itt blogs instruct you how to be a man

yes, but when i was an adolescent some boys in my school started snapping girls' bras and there had to be a special lecture given to the class about honoring the girls in the class. none of the boys were snapping the other boys' dicks or whatever.

xxp

andrew, dawg, there is a big difference between "loving-kindness" and "unending adoration".

honoring your mother and father is partially about respecting a special role they hold, though, right? having it stated outside of respect of elders means you're putting them in a special position outside of others.

i don't think the ways that teenage boys behave with each other should be a model for how they should behave towards women in their lives

none of the boys were snapping the other boys' dicks or whatever.

we've successfully detoured into nightmare

if honor thy fellow man got the job done, i'd agree that we don't need special lessons about honoring women. but clearly it has not gotten the job done to date so maybe some special specific reminders are in order.

I think you're doing an end-run around the fact that merely respecting others and "honoring" are different things

xp
As a long time speaker of english, I'd say that 'honoring' someone requires granting them special distinction that sets them apart from others, while 'respecting' someone entails seeing their individual merits without regard to the merits of others.

i think you're trying to link 'honor' to 'venerate' in a way that isn't necessarily implied, 'respect' and 'honor' can be synonyms too such as in the idiom 'honor my wishes.'

Honour in the case of sexuality frequently relates, historically, to fidelity: preservation of "honour" equates primarily to maintenance of the virginity of singles and to the exclusive monogamy of the remainder of the population. Further conceptions of this type of honour vary widely between cultures; some cultures regard honour killings of (mostly female) members of one's own family as justified if the individuals have "defiled the family's honour" by marrying against the family's wishes, or even by being the victims of rape. Western observers generally see these honour killings as a way of men using the culture of honour to control female sexuality.

The concept of "honor" when it comes to the relationship between men and women is full of baggage

i'm just talking but -- any manifesto that states WOMEN ARE NOT THE SOURCE OF OUR PROBLEMS supposes itself to be corrective of the assumed attitude that women are, in fact, the source of your problems.

"honor" as in "honor killing"

xp

if anyone thinks that women are the source of their problems than they could probably use that corrective?

then*

oh ffs

Mordy, are you actively disbelieving this point that we're attempting to make, or do you actually take issue with it?

The word "honoring" makes me picture ceremonially draping a woman with silk scarves or some shit

I am taking issue with it. I think the manifesto is at worst inoffensive and at best could be useful for a group of people who could hear some of the things it says.

"your gender binarism is all fucked up and bad! here, try THIS gender binarism, it's much cooler and it makes you even better at your gender"

I don't think we should take potshots at anything in the men's movement that encourages things like "We seek to build a world that works for everybody," "We exchange competence in violence for competence in non-violence," "Women are not the source of our problems," "There is no 'Other' that we demonize," "We take personal responsibility for the state of the world." These are all good things!

these people who see women as the source of all my problems (as implied by including me in "OUR PROBLEMS"), who are they and how do i shot them?

try the vast majority of internet communities?

gender is a lie, i cannot honor a lie

taking personal responsibility for the state of the world seems a little... grandiose, wouldn't you say?

and as to the other aspects, it's one thing to espouse these ideals and another to actually put them into practice and aggressively roots out unconscious and unspoken assumptions about who "everybody" is, what "violence" is, what "the other" is in our daily lives.

the difficulty as I see it is not with the few realtively good things in that manifesto, but with mixing them on an equal footing with crap things as if all these statements were equally good and sensible. this is akin to my serving you a nice dish of basmati rice, pea pods, dog vomit and bile and expecting you to pick out the pea pods and pop them into your mouth with gratitude.

xp maybe - it's pretty much a basic tenant of judaism so it didn't really phase me

I don't know that there's a "men's movement" as a single front, though, and many of these sites aren't meant as any sort of rehabilitation, but some sort of statement of manliness.

Sure it could be useful, but we're not gauging this as a system of rehabilitation, we're gauging sentiments on sites that purport to explain "manliness." If we on ilx take issue with it, I think we can do that.

I mean, you're basically saying these are "men's movements" and if they're at all better than some sort of rhetorical worse thing then they're fine?

These are websites, not organizations like Promise Keepers!

tbh it's cool for us to take issue with basic tenets of judaism too, if we want

just remember that jews are not the source of your problems, okay?

Well, not in that it's not cool for them to exist, but that perhaps we don't want those tenets applied to our lives. If people do, that's cool! As long as it's mutually-consensual in relationships.

also, i have a broader contention that anything that self-identifies as being a male movement gets derided including things i've found to be beautiful and psychologically compelling aka robert bly - not everything is the same etc.

this may go to a broader disagreement i realize about whether there is a place in leftist ideals for fraternities/brotherhoods of men of any type (even theoretically utopian/progressive organizations) or if the inherent exclusion of women in light of historical systemic sexism makes such a composition always problematic. obv i fall into the category that doesn't necessarily have a problem w/ all-male organizations (tho many/most are certainly troubling on their own merits) but i understand if you come from a different pov.

whether something gets derided is of no importance. those same things will also be defended. what matters are the grounds upon which it is derided or defended.

all-male choruses rule

I am all for people using whatever framework it takes to find comfort in their self-expression and self-image. Some of the language about men better connecting to emotions can sound hokey, but it's an overall good.

The problem is when these things start to sound prescriptive. The idea that there is a correct way to be manly, or only one type of masculinity, is reductive. Saying that men have been "feminized" always rings that way to me, because it reinforces a gender binary.

i'm fine with men teaching men how to be righteously manly, as long as they are willing to accept and foster people of other gender presentations without prejudice or exception

i get what you're saying -- virtues are by definition good! -- but imho dividing up virtues as gender attributes isn't exactly progressive

kind of annoys me that they're packaging a specific traditionalist view as "manly" instead of coming up with a better term

it's also kind of telling that it really is wrapped up in traditionalism -- you get rugged mountain man, tailored business suit man, and man who makes things in these portrayals, but in order to incorporate something that seems out of traditional stereotypes they show that yes, here is an old-timey tailor man, so men making clothing is normal. or here are two dudes hugging in a non-sexual manner in the 1920s, so it is ok if two dudes do that today

the manly art of making sandwiches -- shows old-timey men working a deli counter for men

all male choruses are pretty cool because each testicle resonates at a different frequency

^^^ this is actually true

wub wub wub wub

FACT: this is how dubstep started

different kind of drop

epic drop

https://twitter.com/dril/status/379597234003644416

yes, but when i was an adolescent some boys in my school started snapping girls' bras and there had to be a special lecture given to the class about honoring the girls in the class. none of the boys were snapping the other boys' dicks or whatever.

― Mordy , Monday, September 16, 2013 2:32 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

way behind here, but. maybe they could have had a lecture about "don't be assholes" instead?

boys will be boys, hah hah

s. clover, while i agree w/ the pov of your post i might suggest that your technique would be more emotionally satisfying for onlookers but probably less effective as a pedagogical tool in making very young immature men into respectful, socially acceptable results. have you ever told a 12yo to "not be an asshole?"