I’ve noticed this year just how quiet it’s been. I used to get woken up by all the bird calls, especially in the spring time. Now it’s just low level background noise.

The dull and distant bird calls feels so empty, especially since it’s been replaced by the continuous hum of air conditioning units and lawn mowers, the violent sounds of vehicle engines with the low rumble of rubber tires and other sources of human activity which never seems to end.

It absolutely breaks my heart.

There was also the reality that many tech companies’ leading executives, Bezos included, had reached middle age. Mortality’s inevitable creep was closing in. It seemed unfair — cruel, even — that people who had acquired all that the material realm had to offer might be forced to face a fate so pedestrian as old age and, eventually, death.

Mid-life crises (criseses?) have always been a strange curiosity to me. When I was younger, there seemed to be much more talk about the inevitable mid-life crisis. Typically this crisis was male centred. It often involved men buying expensive new toys such as cars, trucks, motor bikes, boats or doing things such as cheating or chasing younger women. I can’t recall any talk of feminine mid-life crises or any stereotypical responses. Even if there was a typical feminine mid-life crisis response, it seemed to my young perspective that it was heavily overshadowed by the masculine mid-life crisis and it’s response.

It now seems that the mid-life crisis response has evolved to include health and “peak” physical appearance as promoted by social media influencers. I guess this seems like the logical next step. When I was younger, I began to notice a trend in all this behaviour. Many of these men fear death. They are afraid of their aging bodies. They are afraid that other people will notice their aging bodies. They fear they will no longer be respected by other men. They are absolute cowards created by their own insecurities.

Dealing with aging in an aging body is something everyone has to deal with at some point, it’s a completely normal process of life. We humans have the misfortune of excess free time to think and dwell on our aging bodies. For some people, this can scare them into a vicious hunt for the mythical fountain of youth. And if a man can’t find the fountain of youth, then they will chase youthfulness through dangerous hobbies, material possessions, young women and physical fitness. Adrenaline, wealth, status and virility. Combine these things together and you have a vehicle of destruction that leaves behind a hot mess for everyone else to deal with while also influencing and shaping the minds of young boys and men to continue the cycle.

The most bizarre thing about the masculine mid-life crisis is how painfully gay it all actually is. The wealth, the stuff, the young women, the physical appearance, it’s all for other men. It’s a giant performance and they want to be paid in the currency of respect because respect is the secret currency of masculinity. Masculinity is for the male gaze and masculinity has no room for the unmasculine. It’s seriously gay.

And there is Bryan Johnson, a former venture capitalist, who is attempting to achieve his mantra, “Don’t Die,” through a longevity regime that involves a strict diet, going to bed at 8:30 pm, and tracking his nightly erections.

Seriously, what the fuck.

I’m still shaking my head in disbelief from all the penises rockets these dudes launched in their pointless giant dick measuring contest.

From my perspective, separating women from the respect currency of masculinity is one of many aspects that needs to be worked on by men to produce well rounded people. Otherwise we will all suffocate under masculinities endlessly growing ego.

Emotional intelligence has always been a sort of hidden magnet in my life that’s pulled me towards people who had the emotional capacity to treat people like people instead of treating people based off any first impressions or preconceived labels.

The people who I remember and hold closest in my memories have been people who understood that I’m my own unique person, with my own experiences that shaped me, with my own way of solving problems, and my own way of learning from those experiences. They were able to assist and guide me in a more human and understandable way. It felt more positive and encouraging. I learned so much more from people with a stronger sense of emotional intelligence in comparison to people who lack emotional intelligence.

Unfortunately, with what I believe to be a global mental health crisis brought on by the arrival of a global pandemic, it’s been obvious to me that there has been a critical lack of education in any form of emotional intelligence. Thinking back on my own education, there was more a focus on employable math and science skills, language with a heavy historical perspective, history with a heavily propagandized perspective and obedience within a narrow and confined learning structure. The only class that taught me any sort of life skills was the lowest level math class I had the option to take. The math class only “stupid” kids took.

After the initial uncertainty wore off and reality set in with the global pandemic, those who lacked the emotional intelligence to look within began to lash out at everyone around them. To them, the world turned against them as they were expected to be empathetic towards other people. It’s been difficult to process and deal with such a critical lack of emotional intelligence on such a large scale.

