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I'd start by being wary of anything that says it's 'for men.' The male parts of reproductive medicine/endocrinology/etc. can be studied but real understanding in that area is college/post-grad level courses of material. Almost anything approachable will be over-simplified unless you really dive in. However, on the social side, (brains, emotions, support networks, etc) it's usually a bad sign when the source says anything is exclusive to men. Most philosophy, psychology, sociology, emotional intelligence training, etc. is not served by framing it based on sex, and a lot of stuff that is framed that way tends to be propagandistic in pretending this or that understanding of sex-based social norms (a.k.a. gender) is the one true way. Studying psychoanalysis can be good, and i can recommend the Quarantine Collective on youtube as a nice place to learn about philosophy and a little bit of psychoanalysis, often presenting a secure, non-misogynistic masculinity. For emotional intelligence, it's more about practice than study but Heidi Priebe has made some good explanations, though watch out for the woo in Jungian thinking. And while it might sound strange to some, finding a good (for you) teacher for vipassana and metta meditations can be very helpful in understanding yourself, regardless.
This feels like a dangerous take.
I just yesterday participated in a group for men, because we make up 3% of my industry and suffer a lot of discrimination.
Likewise there are men’s sheds all around my country for men to get together, it’s hugely important for giving them a space to connect and story tell. They’ve led to decreases in suicide rates for older men.
To generalise men’s support networks as bad because you’re probably only thinking of the manosphere hurts the rest of us. And it is sexist, however minor it may seem.
The manosphere is the biggest, most visible thing 'for men' anyone searching is likely to find. I'm not saying every sex-discrimination based division is innately bad, just that it's best to be wary of individuals and organizations that try to claim that space. Many of them, and many of the most visible, are not really there for the benefit of the members. Heck, some of them start on one side of the line and then cross it at some point.
If the goal is to create a world where men feel they are emotionally supported, it would be better to seek a system/situation that enables men to be open with and supported by both men and women. It may be easier to start with a group that shares some identity marker, such as sex, but it creates a... misleading experience to have the supportive kindness in someone's life come from men, or some other identity group, and risk the experience of women, or other outsiders to that identity group, being all/mostly/noticeably unsupportive strangers. Not everyone has the maturity to understand there might be a dynamic at play distorting their perceptions. Nothing is innate to a 'men only' space that encourages that maturity, especially given the world's dynamics with sex and gender as already in place. Thus, one must be very careful.
any sex determined grouping is going to have a ton of biases that are apt to become self-fufilling prophecies.
that's the rub. but 'for men' is 'negative' whereas 'for women' is positive, due to our current western biases.
plenty of women only groups are just as fucked up and toxic as the 'manosphere'. it's just generally not seen as a social threat the way 'men only' thinking is.
like incels are bad and evil, but women incels are not.
That has a lot to do with the perception of how those dynamics visibly play out. Men who group up and reinforce toxic ideation will tend to generate visible violence. Women who do so tend not to become visibly violent. (Visible here meaning at the broad societal/media level)
there are have been violent male incels and female incels.
but only one of those gets media play, due to cultural sex biases.
just like female pedophiles get a pass and male pedophiles are witch-hunted. nobody calls for the tortue and wrap of women pedophiles, weird right?
There is a difference of scale and type. The male incel community tends to produce outwardly focused violence, which sometimes hits at a larger scale, sometimes seemingly completely indiscriminately, or tying into other ideologies of hate. Femcel communities tend to produce smaller, more focused violence. They don't produce mass shootings/stabbings in anywhere near the same amounts.
As for the pedophile double-standard, I suspect that has to do with a visibility bias rooted in most of the people espousing those views being violent adult men with traditional understandings of gender.
there are also just way more male incels than female incels by the nature of sex and biology. if you have 50K male incels and 5K female incels, and only .01% are violent, then you will have 50 male incidents and 5 female ones. but statisically that does not mean male incels are 10x more violent, it's just numbers. incels probably are less violent than non incels, on average, as much of their inceldom comes from their passivity and fear.
last i checked there was never an epidemic of incels. it's like a few random incidents, far suppressed by school shootings, which are basically weekly at this point in the USA. but it gets way more press time because of the controversial gender stuff that ragebaits people. at this point nobody cares if another 10 year old kills 6 of his classmates, that's boring and mundane, but if some 17 year old knife stabs 3 people with an incel rant, that's exciting and novel. mass violence needs a 'hate' element for the media to generate attention these days.
I appreciate your voice of caution.
To the second half of your comment, I think I'd propose we do not necessarily always need an asterisk on a male-specific support space. Yes, we should all support each other, but I think modern feminism and the good of the feminist movement has shown us that many, many decent men are quietly suffering just to get by, and not necessarily a part of the reactive toxic masculinity sphere. Perhaps finding the maturity for that balanced space where anyone can generally support any other still needs an interim step, slowly working towards a more centered place of generalised acceptance, and, dare I ask for it, calm.
It is also possible we're talking past each other, but I felt it worth saying :)
modern feminist thinking regard men's suffering as progress for women. because it seems to think women's progress must come at the expense of men. it's largely antagonistic.
non-antagonistic feminist or gender theorizing doesn't get much social traction because human beings want to root for their group and boo the opposite group. people can't get behind rooting for everyone. they can get behind rooting for men vs women though, just like any other group vs group oppositional dynamic.
I would suggest that the reason some men may need safe male spaces, is similar to the reason some women need safe female-only spaces. Not only does toxic masculinity exist, toxic femininity also exists, even if it is less pervasive. We live in a highly narcissistic culture where people who don't understand the experiences of those different from themselves feel entitled to shit on them.
That said, we should be highly suspicious of those with an axe to grind making prescriptions about what it means to be male.
toxic femininity is socially normalized in a way that toxic masculinity is not. this has changed from say two generations ago when toxic masculinity was more normalized.
a woman flying into a rage about how men are all awful evil rapists... would mostly find agreement with her sentiments from both sexes. a man flying into a rage about how women are awful and evil... would get almost universally condemned.
I imagine that the reason OP framed it this way is because they are (guessing?) a woman, and most things discussing these topics from a practical perspective are created by women, aimed at women, and have a female perspective (implicit or explicit).
This is correct. I want to see what kind of resources are out there which men find helpful, and would want to share with other men. Doesn’t have to be specific to men. I know what I’ve found that’s helpful for myself, but I don’t have the perspective to know what someone with a mostly different life experience than my own would find helpful.
I think part of the reason that this sort of content is less prevalent to men is simply that men find this kind of content less interesting intrinsically. "I want to deeply understand my emotions" is not a theme that many men find resonant. Instead, I think most of the content men consume relating to their mental and emotional lives exists as a subset of achieving some sort of external goal. They want to learn about their minds and emotions because they see these things limiting them in getting to the place they want to be - getting a hot body, getting a higher salary, knowing how to overhaul an engine, living a particular lifestyle, meeting a certain standard they have set for themselves, etc.
I think this also leads to less naval-gazing. When men interact with their emotional lives, there isn't a ton of idle contemplation, which is what a lot of resources on these topics amounts to - men are interacting with their emotions just enough to take the next step forward in whatever their actual goal is. And so the men giving the best advice in this space are almost always not seen as experts on emotions, but are rather seen as experts in other things - their emotional / psychological teachings more often come through in being a good role model.
That said, here are some people/sources that I've read/listened to which I think contributed to my emotional development as a man:
General life/philosophy/emotional health:
Health, fitness, and sport:
Sex and Dating: