DailyJim: Hypermasculinity, bad bitches, and the fear of receiving

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is the episode for Tuesday, October 15th, 2024. Just a couple of minutes late. Today I want to talk about, yeah, screw it, let's just have a controversial title.

Hypermasculinity, Bad Bitches, and the Fear of Receiving. Yeah, whatever, we'll swear in the title, let's see what happens.

Uh i don't normally swear like this um not at least publicly on the internet um the yeah so the topic is hyper masculinity bad bitches and the fear of receiving so yesterday i talked about, how generous givers can often be stingy receivers i think another way to look at it is that sometimes we have this cultural desire that we celebrate people being hyper-masculine, a bad bitch, hyper-independent.

In another way, we celebrate either kind of people being matchers, at least how we think it, or people being givers who don't receive. Regardless, this, this element of hyper independence, I think is about not receiving. And I think sometimes we lift it up as a dream or a goal of ours and gets reinforced by society. Um, that if someone were to receive help, that someone receive attention, someone receives love, if somebody relax and to just receive is, um, maybe considered very feminine.

Um, and a lot of women are taught not even to receive. So it's like a lot of women are taught to be this hyper-masculine, um, and just give and provide, be the provider, provide, provide, provide, don't receive. And And I wonder how much that's just, frankly, a trauma response.

And there is a certain safety in providing and not giving out and not receiving.

Because in receiving, we're not in control. We're not that much in control.

And, yeah, I think a lot of times when I get really hurt, and I'm not trying to demonize, if you want to call it the masculine energy, I'm not trying to demonize being in control and having power, feeling powerful and feeling confident, taking the lead in some ways. I think I'm just also saying we can't only do one. Like I talked about, we can't only give. We can't only give. We burn out. We can't only receive. I think what I'm just so worried about is that sometimes our cultural norms say we should only give and not receive.

And that we are celebrated if we only give and we don't receive. And so if people want to do both giving and receiving, then we often look down upon them. Because any, any glimpse of receiving makes you soft. Yeah, it does make you soft. It makes you tender. That's okay. It's okay to relax occasionally. We don't have to be tense and stressed all the time. We don't have to be in control. We don't have to be strong and powerful all the time. We can relax a bit.

I think I just see this pattern a lot with women in my life, women that I've met, especially out in East Africa. but in the U.S. As well, it's just, and it's not just women, it's men too, right? This idea of we need to give, give, give, give, and not receive.

And I just...

I think I love, I mean, I love to give, yes. And I love when, okay, maybe it's that I love to provide. And I love when somebody also likes to provide and they finally just freaking relax and let me step into that more masculine role and provide. But I also like to receive.

Now, the challenge of saying give and receive in this context is people might assume it's only sexual. And that's not what I'm talking about. Like I'm talking about in terms of help and attention and it could be like, hey, I want to get a massage too. Or hey, I want you to choose where we're going for dinner tonight. Or hey, I would love if you decide what you want to eat instead of making me make all the choices all the time.

But I also don't want to be told what to do all the time. Hey, I don't like that. I don't want to be completely led around all the time. I like a balance of me making decisions, them making decisions, and kind of going back and forth. But sometimes people get locked into, I am the decision maker all the time. I had a friend that visited me once, and I'm like, my friend came from a long way, I think from overseas, to come visit me. And then in my town was making all the decisions about where we're going. I'm like, what are you talking about? No, you're my town. I'm making decisions. I can consult you on the decisions. But don't tell me everywhere we're going. But for him to relax and let me take the lead was really uncomfortable for him, I think. When I had another friend visit, and he was like, yeah, man, go wherever you want. I was like, this is great. Because when I visited him, I'm like, hey, I'll go wherever you want. You show me around. You're the local. And so that kind of exchange of somebody taking the lead, I need somebody following and going back and forth. But I think I just feel really worried when I see.

People doing only one. Only receiving or only following or only leading or only giving.

And yeah, I'm kind of rambling. I could probably end this one. But yeah, it's just that. It's just like sometimes we get so stuck in hyper-masculine. Provide, provide, provide. We don't want to be the bad bitch. We don't want to be all tough. I don't need anyone. I don't have feelings for anyone. It's a lie. It's just a lie. And it's obvious, to me at least. It's obvious. You're just pretending because you don't want to lose control. You're scared of the person seeing you deeply. Scared of the person realizing who you might be and leaving. Scared of the person actually staying.

Yeah. Scared of just not knowing what's going to happen. It's okay to be scared, man. It's okay to be scared. Maybe part of it is just letting ourselves be afraid and scared.

Realizing it means that we care about ourselves and we care about other people.

And realizing it's okay to care about ourselves and care about other people. I think we can get angry or afraid of that too.

I am totally just rambling. It's been a long day. I'll tell you more about it this week. Take care, y'all. Bye.