Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

For those who wish to witness the semantic tug of war in action: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel

Date at which the entry was added seems relevant here.

A litmus test for incel status: If you can't play videogames, express interest in a polygamy, or ignore your partner while having sex, you're an incel.

The only two routes to exit this fate are death and the volcel path, which keeps untold power.

Get a incel mug for your brother Trump.

Been thinking about that top definition from urbandictionary -

incel

aka "involuntarily celibate", a person (usually male) who has a horrible personality and treats women like sexual objects and thinks his lack of a sex life comes from being "ugly" when its really just his blatant sexism and terrible attitude. incels have little to no self awareness; even when they see other "ugly" men with girlfriends, they consider these men to be tricksters who have somehow beat the system and can get women despite being cursed with unattractiveness (in other words, theyre respectful to women and women are attracted to their personalities, but incels cant comprehend such a phenomenon). they believe that women owe them sex, and many of the more extreme incels like to spend time in incel communities on the internet coming up with ways to make women have sex with them (often involving genocide of people of color, genocide of "Chads" (men who have sex), taking rights away from women, raping them, having sex with women's dead bodies, and other horrid, disgusting things. they cant understand that that is PRECISELY why women want nothing to do with them).

I'm pretty sure Ryan is an incel. Yesterday he made a facebook post about how all women are shallow and exist to torture men by "denying" them sex, as if sex is something people "deserve", and not a privilege given by potential sexual partners that should be respected.

And it seems pretty telling in terms of a debate on the internet ending up as a badly drawn cartoon version of itself. The description of sex as "a privilege given by potential sexual partners" is really very odd indeed, it's using the same bizarre language of sex being a reward to be dished out by women to the most deserving. These incels are bad because they have poisonous attitudes to women - however these attitudes are by no means confined entirely to the incel community - the same misogyny can be found throughout society at large, and the fact someone is having sex regularly is in no way evidence that they are a sensitive, well-balanced person with a healthy respect for women, it's possibly because they are just the same as an incel but better looking / more confident, the existence of the MRA / redpill community online is surely ample evidence of this.

the existence of the MRA / redpill community online is surely ample evidence of this.

I agree with your larger point but I wouldn't assume everyone in the MRA/redpill community is in a relationship either, to say the least.

fwiw wikipedia has a defintion too:

Incels (a portmanteau of "involuntary" and "celibacy") are members of an online subculture[1][2] who define themselves as being unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.[3] Self-identified incels are almost exclusively male and mostly heterosexual.[4][5] Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment, misanthropy,[1] misogyny, racism, entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men.[4][6][7][8][9] The Southern Poverty Law Center has described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem",[10] and self-described incels have committed at least four mass murders in North America.

I agree with your larger point but I wouldn't assume everyone in the MRA/redpill community is in a relationship either, to say the least.

Yeah, of course. But I think there's a tendency to sideline the fact that there really are men out there who are "successfully" using emotional manipulation to have sex with women.

The wikipedia definition is much better, of course.

hi5 for us

no

I may be completely wrong, but what I was thinking when I said there’s a spectrum is that there’s probably some less hardcore membership among the self-described incel “community” who may be reachable and potentially persuaded to change their views.

Sounds cool. You should go do that, then.

brb - I’m going to sleep with each and everyone of them.

each one smash one

smash it forward

Starting to feel like the term "toxic masculinity" is not helpful. If you have to explain over and over again that it doesn't mean masculinity is toxic, maybe it's because the phrase carries the underlying message that masculinity is toxic? Feel free to talk me out of this position.

If you hear the term "spoiled milk" do you think it carries the underlying message that all milk is spoiled?

If you hear the term "venomous snake" do you think it carries the underlying message that all snakes are venomous?

If you hear the term "sinking ship" do you think it carries the underlying message that all ships are sinking?

Everybody knows what a "poisonous mushroom" is and people still eat mushrooms. It's not that complicated.

one bad implication of all that style of phrase is that once it's spoiled, it's spoiled; the venomous snake is always venomous; the sunk ship's sunk. so even if you perceive the other meaning re OTHER men, the specimen before you is being written off for good, which is usually n.a.g.l. for human beings.

once a man's ruined by toxic masculinity it's like you're saying you gotta erect a sign

THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR

do not enter for 10,000 years etc

idk I always read "toxic masculinity" as referring to the toxic pursuit of that toxic thing, masculinity

No, j., it's not the person who's being regarded as toxic, but rather the particular manifestation of masculinity in question. The person could rethink and/or abandon the specific attitude under discussion, and be back in the camp of the angels.

"Toxic male" would fit your description, not "toxic masculinity" or "toxic machismo."

I'm pretty sure I've exhibited attitudes that are toxic. Recognizing that, and moving forward while trying to be better, is still within reach for me. So it is for anyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcfIGok1mMI

If you hear the term "spoiled milk" do you think it carries the underlying message that all milk is spoiled?

If you hear the term "venomous snake" do you think it carries the underlying message that all snakes are venomous?

If you hear the term "sinking ship" do you think it carries the underlying message that all ships are sinking?

― markle's potion (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, May 22, 2018 12:12 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

milk, ship and snake are things, not qualities

If I said "delicate femininity" it would carry the implication that femininity is delicate.

The phrase allows for a nontoxic type of masculinity though (iirc it includes grilling, and getting stuff from high shelves)

if we want to turn this into a semantic argument i'm not opposed. what phrase better conveys the intent iyo?

