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I feel like I've stepped into a time warp and come out in /r/MensRights circa 2012. Yeah, men have it rougher. Yeah, women have a glass floor as well as (sometimes) a glass ceiling. Yeah, you can't say this to anyone without being perceived as low status (this is why The Red Pill provoked such an immune response - it was being presented by a cute, blonde, former feminist). Who cares? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It's the world, we have to deal with it, and it is very hard to teach people rational overrides to their visceral responses unless you control culture from top to bottom. IMHO, a large part of this problem comes (as do many others) from childlessness. At least some number of online feminists I used to get mad about had changes of heart once they realized how their rhetoric impacted their sons.
Regardless of the unfairness and its causes, at least we men are always assumed to have agency. No matter how bad things get, there is an action a man can take towards a path up and out. It might be a long and twisty road with low odds of success, but there's always something to do. Don't expect the world to be fair, don't expect anyone else to care that the world's unfair, and don't expect anyone else to notice the unfairness runs counter to the egalitarian principles that you were probably taught (I was, and it threw me for years). You'll be a lot less disappointed, and then you can start to build with clear eyes. Build yourself up, build a space for those you trust, build a space for your family and close friends, and maybe you can shelter some of those people from the unfairness.
I care. Hypocrisy and double standards piss me off like few things can.
I count myself lucky to have sufficiently high status that I can say a lot of these things and not worry about social ostracism or stigma, not that I usually have reason to outside Motte circles.
I'm happy enough being a man, and I don't particularly want to be a woman.
They piss me off too, but the only way I can productively deal with it is to play the ball as it lies.
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Me. At least when I see the situation appearing to degrade rapidly and nobody in power expressing a plan and the people who express some plan being very aggressively unpersoned.
/r/mensrights recognized these issues back in 2012. Things have only deteriorated since then.
Even leaving aside the fact that 'death' is always in the cards (either suicide, or being forced into war, or a random encounter with extreme violence), there are plenty of situations where a person can get so ruined physically, mentally, or financially that recovery to any reasonable standard of living is scant. Becoming a quadripelegic, addicted to some of the nastier drugs, or following a heavy gambling addiction to it's 'logical' conclusion, for example. Hell, if you end up eating way too much and swell up to 600+ pounds the odds of you having any life that makes you truly happy is approximately zilch.
Or read Johnny Got His Gun and/or listen to the Metallica song based on it and tell me the legless, armless, blind, deaf, and mute soldier has a 'path up and out.'
In most cases these sorts of people drop out of visible society so survivorship and availability bias impact the sample that people actually observe when they say things like that.
I actually kinda hate this particular piece of rhetoric when overused, because it ultimately does make it seem like one should never avoid various risks if there's even the tiniest chance of upside, because 'the worst that can happen is you start over.' Well no. There's definitely virtue in realizing that riding a motorcycle without a helmet has some severe downsides which can be easily avoided, and that decisions you make CAN have immediate and unrecoverable consequences for yourself and others, and encouraging words don't change that.
Nonetheless, this is indeed the best advice you can give without knowing a man's specific situation.
That guy actually got surgery and lost the weight. But you're right about some things - namely, some people being royally fucked (quadriplegics, people in prison for life, some schizophrenics) and these kinds of people becoming invisible (they wind up in institutions of one kind or another and don't get out much).
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