Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

uh for the record the last thing in the world i was suggesting was for young men to learn how to relate to women from PUAs, jesus PUAs are just about the worst people on earth

The problem is that these fucking PUAs are offering an optimistic future to these lonely, fucked up young men, and lots of them are buying it, then if it doesn't work becoming incels. Think we all agree that education about consent is vital, that these "poor men" actually have lives of privilege, that what problems they do have are part of the patriarchal society and that's their real enemy, but still, this message is not attractive to so many of them, they feel hectored instead of supported. The situation is really never going to change until we can get through to these people, and we aren't.

"wow, we ended up at dick jokes and Monty Python really quickly"

like 3 posts in a thousand post thread! sorry. it bugs me when people do this. people have been real here. it's made me think about a lot of stuff! and its a rolling thread. it doesn't end up anywhere. it continues. sorry. carry on.

Think we all agree that education about consent is vital, that these "poor men" actually have lives of privilege, that what problems they do have are part of the patriarchal society and that's their real enemy, but still, this message is not attractive to so many of them, they feel hectored instead of supported. The situation is really never going to change until we can get through to these people, and we aren't.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 24 October 2017 12:26 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We don't all agree this

the strange state of public discourse in the 21st Century

yeah i mean i'm poking fun myself there

Think we all agree that education about consent is vital, that these "poor men" actually have lives of privilege, that what problems they do have are part of the patriarchal society and that's their real enemy, but still, this message is not attractive to so many of them, they feel hectored instead of supported. The situation is really never going to change until we can get through to these people, and we aren't.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 24 October 2017 12:26 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, shouldn't empathy be a component of any left movement? That doesn't mean you have to say "oh poor men it's so hard to navigate this brave new world," but browbeating them about how what they feel doesn't matter because they are privileged doesn't seem very human or very effective.

empathy != sympathy

Maybe there's some validity to saying that leftist/intersectional/etc lens should come from a place of empathy or, I think more accurately, love, but holding people accountable IS love. Love isn't only permissiveness and giving and caring; it is also about expecting more, and not allowing the actor to harm others within the loving community.

not sure how we've ended up mistaking "men who try to be progressive can have difficulties" for "we must have sympathy for the alt right"

See, that's the problem. Sure there are progressive men and alt-right men out there, but the vast majority of men are neither. No real social change can happen without reaching these people.

education is key. teaching children. but that would have to be on the local d.i.y. level. town-wide. state-wide. which isn't nothing. obviously nothing good is going to come out of washington for the next four years.

i think we've taught our six year old a lot of great lessons but i think the most valuable thing for him has been having friends who are girls. half of his best friends are girls. most of his favorite musicians are women. he's far more woke than i was at that age. i grew up playing with boys and that was it.

Think we all agree that education about consent is vital, that these "poor men" actually have lives of privilege, that what problems they do have are part of the patriarchal society and that's their real enemy, but still, this message is not attractive to so many of them, they feel hectored instead of supported. The situation is really never going to change until we can get through to these people, and we aren't.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 24 October 2017 12:26 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Personally I and most women I know are not accepting this mission--it's hard enough work just trying to keep our family and chosen loved ones on some kind of path against the pressures of the culture all around them. I wish I could say that I had lots of men in my life that didn't need any managing but lol/sob, no. For reaching other men to somehow change their minds or educate them or w/e, I say vaya con dios--that's on you guys. Women aren't welcome or often even safe in spaces where this shit happens and is born and reaffirmed constantly.

it's on us guys says this guy:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/oct/23/toxic-masculinity-men-privilege-emotions-rizzle-kicks

i think we've taught our six year old a lot of great lessons but i think the most valuable thing for him has been having friends who are girls. half of his best friends are girls. most of his favorite musicians are women. he's far more woke than i was at that age. i grew up playing with boys and that was it.

I was this kid at age six. At age eight, I spent every recess chasing one of my female friends around the playground declaring my unending love for her and trying to kiss her.

So my advice based on personal life experience is "stay on top of that shit because it can go south super quickly"

"We live in a society where men feel safer killing themselves than acknowledging pain."

from that guardian piece.

that sentence doesn't make any sense

i don't think i've ever heard a government official talk about suicide in my lifetime? all time high these days. 44,000+ people last year in the u.s.

"American Indians had the sharpest rise of all racial and ethnic groups, with rates rising by 89 percent for women and 38 percent for men. White middle-aged women had an increase of 80 percent."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html

"that sentence doesn't make any sense"

it does to me.

suicide seems like the ultimate acknowledgment of pain?

I also don't understand how one can conflate being dead with being safe

well, Minos could send you to the darker part of Inferno, it's true

Makes sense to me too
xpost

I also don't understand how one can conflate being dead with being safe

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, October 24, 2017 10:10 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't have to feel if you're not alive

yeah shakey I feel like you're being a bit stubbornly obtuse here

hmm it does make sense to me...

the dad of one of my son's best friends killed himself at the end of December last year. This was a guy i bonded with a lot and considered to be a possible friend in the future, based on our mutual like for one another. we'd sit around and listen to records and hang out all the time, when he was in town. he was away a lot, he worked for a news organization and was trailing the Trump campaign all over. he was a very quiet guy, very low-key, but inside he had a lot of pain which he didn't acknowledge to anyone else. based on what i've heard after the fact, he would let it explode out at certain points in private at home, but the rest of the time he seemed as cool as a cucumber. so that comment makes sense in that way, he never told any of his close friends whom i knew about his internal distress, let alone a new acquaintance like myself, and only in retrospect did i register any pain, and that was only in this new context of his suicide.

idk I get the "nothing hurts when you're dead" but at the same time I equate safety with, y'know, being safe from harm, ie living w out fear. It's just a poorly constructed sentence imo. What they meant was men preferring to kill themselves instead of openly addressing their pain and its sources with other people, but I guess that's not as pithy.

xp

it's like the ultimate in safety from pain. that should really be the official motto of suicide.

