Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Ya

I know nothing more than the term tho

Tho he looks certainly both toxic and masculine

Anyway tl;dr: If I had gone into my junior high school every day wearing assless chaps and a tutu, that would have been weird and tone-deaf.

If the other boys had reacted negatively (reader: they would have), would that be because I was a shining golden spirit with a "complex interior life" and they were just mindless conformist automatons?

needs more shoehorned foucault buzzwords

I'm not attacking the concept ymp

I think possibly being seen to defend how groups reinforce arbitrary norms is a step far but

Mainly I've decided america

foucaulttahere

I dunno about that definition of toxic masculinity. I don't think it's about men being afraid of interiority, I think it's about men being resistant to inward interrogation, as it would only upset the power they hold by dint of their gender

For the past couple months, ever since it became apparent that People Are Listening To Jordan Peterson And Giving Him Money, I've been talking about and hoping to find either an individual, a collective of individuals, or a collection of texts that centre men, and give them the tools and language to forfeit power gracefully, to accept criticism and adopt malleable attitudes toward their outlook, to cultivate a productive response to being called out (instead of immediate defensiveness), and to change their language and patterns and operative methods in ways that benefit not-male people, (rather than the current result of woke maleness being simply men learning the language so that they can better navigate ways to maintain their power)

I've been... hoping to find either an individual, a collective of individuals, or a collection of texts that centre men, and give them the tools and language to forfeit power gracefully, to accept criticism and adopt malleable attitudes toward their outlook, to cultivate a productive response to being called out (instead of immediate defensiveness), and to change their language and patterns and operative methods in ways that benefit not-male people

I hear you but a "collection of texts that centre men" / "tools and language" sounds like you are asking for yet more man-o-centric words when "shut up and listen" still seems like pretty good good advice.

Might one not simply answer as follows? The text is "shut up and listen." The tool is "shut up and listen." The language is "shut up and listen."

lol yes that’ll convince the men that I know for sure

TS: finding just the right language to approach racists and convince them to not be racist vs. finding just the right language to approach sexists and convince them not to be sexist

Shut up and listen is not effective rhetoric no matter who you’re trying to convince of what.

https://i.imgur.com/qz5nf7p.jpg

@ YMP

Ya, text that centres men. Instructs them in how to not centre themselves. "Shut up and listen" is just putting Jordan Peterson on the top of bestseller lists. Not saying "shut up and listen" is wrong, it's just not working

The psychological effects of being asked to forfeit power, or to shut up and listen, haven't really been fully investigated? or at least I'd like to read about their investigation, if they have been. And then, a methodology devised to process those effects that isn't just resistance to forfeiture

Shut up and listen is not effective rhetoric no matter who you’re trying to convince of what.

otm

you also can't force real understanding through telling people to "listen" any more than you can make people confident by telling them to be confident. it takes more than that imo.

i've done a lot of 'shutting up and listening' to feminist rhetoric, i can assure you it doesn't work. hasn't changed opinion #1. if anything it makes it all the more clear how little ppl care to understand men. we are not you.

also is the understood implication to permanently shut up and listen? cos that's a pretty rude and idiotic thing to say to someone

turns out sometimes shutting up is correct

if anything it makes it all the more clear how little ppl care to understand men

Yes, these mysterious creatures called "men," hardly anyone cares about trying to understand them.

Maybe we need to send reporters out to Rust Belt diners to listen more to the esoteric inchoate concerns of these people. From whom we have heard so little. Their hopes, their fears, their dreams, their aspirations.

A completely unexplored area of mystery. The elusive male soul - what does it want?

Seems like we have heard so little about these creatures and how they tick for the last I dunno four thousand years.

The Troma character The Toxic Avenger is in the Troma cartoon Toxic Crusaders

he's right in the centre of the picture

just like a man

Yes, these mysterious creatures called "men," hardly anyone cares about trying to understand them.

This is a little bit of a hyperbolic statement, but I think we can all agree men are ill-served by the patriarchal stereotypes of men our culture generally traffics

and wearing a tutu.

just like a man.

the language of shut up and listen or forfeit power mostly exists in the world of sports for men

if you don't know this, you have probably never been in a sports team, at least not long enough to find out the many ways men react to these things

you probably want to use language that is not part of a world where basic animal instincts are rewarded

being very clear, logical, and specific, without using language that needs too much interpretation helps at least further understanding and compassion

using less interpretative language helps probably because it has something to do with how different each person experiences the world

speaking of sports, have you all read this?
seems relevant

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/kevin-love-everyone-is-going-through-something/

Simon, it's a little late to call something hyperbolic; you started it.

In vain we look at the shelves in our libraries: where are the voices of the men?

Have men written any novels, poems, or songs that tell us their peculiar, idiosyncratic, heretofore suppressed, highly personal stories? Perhaps there are some essays or works of criticism that reflect their perspective.

Perhaps there have been some obscure underground films that were written by, directed by, or were about men?

i think the Kevin Love thing is pretty interesting and also to a degree the fact that the players who called him out were traded says a little something. there were other reasons behind the trades of course but the NBA is also more than any other league pretty forward thinking about social issues and you can positively compare that sport and its culture to how the NFL treats its players w/r/t life-threatening injuries incurred during the course of the game not to mention issues like Love is dealing with.

the culture of toughness and "sucking it up" w/pain and unquestioned masculinity in the NFL is probably the most obvious example of toxic masculinity i can think of in a lot of way, though it intersects with a lot of other negative bullshit.

xxp films, poems... we're talking about reality here. i'm saying i don't need non-men telling me how i should act any more than women need non-women telling them what they should do with their ovaries. headlines, thinkpieces, seminars, discussions, about how maleness is 'toxic', masculinity is a problem; these things are NOT worth 'shutting up and listening to'.