Those who are filled with hate for themselves and the world around them have far more energy than those with a better sense of their own emotional intelligence. Those who are filled with hate are burning out everyone else around them.

I think now more than ever, there needs to be more emotional intelligence education for both young and old. It will be very difficult to help ourselves move forward if we aren’t being empathic towards each other and the world around us.

I’m aware what I’ve said isn’t very specific to autism but it’s a topic that was made much more clearer to me after figuring out I have autism and understanding how it’s affected my life.

My future allies for the future water wars kindly disagree :)

I’ve never understood why people think wasps are so aggressive. At least where I live. They are curious like a bumblebee although slightly more persistent in hanging around.

If I am eating food, I leave a bit for them just within arms reach so they feast on that rather than what I’m eating.

They seem pretty chill if you’re willing to share your space and food with them.

Judging from the stories of autistic women who are in my life, as well as stories I’ve read online, there seems to also be the issue of being heard or taken seriously when attempting to get diagnosed or treated. This is on top of societal or gendered expectations which makes masking that much more of a challenge to maintain.

One of my closest friends had to stop seeing their therapist because she would leave her sessions crying and was only able to improve her mental health by refusing to visit that therapist again. Another really close friend had a doctor that kept prescribing the same medication to her even after stating multiple times at multiple visits that the medication was causing her suicidal thoughts.

In comparison, as a male myself, I was able to walk in, tell them why I thought I had ADHD and later autism and was able to walk about with prescriptions or a plan of action within the same visit.

I do think the the video spoke broadly enough that it could be informative about autism in general and could have added a bit more context to align the title with the video content.

Many people get annoyed that I often give vague answers. If I over explain myself, they’ll twist my words into a new meaning. I’m confused :D

I wouldn’t mind if societies also made some compromises for me too. Currently it feels like I’m making all the compromises to fit in but made to feel like it’s never enough.

Feels like I’m trying to fix an awful relationship by doing all the hard work myself. I’m tired.

I try to remind people that doing nothing is not a bad thing and something you can enjoy. Productivity can be quite addictive for some people. For others, it can be so ingrained into their mindset that they are driven by guilt to remain productive.

In a couple years from now when the sun finally decides to kill all life on earth for shit and giggles, all that progress and productivity won’t mean anything. I’d rather chill the fuck out and enjoy the nice views with the people I like around me and I only have one life to do that.

I have mixed feelings on this because yes, information can be used to cause harm. That same information has also been crucial to me in understanding how abuse and manipulation have affected me. Without identifying the motive behind certain behaviours or actions, how am I supposed to know which boundaries to put up to protect myself? This is obviously very situational to me because in order for me to act on something, I need to understand the under layers of a topic in order to effectively change my views/habits/behaviour.

This article to me reads as an “Ah-Ha!” moment in understanding how to approach the topic of abuse to abusers. Unfortunately, that part wasn’t expanded on enough and since the article is nearly 10 years old, I don’t think I have the patience enough to see if there is any sort of follow-up regarding how to talk about abuse to abusers.

With the information I’ve learned about abusers and manipulators over the past years, I’ve been not only helping myself place proper boundaries, but encouraging the women in my life to protect their boundaries too by informing them of both actions and intent behind those actions from abusers.

My help is one sided though because there are a few men in my life that are on the border of being decent people, they just need light pushes away from toxic masculine influences. Too much can cause things to crumble. Understanding their intent behind their words has helped in avoiding unnecessary, name-calling backlash. It’s an exhausting balancing act. I more often choose to not engage them because it’s such a long, draining process.

I do wish there were more effective ways of educating the dangers and damage from such forms of masculinity. In my area, medical professionals throw Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness at people and call it a day. I feel those methods are like placing a bandage over a problem without looking at the cause. Those methods seem to cause more anger, regret and frustration. It’s such an overburdened mess. It seems the author is attempting to reframe his methods from “treating batterers” to “a consistent coordinated community response.” Or at least advocating for a consistent coordinated community response in general. To approach this sensitive topic from another approach. I can agree this point could have been expanded upon.

Humans are too complex and there’s so no one perfect way to teach other people. What works for one person would completely zone out another person. What can be useful by one person can be harmful by another. There’s really no easy way to talk about uncomfortable topics and it sucks we have to resort to war tactics regarding such information.

