I was woken up by the baby and can’t manage to fall back asleep. So I started browsing (what on earth did people do before there was this option?) and found a delightful true story about a young man who says that his mental and emotional health were damaged by a picture of a gun with roses coming our of its barrel. It’s fortunate that he is too young to have lived in the heyday of the band called Guns N’ Roses, or the poor creature would have a mental breakdown whenever he heard the band’s name.
I’m all for alternative masculinities but this is taking the image of a sensitive male a bit too far from my liking. At the same time, if you read until the end of the linked piece, you’ll see how easily this sensitive male managed to get a woman to service him emotionally and cluck around him like a stupid hen. There is no masculinity alternative enough to let go of the need to be serviced and pandered to by women.
Clarissa's Blog 
Before the internet:
https://xkcd.com/1348/
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Trolling. The kid has to be trolling. Just has to be.
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I want to believe this. I really, really do.
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I think with a lot of women this is something they unlearn with age. To
It’s fortunate that he is too young to have lived in the heyday of the band called Guns N’ Roses, or the poor creature would have a mental breakdown whenever he heard the band’s name.
Now I’m upset that Axl Rose is still alive and Prince is dead. :p
As a general aside:
I don’t know if this is a Gen X/early millennial or an immigrant thing but it just astounds me to see how many people want their feelings catered to or use their feelings to make demands. Between my teachers, other children and my actual parents, nobody gave a shit about whether some image, experience or name calling traumatized me. I remember being a weltering mass of sulky subjectivity but I didn’t have Tumblr and that makes all the difference? I’ve had triggers and they’re idiosyncratic as hell. Like this stupid article <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/fashion/millennials-mic-workplace.html’>sent me into a shaky rage far out of proportion to anything actually in the article. For a long time, men who looked a certain way would send me into fight-or-flight. This guy isn’t claiming that, he’s saying “I hate your tacky mural” but with more words and in an email. The article doesn’t say he contacted her as the mural was going up.
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You are right it’s as if people found that developing a subjectivity is too heavy a burden. The moment they experience anything other than the regular blandness and nothingness, they freak out and either medicate or lash out at the world for causing the experience. They don’t seem even to be aware that there can be internal mechanisms of self-regulation.
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I don’t have anything to add on the topic, but I saw Jungle Book last weekend and couldn’t stop crying throughout the movie.
I am a Sensitive Male.
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Do you recommend the movie? Is it more or less affecting than Old Yeller?
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Haven’t seen Old Yeller, but I would heartily recommend Jungle Book. This movie slayed me.
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I now want to see the movie, too.
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Ah, it’s about Mowgli. We had a really great version back in the USSR. Lovely.
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Cynically speaking, this is why I’m glad my parents were conservative Cuban immigrants who spanked me. I was not raised to be a little wuss crying over stuff and being upset with everything, if we were scared of something, tough shit. That’s actually a very nice mural and this guy is a wimp for wanting it removed because it hurt his little fee fees, and of course he gets his way because no one can be offended anymore. He needs some boot camp, I was spanked as a kid with a belt but I don’t freak out every time I see a belt or someone mentions spanking. Dude needs to grow the fuck up.
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Yeah, Dude need to attain the maturity needed in order to justify children being whipped by belts. Lot of growing to do!
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