Not my note.
It’s so easy to rip people down. Pump someone’s tires. It means way more than you can imagine.
The stranger:
That was my first thought, but then I remembered the tiny campgrounds I’ve stayed at. Now I’m imagining this guy only like 7-8 feet away from the family
We do deep woods camping where gear has to be hiked in and out so this would be creepy as fuck, nosleep material.
I think I would remember this for 5 years if it happened to me, which means I should do it to others
Make sure you confuse them though, give notes calling old grannies great fathers and fathers letters about the joy of child birth.
Absolutely. And I’d remember it forever.
I once had someone tell me on discord that they stopped cutting themselves because of me just being nice to them, when they had trouble making any friends. I’ll never forget that.
Like 10 years ago I had a stranger come up to us in a restaurant and compliment how well behaved our kids were and I still remember it.
Yes, many don’t know this but you can give out appreciation and compliment for free.
No yelling,
Kids behaved,
Didn’t see you hit your wife (even once)!
The bar is set hilariously low, and a lot of people still don’t make it.
That’s right, you didn’t see me hit her 😏
As long as it’s consensual and boundaries have been discussed beforehand you’re fine.
I would have that shit framed
Nah, got to use wax, and stick it to something like a 40k purity seal
In the crisp brightness of the forest campground, there are only supportive neighbors.
This crispbright aesthetic can get it
Maybe it’s generational I don’t know. I’m a 47 year old dude I don’t need strangers validation to know I’m a good dad and frankly that level of assumed eavesdropping and then feeling a need to announce that regardless of it being a positive message is just, fucking weird and off-putting.
Compliments are hard to take for some, and it sounds like you find it patronizing and creepy. This is for this very reason that I was really hesitant as a woman to compliment men, I’m more or less the same generation.
One time late at night, I had no makeup on and was very frumpy, going to buy a six pack at 7eleven. There, a gorgeous gigantic drag queen told me “Giiiiiiirl, look at your faaaace, you’re so gorgeous”. It was so so so cool and made me feel like a queen. So from then on I thought fuck it, I don’t get compliments often and when I do, it makes my day. So now I do whenever I am sincerely impressed or enjoy something.
As a guy, I appreciate compliments.
There’s a lot of us who do, so please don’t stop. We receive them so infrequently that it’s reassuring and nice to hear if we’re doing something well or not from someone else.
No man is an island, and those that want to be tend to be assholes.
Lol I love how it jumps from my having an opposing view to me being an asshole because of it.
Well that person said no man is an island, and the ones who want to be are assholes.
Does that describe you? Do you want to be an island?
I appreciate compliments. I have a hard time accepting overly specific compliments.
The original note that started this thread was on the overly specific side.
Drastically different than observing you and your family over the course of multiple hours. The example you gave is valid and I love shit like that.
To be very fair there’s a difference between giving a compliment to your face directly and writing a letter with specific details that could come off a bit creepy.
“Hey nice hair! You’re rocking it!” - said to your face as someone walks past.
Is different to what’s in OP.
At some campgrounds you can’t not hear your neighbors. I understand there’s a social expectation of pretending privacy but surely this is just a wholesome gesture?
Why?
Seriously, it seems like a genuinely nice note. No harm was done and everything that was said was validating and positive. It didn’t need to be said, but that just makes it all the more special. That guy going out of his way to give that validation when it obviously wasn’t necessary just shows that he isn’t just being a good dad. His parenting is at a quality at that at least one other dad admires. He doesn’t need to be told that, but I’m glad he was.I suppose I don’t understand your perspective. If you know you’re a good dad then getting validation on top of that is just good, right? If it’s obvious you don’t need it and someone else is still compelled to tell you then you must be doing an even better job than you thought!
It’s good you don’t need validation. In fact it’s a great level of confidence in your ability. So if someone validates that confidence. That’s good? It’s not needed, but it’s still good.
Or at least that was my takeaway, I was curious about yours.
