Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

My friends aren't especially woke or sophisticated, but there's no "locker room talk" when we hang

I don't know if this is what you are specifically referring to, but I feel the need to point out that, as "locker room talk" became a kind of signifier in the most recent American election, such talk, in my admittedly extremely limited experience (gym class, high school track and field, far too infrequent trips to the gym to work out), while often raunchy, does not generally consist of bragging about sexual assaults, and I heard guys far more experienced in such talk confirm this fact in the wake of 2016.

I really think we all should not just "listen" to women but learn to empathize with them more. I think there's a huge connection between men's socialization not to identify with anything feminine in themselves and their difficulty empathizing with women. FWIW this is what I ultimately came to feel is damaging about most porn, that it evinces and reinforces a complete lack of empathy. I think that's what the real problem is with "objectification," -- it's not that desire should never have an element of objectification to it, but that complete objectification = lack of empathy. And I think this can come out in more subtle ways even for guys who are not the "locker room talk" type.

It's so much easier to see and admit that at 38 than it was at 21 though.

I think disparaging men as a class is part of toxic masculinity. (If you're a man doing it.) So much of the interactions among men are based on competitiveness and mutual suspicion. I think the lack of close male friendships and suport is part of what leads to the aggressive, bitter spiral that leads some men to mistreat women, or see them and objects. In some cases. It's not a full explanation for sexual assault, but I think isolation lead to all kinds of psychological damage and the lack of communication among men makes it hard for men to keep each other in check.

Xp to ye mad puffin

massively otm

Also man alive otm

Also, I have to say that I loved everything about boxedjoy's post, but what is especially striking to me is the evocation that of the unease that gay men feel in society in the larger context of this conversation. I've never been (physically) gay bashed, but existing in the world as an open gay man brings with it a trunk of anxieties, and it sometimes occurs to me when we discuss issues such as this that my anxieties (I don't think that I'm especially flamboyant, but I am openly gay, married, and not shy about talking about any of it, so who knows if I might have said the wrong thing to the wrong person who wants to make a point of catching me out in the parking lot or whatever) are like a small fraction compared to what many (most?) women probably feel all the fucking time.

boxedjoy thank you for your post

trust yourself to do better and trust other men can, too

I loved boxedjoy's post too. As someone hetero it has been illuminating to read a lot of the posts in this thread, both learning about experiences that are different from mine and recognizing familiar feelings.

Agreed, man alive. I was suggesting but probably should have explicitly stated that listening more to women is really just a first step, necessary but by no means sufficient unto itself.

Empathy is a thing I've been thinking about a lot lately, particularly the ways in which true and deep empathy is not just about seeing and acknowledging and respecting another person's personhood but also striving to understand the ways in which the context and circumstances of another person's life frame their perspective. It involves a lot of ego suppression, acknowledging that that other person I'm interacting with is responding in part to the construction of Me that I'm familiar with but is also potentially responding to a whole host of other things that have nothing to do with me specifically, including that person's history of interactions with other people who superficially resemble me in one way or another. If any of that makes sense.

if the topic was humans c or d i'd vote d. if it was women "c or d" i'd have to assume also d.

who would vote that all humans are classic? or all of any mass group of them?

maybe the "classic or dud" format is straining here.

I don't want to turn this into some kind of #goodmenproject thing, but as long as men aren't going anywhere, I think we have a responsibility to try to envision a better maleness. As much as gender is a construct, I don't think maleness is akin to whiteness as a kind of invented and completely fluid category that we can just abandon. And as long as that's true, saying "men suck" (as a man) can mean abdicating the responsibility to try to do better.

i don't think that men suck or are a dud fwiw. there are some things about men *in general* that are problematic but i agree that men: dud isn't helpful. generally speaking, they don't listen to me so it's up to you to keep the shitty ones in check.

for example, if you excuse a friend for being "kind of a dick" because he is cool or has social capital, you are part of the problem. this was a problem on ilx for a long time. i don't want to (or need to) give examples but i do relish the feeling of being able to say this without the hovering terror of being attacked. maybe i should be scared but i'm not anymore.

the men who were shitty to me were permitted to be not just by themselves and their selfish desires but by culture, their peers, and society at large. they faced no repercussions for their behavior and no one believed me when i told them otherwise, which i stopped doing because it hurt worse than just carrying it around myself. that's as harmful as the harm itself. the harm we inflict on ourselves after being harmed by others can last a lifetime if it's not submitted to the light of day.

i recommend reading Roxane Gay's Hunger if you want to learn a little empathy. Her book is excellent in that it is unflinching in its honesty, nonpornographic* in its detail, and committed to a first person narrative that doesn't ever try to shy away from responsibility by slipping into "you".

*meaning that her book doesn't lavish detail on the assault she experienced nor does it glamorize the assault with florid narrative flourishes.

