Badabinski

Grr, stupid autocorrect! Thanks for the heads-up, imma fix that now.

I was one of those men, although I was never overtly sexist or misogynistic. I had a quieter form of toxic masculinity, where I always had to have an answer to every question, always had to be dependable and available, always had to be tough and strong. My father raised me that way and spoke out whenever I stepped outside of those lines. Once I moved out on my own, I took up my dad’s place and whipped myself whenever I wasn’t good enough. It took years of failure, pain, and suffering before I really questioned what I was raised to be. From there, it took years of therapy and love from a wonderful person to get to the point where I only occasionally find some of that old programming.

Don’t get me wrong, toxic masculinity is not an excuse for bad behavior. Every person is ultimately responsible for their well-being and for how they treat others. My actions as a young adult caused some real harm, and that’s on me. “Buckling down” and working hard for some shithead boss is not, in general, very good for someone’s well-being. However, it’s a lesson that many boys are taught, and it can be very difficult to break out of childhood conditioning.

Yeah, it’s not (in my opinion) the best way to get the idea across. I read that and immediately thought of how it felt when I was emotionally repressed. To me, a de-scrotumed testicle sounds about right, because even the softest and most gentle care was still rough and painful. I can see how someone could read something much less kind in that phrase, however.

Please reconsider this. The sensitivity that OP is talking about is like the hunger that a starving person feels. Men who haven’t ever been allowed to deal with their feelings will be more sensitive as their bodies scream at them to acknowledge years resentment, burden, anger, anxiety, and fear. A man committing suicide to get away from emotional deprivation is like a starving person committing suicide even though they could have access to food. Men don’t have to be providers for others, and it they choose to, they don’t have to suffer silently and thanklessly under a yoke as the world whips them. You can take care of someone while also getting your emotional needs met.

Hey, I think some nuance was lost over the imperfect medium of text. Here’s what OP is getting at—when someone ignores their emotions, they don’t just go away. Emotions are just signals from the body about what is good for it and what is bad for it. Emotions are the body telling someone what it needs. If emotions are ignored, then the body isn’t getting what it needs, so it sends stronger signals. When I don’t eat, I get hungrier (until I start starving and my body begins eating itself, anyways). When I don’t tend to an injury, it hurts more. When I’m resentful and I don’t do anything about my feelings of resentment, those feelings grow in strength and force.

Any person who has been told by society that they should disregard their emotions will have a body which is screaming its discontent at them. I’m a man and I was raised to hide and repress my feelings (although I was never really into extreme toxic masculinity). It was fucking agonizing, and I became so, so sensitive to things. It took years of therapy for me to learn that the body keeps the score and that I had to feel and express my feelings, just like I had to eat or bandage a cut.

Anyone who has suffered from emotional self-neglect will be sensitive. Western society pushes men to neglect themselves, so those men will be sensitive. That’s all OP meant. Men who accept their emotions for what they are and tend to them will be much less sensitive and will almost certainly be happier people.