Advice to other male ptsd sufferers

[richard_Grey_Area]

barefoot.
Thank you. The way you responded is a little more encouraging.
I would like to summarise what I said in the first post because the discussion has moved on quite a bit to reactions and to apparently how badly I have transgressed, but also largely because of the way I wrote it which was aimed at getting a reaction.

1) I feel that I should offer some advice to male ptsd sufferers (not applicable in every case!) about society and how they interact with others.
2) I have observed several friends who engage in what I consider to be damaging behaviour which has let me to suspect that the problem is fairly wide spread.
3) The problem I have observed is that many men seem to feel the need to defend their gender or their own personal masculinity (as shown by some of the responses I have received on this thread) I feel that this is a problem in society, not limited by any means to male ptsd sufferers.
4) I do think that it could be more applicable to male ptsd sufferers because I have personally observed that men who have suffered from some form of trauma often seem to feel this "need" more.
5) I would like to draw attention to how society presents "masculinity" because I feel that this is unhealthy.
6) masculinity is presented in terms of "power or strength" often described with reference to physical violence or force and in terms of sexuality.
7) based on what many male friends and acquaintances have said, many men engage in sexual activities for reasons including their own self-esteem (yes, women do that too) and for the way they are perceived by others when their "conquests" are made known.
8) I worry that a man who has suffered from ptsd may be more inclined to try to "prove" that he is " a man" in this way and the thought of this upsets and worries me.
9) due to the society we live in, many women have legitimate cause for concern in interacting with men - I find this upsetting and worrying too because I don't observe many men feeling the same way.
10) I wanted to make male ptsd sufferers aware that if they should feel the "need" to "redeem masculinity" they feel that they have lost during the trauma or afterwards, that they could - without realising it or intending to - cause or contribute to trauma which many women suffer from.
11) I offered various alternatives at various points (I am open to other suggestions) to examples of behaviour and attitudes I have observed which I feel may be damaging.
12) I would particularly like to encourage men to adopt a broader, more healthy view of masculinity and be more secure in themselves - not feeling the need to defend their "manliness" in various ways.

I am not backtracking or changing what I have said, I am prepared to stick by it. This is a summary of what I was trying to say with the rhetoric filter on.
I was not saying that all of us are rapists, I was not saying that we are all Hitler, I was not saying that someone specific on the forum needs to fly into a rage and aggressively defend themselves
I was saying that we need to be conscious, not only of what we have been through, but more conscious of problems in our society and of how we could cause or aggravate problems in other people's lives if we focus on what has happened to us and how we feel about ourselves without thinking of others.
I offered this as notion of rising above problems in your life and considering those around you as an alternative to the sex and physical violence dominated ideals of masculinity which I have observed in our society.

 

[Cyberluddite]

With all due respect, @richard_Grey_Area , your OP just s*utshamed every male trafficking survivor, every male child survivor of child abuse and SA, and may not have been as effective an introduction as you intended.

I have to agree with the others, your argument was inappropriate. Towards both genders.

 

[richard_Grey_Area]

OP just s*utshamed every male trafficking survivor, every male child survivor of child abuse and SA, and may not have been as effective an introduction as you intended.

I count myself among those you mentioned.
Please elaborate on how what I said was offensive towards both genders.

As for it not being effective, my intention was to draw awareness to what I perceive as a serious problem in our society with particular relevance to male ptsd sufferers, not make friends and convince people that I am an all round great guy. I feel that I have succeeded in this because of the number and type of responses I am getting. These show me that I have gotten under the skin of a lot of men and I hope that in disagreeeing with me, at least some will stop to think why they need to disagree with me so strongly and what the truth about our society is.
I don't know that many men will come out saying "hey, old Richard there had a point after all!" but I do like the idea that they will think about things and form their own opinions rather than just mindlessly reflecting views which have come to be commonly accepted in our society.

 

[Cyberluddite]

Ask Kathy Shelton.

Better yet, ask Jerry Sandusky's victims.

