Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

otm

I did a fairly mild #metoo about the grossly grabby/handsy goth scene in my hometown 20 years back. All the women who'd been in it at the time replied with "hell yes" type responses. The ONE guy who replied basically said 'the women were just as bad!". Irony is he's one of the people I was thinking of when I posted what I did, not that Id've named names... sigh.

But yeah beyond that I'm not going to call anyone out because it involves other people and thats their place not mine.

can i mention that the concern with (and time/energy spent) criticizing other dudes' responses is making it ("it") about men
and that seems like a waste of time to me
i have seen 0 admissions or #dobetter or anything like that

i thought man alive's fb post was thoughtful and restrained. now is a good time to be conservative in that regard (which is probably why the offensive posts offend -- they are florid?)

Thank you DL for posting on Facebook about this - it made me feel able to do so as well, though in a smaller, far less brave way.

know what else? i do think there is a severe lack of male understanding that sexual violence/aggression isn't like other forms of aggression. it leaves its own indelible impression on the body and mind.

i remember when jon krakauer wrote about rape on college campuses and admitted on live radio that he didn't understand that rape is different than other forms of violence. at the time, i was completely appalled. now i know there are lots (apparently LOTS) of men out there who don't understand the difference between sexual violence/aggression and other forms of violence and aggression. idk why but i had assumed everyone gets that. apparently not!

(he said that before writing the book he didn't understand the difference, and that writing the book helped him. the guy has written a number of books and still didn't get this before he wrote a book about it? alright. i tried to be understanding but it was admittedly kinda difficult for me to imagine NOT getting that)

Great point.

I think that understanding of rape (or its politer, but necessary euphemism “sexual aggression”) happens in proximity to victimhood. Maybe this is obvious to say, but I know that a LOT of people who are not directly affected by rape who don’t understand it. Most of these people are men - who, as part of male privilege can easily skate past the issue - but there are also women (especially of a certain generation) who are dismissive/minimizing of rape in general — especially in higher ed.

In college, when I was working (cluelessly) to get a friend to help after a sexual trauma, I was SHOCKED at the road-blocks went up before her, and even more shocked to find that they were thrown up by three middle-aged women in positions of nominal authority, who — because they did not want to make a “big thing” of my friend’s experience — tried to squash her accusation. It was only by seeing THAT, and not the aftermath of the immediate trauma, that I began to see the long and pervasive tail of the incident as distinct from other experiences.

i think straight men are acculturated to not identify with victims. i remember thinking about this a lot in the aftermath of the jerry sandusky scandal, when women and gay men i knew tended to identify with the victims and straight men tended to identify with the bystanders. i think misogyny is at the core of that: so much energy devoted to never putting yourself in the position of "getting fucked," but it's not conscious and it's in the ether (prison rape jokes, etc.)

xp to LL

Horseshoe OTM; sadly I think it's even worse than that, in that straight men in some cases are afraid to even empathize with women for related reasons.

wow, that's bleak.

Our American culture has an unfortunate support of brutalizing and preying on the "weak". So it's not really a surprise. It's not just misogyny, it's a general attitude that applies to anyone outside of the ruling class. I mean, we have a prison slave system going on right now, and most employees are wage slaves with no rights or protections.

I don't think that's specifically American, that's human nature. American government/society does a lot less to protect "the weak" than other similarly prosperous nations, and a lot of our rights and protections exist only in theory. One of my friends' stories was reported being sexually assaulted by a male professor in college. She reported it 9 months after the incident -- after she no longer had to worry about repercussions academically. The administration said, "Sorry, honey, the statute of limitations is only 6 months." This guy is still a professor at that school, 25 years later.

my friend i mentioned upthread who had to deal with the predator neighbor, she's left social media bc with all the #metoo and news stories coming out she was getting triggered constantly. her experience when she was young coupled with other events of her life have left her retreating very far inward and away from real life. she doesn't even want to work jobs in offices, so she's supported by a group of families who all know her and who give her work, all while trying to encourage her as best they can. but it is tough for her. the cost of sexual assault and abuse can be horrific, and she's sometimes just barely hanging on.

Yeah, human nature is fucked up. It'd be nice one day for a society to create things like a social safety net, stronger employee rights, a more balanced taxation scheme, consumer protections, tax-funded public health insurance, and things like that ... but there isn't a single country in the history of the earth that's figured that out.

One day we'll advance as a species. I'm a little too harsh in my idealism for what America could be, since no other country has done any of that, either.

