Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Yes, there's also the thing where telling people clinging to the rungs below you on the privilege ladder how they should feel about something is NAGL.

While I agree with that in a general way, if you're referring to DJP and me, we each have different components to our identities that are more or less marginalized than each other in different ways so it's not really a productive comparison probably.

No, that and my previous post generally were in reference to:

I just realized there’s no way on earth I would ever give that cheap of a bully the satisfaction of screencapping his idiotic crap. That’s fucking life.

Is this the part where I admit my cishet white dudeness and my tax bracket

I got myopia though

Also io of course I would never demean my own child. I’ve seen what it does!

We all have myopia. It's hard as hell to escape the gravity of our egocentric perspective of the world, but I find it helpful to constantly remind myself that every person's 'no doy' is someone else's 'I had no idea'.

So congrats on breaking the cycle in which this arguably abusive/violent way of interacting with people is normalized! Break all the cycles.

Like I get so irritated with both of my immediate superiors at work because they tend to focus almost entirely upon what's asked of them by their superiors rather than what they people under them need, but I have to remind myself that they're both minority women (one with a disability) and that the pressures they deal with and the needs they have to respond to in particular ways are so much different than they would be if I were in either of their positions.

I would like to keep the krebs cycle and the water cycle going btw

I’ve seen people get attacked, sometimes pretty viciously, online for not approaching these issues in the correct ways - using the “mother/sister/daughter” trope, talking about the ways in which patriarchy harms men, & so on. But given our myopias, individual and collective, aren’t these potentially useful gateways into understanding? Maybe for some guys - the chunk of men who are this side of irredeemable but who will never be woke as such - it’s as far as they will ever get, and maybe that’s ok. Progress is progress. And if they’re a little less shitty, even for essentially for selfish reasons, they’ll be less likely to pass it on to their kids and perpetuate it with their peers. Give them a “what’s in it for me”, ferfucksake, because we know that asking for pure empathy is often just too much to ask.

Anyone got any good reading material on the ways patriarchy harms men? I present very cishet because dammit that’s the easiest thing to do (and yes I recognize how privileged that makes me) but there’s all sorts of complicated gender & sexuality shit bubbling under there (I figure I’m probably about 40% female, a small percentage of which would be het female, to put it in shorthand) but I have zero interest in martyring myself to the cause by claiming trans or queer space. I work in an extremely old-school, masculinity-dominated industry where even the women tend to be pretty unprogressive when it comes to gender/race otherness & it’s tough enough being a voice for centrism & diversity as a member of the in-group.

I would love to arm myself with arguments for (at least) weakening patriarchy that focus on how it would benefit “men’s men” who have no interest in giving up their notions of masculinity - the obsession with toys, with status, with sports - I think if they could keep those things they’d be willing to budge on valuing the things that people who don’t share that sphere bring to the table.

tl;dr - Any good writing on how to convince men that it’s in their own interest to not be such dicks?

Give them a “what’s in it for me”, ferfucksake, because we know that asking for pure empathy is often just too much to ask.

This is sure to be a controversial perspective but it's a valid point that I've pondered quite a bit. How do we incentivize empathy (or some simulacrum thereof) among those who don't see the personal benefit in changing their attitudes (and may see far more personal benefit in remaining steadfastly-regressive)? I understand the knee-jerk reaction of saying 'fuck 'em, ignore 'em, let 'em die off, problem solved' but the fact remains that those people are still out there perpetuating those attitudes. And it's really hard to make persuasive arguments for maximizing the common good in a society that overwhelmingly incentivizes the exact opposite behavior. It may be a weak tea suggestion and it certainly isn't a pat solution, but I guess just trying to personally model the behavior you'd like to see others adopt is the best way to go about it for a start.

My lived experience of being an extremely masculine American straight white man has taught me that the primary emotion is anger. at everything. Start with the assumption that if you're dealing with such as I, that guy's deal is being angry all the fucking time, and whatever pastimes he might have, they are escape valves for colossal amounts of anger. And anything that doesn't get exhausted via another channel - sports, drugs, toys, video games, etc - radiates internally, as self-loathing, and externally on to whomever is around and seems available for abuse.

