Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

one of my closest friends, who was sexually assaulted about a decade ago, told me about the real, palpable relief she experienced when #MeToo started to trend, especially since she endured a few years of being less than totally believed

my closest friends who had been sexually assaulted were kinda equally divided between participating in the #metoo thing and wanting to have nothing to do with it because of things like,
1. one of the men who assaulted them has many mutual friends on social media;
2. feeling re-traumatized by the idea of bringing it up
3. it's not really going to change things, it's like people getting horrified by mass shootings, and we hashtag the victims and <3 the location, and then there's another shooting, and the cycle starts all over again. Meanwhile some of the men who were sympathizing with the #metoo posters were rapists (and didn't post any form of acknowledgement), and it just like an absurd spectacle

way xxxxxp - to fgti - lol at David Lang being "marginalized" when it comes to the context of new music composers -- good response!

what was even the rationale behind including David Lang?

Someone once said 'Kill all Davids' and it made him sad.

in orbit - are you familiar with the Can U Not PAC?

http://canyounot.org/

ugly stuff

better placed imo in another thread unless one were being a lil naughty/trolly

i think it's really problematic that these young men are running this disempowering male PAC when there are plenty of women who i know would love a position at an organization dedicated to disempowering men. i'm starting a new PAC the Can You Not [Run the] Can You Not PAC where we - politically active men - encourage other brogressives to not start PACs that take activist positions and ideas that could be harnessed by women and POC.

it's PACs all the way down

in orbit - are you familiar with the Can U Not PAC?

http://canyounot.org/

― I leprecan't even. (Ye Mad Puffin)

the doug jones election has really shifted my thoughts on how politics "should work". before then i was very much in favor of the liberal orthodoxy that everybody should vote, that the answer to bad votes was more voting. (sort of a parallel here to free speech absolutists who insist that the answer to hate speech is more speech). but looking at the numbers in that race, it became clear that a decisive bloc in the race were the people who stayed home, the people who decided they couldn't vote for either a pederast or a democrat (the two things being roughly equally bad in their minds).

i'm inclined to encourage this trend. i'm not a marxist and i don't generally believe in "heightening the contradictions", but we've reached a point in time where compromise is impossible, and "progressive" white men with good hair serve in large part to feed the contrary delusion. if people are going to choose in a "free" election, i say we let them choose between a woman and a pederast, and if they can vote for neither, let them stay the fuck home.

(for the record i am limiting myself to "white men" because i have insufficient knowledge or authority to speak outside that scope.)

i think it's really problematic that these young men are running this disempowering male PAC when there are plenty of women who i know would love a position at an organization dedicated to disempowering men. i'm starting a new PAC the Can You Not [Run the] Can You Not PAC where we - politically active men - encourage other brogressives to not start PACs that take activist positions and ideas that could be harnessed by women and POC.

― Mordy

nah this pac is clearly a horrible idea, and as such, the leadership and involvement of men is pivotal in its perpetuation

I know it's meant to be jokey to an extent, but I find the combination of self-effacement and smugness in that Can U Not PAC really off-putting - I guess because I don't believe that both the self-effacement and the smugness can both be real, at least one of them has to be phony. I think macho self-effacement from social-justice inclined straight white guys can be a thing, the implication that anyone who'd feel put out or resentful at stepping back is an insecure beta, if you're alpha enough then you're confident you'll do well even on a level playing field (or handicapped to make up for pre-existing inequalities)

or if it's the self-effacement is real then I feel like they must be filled with self-loathing and the flip smirky tone is just a pose to cover that up?

i find self-loathing and self-sabotage are entirely different qualities - through years of work, i've trained myself out of the first, but will never, ever let go of the second

So much 'I guess' and 'I believe' from soref. You should really try and shut up and listen to a couple of feminist men some time, might learn something.

see soref you can literally write that the actions of individuals don't matter only the systemic privileges that they benefit from and some douchebag from finland will still tell you to shut up

It's kinda mind-blowing that you think that's a legitimate point.

You can LITERALLY write a right sentence, and STILL people will ask you to do more. HOW UNFAIR!!!

It's kinda mind-blowing that you think that's a legitimate point.

yeah, fred's from denmark iirc

i thought he was a silly sod from sweden

You should really try and shut up and listen to a couple of feminist men some time, might learn something.

lmao

Hey, you can't correct Mordy, 24 hours ago he wrote something slightly progressive, so everyone else is obliged to pat him on the back at least 6 hours more.

ew when did i write something progressive?

who knew the rolling maleness and masculinity discussion thread would be so riddled with dudes engaging in contestive head-butting displays

US/non US/Frederik imo.

