Why is this a gendered thing?
If you replaced “Younger girls” with “any person” and “Men” with “Other people” then this not only remains true, but actually makes just as much sense and applies to more situations.
As a bisexual person, it is very weird to me on a conceptual level how much weight people put behind genders. Like, whether I find a person attractive or not does not correlate to whether they present masculine or feminine, or which sex they had assigned at birth. Like logically I understand why it is the way it is, I’ve just never felt it for myself and assumed everyone just sorta pretends it matters, until I figured out I’m bi.
Hmm, maybe that’s why I have a similar mindset to you. I’m not sure it’s related to my sexuality though. Possibly, but I’ve just been screwed over by people in all kinds of relationships to me, whether it be family, people in positions of authority over me, co-workers, friends and also people I’ve been in a romantic relationships with.
It seems strange to put so much weight on gender and also so much weight on romance / intimacy when doing things solely to please others whilst neglecting your own needs and desires is bad regardless of your relationship with that person.
I feel the specificity is to drive home the point to the target of this message. You can generalize advice to be more accurate and apply to more people, but it’ll be as wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle.
People are really great at excluding themselves from general advice like “don’t worry about judgement”, they need to feel like the message is tailored to their own experiences.
You can definitely recycle the message with a male or gender neutral tone, but that’ll lead to different conversations. Sometimes people don’t want to speak out to a generic broad audience, they want a more specific conversation.
Valid point.
Narrowing the audience of the message can make sense, but weakening the actual lesson by ignoring all the other people you shouldn’t please with no regard for your own feelings I don’t think is a great idea.
After all, we all seek validation from our peers far too often and this can be devastating to our mental health and wellbeing.
But you often should worry about being a good friend and a good student and a good daughter and a good person. And much of how we judge if we’re hitting those marks is how other people feel about us. And sometimes being a good friend/student/daughter/person means some degree of self-sacrafice. So “don’t worry about what anyone thinks”/“don’t compromise on your feelings” isn’t the right message either. That message gets nuanced and complex fairly quickly, whereas it’s reasonable not to worry about romantic relationships, period, when you’re young.
Why is this what you’re worried about? This person is talking to a specific group, and to a soecific group that is often told that their only value is in being attractive men. While us dudes would also benefit from this advice we often find our hobbies and our romantic lives more separated than women.
Wording it like that is coming off as such a “why aren’t we talking about me though?!”
I don’t think that assumption holds. Many activities like hyper masculine sports or body building are culturally tied to impressing women. Dudes getting in shape or “winning” to impress some girl is a common troupe. By the same token, many “feminine hobbies” like makeup and fashion are often about feeling confident about oneself and less about impressing dudes.
Both masculine and feminine hobbies get grouped in with impressing the opposite gender, but both are usually not about that for many of the people involved. A guy dressing fem isn’t necessarily trying to seduce men and a girl who makes gains and plays football isn’t necessarily a lesbian.
Hobbies and romantic lives aren’t more or less tied depending on gender, it’s just that women get presumed to only exist for men. The other reasons men do manly things are more easily recognized. Femininity gets assumed to exist just for men, but masculinity doesn’t get assumed to exist just for women.
Men are very much also told their value is tied to being attractive to women. A huge number of perjoratives against men are based on their lack of romantic success.
Why is this a gendered thing? If you replaced “Younger girls” with “any person” and “Men” with “Other people” then this not only remains true, but actually makes just as much sense and applies to more situations.
As a bisexual person, it is very weird to me on a conceptual level how much weight people put behind genders. Like, whether I find a person attractive or not does not correlate to whether they present masculine or feminine, or which sex they had assigned at birth. Like logically I understand why it is the way it is, I’ve just never felt it for myself and assumed everyone just sorta pretends it matters, until I figured out I’m bi.
Hmm, maybe that’s why I have a similar mindset to you. I’m not sure it’s related to my sexuality though. Possibly, but I’ve just been screwed over by people in all kinds of relationships to me, whether it be family, people in positions of authority over me, co-workers, friends and also people I’ve been in a romantic relationships with.
It seems strange to put so much weight on gender and also so much weight on romance / intimacy when doing things solely to please others whilst neglecting your own needs and desires is bad regardless of your relationship with that person.
I feel the specificity is to drive home the point to the target of this message. You can generalize advice to be more accurate and apply to more people, but it’ll be as wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle.
People are really great at excluding themselves from general advice like “don’t worry about judgement”, they need to feel like the message is tailored to their own experiences.
You can definitely recycle the message with a male or gender neutral tone, but that’ll lead to different conversations. Sometimes people don’t want to speak out to a generic broad audience, they want a more specific conversation.
Valid point. Narrowing the audience of the message can make sense, but weakening the actual lesson by ignoring all the other people you shouldn’t please with no regard for your own feelings I don’t think is a great idea. After all, we all seek validation from our peers far too often and this can be devastating to our mental health and wellbeing.
But you often should worry about being a good friend and a good student and a good daughter and a good person. And much of how we judge if we’re hitting those marks is how other people feel about us. And sometimes being a good friend/student/daughter/person means some degree of self-sacrafice. So “don’t worry about what anyone thinks”/“don’t compromise on your feelings” isn’t the right message either. That message gets nuanced and complex fairly quickly, whereas it’s reasonable not to worry about romantic relationships, period, when you’re young.
Good question - my thoughts exactly.
Why is this what you’re worried about? This person is talking to a specific group, and to a soecific group that is often told that their only value is in being attractive men. While us dudes would also benefit from this advice we often find our hobbies and our romantic lives more separated than women.
Wording it like that is coming off as such a “why aren’t we talking about me though?!”
I don’t think that assumption holds. Many activities like hyper masculine sports or body building are culturally tied to impressing women. Dudes getting in shape or “winning” to impress some girl is a common troupe. By the same token, many “feminine hobbies” like makeup and fashion are often about feeling confident about oneself and less about impressing dudes.
Both masculine and feminine hobbies get grouped in with impressing the opposite gender, but both are usually not about that for many of the people involved. A guy dressing fem isn’t necessarily trying to seduce men and a girl who makes gains and plays football isn’t necessarily a lesbian.
Hobbies and romantic lives aren’t more or less tied depending on gender, it’s just that women get presumed to only exist for men. The other reasons men do manly things are more easily recognized. Femininity gets assumed to exist just for men, but masculinity doesn’t get assumed to exist just for women.
Men are very much also told their value is tied to being attractive to women. A huge number of perjoratives against men are based on their lack of romantic success.
In case of OP, it’s self-loathing
That’s sad.