ETA: I had a thought… What would your opinion be if the feedback was negative? What if he was aggressive and mean? Not loud, or drawing attention, just a dickhead to his kids and family.
I’m not looking for any particular answer here, I’m just curious if your opinion would change at all.If you’ve ever been camping at RV parks, there is limited privacy and especially if you have kids, if two campsites are next to each other outside, they are absolutely going to be listening in on each other, because there’s not much else to do.
Also same with watching people pull in to their spot. As someone who regularly RV camps, everyone watches everyone pull in and also pack up to see how efficient they can do it vs themselves. It’s like a pasttime, especially if you get lucky and catch someone who has to try 10+ times to line up the RV correctly, because you know they just rented a bunch of equipment and don’t really understand how to use any of it.
TL;DR; it feels like you’re complaining about someone being thoughtful and wanting to pay it forward at an RV park by telling someone else, one father to another, that they’re doing a good job at life. Guys don’t get positive reinforcement a lot, so I bet this meant the world to the father who received the note.
I’ve spent many a week and weekend at camp sites. Normal people are not standing around gawking at people’s parking skills nor are they actively listening in to other campers conversations.
the weird part to me is writing such a long note and putting it on the car.
if it was delivered in person (and then there’s still a lot that could make it weird), or the note was just “hey man, couldn’t help but notice you seem to be a great parent, props from a fellow camper”, i’d be more comfortable with it.Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I can understand how something coming across as overly specific could be creepy.
I think I’d put a bit more details to show actual examples then it doesn’t sound hollow. I think I would feel weird if it was just a random short note. Like, what did I do? Did I make a scene? So to avoid making someone else feel that way I’d add a few examples in the least weird way possible 😄
But I’m autistic and tend to question my way of viewing things a lot, so maybe that’s just a me thing 😉
I’ve personally lost all sense of masculinity. There’s no positive feature I would think men should have and women not, or vice versa.
To me gender norms feel weird and toxic, except there are folk in our trans community that get a lot out of representing as their gender.
But telling people they rock is a good thing I think. 2025 is expected to a lot of bad days.
That is awesome.
And in answer to the question in the title: Yes. Yes it is. Toxic masculinity has never been about man=bad or anything. It’s about finding better ways of being masculine. That’s what it was always supposed to be.
Good men are real; I’ve met many of them. It isn’t some impossible ideal, but a process of self improvement that anyone can jump on.
Is it OK to 💩 on men in the meantime? (I’m a man who’s usually fine with it.)
e.g. IDK, “men are predators” or something - really broad brush stuff that has an origin in accuracy, but is a majorly broad brush all the same. I’ve wondered if we don’t need to be more careful with those statements, as heartfelt as they may be.
So long as it’s measured self depreciation, it’s probably fine. If you want a women centered version of this, see @femcelmemes@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Ah maybe not self deprecation, like maybe you see a story about a rapist and comment
FUCK MEN! Teach your boys not to rape
I guess complaining about white people can be the same thing. Special rules for criticizing oppressors; you’d only hear complaints from right wing folks.
RE: femcelmemes: thanks, had never browsed the community itself before - tame stuff overall :)
I try to keep it positive there, as I’ve seen similar communities turn into spiraling pits of self hatred. Making fun of weakness is productive, but feeling ashamed is not.
💪
I agree that that is what it should be, but my experience has been that I’ve heard a lot of man=bad messages. Maybe it’s the bubble I’ve been in, but it’s hard for me to shake that off. I try to be a good person, but I don’t know what it means to be a good man. Any personality trait that is good for a man to have, I also think is good for a woman to have, so it’s not specifically a good man trait.
all of that is because gender is socially derived. we don’t need to attach any aspect of our personality to our gender, or any of our gender to our personality. given this, we can understand all gender to be either contrived or performative. if gender is performative, we can contrive associations that are positive and hopefully raise a new generation of decently well adjusted men who get us closer to living in a post gender-coded society
Honest question, in a post gender-coded society, would there be no gender dysphoria?