Personally, the thing that made me a feminist was shutting up and listening. I'd wager it's the only thing that works. And yeah, there's a problem here, because it's uncomfortable and men don't want to do uncomfortable things. And even more importantly, don't have to.

I agree there needs to be more thoughtful writing, probably by men, that can make the shutting up and listening seem like less of a chore and more of both a moral and a self-enlightening thing to do. But at the end of the day, it's about shutting up and listening for a bit.

speaking of sports, have you all read this?
seems relevant

https://www.theplayerstribune.com/kevin-love-everyone-is-going-through-something/

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Wednesday, March 7, 2018 2:12 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did read it! linked to it in an ILH thread. i listen to cleveland sports radio often - all the hosts are male as well as 99.9% of the callers - and it's all they've been talking about since yesterday, pretty much all positive.

the NBA is way ahead of the curve on this kind of thing, unless i guess you're a scuffling mediocrity and you want to go at the second best player on your team in the locker room. LeBron coming out in major support of KL is good too.

what i like most about the kevin love thing is the effort to make it relatable. i think that even when ppl do make the effort to communicate/educate they can fall into the trap of assuming others know or understand more than they do, what's "obvious" to them.

personally the extent to which I am less of a prick than I was earlier in life is, I think, mostly owed to some early, close proximity to some bad male behavior that messed with my life, resulting in my subsequently mostly distrusting / not relying on other men. not really a replicable set of circumstances for most people I wouldn't think. I do hope that the increased circulation of stories of sexual abuse and impropriety is causing a small shift in consciousness.

the Kevin Love thing is good. in general encouraging young men to be more, not less, forthcoming about their problems, is A Good Thing imo. I was definitely not raised to do that.

Personally, the thing that made me a feminist was shutting up and listening...

― Frederik B, Wednesday, March 7, 2018 2:19 PM (fourteen minutes ago)

v hard to imagine tbph

The fact that I don't listen to your bullshit isn't really applicable all over.

i'm saying i don't need non-men telling me how i should act

Hey sleepingbag, try that same formula only with "non-whites" and see how well it works. I'll wait.

And I'm not even remotely play-acting when I compare this to other issues in the ilx rhetorical space.

Routinely, on politics threads, we keep going round this point: it's not worth trying to "understand" Trumpers/Teahadis/Nazis. No reason to meet them where they are and try to bring them back to the fold. They're a lost cause; it's better to mobilize dormant constituencies on the left.

In a fun twist, it's some of the SAME people who are advocating sawing off the gangrenous limb of Trumpoids, while at the same time saying we need to coax toxic men back to civilization gently. Case in point:

...you can be damn sure that Wolff's slipups will be madly spun on fox - beetblort - dextrosphere.

― oklahomie don't play that (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, February 26, 2018 1:40 PM (one week ago)

Not much you can do about the chuds.

― Simon H., Monday, February 26, 2018 1:44 PM (one week ago)

yes there is, you don't have to give them free ammunition.

― flappy bird, Monday, February 26, 2018 1:46 PM (one week ago)

This line of attack was inevitable as soon as Wolff got involved. And it's not like the likes of fuckin Breitbart need to wait around for legitimate grievances to fire those shots.

― Simon H., Monday, February 26, 2018 1:56 PM (one week ago)

So my conclusion from this is that many on the left are willing to write off conservative white guys as a lost cause rather than pandering to them and trying to understand them as a means to motivating them. But toxic men in general? Well, there, we need to be more careful. Can't risk alienating them with BOOGA BOOGA EXTREME RHETORIC.

ime:

adult men bro out in very private or at least when in a very close knit circle of friends

a lot of them never build this type of relationship, so they end up building it with a long-term gf or wife -- at least the good ones do

the bad ones just never learn to communicate their feelings and are literally stunted by their own overwhelming emotions that they don't know how to articulate them

also there is a kind of "secret language" that men use with other men which is symbolic, non-direct, when expressing closeness or compassion but they do not dwell on it too long

but of course this could all be tainted by my own forefathers (maybe class and profession have something to do with it), so it's hard to pinpoint the numerous causes without having an earnest conversation

we're still a long way from having an earnest conversation though, because men generally don't think it's important to tell personal stories of turmoil or at least they don't tell them til the end of their lives when their memory is hazy, but even then, those types of stories are far and few between

also men act differently towards their daughters, mostly because their daughters (i'm thinking of my own step sisters here) start the uncomfortable conversations first and father feels pressured to continue with it

w/r/t sport, i can only talk in terms of hockey, but with the whole mental illness awareness that was going on in recent years, players were trying to open up, but that wasn't very successful

I think we can all agree men are ill-served by the patriarchal stereotypes of men our culture generally traffics

These stereotypes are always changing though, and cultural standards/expectations along with them. And they change not only with time but also location. Sometimes in these discussions I feel like people are envisioning John Wayne or whatever.

I think there's a difference between conservatives who hold shitty views in daily life vs people who are paid to spew bilious junk on TV. xxp

F# A#, I grew up in a house with four and a half feet of bookshelf space occupied by John Updike books. Plus almost every record by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, and James Taylor.

Excuse me if I roll my eyes at "men can't communicate about their feelings" type talk.

See class/profession comment

shut up n listen works when its two-way

xpost
yeah but we can't mostly

i think it's fairly well established that men generally have less intimate relationship with people than women do - a lot of men typically only really being intimate and open with their partners, some not even - and therefore are less likely to be communicating their inner life in a meaningful way to those close to them. it's probably one of the reasons why young men kill themselves more than anyone else. it's quite different from saying that men do not have the opportunity to put their thoughts and feelings out their in literature, art, journalism etc. which is of course not true

also a lot of men's problems with not being able to express their feelings is the discomfort of their male close friends and family with this type of sharing