I swear to god if any of you see this as an invitation to be weird and misogynistic in the comments

Ah, tumblr is growing up, I see. Five years ago voicing anything like that would get you flooded with angry comments about what an incel you are and shit. Now people at least try to do some self-reflection.

Yep, when someone waves some flag of tolerance and then turns and attacks the people they claim to be tolerant towards the moment those people don't act according to some script, you know that person is full of shit. And that's why I've shunned this "aaaawwwww men should cry and be soft and be little ✨ cinnamon buns ✨ ~~~~" bullshit since the early 2010s. Because I always felt it was performative and self-congratulatory - the people spreading it needed someone to play the "perfect victim of toxic masculinity" for them to portray themselves as the savior of that person and feel good about themselves. Once you deviate from the script, don't show emotion at the "proper" moment, or in an "acceptable" way, you're no longer an uwu cinnamon roll for them to coddle and pat themselves on the back.

Before someone says I need to touch grass (I probably do), I've experienced this irl too. A stark example was my ex who was a weird mix of Western progressive and Eastern European traditional mindsets. She would invite me to be emotionally open, share, express worries and distress and whatnot. But when I did... that "malfunction" didn't happen "according to plan", at "acceptable" times and in "acceptable" ways, so I was berated and/or dismissed (the classic Eastern European "no, you don't have depression or anxiety"). Other women in my life have been the same at times - my mother, occasionally my female friends with their boyfriends (not with me but it's different, I'm a friend). So if all this professed empathy always comes with terms and conditions, rationed into scheduled amounts and times and is basically never there when I actually need it and on the contrary, I get shamed when I express that need, I'll stay shut in, thank you very much.