Yes and no. It depends on how the person sees themself and what they’re “allowed” by society to be.
Like, being punk or metal are not “genders,” and life maybe 200 years ago certainly predates those movements, but those movements are reflected in those people’s clothing and personalities, and attempting to rip that away from them would still deal psychological damage, wouldn’t it?
These things are socially built, but that doesn’t mean they don’t matter. And if you build different social things, then different things matter.
I don’t know how many people feel dysphoric for not being a man specifically from the year 1630, but if there’s a strong desire to go there, more than just a bit of cosplay, and society won’t let you, I think that quite obviously leads to emotional pain.
200 years ago, punk and metal didn’t exist, so the possibility to have your wish to be punk denied is something specific to the era where punk exist as a concept. Am I on the right way here? What I mean is… doesn’t that imply that being transgender is not inherent in a person, but a personal wish that can only exist in a time when gender exist?
Um… kind of. I mean, yeah, if people had no concept for what “man” or “woman” was, I struggle to imagine how they could be upset about it.
Dysphoria is just some kind of disconnect between the mind and the body, how the mind sees itself and how it perceives the body to be. Cis men, even, experience dysphoria all the time. Not being six feet tall, or not being muscular enough, or watching their hair thin out as they age. Some people, I know this is silly, are like suicidally dysphoric about their dicks being 5.5 inches long and not 6.
Speaking of men being too short, I actually have a personal example. A mild one.
My mom had a friend, another mom, she used to hang out with quite often. And you know, where mom goes, the kids go. So, I was often around like 6 or 7 other kids, some of them my siblings, and sometimes we weren’t all ignoring each other.
I was also the oldest, and therefore the biggest, the strongest, the coolest. And, I dunno, I guess my shoes were as well: I wore boots a lot. I promise that’s relevant.
Being a bit of a klutz, it was not uncommon that if something was knocked over, a stack of CDs, a child, I might have had something to do with it. And my mom, and her friend, bless them, would make fun of me for this. You know, my long monkey arms or my big clobber feet (heavy boots). And, the thing is, this made me self-conscious a bit. Kinda made me feel like a gentle giant, or a lumbering oaf. And I didn’t want that, I wanted to be small and agile and deftly acrobatic. I definitely did not want to kick children into any CD towers.
To this day, I actually wish I was a little shorter. Just aesthetically, I think I’d vibe with it. No surgeries, but if I could snap my fingers? I might consider it.
The point of this story, though, is that this is kind of a learned behavior. I could argue that this bothers me, the same as not being tall and manly enough bothers some other people, but if I hadn’t grown up with this story, would it matter to me? If I had grown up around people who were already much taller, would I have felt as small as I wanted to? Why do I want to be small anyway? Another version of this story is that I just accept the gentle giant identity as my own and roll with it.
I’m not going to pretend I know when and where the brain decides what it wants to be. But, I can tell you its desires are both very real and completely arbitrary; incredibly important and deeply silly.
I guess the corollary I’m drawing is that gender abolishment is like taking this story of mine, but which isn’t just mine, it’s actually everyone’s, and saying “you don’t have to grow up this way anymore. You don’t have to be sad about your genitalia not being what it’s ‘supposed’ to be because it’s no longer ‘supposed’ to be anything. 5.5 is just fine. You don’t have to be sad about not fitting in with the dress-wearing people because, well, I mean, just wear one if you want to. Like, why not. What’s the problem.”
And just as a final note, if we could abolish it right now, instantaneous K.O., people who are already who they are, like me, probably wouldn’t benefit much. As a gender abolishonist myself, I’m perfectly comfortable being a ‘guy’, whatever that continues to mean. That’s already part of my identity. It just wouldn’t matter so much to the rest of the world.
Also, sorry this was so long. I was struggling for a while about how I wanted to articulate this.
Thank you for writing that, I do appreciate long posts. I have thought about where my confusion comes from.