 

[Deleted member 541]

Honestly, I don’t think this has anything to do with male sufferers with PTSD being singled out to “behave” better towards women. PTSD or not, if a guy is going to be a f*cking dick, then he will. I honestly don’t see where any of this pertains to PTSD!

 

[Ronin]

@richard_Grey_Area what are you grey area of?

And why don't you try Tumblr, the kiddies might consider you actually enlightened.
Or post it at V Kontakte, but I'm afraid they'll cuss you out as you don't appear to bring neither Prozac, nor vodka, to the all deep discussions, and that's no comraderie.

 

[Friday]

Men! Don’t rape women!
Victims! Being a victim doesn’t give you the right to rape women!
Men! It is not masculine to rape women!

All seems a bit disingenuous.

If you’ve found yourself in the position of sexually assaulting &/or raping women because you feel you are a victim, or to assert your idea of masculinity, I would suggest you discuss it from there.

These show me that I have gotten under the skin of a lot of men and I hope that in disagreeeing with me, at least some will stop to think why they need to disagree with me so strongly and what the truth about our society is.

You might want to take a closer look at what people are disagreeing with. No one has disagreed with you that rape is bad. Almost everyone has tried to point out to you that they don’t need to be told water is wet. That, in point of fact, it’s insulting and offensive.

 

[somerandomguy]

@richard_Grey_Area,

You are 100% an idiot. I'm going to completely ignore you and your posts from now on. Your misguided advice is incredibly rude, condescending, and harmful for current and future readers if this forum.

As a man, let me say that I sure wish that you weren't a man as well. You're really, really making the rest of us men look horrible.

 

[joeylittle]

@richard_Grey_Area - lets move away from your desire to instruct others, for a moment. Lets make this about you. I am curious. You gave a list of motivations for writing your OP, and some jumped out to me - so, here are some questions.

I just thought (based on interactions I had offline) that it might - just might - be necessary to remind some men that the ideals of "masculinity" many of us adhere to can be damaging to everyone, including us.

I only want to point out that, having this context in your OP would have helped. You had something happen in your life, and it's led you to think these thoughts - that's a very different launching point than giving advice when it's not asked for.

I feel that I should offer some advice to male ptsd sufferers (not applicable in every case!) about society and how they interact with others.

I'm curious what is behind the idea that you 'should' offer advice to male PTSD sufferers.

I am writing to men who have undergone some kind of trauma in their lives and who I worry might end up hurting our upsetting people because they get into situations without thinking about what others have been through.

I am guessing that you have done this, in your own life. Yes? No?

I worry that a man who has suffered from ptsd may be more inclined to try to "prove" that he is " a man" in this way and the thought of this upsets and worries me.

Have you, yourself, ever done this, or felt that you needed to prove your masculinity? And if not - where is the upset and worry coming from?

I wanted to make male ptsd sufferers aware that if they should feel the "need" to "redeem masculinity" they feel that they have lost during the trauma or afterwards, that they could - without realising it or intending to - cause or contribute to trauma which many women suffer from.

That's a biggie. It's an 'if', which might not apply to everyone, and then it's a 'could' - which seems like a worst-case scenario, to me. But the way you've written it, makes me want to ask - when did you go through this? Were you the one who, without intending to, may have contributed to someone else's (a woman's) trauma?

And if not you, who did this happen to, that you care about?

I would particularly like to encourage men to adopt a broader, more healthy view of masculinity and be more secure in themselves - not feeling the need to defend their "manliness" in various ways.

This is a nice thing to want and to encourage. But, it's not helpful to layer an assumption onto an entire gender. You are assuming that men who have PTSD struggle to regain their masculine identity. Can you share your own struggle with this?

I have to address this one:

To put things very blatantly, at their crudest, a physical relationship between a man and a woman will go in either of 3 ways.

1) the will have sex when she wants to
2) they won't have sex
3) he will rape her

Only because you left out, "they decide to have sex when they want to". It is an option, for things to be mutually arrived at. You are right to call this crude - it's overly simplistic, and reminds me of catastrophizing. It's equivalent to, "one of three things will happen if I get on this plane: (1), we will arrive at our destination as planned, (2), we will be delayed and not make it to take off, (3) we will crash and die."

