Reddit reviews Men, Women and Worthiness: The Experience of Shame and the Power of Being Enough
We found 4 Reddit comments about Men, Women and Worthiness: The Experience of Shame and the Power of Being Enough. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
I know your question was rhetorical, but Brené Brown’s Men, Women, and Worthiness touches on the subject of how and why emotions are tied to shame for men, and why men tend to avoid or ignore them. Basically full lifetimes of being shamed for any show of vulnerability or emotion.
Sounds like you're being pretty hard on yourself. Here's a few thoughts from someone who was also pretty hard on himself:
You'll be amazed at how hard women find it to find a great guy. You can be that great guy.
Sorry you're going through this, there is a lot there and it sounds like that one person is being allowed to consume you.
I'd seriously check out Brene Brown's work on shame. She equates rage and anger to shame, you'd not think it, but it could be really helpful. I listen to her stuff on audiobook because I'm an image type but helpful for anyone imo.
My library has this for free on hoopla, yours may too. https://www.amazon.com/Men-Women-Worthiness-Experience-Enough/dp/B00D4APD3M?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-d-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00D4APD3M
About 2/3 of people in North America are women, people of colour, and/or LGBTQ people. Yet in terms of media representation, or in terms of positions of power — in politics and business — way less than 2/3 is allocated to people in these groups.
Over time, the allocation will trend closer to 2/3. Social justice activism is about attempting to speed up that change.
As previously underrepresented and disempowered groups of people gain representation and power, it's going to be uncomfortable and maybe even scary for people outside those groups. Perhaps particularly for the roughly 1/3 of people in North America who are straight white men. The status quo is going to be disrupted. There is going to be change. It's not going to be clean or easy or comfortable.
The best we can do as this transition toward gender, racial, and LGBTQ equality continues over the years and decades is to try to soften. To empathize, to consider, to listen — to not react instantly, but to pause, breathe, and think it over. People with a different experience of gender, race, and sexual orientation tend to — statistically — have a different life experience overall. We can't assume everyone else's experience is the same as ours. That means if we want to understand where people different from us are coming from — why they're angry, for instance — we need to really try to understand a life experience that might be foreign to us.
A lot of conflict and distress around social justice issues really is down to just a lack of knowledge. It was easier to demonize gay people when the majority view was that 1) being gay has high comorbidity with severe mental illness (independent of the effects of discrimination and systemic inequality), 2) that committed, healthy, long-term gay romantic relationships were rare or just didn't happen, and 3) that gay people were much more likely than straight people to sexually predate on children.
Over time, as gay people organized into activist groups and gained visibility, these myths crumbled. New knowledge about what gay people's lives are actually like made inequality less easy to rationalize.
This same process is constantly unfolding, with different groups of people. At least until theast few years, most men were unaware of the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and sexual assault that women experience. As more men learn the truth, more men share the anger that activist women express.
There is a scientific humility and open-mindedness we can bring to this process. We know that different people have different experience, and we know (in large part from an extensive social science literature) that people statistically have very different life experience along the lines of gender, race, and sexual orientation. Knowing that, do we assume that we already understand everyone's experience, that the status quo must be justified, and if some people aren't happy with the status quo, it must be their fault? Do we resist and resent the discomfort that comes with 2/3 of people getting 2/3 of the representation and power?
Or do we reserve judgment, and try to absorb new information from people who have a different life experience? Do we soften into empathy, and accept that discomfort may be the cost of constructive social change?
Recommended listening: "Men, Women and Worthiness" by Brené Brown.