Earlier I have found it difficult to understand what appears to me to be two incompatible claims. One that says that gender is completely a social construct, and one that says that being trans is something inherent in a person, i.e being the case regardless of external expectations and beliefs. People may say “I am trans”, in a way that goes beyond “I would like to wear a dress but people expect me not to.” Do you know what I mean?
I mean, mom was there too and presumably has at least half of parenting influence on the kids. Why no paragraphs of praise for her, or even a mention beyond the fact that she guided in the trailer (which is only in there so the writer could compliment the dad more on getting it ‘first try’)?
Because of the implicit assumption that yeah, obviously moms are good at parenting–just business as usual–but when a DAD is good at it, strangers take the time to write a whole diatribe about it. Meanwhile mom gets no praise, she’s just doing what she’s supposed to in this guy’s opinion.
Shit is fucked, exhausting, demoralizing, and so pervasive.
EDIT: MRAs alive and thriving here on Lemmy, as always
I think it was more that a dad wanted to compliment another dad, as someone who might relate to him easier.
It even says that in the note.
That would make sense if the mom wasn’t also there parenting, trying to make some good memories with her family. Instead, creepy note guy ignores her entirely, which is very inline with what I’m talking about, unfortunately. Moms will and do get straight ignored while heaps of praise is lavished on dads just for being there with the kids. It’s a pretty common experience, and I would feel pretty annoyed if I were the mom and I found that note before husband did.
‘I’m married.’
‘I have a boyfriend.’
‘I don’t need your help.’
I understand why they react this way, but I have to admit, I don’t compliment women very often anymore. At least the guys don’t need to assume I have some other motive in order to feel safe.
Lmao Jesus it didn’t take long for the mask to come off. Holy false equivalency and strawmaning, batman.
You have a valid point about the historical unfair distribution of labor in heterosexual relationships, but for the love of Jesus, can you not just let the guy have a win?
Your whole response is very “all lives matter,” and it’s extremely off-putting … even to me, a woman who is very firmly on your side about the unfairness of the emotional and domestic labor workload that is foisted upon women.
Read the room. This conversation is an opportunity to recognize that men could do with some encouragement sometimes for doing things well. That doesn’t mean women don’t also deserve encouragement when they do something well.
Both things can be true simultaneously. But we’re not talking about both things here. Don’t derail the former conversation to try to make it about the latter. Surely you can see from the downvotes that your digression isn’t getting any traction.
People who might otherwise listen to what you have to say are actively dismissing your ideas because they are not receptive to those ideas as a part of this conversation. If you find that is a common theme in your experience, it’s probably because you aren’t making ideal choices about how to start these conversations. (Unless your whole goal is just trolling, in which case … congratulations, I guess?)
The old saying is trite, but it’s also true: you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Nice job with that edit, lumping people who disagree with you into a group so you can easily label them with your stereotypes 👏👏👏 How tolerant of you 👏👏👏
Legit question: what’s an MRA?
I had to kagi this one myself, apparently it’s a “Men’s Rights Activist”… TIL this is a thing
Thanks for the explanation!
Tolerance is a peace treaty. Once one party voids it, they are no longer protected by it. Very “so much for the tolerant left” of you.
If your idea of voiding peace is disagreeing, you might be a bigot
Precisely, hence why your actions deserve no peace ✌🏻
I’d hardly call men getting compliments pervasive. Sure the note should’ve said “both of you were doing great” but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater
Men getting excessive praise just for being a decent parent is extremely different than men just getting compliments. Let’s engage in good faith here.
Long before I was a dad, I once told a dad I saw in a retail store “you’re a great dad!” after being in an adjacent aisle and hearing him interact with his kid. He was clearly offput by the input. That was the only thing I said to him; hopefully it had a net positive impact.
Is this Adrian Dittman??
This guy wrote a note to himself as a self love exercise.
c/nothingeverhappens
Humble brag
Let the man brag. Good dads are underappreciated.
What were you cooking that smelled so good?
Kids
Nice; how do you season them?
Hell yeah!