I didn’t read in this article any claims that this was a scientific study. Should this person’s experiences be any less valid?

To me it reads as a person attempting to understand why men want to commit violence and abuse against women. It also didn’t read as if it promoted abuse against women but rather promoted publicly addressing and dealing with abuse through public education.

I get that gender related violence is an awkward, uncomfortable topic but this article can be one step of many in understanding and dealing with abuse.

Had this person framed this article as a scientific study, I would definitely doubt it’s message and validity as that would be intentionally deceptive.

I don’t understand what is meant by raw data in the context of this article.

This seems less like a scientific study and more like a black board brainstorming session. The list that was shown seems to read as a disorganized list of thoughts, the type you’d find in a brain storming session.

It seems to me that this court mandated facilitator for men who batter was merely trying to share their experiences and insight for why men abuse women.

I’m a guy. Over the past couple years I’ve become quite close with two women online who are both younger than me. One is 15 years younger than me while the other is 6 years younger.

I actually met the younger one through a former male work friend who met her first through a Minecraft server he used to host. He bought her a game that was on sale and the 3 of us played together. After my work friend went to bed, she and I talked a bit afterwords.

It was quite clear to me that she liked getting to know people and I entertained her conversation. At some point in the conversation, she casually brought up her current mental health state and it was at that point I knew she was someone I wanted to continue talking with.

At that time, I was struggling hard with my own mental health and my attempts at finding a support group that suited me wasn’t working. In that short time, she proved to be brutally self aware, honest and empathetic. She treated me as a person and allowed me to express myself honestly without judgement. At the time, I was working in the trades surrounded by men and I was only treated with judgement as a failure as a man. Even my close relationships with other women at the time was the same, I was a failure of a man.

Having this one person in the world treat me like a person meant so much to me. She allowed me to talk without judgement, allowed me to approach my problems my own way without judgement or unsolicited advice, and allowed me to be me without criticism or judgement. These are all things I craved at the time so returned all these actions to her as well. I learned a lot about mental health through her and and how she spoke of her friends.

Over the next year, we sort of became our own mental health support group and made ourselves available to each other because we wanted to and as a result became close friends.

A year later she approached me with a situation that made me incredibly angry and upset me for a couple weeks. She revealed to me that my work friend had been trying to sext with her and was making her feel uncomfortable. A man who was 15 years older than her, who met her when she was approximately 13 years old when she joined that minecraft server who she used to think of him as a mentor. A man who is married and has two adorable little girls himself in an amazing house with a huge chunk of property. I confronted him and then stopped talking to him. He sickens me. While she may have been of legal age at the time he tried to sext with her, he absolutely destroyed any trust she had in him. I have good reason to believe he’s made attempts with other women behind his amazing wife’s back and I can no longer stand to look or talk to him.

Even with all that her and I had been through, it still felt super strange to me being close friends with someone 15 years younger than me. But she provided me with fresh takes on mental health and I was able to provide a perspective based on experience that can only be understood through that additional 15 years of being alive.

I did go and meet her in her home country. As a thank you to her, I bought us matching tattoos. We were able to talk face to face and it was a very comfortable and easy going experience. By the end of my trip, I told her that she is my new sister (my actual sister barely remembers I exist) and she was quite happy with that.

The feeling of strangeness from this particular relationship has faded significantly now but still sort of lingers in the back of my mind. I think that’s more of result of the north American mindset. There is a lack of intergenerational community in modern north American life that negatively affects how people treat and view relationships with older/younger people. Learning goes both ways and I absolutely value the perspectives and views coming from younger people.

In a more just world, intergenerational relationships would be normal and boring. In it’s current form (from a north American perspective) it’s open to abuse through a power imbalance and that seems to inadvertently bring up feelings of guilt or shame in those who stumble across such relations.

For me, letting time pass and allowing those feelings of guilt and shame to dissipate leaving a normal, boring and safe friendship with someone who is younger than me.

Unfortunately, I’m still cautious talking about her to other people who I feel are judgemental. Especially men. The overwhelming majority of men in my life would assume our relationship is sexual. It’s easier to simply not talk about her so I can avoid fending off those gross accusations. Fortunately, my other friend who is 6 years younger is super understanding and awesome. I can talk about my younger friend with her and not feel uncomfortable about it. In that sense, I feel quite lucky to know both these people.