What do they mean by "vulnerability" here? There is this constant redefinition of words. In mainstream usage, "vulnerability" is not a good thing as it means you are open to problems and can easily be attacked. They presumably mean it in the sense of being "open to your own emotions" or tender. Silly misuse of words for a serious subject.
It’s not a misuse - it’s exactly the intended meaning and it is perfectly common in mainstream usage.
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable means you are indeed open to attack. But it is also a large part of emotional connection. The alternative is being a fortress - with all the relationship problems that entails.
The very fact that you see vulnerability as “bad” is a perfect example of what that language is intended to highlight.
> In sociology, siege mentality is a shared feeling of victimization and defensiveness—a term derived from the actual experience of military defences of real sieges. It is a collective state of mind in which a group of people believe themselves constantly attacked, oppressed, or isolated in the face of the negative intentions of the rest of the world. Although a group phenomenon, the term describes both the emotions and thoughts of the group as a whole, and as individuals. The result is a state of being overly fearful of surrounding peoples, and an intractably defensive attitude.
> Among the consequences of a siege mentality are black and white thinking, social conformity, and lack of trust, but also a preparedness for the worst and a strong sense of social cohesion.
I would say yes. Your weaknesses, if truly shared are weaknesses which can be used against you to hurt you and thereby you are vulnerable to them. Further, even if you don't care about the judgment of others then you can still be harmed by decisions of and social coordination between people who judge you.
We agree, assuming self knowledge, that the judgments of others tell you about them rather than about you.
This leads me to a conclusion that someone can only be truly vulnerable around people that you might consider toxic?
It's unavoidable in many cases, but I'd prefer a life where I would surround myself with people who tried to build each other and not take advantage of each other. I think it's definitely possible, and I think I'm pretty much there at least.
This leads me to the next point, which is that I don't think it's a problem about men unwilling to be vulnerable, it's more so about them happening to be around people who might use it against them (and it succeeding effectively, ergo there being a critical mass of people supporting this).
Not using a capacity may atrophy it but does not remove it. I haven't cherry picked with git in a very long time but I could if I wanted to. I'm not violent but physics still allows it. Toxicity is not required for people to be vulnerable.
I totally prefer the lift each other up crowd too. They exist, often in the same spaces as everyone else.
IMO, the problem comes down to a current inability to scale social knowing.
However, you seem to want to grind on an axe and I worry I might be getting in the way of that. I suggest you consider what has you activated and whether you can take away it's power to echo through and continue hurting you.
If you are currently a target of DV, reach out; there are lots of people and organizations who want to support you and have tools to do so. This may not apply to you but seemed appropriate place to remind us all.
> However, you seem to want to grind on an axe and I worry I might be getting in the way of that. I suggest you consider what has you activated and whether you can take away it's power to echo through and continue hurting you.
It seems to me (and clearly I could be wrong) that you really want to express certain sentiments. Another way to say it is that you seem to be engaging in motivated arguing. Said with the more standard idiom, that you have "an axe to grind".
I am honestly just curious what people think, it is an interesting topic. I have heard off and on throughout my life this idea about being vulnerable. I was never fully certain what people meant by that. Even in this thread it seems people think of it differently, but no one really goes into details to clarify.
E.g. what are some concrete examples of what would make a man be vulnerable?
In my opinion and in this context the common striped-down-to-its-consistent-core usage is taking the actions that expose one's inner/core emotional space/thoughts/feelings. FWIW I would agree that this doesn't have to be a true vulnerability in the dictionary or any other sense. I think many people talk past each other a lot without knowing it with this word. There is a lot of diversity in specific semantics so good question. The idea that one is vulnerable when one is known seems to encode the victim mindset many get stuck in but that's reality for many. Even when I yack at my therapists for years they still only learn small slivers of my whole person so certainly the broader being is not so vulnerable by sharing just little moments. I think openness is true strength (obvious caveats for secrets like passwords/PINs/et cetera. The contradicting position seems to be that by withholding and looking for opening for attack you position yourself for "winning". In the meantime, it seems to me, you lock in isolation and losing, missing your opportunity to connect, learn, and grow increasing your vulnerability over time. Busy night, rushed through writing so hopefully not too many errors or stupid thoughts.