Ok, and what’s behind that?

he won't say "WOMEN" so I will

re Tombot - well, it's easy to choose anger as a dude because we're not supposed to exhibit sadness overtly, especially to other men. It's a toxic mentality and turns to tears eventually anyway.

i think that's as much about being american as it is about being male

http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780743456081_9780743456081_lg.jpg

This was recommended on another thread somewhere and does a great job (at least to me) of illustrating the ways men are harmed by the patriarchy.

http://d28hgpri8am2if.cloudfront.net/book_images/cvr9780743456081_9780743456081_lg.jpg

ogmor at 3:35 17 Nov 17

i think that's as much about being american as it is about being male

look at Italy, look at Poland right now, it's everywhere

no sleepingbag not the plural

sad lol @ “what’s behind that” oh really

xp UMS
what's the it? I don't think they have the same type of angry, violent & indignant culture or turn other suppressed emotions into anger in the same way

to change/understand masculinity I think it's useful to think about how it's differently manifested across time and space, seeing how it is entwined with broader social/cultural factors. reductive views on social issues like masculinity strangely tend to be very US-centric, which is a real weakness (& ofc frustrating for everyone else)

On ilx or in popular theory or ...?

Sorry, re reductive views

Reductive views on Americanity always acceptable of course

damn i guess you guys aren't indignant after all

but really though, I don't think men I know are really angry, or, for the most part, emotionally inarticulate. sometimes I wonder if there is something generally destructive about masculinity but even then idk if it really holds true everywhere

Genuine q!

i just mean that as with most social/cultural issues, at least in the anglophone world, the US dominates & those experiences are centred. there are different other factors playing into specific things, but the americanness of a lot of these thoughts and experiences is erased, invisible, but I think the differences are often more salient than the commonalities

observing boys from 3-7 years old from a variety of backgrounds while raising my daughter I think there is certainly something instinctively destructive in the Y chromosome and it seems easy enough to reinforce that at the expense of teaching fluency in other emotions.

Obviously my society invented the Western genre and the murder mystery and the nuclear bomb so we definitely have some fucked up ideas about who men are supposed to be and what they should be good at so you have a point but I think it’s a boring one.

Actually the differences vs commonalities is interesting, belay my last

the impulse to point to some essential badness in masculinity is v strong especially given the history of e.g. war and violence, but ends up being quite defeatist & you could even say convenient in terms of nothing changing - 'that's just how men are' - & i think it has a big impact on male self image

In my experience most men, even most “madculine men,” are not repressed ticking time bombs, seething with anger. I don’t see myself that way. If people end up like that it doesn’t have to do with the Y chromosome.

in sooth i will belay when it please my lord *bows*

xposts

i just mean that as with most social/cultural issues, at least in the anglophone world, the US dominates & those experiences are centred. there are different other factors playing into specific things, but the americanness of a lot of these thoughts and experiences is erased, invisible, but I think the differences are often more salient than the commonalities

― ogmor, Friday, November 17

otm

Men are the people who caused and fought wars because historically the gendered division of labor put them in that role. The origins of war are complex, overdetermined, whatever but it’s way too facile to say it has to do with masculinity in some sort of biological sense. I just don’t buy it.

“Aggression” as a personality trait has something to do with testosterone, but it only leads to violence when it is channeled in anti-social ways. There are tons of pro-social ways to satisfy a competitive drive. Sports is a big one so it’s weird that was being disparaged earlier.

Also like even connecting aggression to masculinity — the small point I conceded — erases women’s experiences. Women aren’t being “more masculine” when they are angry. All people experience the full spectrum of human emotions. I get really uncomfortable when these discussions lead to generalizations. I don’t think it helps women or non-binary people even when on the surfaxs it seems to be “men” who are being disparaged.

Gender essentialism and binarism is reductive &, when taken as a truth, harmful. (It can be used as a useful shorthand - it’s not possible to always use language that parses out all the nuances.) so in some sense I agree w/you, treeship, but aggression is connected with masculinity culturally (nearly universally) and - through testosterone - even with biological maleness. I understand gender largely as a performance, and the space each of us carves out within our gender (whatever that may be) as a kind of dialogue between authentic expression of our inner selves (partially innate, much moulded by culture) and the role we play socially.