I will take that rec. I'm in a book club too (which is split about 70-30 male) and I may suggest it as a next book.

FWIW, I also think it's good for us as men to learn to empathize with women in general, and not just with the bad experiences they go through, if that makes sense? Because real empathy is humanizing, and you can't fully humanize someone just by seeing them as a victim. Like literally just imagining what it would be like to be a woman in a variety of situations and not solely from the perspective of pity I think is helpful and something I'm still working on letting myself do more.

With facebook I'm really hesitant to post anything because of wanting to avoid performative woke maleness and repentance as fishing-for-likes at a moment that is supposed to be about women. I'm tempted to just make my status "I believe you" though. LL do you think that's worth doing?

idk -- that's up to you. the line between performative wokeness and genuine expressions of care is as blurry to me as it is to everyone else.

I guess at least rewarding people for performative wokeness is better than rewarding them for performative machoness.

I think an "I believe you" status is fine

LL thanks for all your posts here

i feel like i am exploding. thank you for reading.

i also agree with man alive about not reducing human beings to the worst things that happened to them. no one wants to be defined by the worst experiences they've had.

I guess at least rewarding people for performative wokeness is better than rewarding them for performative machoness.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Monday, October 16, 2017 10:37 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is kinda my take on 'virtue signaling' (a phrase I hate, largely because I almost always see it used pejoratively by subhumans) generally. People who 'signal their virtue' may not have wholly selfless motives for doing so, but I don't feel like aspirational expressions of equality and tolerance and inclusion can't be all bad even if they sometimes unfortunately veer more toward self-promotion.

don't, in that last sentence, obvs.

My reaction to the "me too" posts are likes and loves - BUT! this is just my personal way of acknowledgement, and I understand and accept that other men have other ways of acknowledging.

Second the thanks to LL for the posts, very helpful

it's true that only one man has liked my "me too"
crut <3

Ok I think I'm just going to go around liking the "me too" posts, that seems like a better and less self-centered way of responding.

it is!

A friend of mine posted a #metoo so devastating today that I hardly know how to react aside from an "I'm sorry this happened to you."

striving to understand the ways in which the context and circumstances of another person's life frame their perspective. It involves a lot of ego suppression, acknowledging that that other person I'm interacting with is responding in part to the construction of Me that I'm familiar with but is also potentially responding to a whole host of other things that have nothing to do with me specifically, including that person's history of interactions with other people who superficially resemble me in one way or another.

otm! imo. But, and forgive me if this is a cross-reference to the "why is it so hard to make friends over the age of 30" or wahtever, but isn't everything you said up there essentially the most basic building block of...knowing people and interacting with them?

Going back waaaaay upthread:

The DUI thing wasn't even an analogy, really! I mean, it was in my head, but I was just stating that I wished "creepy behaviour" could be de-stigmatized, and used DUI as an example of something that was just as commonplace, more harmful, but somehow less stigmatized

I think I agree with this if we're talking about a thing called creepy behaviour, the thing that everyone does at some point, that is understood to be different to like, a campaign.

I'd like to add my thanks to those who have shared personal stories here. I read, I learn.

One thing that strikes me reading through all this - for those posters discussing unpleasant things they've seen in the gay community, I would like to put across my general experience as a straight man, that the gays are generally a lot better than the straights at spotting the ridiculousness of any objectification they might be doing. The colleague I noted in my post above - the chap who was blaring out to the office that he wanted to fuck the woman who was a lesbian and thus cure her of the latter - was really, truly, 'lost in the game', was I suppose sexually stupid, in a way few gay men are that I've met.

I remembered a couple of other "me too,"s but again, by men, and when I was young. When I was 13 I struck up a "friendship" online (Prodigy message boards) with what I thought was an older teenager (turned out to be a grown man), who was going to come visit my area and wanted to hang out, but either right before or after he arrived revealed over the phone that he was actually older and also that he might want to "hug" me when he showed up. I told my parents about it and that it seemed weird, and they of course put a stop to the whole thing. I had actually forgotten about that whole episode.

Then when I was a sophomore in high school I had a drum teacher start massaging my shoulders and trying to seduce me.

As with the one I mentioned above, these left me questioning myself and wondering what it was about me that made them "choose" me, and had an effect on me for years.

I think because these situations are about exploiting a power dynamic, they're less likely to occur between adult men (although they certainly do occur) than between an older man and a younger man.

I'm searching my memory for anything on that level done by women and I can't think of anything. Part of it is just the power dynamic again. A woman I'm not interested in hitting on me in an unwanted way is just not going to feel threatening in the same way.