[edit: Giving up control seems to be a common feature. Maybe more simply being willing to cooperate when your interactant could defect.]
Do you think there's something that you are intentionally hiding from your therapists that might make you vulnerable? Or it's just, that you don't have enough time to give full overview into yourself? I've gone to therapists and many different ones through my whole life too. Maybe in the past I had times when there were some things I might have not told them, but I feel like I'm pretty stream of consciousness now.
I think I'm a at a point in my life where I think that as long as with each person that I interact with, I'm looking to benefit both of our lives, I'm free to be myself. This wasn't always the case, and especially as a teenager, I was a lot more paranoid that people are out to get me, and in my 20s as well. I think I wasn't being myself because at those times it didn't seem like myself was received truly well.
But now if I think everything I do is to benefit both parties - or whoever is in my circle, there's nothing to be ashamed about anything that I do. And any situation I treat as being in a team together whether it's work, friends, or with my life partner.
So what I'm thinking still is - if I do it like that, I can communicate my thoughts without concern. And is that being vulnerable or not? I don't think I'm a "kind" person or trying to virtue signal here or something or a naive person that could be taken advantage of because of this strategy. I do think however life is too short to be playing any such social games trying to hide or seek advantage from. I'd prefer to truly understand people and what they think, transparency. I'd prefer any situation is treated as a team working on a unified goal, whether it's understanding the World, each other, or making best of any gathering in terms of jokes, entertainment, insight or whatever.
There are still situations of course where I have to be on guard, and these I'm really bothered by, e.g. corporate environments. Not the best place for me in that sense. But I try to be as honest as I can. I guess my main issue is that I work in weird passionate bursts and I have trouble doing organizing/maintenance/routine stuff, so I feel like I have to hustle around that and what actually gives me frequently feelings of being an impostor. That I can't do many of the routine things that I consider boring, yet are frequently expected. I sometimes do 16h of very passionate, efficient, effective work, but the other days I'm completely disinterested in my paid work and so I have to kind of fake being productive or something, as I'm not sure how it plays to people that I just can't be bothered to work if I don't feel like it. Like I can't be that 9 to 5 person, but I work in corporate environment, because it pays me the most.
> Giving up control seems to be a common feature.
That is also an interesting one. What does giving up control exactly means?
Another thing I've heard a lot about in my life. Someone's controlling, someone doesn't like to let go of control etc. I can understand how there are unhealthy controlling behaviors (e.g. intruding someone's freedom by pressuring or manipulating them to do what you want or not do what you don't want etc), but what does it mean to exactly giving up control over yourself?
I guess in romantic relationships maybe people can be vulnerable early in terms of getting hurt? E.g. putting yourself out there to be rejected. But I don't think that's where there's an actual problem with men? With men there must be this problem elsewhere.
Reading the article again - it doesn't seem to super register to me that it's the male vulnerability that is the problem. It seems there's an example of a homeless character that lies about being homeless. Is it that men don't want to leave an impression that they are unsuccessful? I can see how that's the case, although I think the main issue here is not the vulnerability, it's the fact that he's homeless in the first place. Perhaps if he didn't hide it, it could be solved somehow, but I don't know if that's exactly the case.
Given the context, I'd say vulnerability is a bundle concept used on average to hold a set of mostly unconsciously contradictory demands by women asking to have their needs met but in my experience not able nor willing to keep their side of the bargain but merely reciting their cue. Still, I'm not responding again to write more myself...
What do you think of vulnerability or whatever the thing you think we are discussing means to you?