I was this kid at age six. At age eight, I spent every recess chasing one of my female friends around the playground declaring my unending love for her and trying to kiss her.

So my advice based on personal life experience is "stay on top of that shit because it can go south super quickly"

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP), Tuesday, October 24, 2017 5:49 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we are staying on top of that as much as possible. so far he's the one being chased and he's just oblivious. we tell him all the time about the need for respect, how to treat girls, we've had somewhat deep talks about larger issues in society, and he's very much aware that treating people disrespectfully and treating women like objects would put him on par with terrible people like the President.

my old therapist used to say you have to "live with" or "sit with" the pain sometimes to understand it and overcome it (rather than just try to repress it or numb it). Suicide is the opposite of that. (I realize this can lead to a minimization of some people's very severe pain, and I don't mean it in that way, just trying to illustrate what is being said about suicide).

Yeah. Suicide is the most extreme form of the escapist impulse that plagues depressives and prevents them from working through their problems.

imo Jordan Stephens might have done better to have lurked in the debate or retweeted something he agreed with rather than to have penned that well-meaning but garbled Guardian piece.

well, i think we all learned that there are a diversity of opinions on this subject and that there's no one right answer about any of this. kudos to all the posters and the thinkpiece writers who made this thread possible. bravo.

^maleness

*lets sleepingbag lie*

― estela

Good example of the “all or nothing” mindset I was trying to get at upthread tbh

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/10/12/rise-bromance-threatens-heterosexual-relationships-warn-social/

Of the 30 men interviewed, 29 said that they had experienced cuddling with a same sex friend, and many said they often slept in the same bed.

One man named ‘Aaron’ told researchers: “We hug when we meet, and we sleep in the same bed when we have sleepovers. Everyone knows it, and nobody is bothered by it because they do it as well.”

Is this a real trend? If so it seems... good. I’ve always thought the lack of emotionally supportive friendships among men was a problem.

Hugging when meeting is not cuddling imo

The article also suggests these guys see women as nags and joykills but that probably isn’t due to their “bromances” (what a terrible term). Also if their girlfriends really are people who judge and browbeat them maybe their male friendships will give them the strength to break up.

https://longreads.com/2017/10/23/weinstein-women-and-the-language-of-lunacy/

laurie penny

The first example of this I came across personally was someone I vaguely knew on a web forum where he was very active - there was a minor scandal on the board about him (aged 17/18) chatting to a younger board member (aged 15/16) in the USA and discussing meeting up, and later being stopped by the girl's stepfather who was also a board member. The general reaction was to joke about it or say the stepfather was overreacting, that they were both young people and they would naturally be up to this sort of stuff. Then he became quite famous as a youtuber, and then a few years ago, well, he's one of these people - https://web.archive.org/web/20160207071205/http://unpleasantmyles.tumblr.com:80/post/79455706244/tom-milsom-hexachordal-sexual-abusemanipulation - and he's done a good job of disappearing since. Should we have known something was up from that early interaction? Hard to say, there wasn't much to go on (the girl involved said nothing about it) - but I'm sure that the community could have had a much better response than just making jokes about it. The whole humour around that site at that time was deeply unhealthy.

loooooooool that bromance article.

1. They sound very surprised that it's so enjoyable to have friends. Have they been living in a cave on Mars?
2. Please god let men learn to form supportive friendships where they hug and tell each other things so they stop expecting their female partners to bear the ENTIRE responsibility for their emotional stability.
3. If they think women are nagging or being "regulators" of male behavior, maybe they should stop being irresponsible doofuses who need to be taken care of like helpless babies.
4. If they prefer not to do that, they're welcome to stay single and not impose their learned helplessness on a functional human.

Christopher Garrod 16 Oct 2017 12:20PM
Having a daughter of 25 I can confirm that these touchy-feely blokes are a new phenomenon that is producing a generation of strong women and weak men. If my daughter shouts jump in a pub at least half a dozen wail 'how high'. Pathetic and not good for the girls either as they have to rethink their roles when involved in normal things like caring for babies for which they are genetically equipped, and running the show at the same time, which is too much pressure. It's very easy to blame it on the BBC gay-embracing view of life, the compulsory acceptance of homosexual mores and awful teaching in state schools...so I shall!

The article also suggests these guys see women as nags and joykills

this feels like a bit of a sweeping statement based on brief cherrypicked quotes in an article from one of the worst newspapers on earth

the laurie penny essay is really good
made me think about the gira/grimm situation

Definitely hug my closer male friends. Have slept in the same bed a few times, but mostly on band tour. Have never "cuddled" with one though.

I thought this article was bad:

https://www.thecut.com/2017/10/this-isnt-toxic-masculinity-its-sociopathic-baby-men.html

however, it got me wondering, is "toxic masculinity" a poor phrase for general usage? I understand what it means, but it's very easy to misread or misunderstand if you don't read an explanation of it.

hardly believe sensitive cuddles are a sign of real troo friendship which men are all missing out on. most of my female friends don't "cuddle" either.

and i say that as someone who hugs or handshakes with p much all friends on meeting.

I hadn't really thought about it before, but my comfort with others (male or female) is pretty clearly signaled by whether or not I hug them. Like, I can't think of anyone I'm close to that I don't hug (except my sister, who's just too cool for school and expresses her affection through idle threats of violence).