Humanities & Cultures

Do I think a trailblazing men’s dating column is going to suddenly solve the so-called crisis in male emotional communication? No.

This is really interesting considering the points they bring up in the article. This one in particular:

“If it’s going well, it comes off braggy and vulgar, and if it’s going poorly, stop whinging in print.”

Men attempting to communicate their experiences are immediately judged for it. Here's another one:

“Paradoxically, the sort of men who have the insight and sensitivity to write well about that experience preclude themselves from doing it exactly because of the sensitivity and awareness that would make their writing insightful,”

So male sensitivity and awareness means men not talking about things? That doesn't sound healthy.

I think a good model for a dating community would be the /r/daddit subreddit. Here's men communicating emotions in a male-oriented space, getting helpful support and feedback from a welcoming community. Another great one for this was /r/bigdickproblems. Aside from the pervs asking for dick pics in DMs it was full of helpful advice about sex.

There's so much to unpack in this really short article it's hard to know where to start. At the very top we should probably start with male and female socialization and focus and how it leads to very different media consumption patterns. In broad strokes men are socialized to pay attention to action and resolution. Problems are to be solved. Objects are to be built. Efficiency is to be analyzed. The focus is often on the non human elements in life or the measurable and tangible things. Women, on the other hand, are socialized to pay more attention to the human element. It's no surprise, given their historical role as caretakers of the home, the family, and the community. Problems aren't just to be solved, there's a need to manage the emotional needs of the parties as well. It's less about the objects you build but more about how and who you build them with. Efficiency isn't very important if everyone is unhappy as a result of changing the process.

This difference in socialization is likely behind the differences in media consumption. Men tend to consume more media that is action oriented and women tend to consume more media that is about human interactions. Romance novels, for example, are much more heavily consumed by women than men and the reverse is true for something much less focused on the human such as books on business. There is something special about the topic of romance, however, as gender disparity among readers of romance novels is highest, and while I couldn't find any statistics on relationships blogs and advice media, I suspect strong disparity among gender in this space as well.

Starting from this space it's easy to see how a straight male blog on relationships is just generally speaking not a very likely thing to exist in the first place. However, this begs the question of why the author is curious why it doesn't exist in the first place. The author is not a straight male and it's fairly clear there most likely isn't a very large straight male audience for this sort of thing, so why ask about it's existence? There's a few main trails of thought here that I think are relevant.

The first is that the author enjoys this kind of content and is curious why men aren't interested in the same content. I think this is adequately answered by the above, at least in broad strokes. Another thought in the same vein is that they're transferring what they get out of relationship blogs to the needs of men - that whatever they get out of the writings from women on sex and dating is something that they believe men need or can see how some of them might desire the same thing. To an extent, I think this can also be explained by the reasons above. A cisgender heterosexual romantic/sexual relationship consists of both a man and a woman. If, in general, men are more concerned about outcome (acquiring a relationship, being successful in a relationship, etc.) than they are about the human element (how a relationship makes you feel, the moments that make a relationship special, etc.) then a man might be able to get just as much if not more information from reading a blog about sex and dating written from the perspective they are missing. If they are trying to understand the needs of potential partners, there's no better place to find them then in the thoughts of people who resemble them. A male's perspective wouldn't have a particularly high utility to them, except perhaps when its dressed as a set of action items such as how to pick up women which almost always veers into the territory that the author and many other individuals rightfully consider as toxic (such as pickup artists).

Another potential trail of thought is that the author sees straight men in need of education based on her experiences interacting with them and has decided that it's good to have both male and female role models and is struggling to find the male ones. This would be a transference of an observed educational need. I think it's important to note that this need may be one sided in that it's implied that men would also desire this education. It's also important to note that there's a level of broad strokes thinking here which I think one can rightfully deduce as well as specific strokes which apply more to the individuals likes, wants, and desires and is subject to their own personality. A good example of this is how courtship should play out. Some people feel strongly that the heterosexual male needs to initiate courtship and others might be perfectly fine with the woman initiating. The relative importance of say tips on how to initiate that courtship, where it's appropriate to initiate it, how long one might need/want to know someone before initiating, what words to use when initiating and so on and so forth vary on a personal basis. Seeing a need on one or more aspects of this could represent a broader general need among men as a whole, or simply reflect the social circumstances of where the person exists, how attractive they are, their persuasion towards this kind of behavior and just pure happenstance. I suspect there's a fair chunk of this trail of thought by the author given that they mention a 'so-called crisis in male emotional communication.'

Of course none of these thoughts even begin to touch on a lot of the technical difficulties with respect to writing on this subject as a straight male. I think the author does a good job of bringing up the most salient points of power dynamics and an online audience and how that is likely to amplify its effect to a straight male writer more than a female one, but I don't think they do a good job of mentioning how badly some of these gender dynamics already affect women who do write on this subject. She mentions that women are allowed to denigrate men in print, but fails to mention how articles like that often draw in a lot of negative male criticism even when the author does so in good faith and is sure to couch their words in a way to make it very clear they are speaking in broad strokes and not about men as a whole. The same would be exponentially worse for men writing about toxic women, requiring an even higher emotional burden before sharing their experience which also would undoubtedly be met by some irate individuals on the internet claiming that the author must be sexist and a womanizer. If men are in a crisis of emotional communication, why should the author expect that they have the desire to expend what little emotional energy they have left on the burden of attempting to write about sex and dating in a way which draws more positive attention than negative?

Ultimately these trails of thoughts are different enough that I'm not sure they're all served by simply having more straight men write about sex and dating. While I do think the inclusion of more media of this nature is good for the world in general, the educational need would probably not be particularly well served by this given that straight male consumerism of relationship focused media is fairly low. Scientific and educational books are more likely to meet the eyes of straight male readers, and may do a lot more for teaching them how to have better a sex and dating life than a blog ever would. If we're focused on disparities among consumption habits by gender, de-gendering the socialization of children might result in less disparity. Some of these may not even be problems at all, but simply a reflection of human diversity as it loosely correlates with genetic expression.

Can just we skip to the part where gender is impertinent and we just lead our lives in ways that fulfill ourselves and others? Support and adore your partners, communicate and productively work through unmet expectations, etc. It really shouldn’t matter much what’s between one’s legs.

At some level, men just need to stop giving a shit about what maladjusted men think and focus on what actually matters - living a good life for one’s self and those around them. If we’re actually interested in flourishing beyond our critter origins, anyway.

They do, its usually pick up artist bullshit

@Gaywallet It is an interesting question and the success of Dan Savage suggests that the "straight" part of this question might not be irrelevant.

I have been reading / listening to Dan Savage for years for my sex and relationship advice. With him being a gay man its interesting to hear his perspective as a man and dating men. Its been wonderful for my development and I highly recommend him to everyone.

That being said it would be interesting to hear from a straight or bi men as well. I often hear things that he says about men in general that I disagree with and wonder if its me, a gay thing or something different. A diversity of voices is always helpful especially if its about kink. Its more interesting as a topic and there are plenty of kinky woman writing now and few kinky men. Which is ironic since there are more kinky identified men than woman as a population overall

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