Photograph just means lightdrawing , which is a great description of how one is made but a poor description of what one is . Everything everyone says is stupid and there ' s nothing we can do about it . <| sep |> Weight cutting in its current form is fucked up and something needs to change . I learned that from Joe Rogan . <| sep |> I think userpentineeyelash makes a fair point in making the comparison to emotional labor . I should clarify that I said that MRAs complaining about dating sounds like a bit of a whine i . e . , that is my instinctive response to it . It ' s worth a bit of introspection to examine whether that is a reasonable response or not . I ' m not totally clear what you ' re saying in your first paragraph , but I think we ' re in agreement that complaining about loneliness caused by the genderbased complexities of dating and complaining about emotional labor are both rooted in genuine suffering . On the other hand . Being someone ' s sole emotional provider is exhausting , especially when they ' re not in a place to support you back . This makes intuitive sense , and there ' s no reason not to empathize with the people caught in this position . While I empathise , I think it ' s worth highlighting a possible contradiction . Men are often berated for not being sufficiently emotionally open and trying to deal with too much on their own , rather than sharing their feelings . You can ' t simultaneously criticise them for that and for demanding too much emotional labor . The interactions between men and women are obviously at least as varied as the men and women who take part in them , but I think that our model of emotional labour is too tilted towards a broadly feminine viewpoint of what that does , and should , entail . My impression is that women generally undertake emotional labour , of the sharing and talking type , because they feel that it ' s necessary . A man taking on the strong stoic role and soaking up stress in a relationship by just taking things on the chin is doing a great deal of emotional labour . It may not be seen as productive because it doesn ' t involve sharing feelings , but it is hard work ! Criticising this sort of dynamic is perhaps unrealistic as it is may be one of those asymmetrical tradeoffs that happen in relationships , along the same lines as one partner bringing in more income and the other spending more time doing domestic work . It ' s just a decision that people make which reflects the complexity of human interactions . If we respond to the someone minimizing suffering by minimizing someone else ' s suffering , we ' ll be trapped in a race to the bottom that hurts everyone . Absolutely , if we can all agree that you should help people who are suffering , rather than just those who you think are suffering more , we could move forward more productively .