Statement 1: correct. Rejection is part of life, and growing up means taking the hits with grace. Spending your life dissociated from reality chasing influencers and snake-oil gurus makes you fragile and incapable of handling frustration. Dealing with life’s kicks in the face is a fundamental skill that few people care about. Better to play the diva (men included).
Statement 2: big no. The usual confusion between sexism and patriarchal society. Ours is a sexist society, and in this sense men are victims too if they don’t play the “macho” game — or worse, the charismatic sociopath. Who, incidentally, is often adored by women too, which proves that everyone contributes to creating sexism, not just men.
In a patriarchal society, power lies in the hands of men, full stop. And this is literally false in the West. Young men have zero power compared to their female counterparts (count the likes, the matches, academic performance, friendship networks, suicides, social understanding, time dedicated to their emotional development). And, among adults, most men have zero power (go ask many divorced fathers). Real power is overwhelmingly concentrated in the hands of a few extremely wealthy old people. Often men, true.
So, sociologically speaking, we don’t live in a patriarchal society but a gerontocratic and sexist one. These seem like nuances, but they make all the difference between knowing where we all need to work together to improve things, and where instead we keep pouring gasoline on the fire.