― Buff Jeckley (Tom D.), Thursday, 8 March 2018 23:06 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol crut

You should really try and shut up and listen to a couple of feminist men some time, might learn something.

ok i'm starting to swing back to the "fred is a sock" camp

fred is a legend

M vs F cage match would be awesome [popcorn.gif]

how much can mordy bench? i feel like he might be secretly swole

who knew the rolling maleness and masculinity discussion thread would be so riddled with dudes engaging in contestive head-butting displays

― had (crüt), Friday, 9 March 2018 15:39 (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

who knew it would be characterised as this at any available opportunity

campaigning for this thread to be let be w/out this lameness tbh

morbs up in here advocating for male vs female mma fights

I love how outraged everyone pretends to be at the suggestion that if soref wants to know about feminist men, he should listen to them. Or did nobody read the post of his I was responding to?

You should really try and shut up and listen to a couple of feminist men some time, might learn something.

lmao

― had (crüt), Friday, March 9, 2018 7:29 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poe's law candidate

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/09/men-after-metoo-masculinity-fundamentally-toxic

I think macho self-effacement from social-justice inclined straight white guys can be a thing, the implication that anyone who'd feel put out or resentful at stepping back is an insecure beta, if you're alpha enough then you're confident you'll do well even on a level playing field (or handicapped to make up for pre-existing inequalities)

― soref, Friday, March 9, 2018 8:53 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean...

who knew the rolling maleness and masculinity discussion thread would be so riddled with dudes engaging in contestive head-butting displays

― had (crüt), Friday, March 9, 2018 7:39 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was waiting for this type of comment the moment fgti revived this thread

to expand on what dmac said, this is a lame comment because every single controversial/political topic on ilx has been riddled with worse attacks

but u know u rly have to stick it to the MAN eh

the unflinching metacommentary on masculinity where a minor disagreement turns into personal attacks at the drop of a hat

also officially casting my vote as yea for separating US/non-US threads

Men Are Trash vs. Men Are Rubbish

you joke but

vs. Men are both Trash and Rubbish

Human Condition, tbh

i'm a little rubbery in parts yes

trying to work out what you have left once you remove the sensationalism from all the writing that's come out over the last ten years or so about the lazy unambitious and ultimately unhappy nature of young men, with their gaming and their low achieving and low earning and their suicide and their pornography and their propensity to live at home and so on.

while the diagnosis is at least ostensibly dispassionate & takes place at a societal level, the solutions I've seen offered are largely individual & moral (& ofc of varying toxicity), empowering ppl to improve themselves. this seems like treating the symptons rather than addressing whatever wide-ranging underlying factors are seen to be the cause, so to flesh out my reading on this immiserating topic I'd like to find something that looked at this structurally, a theory of male disengagement and laziness at a societal level that really gets at the mechanics and doesn't just fall back on pop psychology or motivational thinking type literature.

i think there is mb something to this idea that people's senses of gender develop oppositionally. idk if this is just bc it reminds me of how people in relationships often end up contrasting or reacting to the traits of their partner, or feeling trapped and forced into performing a certain role by them.

anyone else bothered by this?

massively but i mainly work with a particular neurodiverse subset of young men and i'm not sure how much of their disengagement to attribute to neurodiversity. looking at the bigger picture, i see a lot of young people of all genders with either low aspirations, no aspirations or unrealistic ones. but again this is a subset of the demographic, predominantly young people in the poorest section of society. on this specific area i think Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism has some insightful things to say on Further Education aged British kids. i can't help but think that their response to boring, inappropriate and ineffective education coupled with the realistic prospect of a life either on benefits or in shitty dead end jobs is a rational one.

I think the writing about disaffected young men, or the abuses of patriarchal figures, kind of obscures the reality that many attitudes are being questioned and people are generally changing in positive ways.

It's difficult to write an article about the ways things are going right. Not intentional positivity movements (yoga men!) or activism, just men fitting into the current landscape and trying to make sure they're pushing things forward and not just doing upkeep on the patriarchy.

#notallmen

many attitudes are being questioned and people are generally changing in positive ways.

well that's put my mind at rest

can't rest, man, you gotta keep pushing the discourse