Xp yeah I mean I don't want to exaggerate it, I don't mean that straight men are literally rendered incapable of identifying with women, but there is definitely a way that men are trained to fear and squash the "feminine" in themselves that I think by extension diminishes the capacity to imagine oneself in the place of a woman, because as horseshoe points out, fuck or get fucked.

Uh I live in one, actually. PS Wrong thread for this xp

What I mean is, the culture that produces what I mentioned, derives from a mentality which also leads to a whole slew of other abuses. It's a poisonous mindset that's infected anything ...

And I'm no America hater, I just want to see this country as great as possible for everyone, like it could be, but isn't for some stupid reason.

Rape culture is alive and well in countries with great welfare states, I think probably most ppl itt would agree w/ you that the lack of same is a problem in the US but within the context of this thread it's going off on a tangent and kinda disrespectful.

Yeah rape culture's awful here in NZ, more tied in to sports and binge drinking than any lack of a welfare system

Xp yeah I mean I don't want to exaggerate it, I don't mean that straight men are literally rendered incapable of identifying with women, but there is definitely a way that men are trained to fear and squash the "feminine" in themselves that I think by extension diminishes the capacity to imagine oneself in the place of a woman, because as horseshoe points out, fuck or get fucked.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 19, 2017 3:25 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. It's not that it's impossible to feel empathy, but the idea that empathising somehow makes one appear weak or 'less of a man'. This extends from not being sure how vocal to be in expressing feminist values online, all the way to feeling a bit weird carrying your girlfriend's handbag while out in public. So much irrationality going on, all in the fear of being perceived 'the wrong way'.

OTM, and 'fuck or get fucked' for swaths of insecure boys is being replaced with 'fuck or get cucked'. Hate that word so much, but it doesn't seem like it's going away any time soon. It's a vessel, an excuse, for misogyny.

American exceptionalism dictates that we believe even the worst aspects of our culture are uniquely terrible

i'm not captain-save-a-man or anything, but direct experience does create empathy. many people in this country - men and women - don't give a shit what happens to terrorized victims of american aggression in Iraq and in U.S. prisons and in the criminal justice system because most Americans haven't been in prison or had their town bombed or been abused by law enforcement. i just think most people don't like to think about horrible things at all. and you need to actively think about what someone is going through or go through it yourself to have any empathy or understanding of how horrible it is to be terrorized or violated in a horrible way. trauma in my own life has made me empathetic to people in ways i might not have been had that trauma not happened.

yeah, I think one of the things that enables me to escape that as well is knowing what it feels like to be a victim. But the thing is, I'll bet a lot of men know what it feels like to be a victim, they just don't want to face that part of themselves.

Different people can empathize the same amount, and yet have different ideas of what to do about it tho (speaking abstractly here)

You can empathize quite a lot with the plight of the downtrodden, then do exactly zero things to alleviate it.

You can empathize quite a lot and think that hyperlocal volunteerism and personal activism are the best ways to alleviate the plight of the downtrodden.

You can empathize quite a lot and think that conventional liberal politics is the most realistic way of alleviating the plight of the downtrodden.

You can empathize quite a lot and think that only overthrowing The System is sufficient.

you can also grow empathy and concern. teach it in schools at a young age. but the entire system has to be changed from top to bottom. i mean its sad that someone has to feel the hurt and pain in order to care. you see this in a lot of veterans. or with global warming. we were flooded and we know how it feels and we are going to send help to the most recently flooded. it would be nice if people didn't need the direct experience to help and care!

i guess i'm that last one, YMP!

i don't know where i am. i don't really have answers.

having empathy doesn't always have to mean direct action but it might direct your actions in the future.

it would be nice if people didn't need the direct experience to help and care!

Indeed, I've heard you can be decent toward women even if you don't have a daughter!

Well everyone has experienced some kind of pain or trauma in their lives, I think? It's just a matter of being willing to tap into that and connect it to someone else's pain.

at my kid's school they were taught at a young age to stick up for people who were hurt or being hurt and they believe that that is important now! that's just one small example. of social engineering that i can get behind. i don't know what that would take to make that the norm. a sane secretary of education would be a start...