Can you see how there are more options than that?

But they don't let you know because of the kind of men who fake friendship as a way of getting into women't pants (with consent or not).

I'm not sure who your sample set of women are, but honestly, this isn't the way things always are. Each person in a budding relationship can and should have the confidence to say true things to the other person. it's not always easy. But it's not something that everyone avoids purely so that they don't get f*cked over, literally.

I was looking for responses. My idea was that the kind of man who said "dude, nobody thinks like that, where did you get this from?" would make me very happy, because he was a genuinely good guy all round who just can't relate to the sort of issues I am talking about, where as the kind of person who got very angry with me and started making death threats, etc... well maybe I was hitting a raw nerve there. My hope was that such a person would stop and think rather than coming to murder me, but... well if people see something they disagree with, some will just react and a few will think about why they disagree with it.

Did this happen somewhere else online, or in your life?

What women have shared with me is that these are not uncommon reactions to women in similar circumstances. This upsets me. I would ask any female readers of this topic (including the one who just accused me of giving advice to rapists on how to emotionally manipulate women [????!!!!!*]) if I have been misinformed.

Again, your sample set of women seems to be limited. I would say, you have been misinformed. Or, something is being lost in translation. Is English your first language? (I'm not trying to be offensive in asking that, it's an honest question)

due to the society we live in, many women have legitimate cause for concern in interacting with men - I find this upsetting and worrying too because I don't observe many men feeling the same way.

I really want to know why this is upsetting and worrying to you - what about it is triggering you?

 

[lostforgottensoul]

1) the will have sex when she wants to
2) they won't have sex
3) he will rape her

Why can't they have sex when he wants to but she doesn't? I know many of marriages go that way and it isn't rape as she said yes though he wanted it and she didn't. Fake orgasm anyone?

And what's with instructing men about sex. I've had to become celibate due to hurting men and the unhealthy-ness of my sexual encounters. And I'm female. Women can do the exact same thing. I am unsure why it's seen as a male thing as it isn't.

 

[Cyberluddite]

Also, not every woman you meet (and/or have any level of personal relations with) is going to be an abusive person -- the same goes for men. Are there people who are looking to hunt for their next victims? Yes, and some are called "copycats" who hunt for fresh survivors. But not everyone who walks into your life is looking to start trouble; as the saying goes, "not all angels wear halos, and not all devils have horns."

I think I might have an idea of where you were trying to go with this... and for what it's worth, the "White Knight" stage of recovery is probably one of the most dangerous ones. That's roughly when you figure out which side of the "grey area" you wish to turn, and that's a choice that both genders have to make.

This being said, Hitler's PTSD came from a close-proximity grenade blast during WW1, while fighting in the Austrian army. And my German-speaking skills are an atrocity in itself.

 

[mumstheword]

I honestly don't think that the kind of men you are hoping to reach are also the kind of men who bother to read unsolicited advice posts on a PTSD forum.
I also think you'd be more effective in supporting women if you worked to build up male self esteem, after all, in general, the mainstream media portray men in a pretty poor light, on the whole. Men are often either portrayed as "the silverback gorilla" you mentioned, or as ineffectual disingenuous not-true-to-themselves types.

Men might benefit from tapping in a sense that being true to themselves is attractive to women and that old school traits of courtesy, bravery and honesty are good ones. That having been said, the saying "men need sex to feel love and women need to feel love in order to want sex" may ring true for many but I would add that men should aim for loving sex too, and for friendships with women that involve platonic mutual respect and to not get caught up with wanting sex just for egoic validation, and status with other men, instead develop their higher (more honest, integral and authentic) faculties to gain true self esteem and rock solid inner strength, thus improving their attractiveness to women and prospects for genuinely fulfilling sex and relationships with women.

Not that the men here need to hear or read that but perhaps this sort of sentiment was what you were so clunkily alluding to?