> Do you think there's something that you are intentionally hiding from your therapists that might make you vulnerable? Or it's just, that you don't have enough time to give full overview into yourself?
Nothing hidden. Hiding from anyone feels pointless and would leave me even more alone. I would need to live in a shell/shadow of myself and have to do a bunch of work to keep track of the boundaries - exhausting waste! Part of it is that I am a very odd primate. I had life circumstances that had me separated from most people followed by an existential crisis at 8 with no adults that could even start to discuss or support me through it. That led me off into lots of weird spaces and problems (and problem definitions) that I've been working on since then. My struggles mostly have to do with how humanity undermines and underperforms while dragging those attempting better down. I often try to enlist therapist's creativity to help solve subproblems but having a forum to discuss these things is itself relieving.
I'm with you about being able to just speak one's mind. Living your values and in a positive economic outcomes oriented manner is a pretty bullet proof strategy but it assumes a certain amount of physical and economic safety. A lot of people get stuck in the "social intrigue" pattern/asynchronous information building suboptimal strategy. I spend a lot of time trying to invite people to join and give them the tools and supports that make it plausible.
> e.g. corporate environments
Yeah, I've kinda washed out of all the horsecarp that happens in those. After 20 years and lots of success I still enjoy the work but the people ruin it for me. I'm planing a transition to farming. These social patterns destroy industry performance but it seems locked in on them.
> What does giving up control exactly means?
One always, outside of dystopic electrode or mind control ray scenarios, retains exclusive control over their connected neutral infrastructure but in having attachment to values we can feel induced into tradeoffs we would otherwise reject. Becoming attached to a life partner can cause shifts in your priorities and gives up control of priority updates, at least partially, to an uncontrolled entity. Lies told, being stuck in abuse patterns, and many other factors can create adverse dynamics and all these are risked. Similar risks can manifest in a business or investment decision. Even the accumulated knowledge, increase communications efficiency, and shared experience of any long term relationship becomes an asset that can exert control. Usually a worthwhile risk and trade-off.
The problem isn't gendered, that's just a distraction to keep us distracted warring against ourselves. Not to ignore the gender associated norms that lead to gender correlated adverse outcomes inside of a societal system that reflects and countersolves these. The problem is the distributed defection status and the challenges of social coordination coupled with social knowing not scaling.
However, I kinda ignore your last bit. I think you are saying "isn't the submission to satisfying the external the problem?" I believe it is a problem but it's paired with the collaboration can lead to far better outcomes factor. Society puts a lot of effort to make us dependent and through it dependence subservient. On the platform of society some attempt to get us to enslave ourselves (and others) to the whims of those same. Through such tangles, we all lose and pay dearly, living underperforming lives in an underperforming existence.
Historic ‘stoic male’ personas existed for a reason. Because in many situations, it works. Despite the complaining.
And being less ‘emotionally connected’ is valuable when people use that connection to exploit or hurt you. A very common experience for many men.
That people (especially women) then complain you won’t open up to them is a riot in those situations because it’s like someone complaining you keep putting on your bullet proof vest - while they keep shooting at you.
Historic male mental health issues also resulted. But notably, folks depending on the stoic persona for their own wellbeing would typically throw you under the bus for those issues too.
“How dare you get mad! You’re a dangerous threat!” says the person constantly harassing the person, or the boss putting you in worse and worse work conditions while pretending they are doing you a favor, etc.
They do that, of course, because mad people actually fight back. But if you need the job or are dependent on the relationship…
As many men have experienced, the only way to ‘win’ is shut off caring about what people say on that front - among other emotions.
> Historic ‘stoic male’ personas existed for a reason.
What are you talking about here. "Historic male persona" differs between periods and places, but anger, friendships and happiness are basically always parts of it.
Odysseus "weeps" and "cries". The whole romantic era was about overly emotional, passionate and sensitive guys.
