LogFAQs > #983865881

swordz9 posted...

Single adult men are probably the most unhappy group of people by a mile Id guess because a lot of them dont have ANY friends where single women still probably at least have friend circles to socialize with at worst

Warning: kind of a rambling post incoming but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and this post made me want to try to those thoughts into words.

So as someone who has experienced both it definitely does suck in many ways to be a single adult man. My life has gotten markedly better since transitioning, even despite having to deal with transphobia (and, to an extent, misogyny) now. It's hard to say how much of my unhappiness before was because of being "stuck in the wrong body"* versus it being awful to be a man more objectively, but it feels like the latter was a big part of it.

And it's weird to talk about this because like. Institutionally, societally, being a woman and/or trans is fuckin awful, way worse than being a cis man. There's really no debating that, as much as some people try. But interpersonally I've only been treated way, way better. I'm closer to my friends and family, everyone seems more comfortable around me and with expressing affection towards me, and dating has literally never been easier in my life.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this post except to say that men's unhappiness is a hard problem to solve, especially when, frankly, a lot of it is men making each other and themselves unhappy. If we're talking institutional discrimination you can make a law against it; you can't make a law that says "men must be more supportive of and kind to each other". And the greatest social movement to address this issue is, despite the name, feminism -- and we've all seen what unhappy men think of feminism and feminists.

*Not exactly my experience but an easy way to think about it for the purposes of this post.