"Mankeeping" and How Women Still Find Male Vulnerability Annoying

It wasn’t that long ago that I tended to hear a fair number of women complain that men weren’t “emotionally available” or sensitive and sharing or vulnerable enough regarding their feelings. Now, pretty much turning on a dime, the narrative has switched to “mankeeping” which, reading between the lines, basically suggests women are tired of all this male emotionality which, it turns out, is annoying.

I was always skeptical of the narrative women really wanted men to be more like women in terms of emotional expression. After all, if women really wanted that, they could have used sexual selection over generations to mate with the sensitive men and weed out the big lugs. Alas, that was not what women generally did. I generally figured all the “men should cry more” talk came out of gender studies classes but that young women would actually find it irritating if they got stuck with a dude who actually took the invitation seriously.

There are probably evolved reasons for this. In hunter gatherer societies, men generally evolved as risk takers for hunting but also for protection (quite often from other humans). Men are physically larger, more physically aggressive, have deeper voices, thicker bones, etc. In general, men have evolved to project strength and, not surprisingly, this has tended to reflect in behavior for good or for ill. By contrast, women are physically smaller on average, have higher-pitched voices, softer features, etc., and the argument is much of this was evolved to elicit protectiveness in males. And, again, this reflects in female behavior including a greater ease in emotional expressiveness including alarm.

But humans aren’t fully at the mercy of evolution and genetics and when women say “We want more male tears”, some suckers might actually think it’s true. Enter the mankeeping concept, as recently covered in the New York Times. There’s a lot of talk about “emotional labor” and how the breakdown of male friendship relationships has placed a burden on women to support men through their emotional problems (more or less the thing they said they wanted in the first place). The NYT article assures us “Mankeeping isn’t just emotional intimacy” but then fails to explain what the difference is.

The couple in the article, used as an example, mainly seem split on who should be making the decisions about how they spend their time. The lady in question does most of it, which she finds burdensome. The gentleman assumed that was what she wanted (which I am going to go out on a limb and guess it was until she got it).

The NYT also assures us “Rather than viewing ‘mankeeping’ as an internet-approved bit of therapy-speak used to dump on straight men, experts said they see it as a term that can help sound the alarm about the need for men to invest emotionally in friendships.” I dunno…do “experts” say this? I’m a licensed psychologist and I kinda think it sounds like a new way to dump on straight men. Was there a NYT poll for “experts” that I missed?

The funny thing about it is this very gripe…that one’s partner is too emotionally needy…was used by men against women for generations. Ultimately, it came to be seen as sexist and rightly so. So, it’s a little surprising to see it resurrected in reverse.

by Christopher J Ferguson, Ph.D., Grimoire Manor |  Read more:

Image: uncredited