Homer predates the stoics by several centuries, so that makes sense. Though I do think Homer does make a solid case of traditional male ideals being fairly emotional, and this is something that persists to modern day.
Achilles in particular spends half the Iliad sulking in his tent, and the other half making shish kebabs out of the Trojan army on a tireless revenge-rampage where he's so goddamn angry he picks a fight with a river.
These types of characters are still written today, John Wick is something of a superficial parallel.
Though it could be argued that Achilles lengthy sulking is diva behavior, few would argue Captain Kirk is effeminate because he's more emotionally driven than Spock, who in many ways turns the stoic ideals up to 11. Likely because despite occasionally chewing the scenery with emotional moments, he is still ultimately in control.
(It's also worth noting that neither Achilles or Odysseus were likely intended as ideals, but rather tragic extremes, and Homer's works largely deal with the consequences of their personalities; the pride and rage of Achilles like we just discussed, the pathological distrust and constant scheming of Odysseus protracting his journey and being the true source of many of his countless obstacles)
Even if it was written post-peak-stoic-era (it wasn’t), you still would probably not find many historic ‘stoic men’ as primary characters in a drama such as the Iliad. They would tend to be either scenery/setting, or somewhat uninteresting.
for good reason.
They are typically not very dramatic, and do the right thing - even in difficult circumstances. That is anti-drama.
They are the ‘good dads’. The strong leaders who make sure the right things actually happen. Etc.
They are not perfect, or superhuman. They can’t change the tide of a tsunami. But they do tend to make sure their family (and anyone who will listen to them without making their primary mission difficult!) also get to high ground at the right time.
If society actually listens to them, society might even build a high enough sea wall that the Tsunami doesn’t even destroy the city. That one is rare, however.
Repressing emotions is bad. Letting them stop you finding a solution is worse. I've found myself in bad situations a number of times. Sensitivity has its place but sometimes it is a hindrance.
I had no question. You also do not know what historical stoicism as a philosophy and behavior was, but I assumed actual historical stoicism was not the point.
My point was, you made up "historic stoic persona" based on conservative ideology. Not as something that actually characterized historical manhood.
The point of stoicism is to make your own decisions and be able to chart your own life by following principles you believe are just - in large part by avoiding being controlled by emotional reactivity/manipulation.
Not to cut out emotions all together, but to not be driven by them. Especially when someone is trying to induce them in you.
This often comes across as ‘stone faced in the face of extreme emotion’ - but doesn’t mean the person isn’t feeling them. Rather that they are not letting themselves be driven by or controlled by them in the moment, if they do not serve a useful purpose for them.
It's always about that isn't it? Not getting the reaction you want, vilifying your interlocutor, then run crying with fingers in your ears screaming "lalala I didn't want it anyway" and declaring yourself a stoic is really indicative of the type of people who in the present day call themselves stoics.
This whole thread is just a long-winded version of redpill discourse, people who can see past minor adolescent romantic mishaps.
How pathetic is it to still model your whole life after women while pretending to be an isle of self-reliance? Men really are lost.
I didn't see any vilification of women. Women value sharing and emotional vulnerability. It's how they bond with other women, who make up the bulk of their friends. Men's experiences with other men, the bulk of their friends, often make them wary of being emotionally vulnerable. Hence, naturally, a disconnect when a man and a woman are establishing a relationship.
Women value sharing and emotional vulnerability, but typically not from the males in their lives. There is a significant disconnect between average women and genuine male emotions, and males are expected to show emotional resilience and self-control first and foremost precisely to bridge that gap and then allow the 'sharing' to occur unimpeded, though still in a somewhat controlled way.
Are men expected to do so? Male anger is more tolerated then female anger. Also, if you look at men who are popular or get far, they are super emotional - Trump, Musk, Tate heck even Vance and Hengensberg.