This extends from not being sure how vocal to be in expressing feminist values online

disagree with this. we already discussed upthread that this can be to do with feeling as tho being a man means you're part of the problem and not comfortable in this role. don't think men expressing strident views on the internet is viewed as feminine, far from it.

you see this in a lot of veterans. or with global warming. we were flooded and we know how it feels and we are going to send help to the most recently flooded. it would be nice if people didn't need the direct experience to help and care!

when i worked in local news years ago it used to bother me how every family who had experienced a fatal tragedy of whatever kind always set up a campaign about that thing. not diminishing grief or saying that there can't be good done by these campaigns but just the idea that because this freakish awful thing happened to your family it's now the most important issue in the world, over and above the million other dangers you prob blithely ignore all day every day.

i dunno tho, i think humans have this deep-seated and misplaced sense of cosmic justice, even people who would never claim to be religious or believe in god seem to think that things right themselves or that somehow their life is on some rail of good fortune, at least until the unthinkable happens and then it's this awful realisation. i'm speaking of privileged people only i suppose, presumably others are born knowing how completely fucking random and unfair everything can be.

there are also women (especially of a certain generation) who are dismissive/minimizing of rape in general

I am not excusing ANYone, but I've noticed women "of a certain age" can be very dismissive of lots of kinds of misogyny because in their lifetimes there's never been any remedy for it. They figure best just to put it behind you and not dwell on what you can't help.

there are so many of those innocent white people movies where something TERRIBLE happens and they realize the world isn't what they thought it was! how dare you put ME in a Singapore prison! all those endless times where America lost its innocence....

x-post

i think i was kinda born thinking a safe was going to fall on my head at any minute...

at my kid's school they were taught at a young age to stick up for people who were hurt or being hurt and they believe that that is important now! that's just one small example. of social engineering that i can get behind.

My daughter's school is REALLY heavy on overt character-education stuff, in a way that I found kind of strange when she started (a bit protest-too-muchy maybe?). But I definitely think it's an improvement over the Lord-of-the-Flies zoos of my childhood. The culture has changed as well. You don't get beaten up on the playground for being named Hayden or whatever (because pretty much everybody is named Hayden or whatever).

My son's school doesn't make as much of a deal about it out loud, but in practice they have proven to be extremely accepting of difference and extremely committed to inclusion. (Speaking mainly in terms of people with disabilities here, as that's what I know all too well.)

This in a deep blue and obscenely affluent school district, but still.

My mom has passed off lots of comments from an elderly man at her church that she befriends--he makes off-color comments to her and they go right over her head. When I bring it up later, she's almost maternal in her empathy and care for him. "He just needs to feel like a man," "Oh honey, once a Marine, always a Marine" (wtf does she know about Marines?? nothing, that's what), and other brush offs that prioritize HIS feelings and well-being.

"(because pretty much everybody is named Hayden or whatever)"

i was looking at a collection of class poetry from my oldest kid's class a few years back and one of the poems had the line: "and i hang out with my friends who are named after trees..."

lots of kids named after trees.

like how? silver birch? sycamore? palm?

that's interesting YMP - I was talking with a parent friend of ours (lesbian couple w/two kids) about their experience w schools out near Walnut Creek and she was telling me about their 5th grade son getting harassed/called a faggot for having long hair. And I was like "damn some things never change"

xp to in orbit
my grandfather (who died earlier this year) was never necessarily off-color but had the weirdest dynamic with women after the death of my grandmother nearly thirty years earlier. there's something to the idea that the attention of women is currency in how he related to people. that's not atypical for people who aren't used to being alone, but being around him became very one-note because he had a list of topics that he knew would interest people or get female sympathy and as he became senile, every conversation was just going through that checklist.

I mean, I'm all for treating the elderly with respect and humoring them, but this maternal bit you mentioned definitely sounds too familiar

Yeah but at the same time she was mothering him he was sexualizing her. Like she was putting him in a fatherly role, and he was putting her in a wifely one. Gross.

feel like i've seen that dynamic work in reverse and it's just as creepy.

"like how? silver birch? sycamore? palm?"

Cedar and Willow are big.

see also: Mike Pence calling his wife "mother" for a glimpse of the dynamic from the other end of things

Oh heck my parents call each other Mom and Dad all the time. I don't think that's necessarily directly related to what I was thinking of, although let me never discourage anyone from hating on stupid traditional gender roles/performances.

I’ve never heard my mother call my father by name. He is always “Papa,” except - now that he’s a grandfather to my nephew, he’s become “Grampy”

i never wanted a mommy. so many men want mommies. i mean i like my mom. she's nice. i actually hugged my mom last weekend and told her how much i loved her and how she was the best mom to me. she's losing her marbles. figure i should use every opportunity. i know for a fact that my dad has referred to my mom as mommy to me and my mom has referred to my dad as daddy to me in conversation as an adult and it always felt a little weird to me but they are definitely the products of the fabulous 50's.

I was talking with a parent friend of ours (lesbian couple w/two kids) about their experience w schools out near Walnut Creek and she was telling me about their 5th grade son getting harassed/called a faggot for having long hair. And I was like "damn some things never change"

are they still near the W.C. or did they move to San Francisco?