[DaUR]

Sociologists and feminists like to chalk everything up to gender roles, as the author does here, and offer feminism as a solution, but this is dogmatic.

There's a difference between taking risks (if you take risks, and bad things happen as a result, that's often outside of your control; e.g. sharks when swimming in the ocean, there's always a risk) and self-neglect, which is within your control. Self-neglect is a consequence of low self-esteem, and has nothing to do with masculinity. This may be uncouth, but: think of the men who you think are least masculine, and ask yourself if they nurture themselves more, go more to the gym, and eat better. If anything, the opposite is true.

The real problem is self-neglect, whose root cause is low self-esteem.

I don't think women's average self-esteem is any higher or lower than men's, but theirs manifests itself in different ways, which explains why women would be more conscientious of their physical health, and push men to do the same. Still doesn't change the nature of the problem, or its real solution.

[derefr]

> The real problem is self-neglect, whose root cause is low self-esteem.

I'm not sure if I disagree with you, or if my perspective is this same perspective from a different angle, but: I would say that it's more that men tend to (expect to) derive their self-esteem from things they do, rather than things they are—so they invest much more time in doing things, and much less time in being things.

In order to "be" beautiful or to "be" athletic, it's usually a pre-requisite to be healthy—to take care of your body. In order to do things like building a successful business or finding cures for diseases, you don't have to be anything in particular, other than, perhaps, stubborn. So you tend to see things like your own physical health as distractions from "doing."

[DaUR]

> I'm not sure if I disagree with you, or if my perspective is this same perspective from a different angle, but: I would say that it's more that men tend to (expect to) derive their self-esteem from things they do, rather than things they are—so they invest much more time in doing things, and much less time in being things.

I agree, but that seems tangential to the point. It's a gender difference that has been constant throughout history, and seems arbitrary to want to change. It also doesn't fix the main problem. Making men more feminine will not make them more self-nurturing.

To illustrate, putting on makeup isn't self-nurturing, anymore than getting a haircut. It's not something that depends on your self-esteem, everyone does it. Binge-dieting is self-neglectful (the opposite of nurturing), and so obviously doesn't come from a position of high self-esteem. Being more obsessed about your appearance doesn't make you more nurturing of yourself physically. Again, women don't nurture themselves more than men. You could chalk up wives' willingness to go to the doctor as higher fear of potential negative consequences, rather than self-nourishment.

The question is how do you get men to care more about their health, remember. And changing society or "gender roles" isn't the solution.

> In order to "be" beautiful or to "be" athletic, it's usually a pre-requisite to be healthy

The assumption here is that women nurture themselves because they want to look good, I don't believe that at all. You'll nurture yourself because you'll want to do it, instinctively, without needing any willpower. A necessary condition for that is high self-esteem.

Put another way: if you want to learn better eye contact, you have two ways. 1st: practice better eye contact. 2nd: increase your self-respect. The 1st won't work. The 2nd, will, because it addresses the actual cause. I'm arguing that the same is true for men's health.

[derefr]

> The assumption here is that women nurture themselves because they want to look good, I don't believe that at all. You'll nurture yourself because you'll want to do it, instinctively, without needing any willpower.

That wasn't what I was trying to communicate at all. My intended meaning was that women—by wanting to look good, or to seem happy, or to put on one of the numerous other faces people expect women to present to the world—are forced to pay attention to their own bodies. At which point they will notice if-and-when they're bodily unhealthy. (And in many of the other major roles women play, they're expected to be caregivers: people who pay attention to others, and are paid attention to in turn. Women in such roles have support networks who will notice if-and-when they are unhealthy.)

Men, meanwhile, usually are expected to strive toward goals that involve paying solely external attention—and often abstract attention, to things or systems or concepts more than to people. Their attention will almost never need to be on their own bodies to achieve their goals; and nor will anyone around them (in a professional capacity) pay attention to their state of being, as long as their work is getting done.

The stereotype is at its strongest in war narratives: "valor" is ignoring the bullet in your calf and the stab-wound in your left side and marching on to finish the battle. Because, relative to winning the battle, the state of your body is immaterial. All other stories of "heroism" tend to have some form of this—the mathematician who abuses drugs to find the answer, the entrepreneur who gives a thousand sleepless nights to their cause, etc.

Put women in those roles, and the immediate evaluation (in our culture) changes from "heroism" to "self-neglect." Which tells you a lot more about how our culture thinks of men, than how it thinks of women, since the evaluation for women is clearly factual.

[DaUR]

> That wasn't what I was trying to communicate at all. My intended meaning was that women—by wanting to look good, or to seem happy, or to put on one of the numerous other faces people expect women to present to the world—are forced to pay attention to their own bodies.

I misunderstood that, you're right.

About your wider point: you seem to put a lot of importance on societal roles ("expected to", "narratives"), and I don't think much of this (if at all) is caused by society rather than self-directed. You're arguing that women are more physically nurturing than men (which could well be true), I'm arguing that it's inconsequential as to how to make men more self-nurturing.

[mbrock]

> About your wider point: you seem to put a lot of importance on societal roles ("expected to", "narratives"), and I don't think much of this (if at all) is caused by society rather than self-directed.

Why do you think so?

[pmarreck]

With the disclaimer that this is gender stereotyping (and my doubts have been increasing as to the utility of this way of thinking about people), this does seem like an insightful observation

[derefr]

Hmm, sex stereotyping is usually wrong, but I'm not sure what's wrong with gender stereotyping—as in, predicting that people will behave a certain way when (voluntarily, self-identifyingly) playing a defined gender role in a culture with clear gender-segregated role-scripts.

It's in the "Western man" role-script to "do" things—and to be expected to "do" things by others; it's in the "Western woman" role-script to "be" things—and to be expected to "be" things by others. As long as you "put on the mask", the people around you will generally push you toward playing your part. (This is what a large part of gender dysphoria is about: being pushed by society to play a part you don't identify with, because of what you present as.)

If you don't strongly identify with either of the roles of "Western man" or "Western woman", then the likelihood of you taking care of yourself isn't predictable. But if you do (and a lot of people do), it generally is.