Emotions driven males are cultural and political leaders literally now.
this is the general insanity of today’s world, today’s leaders would be laughed at as weakest of the weak in vast majority of human history, just absolute weakest men imaginable are “leaders” now…
There is a saying in wealth management - ‘the first generation builds it, the second generation preserves it, the third generation smokes it’.
It’s hard to not see that playing out in a large sense society wise right now, if we assume the first generation was the post WW2 folks, and the wealth was the post-WW2 economic benefits from the US not being bombed into the Stone Age like most of the rest of the world - and if anything, being the only major economy still standing.
Where exactly you draw the lines generationally is of course up for debate. But we’re starting to have to relearn a lot of hard lessons now that the post WW2 (and depression) generations understood as basic table stakes.
And it’s not because people today are ‘weaker’ per-se. Rather, they’ve lived a (relatively) comfortable life. That generally leads to not having to learn the hard lessons (or being so miserable) that they do the hard things required to build that society. And there is no free lunch. And it was never ideal, then, or now, and will never be ideal in the future either.
But it can be better if we put in the work and take the risk.
Anger like any other emotion has its place. But it is better to channel it into something productive.
Trump and Musk are men who were born into wealth, and were boosted by mass media for decades, so I don't think they really count. Musk's main tactic has been to take credit for others' R&D.
OP blamed women for supposedly complaining that men dont open up. Men simultaneously have natural friendships with other men, but it is women fault men do not open up.
Por op, women are at wrong when they want men to talk (which is outrageous ask), but also cause of men not talking. Which includes men not talking to other men, which is also fault of women.
Yes, it's projection for sure. A large number of men appear to need validation from women. Pathetic. I guess from an evolutionary perspective it had to that way. Men who didn't need that validation worked themselves out of the gene pool.
Completely ignoring what everyone thinks and doing your own thing is a good way to get in a very dangerous situation from a basic-life-needs perspective. And with women being a bit over half the population, saying ‘fuck it’ to what half the population wants, especially if you’re picking fights with them, is quite dangerous - even if they are not 100%.
But you know who can handle dangerous, and doesn’t need validation from the population (in that form) to get what they want and have their needs met?
The actual king.
It’s a high risk, high reward (potentially) strategy. Better be good (and actually strong) if you want to not need to be liked.
What I think we’ve been seeing play out is entire generations of men who learned that the best strategy was to be liked by women so the women would do all the work to support them. Which seems to have worked quite well for many of them for awhile.
But now people are burning out, and the ‘easy wins’ from the prior approach (or just lifestyle creep/inflation!) is causing more real and visible difficulty - and the situation is indeed getting more difficult. We even have clear predators showing up and operating in the open, with no one stopping them.
There needs to be more than just vibes and following the rules for things to work out now, and a different approach is needed.
We’ll see what ends up shaking out, eh?
One thing is clear though - if society won’t accept someone stepping up and punching someone in the face or worse (even if it is to protect them), you’ll eventually end up with a bunch of predators who will do whatever they want without fear taking advantage of society.
I don't think there's any redefinition here, and it's exactly this dichotomy that makes this a big issue. Vulnerability is indeed not "a good thing", but the issue is that the struggle to constantly keep yourself invulnerable at all times is a "worse thing", leading to many stress-related issues (amongst other problems). So the modern psychological advice, as I understand it, is to find particular people, spaces and opportunities where we can let our guard down, even at the risk of being open to attack, because the alternative is worse.
There's a stoic quote I love:
> our ideal wise man feels his troubles, but overcomes them
> Is this something that generally goes beyond school?
The things that make you vulnerable change depending on what year and situation you're in. I can very much get behind the idea that you should consider whether your legacy sense of what makes you vulnerable is relevant to your current circumstances. I'm not so much behind the "freely dispense the rope people will use to hang you" version.
There's a lot of abstraction in this thread, but I would like to hear specifics.
What are the exact vulnerabilities that we are talking about?
From my side I guess I can say I frequently feel like impostor type of things or that I'm not doing enough. I won't mention that at work, but I definitely share those feelings to my partner.
