Edit: Okay, wow. if the statement from a woman of “we owe you nothing” immediately sets you off emotionally, I would really encourage you to think through why that might be.
A more systemic phrasing could have been “we owe the patriarchy nothing”. I changed it to that for a second before realizing, again, that it was fine. A guy that has worked through internalized patriarchy around this will understand it’s not about them.
Patriarchy on the whole conditions men towards having a sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies, time, attention, labor, etc. It also conditions women that they should feel obligated to provide this without setting boundaries or expecting reciprocal solidarity.
Remember, we literally all have degrees of internalized bigotry, misogyny, racism, transphobia, etc because these are systemic issues. Our responsibility to ourselves and our comrades is to work through that. You are not a bad person for finding those brainworms in yourself, only if you refuse to do the work to address them.
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This is an awesome question! You can start by asking her if she feels like you ever put too much on her without asking first. Checking in with people about how they’re feeling before you vent is important. You should also ask her how much she feels you are reciprocating with emotional support.
A ton of straight couples straight up do not talk about this and it leads to women breaking up with men. I have a lot of straight friends who have ended relationships because the guy just couldn’t even communicate. At the point you’re breaking up with someone for that, you also probably aren’t going to talk to them about it because they’ve already shown they’re unwilling to do that.
Men have an incredible capacity for emotional depth, the same as anyone else. Patriarchy victimizes men by pressuring them to suppress and close off that part of themselves.
Looking for support from a romantic partner, or even a close friend or a family member, is not making them. They choose to do it because they're in a close relationship with you.
The problem is exactly what you said in the second paragraph, and that's what this poster is saying. The problem we're having here is that a lot of men are seeing a woman saying we don't owe you anything by virtue of being a woman, and getting up in arms about it. Men are seeing this poster and instead of engaging with the core point of it - that women are expected to be kind, and always able to deal with men's problems - are getting angry and going off on tangents about men's mental health and accusing people of saying things they never said
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