"Mankeeping" is Just a Variation on "High Maintenance."

Can we just be normal?

(Audio version here)

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Substack is currently abuzz with thinkpieces and notes on the issue of “mankeeping.” This concept is based on the premise that women are expected to perform excessive amounts of emotional labour to “manage men’s stress, interpret their moods & hold their hand through feelings….” This video is currently doing the rounds. Within it, a woman talks about the male loneliness problem and how it affects women. She claims that, while men may well take part in activities in the company of other men, they are socialised into not sharing their emotions, hopes and fears with their male friends. This causes them to rely excessively on women to meet their emotional needs and this is experienced by women as a burden. She concludes, “We no longer depend on men financially. They need to not depend on us emotionally.”

It seems clear to me that ‘mankeeping’ is essentially a variation on the accusation of being “high maintenance” most commonly made against women by men. This involves a complaint that women are far too emotionally expressive, have inexplicable mood swings and require excessive amounts of emotional support to cope with their everyday lives. Both concepts convey a cynical, transactional view of relationships and a sad lack of insight into genuine human connection by likening the emotional commitment of a romantic partnership to the care of a house or a car. It pathologises the other sex’s needs, makes oneself the victim, dodges mutual responsibility and is thoroughly psychologically unhealthy and counterproductive to ever forming a healthy relationship.

Let’s steelman these concepts for a moment. Isn’t it true that some people really are needy, struggle to regulate their emotions or are chronically emotionally dependent on their partners, and that this can cause exhaustion in a relationship? Yes, of course, it is, and if you end up in a relationship with someone with these problems, you should recommend them to seek psychological support and you’ll have to decide whether to stick with the relationship or whether it will be too much for you. However, this issue is not being discussed as an individual one but as a persistent problem with one sex or the other, so let’s accept that some people have personality disorders, mood disorders and attachment issues, but look at the truth and helpfulness of what is ultimately, a political stance in the Battle of the Sexes.

Perfectly well-adjusted women are, on average, more emotionally expressive, more neurotic (in the Big Five personality sense), more attuned to subtle social nuance and shifts in interpersonal dynamics, and more likely to ruminate anxiously about these things. This isn’t dysfunction. This is normal. In many primate groups, female members develop finely tuned sensitivity to the emotional and relational atmosphere of their troop as a survival mechanism. Changes in social cohesion, leadership, or alliances often put offspring at risk. In contemporary humans, this manifests in women’s overrepresentation in professions that deal with how people think and feel -education, psychology, healthcare, social work, publishing, etc. - and in our personal lives, a greater tendency to discuss and analyse emotional states and relationships, especially with other women. This does sometimes mean that women may engage in more discussion of their own feelings, their partner’s and the state of the relationship than men may typically be naturally inclined to do. Nevertheless, emotionally intelligent men typically accept this as a psychological sex difference that also comes with benefits and quite manageable within a loving relationship and do not write off women, as a whole, as ‘high maintenance.’

Perfectly well-adjusted men do, on average, spend less time probing their innermost feelings or dissecting the nuances of their romantic relationships with their same-sex friends than women do. This does not mean men lack emotional depth or don’t care about their friends. Their emotional connections often centre on shared activities and mutual support through action and advice, rather than lengthy discussions of personal psychology. This likely also has evolutionary underpinnings and isn’t purely a social construct. There clearly is a problem with the adequacy of men’s social support networks because the male loneliness problem is real and so is the disproportionate number of male suicides. Expectations of men to be self-contained emotionally and stoical are hardly new, however, and have, if anything, reduced to some extent. It also seems unlikely that this will be helped by women telling men they are a burden and speaking as though expressing interest in and concern about one’s partner’s feelings is a form of prostitution and something a financially independent partner need not do anymore. Additionally, this is not remotely a common view among women. In my observation, women generally like being told what their partner is thinking and feeling and wish they would do more of this. It’s a sign of trust, depth, and investment in the relationship. It also seems likely that men are often most emotionally open with women precisely because women invite, welcome, and encourage that openness. (See previous paragraph).

“Mankeeping,” then, seems to be largely a fabricated problem and one rooted in a belief that men should be more like women as well as a dislike of and resentment against men. This is precisely how the accusation of women being ‘high maintenance’ works too and how so much historical misogyny always has.

I would suggest there is an element of what I have called ‘reciprocal overcompensation’ in all this. We humans appear to be persistently terrible at ethical balance and consistency. We have seen this very strongly and recently in rhetoric around the Critical Social Justice (woke) movement. Becoming very aware and rightly ashamed of the historical mistreatment and denigration of black people, too many ‘anti-racists’ decided not to stand against evaluating people by their skin colour consistently but instead to pathologise and demonise white people. Instead of deploring colonialist, “orientalising” narratives that held the West to be defined by reason, science, and liberalism and thus morally and intellectually superior to the East, which was defined by primitive superstition and barbarism, the ‘decolonise’ movement decided to uphold that binary but that science, reason and liberalism are now bad. Rather than taking stock of the ways in which society had penalised and constrained the gender non-conforming and same-sex attracted people and determining that this must never happen again, ‘woke’ LGBT activists decided that ‘cis/heteronormativity’ was now the problem and that it was necessary to ‘queer’ everything.

Can we not? Can we just not demonise and pathologise great swathes of the population due to a twisted sense of retributive justice? Can we try to recognise people as individuals and that, while some of those individuals may present a problem personally, this does not define the entire demographic and the personal is not always political? Can we focus on what is actually true and what is ethically consistent and just not be horribly cynical, transactional and callously cruel to any subset of our fellow human beings?

When it comes to men and women, can we accept that we’re not psychologically identical but that’s actually OK and most people don’t want us to be? Most men like that women are, on average, more emotionally expressive, more attentive to issues of social nuance and more tuned into relationship dynamics. Most women like that men are, on average, more emotionally reserved, stoical and action orientated and we particularly like it when that wall comes down just for us. Most men and women like each other and it would be very odd if we did not, seeing as how we sexually selected those differing distributions of traits into each other. Can’t we accept the reality of psychological sex differences without either enforcing them or trying to eradicate them? Then work with them and with each other in ways that enable us to form healthy, committed and loving relationships where we understand that we have a common bond and a shared fate? Can we just be normal?