I would hate not being able to share something like that to my partner for instance.
When I was at school (and in the 20th century generally) admitting to anything outside traditional masculinity / heterosexuality made you vulnerable to physical / verbal attack. Which remains the case for a lot of people in the 21st century. If they want to be loud and proud then good for them, but I can understand it if they prefer to keep it quiet. Whereas, at least around me, now, I think you can come out as gay without too much concern for your physical safety.
Conversely, at my school you could be as overtly homophobic as you wanted with no consequences, whereas now you should probably be a lot more cautious if you harbour homophobic sentiments.
Talking about partners in particular, I've had partners I felt fairly safe sharing anything (most things anyway) with, and I've also had partners who would mine our conversations for any kind of viable ammunition. Which led to me being a bit more careful what I said. We can perhaps agree the first kind of relationship is better.
Yeah, I think the 2nd type of relationship is much worse than no relationship, I'd say the problem there wouldn't be with someone being vulnerable, it's the problem with the relationship...
Yeah, during school it's difficult since you are forced together with potentially toxic people. As an adult you can choose at least in personal life and to an extent workplace, although sometimes workplace can also be difficult to get right.
I'd 100% rather be alone than around people who might judge or use in someway against me anything about me. It would feel internally disgusting for me to think that someone might be trying to get at my expense and that I'm not around people who are there to try and build each other. What a waste of time.
The thing is, what you want is specifically a relationship where you are not vulnerable. If you're not worried about the consequences of the things you say, there's no actual vulnerability. You're just adapting to a safe situation. In which case good for you and you partner.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to do though, is to build myself such a life that if my internal principles are good, I shouldn't have to worry in most cases about what I'm saying since I want to believe in my principles. I want my interactions with people to be win-win, and I want to surround myself with people who want that too. If someone displays lose-win behavior, I should always naturally have the "moral" upper-hand assuming other people around me are reasonable. And if none of the people around me are reasonable, I should go and find the reasonable people.
People seem to be romanticizing the term "vulnerable" though. I think it would be important to go deeper into this. What does "vulnerability" exactly mean. I have had depression, anxiety diagnosed in the past and addictions and other similar issues, are these vulnerabilities because they may interfere with me acting optimally or are they vulnerabilities because they provide someone a tool to try and get at me if they so wanted because they think there's stigma around those labels to influence others to think worse of me?
You really don't need to reach that far. As a man if you are too often vulnerable, too much, for the wrong reasons or at the wrong time you will loose the respect of your partner and soon after there love.
Most people seek emotional support, resilience and trustworthiness from their partner, and being excessively "vulnerable" can definitely hinder you from playing that role effectively. This is what can sometimes be experienced as a loss of respect. What you really want is to show a mere modicum of emotional vulnerability that your partner can then have some opportunity to empathize with, and not view you as overly brittle. But not more than that.
Why are you assuming that someone who sensibly refrains from overly impulsive behavior wrt. showing their emotions (this is what "self-monitoring" ultimately means: we all do it in all sorts of social contexts, and it's a normal part of being a healthy, well-adjusted person) must necessarily be "disconnecting" from them altogether and lacking in emotional resilience?
If you manage to "self-monitor" all the time, and never show more than a modicum of vulnerability, that seems very disconnected to me.
Perhaps 'disconnected' is the wrong word, but what I mean is that emotionally healthy people feel their emotions and express them, not just hold them at arm's length and pick and choose which to feel and express.
On the contrary, part of being a well-adjusted person is learning how to express any emotion in a gradual and controlled fashion, without letting it dominate your behavior in dysfunctional ways. As the ancient philosopher Epictetus famously put it: "If anyone were to deliver your body in public to whomever he wished, that any passer-by might do as he liked with it, you would certainly be angry and indignant. But that you should then set your mind at the mercy of all the world, to be troubled and disturbed whenever anyone should happen to revile you--are you not ashamed of that?" In a way, this is at essence the underlying tension that's inherently in play whenever someone advocates for "vulnerability".