'Delicate feminity' implies all feminity is delicate because that's the stereotype it confirms, not because the words fit together. 'Indelicate femininity' does not implicate all femininity, nor would 'toxic' femininity implicate all femininity.

There are no better phrases to convey the intent, the reason the phrase is so contended has to do with the intent rather than the wording, imo.

The things that are bad about “toxic masculinity” are just the things that are bad about masculinity, the extra adjective essentially signifies “#notallmen”

― valorous wokelord (silby), Saturday, March 24, 2018 12:00 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Anyway y’all can and should continue to be men without participating in “masculinity” other than in the trivial, grammatical sense. A reconstructed masculinity serves no purpose. It doesn’t serve any purpose to violent misogynists either; they need to stop being violent misogynists, not find a new way to be a “real man”.

― valorous wokelord (silby), Tuesday, May 1, 2018 7:38 AM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Quoting myself from here and some other thread b/c this is all I have to say on the matter.

(Yeah I thought the grilling/shelves bit was from this thread, but on further investigation it's from The Jordan Peterson Thread )

delicate feminity' implies all feminity is delicate because that's the stereotype it confirms, not because the words fit together. 'Indelicate femininity' does not implicate all femininity, nor would 'toxic' femininity implicate all femininity.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, May 22, 2018 12:44 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

toxic masculinity operates the same way. masculinity already carries an association with toxicity. "toxic masculinity" strengthens the association.

Anyway y’all can and should continue to be men without participating in “masculinity” other than in the trivial, grammatical sense.

how do you opt out of participating in 'masculinity'? given that your sense of self will have been shaped by ideas of 'masculinity', your interactions with other people are shaped by (their and society's) ideas of 'masculinity', the standards you are judged by will inevitably be the standards of 'maculinity'? surely it's not just something you can discard?

you can't just say "i'm not playing this game anymore" when the game is woven into the fabric of literally the everything real and imagined

otm, and also I think that's part of the reason the phrase doesn't work in the way YMP suggests, which is that you can't simultaneously have "toxic masculinity" = "not all masculinity" and "masculinity should be discarded as an idea." But we have those messages coexisting in the same spheres of discussion right now.

You are both describing the 'trivial, grammatical sense'.

And masculinity is not considered toxic the way femininity has been considered delicate. Come on!

so much delicate masculinity itt

i mean i see man alive's point, but each word/phrase has its own history, and so their connotations change and differ depending on what period in history we're talking about

the word masculinity poses a problem in that it may refer to maleness, and in a post-gender world, there are different views on what is being talked about when you say "male" (biological/sexuality/etc), from what i can tell

so some guys think there is no way of escaping being a male if you were born with male genitalia, and masculinity encompasses this definition to some

language is a tricky thing -- feel like we're discussing semantics at this point

@man alive: You are comparing gender norms that have been societally imposed for thousands of years with, like, something some people have said on twitter recently.

so what's your semantic argument here, fred? words don't matter?

multi-xps

One difficulty with 'toxic masculinity' is that it adds an element of highly subjective hyperbole that is not present in the term 'spoiled milk'. Whether or not milk is spoiled is easily verifiable, but you can't determine when masculinity has become toxic by testing it for toxic substances. The same for 'testosterone poisoning'. Those are not statements of fact, but rhetorical constructions reflecting subjective judgments in hyperbolic language.

So, without the speaker expatiating on their intended meaning, it is quite possible to hear the phrase 'toxic masculinity' and infer that the speaker judges all masculinity to be toxic.

The benefit of transfeminist discourse to cis dudes should be that you should feel entitled to being a man without having to endorse, actively participate in, or seek to reconstruct any received cultural ideas about what "masculinity" is. If you are a man, great! Please be a good person. You don't need to seek to gender the process of being a good person, since you are no less of a man no matter how "unmasculine" you are.

so much delicate masculinity itt

― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, 22 May 2018 18:08 (ten minutes ago) Permalink

cool

Like what is the purpose of a reconstructed and ostensibly nontoxic masculinity to you, man alive? What personal growth do you need it for?

xxp the process of 'being a good person' is gendered though, the things you say and do can mean different thing depending on whether you are a man or a woman, because society will treat you differently based on whether you are a man or a woman - you can't separate 'being a good person' from the system of gender relations/inequality and where you personally are situated in that system?

Like what is the purpose of a reconstructed and ostensibly nontoxic masculinity to you, man alive? What personal growth do you need it for?

― valorous wokelord (silby), Tuesday, May 22, 2018 1:24 PM (fifty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What is the purpose of a transman identifying as a man then? What is the meaning of identifying as a gender other than your sex if gender is a mere vestige of a less enlightened era?

Yeah I mean I’m not saying you can dismantle patriarchy by thinking hard enough I just mean you don’t need to find a way to dismantle patriarchy while still getting to endorse or adhere to “manly virtues” or whatever else you think need out of masculinity as a concept.

Why do we need to go out of our way to attach positive and non-traditionally feminine traits to women, girls, femininity etc. if the goal is actually that gender should have nothing associated with it whatsoever, a pure blank slate?

To mitigate the harm of gender-based oppression, I guess?

Anyway the one step process to being a man is:

1. Be a man

The accoutrements have no obvious metaphysical function. If you are a man, you are already a man, and the state of being-a-man cannot be taken from you even if masculinity is itself a nullity.

If you are a man, you are already a man, and the state of being-a-man cannot be taken from you

see, i don't think this is right if we go by new gender ideas

No, silby is right.