This seems like a good time to note that the aftermath of one of these incidents of sexual violence/predation can be the most harmful part. The "why me?" questions, the damage to one's relationship to one's own body, the rupture of autonomy over one's sexuality. It can reverberate for as long as it's able to. It's the quietest most disturbing bell that won't stop ringing, like psychological tinnitus that flares up when and wherever it pleases.

aka PTSD :(

it's true that only one man has liked my "me too"
crut <3

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, October 16, 2017 12:01 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3 I'm glad this was taken positively! (hopefully)

I'm trying to figure out how to address the garbage things I've done to women. I've never assaulted anyone but I have been a creep and a pest and an emotional vampire and thinking about all those things makes me want to crawl into a hole and disappear, but that doesn't do any good.

it was, i felt understood. you are not a bad person crüt and i like you :)

go forward, do your best, be kind. that's a start

We can all change and do better! That's a given. I was a homophobe until I was like 20 and I definitely deeply hurt at least one person directly that I know of. (Ironically it was a peer who was straight but her dad had just come out as gay and it ended his marriage and iirc basically everyone in their church and their entire community shunned the whole family--all of which she kept secret from me, her roommate, for the entire freshman year.)

There was one time that the only reason I didn't become more of a predator was I was stopped by a friend. I was 18 years old, freshman in college, somewhat drunk but my memory is clear. The woman was "conscious" but clearly too drunk to consent. At the time I don't believe I had learned the phrase "too drunk to consent," but I had a vague sense that it was not the right thing to do and was moving forward anyway. The friend really deserves a lot of kudos, he was thought of by people as a kind of dirtbag, but it was actually, in retrospect, one of the most decent things I have ever witnessed, the fact that he very insistently stopped me, which not only prevented me from doing it that night but probably from ever getting the idea into my head again. Whereas I was the "shy, nice guy" type and yet perfectly capable of doing something awful. I've typed and deleted this seven or eight times already since the thread started.

In case it wasn't completely clear, he stopped me before much of anything happened. But I am still pretty ashamed of it even 20 years later.

If these are the reverberated effects of thwarted sexual predation, imagine what it's like when it happens. That's what I meant about emotional tinnitus. I'm glad you shared your experience because it highlights why all of this is so dangerous to ignore. Thank you.

Yes, I can say I understand that reverberation from both sides.

And I also just wanted to give my friend as an example of how much of an impact it can have to have someone in your life who sends the right message at an impressionable age, because I really think there was something about seeing myself through his response to me that woke me up to what I was doing and prevented me from ever trying something like that again.

man alive, I think at that point in life there's this discrepancy between what you've been taught, know is right, and what that behavior actually looks like in practice. And I'm glad that dude helped point it out.

As far as being intoxicated or having a diminished capacity and the issue of consent.. I know at this point in my life the I'm only really comfortable remembering how a relationship started if I'm confident that I was actively engaged in the whole thing, and so was my partner. There are incidents on either side where this wasn't especially the case, where things were lopsided or intentions weren't clear, and I don't like that.

I don't understand how people can kind of brush off situations like that instead of feeling kind of shitty about it!

I made an FB post about #metoo, knowing full well it could come off as 'virtue signalling' but it was more out of frustration that I was hardly seeing anything about it from other straight guys I guess. Think it's important that this is more than a sharing experience for people who have suffered abuse and harassment and an opportunity for those lucky enough not to be directly affected by it to sit up and listen and understand. I wanted my male friends to do the same and take these posts seriously, and not try and do that thing where they prove the point by challenging it. Sadly we're still at a stage where males tend to listen to males more than females

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/16/a-simple-list-of-things-men-can-do-to-change-our-work-and-life-culture?CMP=share_btn_fb

xp - did it work?

Haha, if you're asking if it 'fixed sexism', no.
It led to an interesting discussion though. For people who don't need to worry about sexual harassment, it's not alway obvious what others suffer through.
A big part of this is because victims don't always speak up, or they get ignored. For the privileged ones, that means they never fully grasp the extent of the issue. #metoo really throws all that into stark relief.
So many of my (mostly female) friends have posted a status update, and they're just the ones who felt comfortable sharing.
Some have even gone on to describe their experiences, and it's never 'this one time', it's 'I get this almost every time I go out and it's been going on since before I became sexually mature'.
You can't ignore that or treat it as an unfortunate but isolated incident. It's practically everyone I know who is female, and some men too of course.
As for the fellas on my Facebook, I know a few people get it, and they've replied and made some good points. However, it's frustrating seeing blokes on other threads saying things like 'there are levels of harassment', 'I don't do this so why are you patronising me?', 'this is not my experience' etc..
In doing this, I've had to wrestle with my own thoughts, feelings and history and I hope a lot of other men are doing the same. While I've never knowingly harassed or assaulted anyone, I can't acquit myself of ever having displayed sexist behaviour, sexist opinions, abusing my status as a male, or simply not doing anything to stop the actions of others. I'm hoping this whole exercise challenges men like me to look into their past, think about 'that one time that didn't really count', and really come to terms with what they did and what the consequences were.