Right I forgot we are on HN where we even need a scientific paper on "do women like weak vulnerable or strong confident men?" because nobody ever goes outside.
I bet that people who advocate for showing "vulnerability" are modeling this as a facet of strong confidence, and not opposed to it. But the thing is, if you really have reached the level of effortless confidence where that's a realistic prospect, you won't need that advice! You'll just be able to intuitively calibrate how much "vulnerability" to allow others, as a direct outcome of that strong emotional stability. Most people would probably be better off being told to be a little bit more guarded about their emotions.
Not really, it's just that most of us are adults who have experiences with healthy adult relationships. "Is my partner going to leave me if I display emotional vulnerability" is not really a concern in healthy, adult relationships.
Differences between men and women are down to the situation.
Sometimes the long situation. When a situation has lasted a long time, it sticks, and turns into culture, gender roles.
When a situation has lasted a really long time, it sticks hard, and becomes biology.
But most of the time, it's neither culture or biology which decides what men and women do. It's the immediate situation.
And even if you think it's culture, even if you think it's biology, if you don't like how men are (or how women are) you have to start with changing the immediate situation. The others will follow - eventually.
I think some concrete examples would be great. I think we need some examples of vulnerability too. Is vulnerability just about showing your actual emotional state? E.g. if you are depressed, anxious or nervous?
My take is you've got the right reasoning but the wrong conclusion, I agree with your contextless definition of vulnerability and with the use of it in this context, vulnerability makes people vulnerable, by definition.
From my experience, the reason you'd risk being vulnerable is there are some things you can't achieve without doing so, it'd be like trying to do surgery with a scalpel on someone wearing platemail, or trying to detect radiation with a Geiger counter behind 20 meters of lead, for some tools to work properly they're required to be in a position where they're 'vulnerable', like eyes.
I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance. Which in my opinion is worse than nothing as at least when you're not faking something it's easier to agree that you haven't really tried it.
> I think it's sad that performative emotions & vulnerability seem to be a popular thing to have to signal for acceptance.
You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not and performative anything is not required for acceptance, but people are not accepting of others who deal with their social interaction in these terms and your very language betrays where you stand. These imaginary requirements for affection are not what's sad here.
> You only think it's performative because you think people are signalling
You're correct that I think something because I think something else. You're assuming I'm unwilling or unable to tell the difference.
I don't see a betrayal to state that I think it's a shame that people that have copied a performative action, gotten nothing out of it and are then hesitant to try again because they feel they've already tried that avenue and had bad results. It's the same feeling of sadness I get when people have tried therapy, for whatever reason haven't gotten much out of it and then write it off as a sham.
I do get that you're saying 'aha ! I've detected your true intent through my clever analysis of your language' - consider your assumption "You only think it's performative because you think people are signaling. They're not"
They're not? You can state absolute facts with confidence about the people I've experienced in my life that you don't know anything about? That is either some amazing superpower or regular old conjecture.
It might help you to notice how many times I said I think or in my opinion, and how many absolutes you're willing to state.
Sometimes people do signal. I know people who do not cry and maybe need to, and others who can and do to try and get what they want. Some emotions are performative — look at the performative grief over Evita, Diana or even Stalin.
I think you are projecting the sense of the word from computer security onto people. But "vulnerability" always has that second sense in common speech, as in "showing vulnerability". If a person is actually open to being harmed in some way we use the phrasing "they are vulnerable to ...", which has quite a different meaning.
No, definitely not thinking in computer terms. I know the word from a completely different context. I think what they mean is sensitivity (which can be good or bad) and tenderness (which is generally good). But there are contexts in which it is not helpful. We have a problem with street violence where I live, and showing your emotional side to a potential attacker is not the best way of avoiding trouble.