Taking it as a given that we’re not going to just magically erase gender binarism and live in a post-gender (post-race etc) utopia, probably the best we can hope for is a massive broadening of the acceptable range of gender expression within the binary categories. If we think of any trait as being exclusive to one gender or another, we’re doing disservice to the gender as a whole & to the whole person underlying the gender performance. Denying a wide range of emotional expression to men, as noted above, virtually guarantees that they will channel those emotions into acceptable outlets - like aggression.

The phrase “gender is a ghetto” keeps bouncing around in my head & I can’t figure out whether I heard it somewhere or I made it up, but it seems like it might be a useful metaphor to explore. Ghettoes are places where people are kept powerless to the larger society, where harmful behaviours are contained even as they may ensure survival there. Theyre both exclusive (if you’re not of it, you don’t belong there) and excluded (if you’re of it, you don’t belong to the broader culture). They’re also communities where people with something in common engage with each other, live lives, make progress. When they cease to become dysfunctional they cease to function as ghettoes but simply as communities, become both inclusive and included. I dunno, maybe it’s horseshit.

the impulse to point to some essential badness in masculinity is v strong especially given the history of e.g. war and violence, but ends up being quite defeatist & you could even say convenient in terms of nothing changing - 'that's just how men are' - & i think it has a big impact on male self image

― ogmor,

xxp That's interesting.

xp and otm imo

Sports is a big one so it’s weird that was being disparaged earlier.

sports historically filled with violence, including murder fyi

xp

yeah really

some sports more than others, of course. as team sports go, culturally, the NFL is far and away the worst in the States. at this stage virtually everything about it is pretty gross, Trump can take credit for declining numbers but it's largely due to more and more people finding the culture (this is apart from the anthem protests) and long term health issues unacceptable. NCAA football is probably even worse, i tend to believe if an NFL coach got caught shielding a pedophile he wouldn't instinctively have his legacy aggressively defended by fans like Paterno's was and is.

Sports is a big one so it’s weird that was being disparaged earlier.

― treeship 2, Friday, November 17, 2017 7:04 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haven't been following this discussion but putting aggressive kids in sports definitely helps; even with mellower kids as it teaches them how to cope in situations where there are testosterone-filled boys

some kids really do need an outlet for their anger/energy and sports is a good way to release it, especially as a referee is more or less monitoring their aggression. if done properly there are consequences for a boy overdoing it. the lack of supervision that leads to something serious is not inherent to sports. it's the responsibility of the coach, trainer, and/or parents. sports is not meant to mellow out aggressive boys or cure aggression. it's just one component

having said that, minor hockey, as an example, is restricting fighting more and more since i was a kid and they are teaching kids more about technique/finesse and overall good sportsmanship

beyond the physical violence inherent in many sports like football and hockey, I was referring more to the general culture of violence that has always pervaded sports, from this to this to this. sports and sports fandom are violent.

My lived experience of being an extremely masculine American straight white man has taught me that the primary emotion is anger. at everything.

this is . . . not my experience at all, except sometimes when deej makes six straight posts on a thread

lol

The phrase “gender is a ghetto” keeps bouncing around in my head & I can’t figure out whether I heard it somewhere or I made it up, but it seems like it might be a useful metaphor to explore. Ghettoes are places where people are kept powerless to the larger society, where harmful behaviours are contained even as they may ensure survival there. Theyre both exclusive (if you’re not of it, you don’t belong there) and excluded (if you’re of it, you don’t belong to the broader culture). They’re also communities where people with something in common engage with each other, live lives, make progress. When they cease to become dysfunctional they cease to function as ghettoes but simply as communities, become both inclusive and included. I dunno, maybe it’s horseshit.

― bumbling my way toward the light or wahtever (hardcore dilettante), Friday, 17 November 2017 17:15 (thirty-two minutes ago) Permalink

love this

i would say it depends on the sport

european hockey has more or less been mellower than north american hockey for starters

but american/canadian sports have moved on to make attending sports events more family-friendly

when the us gov't was trying to popularize soccer in the us, that is one of the things they tried to focus on, because violent incidents had occurred at a lot of non-us/canadian soccer games. north americans have done a pretty decent job at it to be honest

sports historically filled with violence, including murder fyi

xp

― Οὖτις, Friday, 17 November 2017 17:24 (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah really

― omar little, Friday, 17 November 2017 17:25 (twenty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So has literature, music, painting and idk chess probly

now we just inflict brain damage on the opposing team's fans in the parking lot

xp