Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

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.

Again, what is the meaning of an entirely blank slate gender divorced from biological sex? What does that actually mean? What is the difference between saying "I am a man" and "I am a blorf"?

whoa never seen blorf used before but that's definitely what i am

xxp

but if you are a man your gender can also be woman

so being a man is not enough to define the other parts of your self

Well sure like gender is performative and coercive and constructed and all those things but it is also metaphysical and so if there’s nothing that it means to be a man, then you succeed at being a man simply by being a man. Like a trans man isn’t a man because he medically transitions, or self-identifies as a man, he’s a man because he is. Which is the same reason a cis man is a man and a nonbinary person is nonbinary. Which is not to say any of these people could not be something else later, for some reason.

This is mostly my own half-baked concept of how this shit works, I have no authority to cite here.

man alive, there is no meaning you are free from meaning.

yeah, if you want to be a 'blorf', man alive, you should go for it.

xxp

okay seriously not trolling, but to play devil's advocate, what if i don't believe in metaphysics?

i feel like it just further confuses things because it creates an intangible concept

so my solution, call the person whatever the person wants to be called!

Idk; if you don’t believe in metaphysics my argument doesn’t apply. You’ll have to look elsewhere for a different argument.

fair

to blorfinity… and beyond!

i have a lot of ideas about this that i can't untangle into sentences but i've really enjoyed silby's posts itt

more multi-xps

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

People create meaning both within and among themselves. What it 'means' for a transman to identify as a gender other than their sexual equipment at birth is a meaning the transman has created for themselves, in dialogue with other meanings generated by others. Such meanings tend to cluster together in a similar neighborhood, which is fortunate in terms of being able to live together in society, but ultimately that meaning is the transman's personal possession. So, ask them what it means to them.

<3 brad

So to sum up, "I am a man" = self-evident but can't mean anything beyond itself. But also there is a particular kind of masculinity that is toxic, even though masculinity doesn't mean anything.

It's ironic it's so hard for you to grasp what 'toxic masculinity' means, when 'Fedora Dostoyevsky' seems to capture it so well.

"I am a man" = self-evident

No, I would say it doesn't admit to any kind of evidentiary process or even some sort of Platonic discernment.

there is a particular kind of masculinity that is toxic

I wouldn't say that.

masculinity doesn't mean anything

No, it is the bare fact of being a man doesn't mean anything beyond itself. I have here construed "masculinity" as the received, performative, and culturally-determined collection of attributes commonly ascribed to people who are or are perceived to be men.

(I'm still really glad Mordy gave me this sweet dn, really works here)

it's very easy to grasp what it "means." It seems hard for you to grasp that words have multiple senses and subtexts. xp

as far as i can tell this is still the final word on masculinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lp_e4wUnz4

But "fedora" is just a style of crowned hat to countless millions of people, unless it has become a weighty cultural signifier, as it now appears to be to millions of others. And Dostoevsky is just a name most often associated with an author that the great majority of people have not read.

No, it is the bare fact of being a man doesn't mean anything beyond itself. I have here construed "masculinity" as the received, performative, and culturally-determined collection of attributes commonly ascribed to people who are or are perceived to be men.

― valorous wokelord (silby), Tuesday, May 22, 2018 2:07 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But if you remove all performative and culturally determined attributes as well as biological attributes from the concept of "man" what is left?

The mere fact. You're a man! I'm really happy for you.

I mean this concept I'm working with here is probably subject to some major complaints from anyone who has read Wittgenstein more carefully than I have but I think it's both kind of true and politically useful so I'll defend it at least a little bit.

silby on fire

what is left?

an extremely malleable concept signified by 'man'. which is what it always was to begin with.

I mean this concept I'm working with here is probably subject to some major complaints from anyone who has read Wittgenstein more carefully than I have but I think it's both kind of true and politically useful so I'll defend it at least a little bit.

― valorous wokelord (silby), 22. maj 2018 21:11 (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We need to go from 'being' to either 'doing' or 'becoming', etc ;)

The Fedora Dostojevski thing was an attempt at a joke, btw, nothing more. Sorry if it seemed snarky.

Please be a good person.

all else is commentary

Enjoyed yr subtle alanis morrissette reference freddie

Just found a YouTube Channel - Pop Culture Detective - doing hero's work analyzing masculinity protrayals in TV shows and media. Particularly liked the ones on Steven Universe and Big Bang Theory, and the videos go into elements of why I respectively love and despite them.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHiwtz2tCEfS17N9A-WoSSw

anyone else sit down to pee? was recommended to me by a friend a few years ago, and after an initial reaction of incredulity (mild offense, even) I have now come to love it - makes for a nice little break and it's never messy

if there is a urinal (or if toilet is trashed) will still stand, in a forest would ofc always stand

it's funny tho because it's (seen as) effeminate and not something I admit to everyone

Of course I sit, otherwise I won't have hands free to swipe on Tinder.

swipe from left to right

i lived in a house for years with one of those toilet seats that doesn't always stay up and risks at any time slamming down and showering you half-way through a piss. So I kinda got used to a sit-down wee

Yes, peeing sitting down is awesome. Any excuse to sit down really!

silby said most of what I wanted to say in these recent posts but on this specifically:

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?

Because while the end of gender as a category is the best idea in the long term you can't act according to that in our current reality in the same way that saying "I don't even see colour" is not a good way to be anti-racist. Any positive traits associated with feminity should, in the long run, be seen as simply positive traits that anyone of any gender can decide to adopt or not, same for masculinity.

i took a look at that youtube channel and especially liked the one about stalking
it's not surprising that young men learn that dogged persistence and "not taking no for an answer" is the path to their dream girl's heart but irl it does not work and is harmful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ1MPc5HG_I

Silby’s posts reminded me a bit of the essay here:

https://aeon.co/amp/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

which I know was quite unpopular but still thought-provoking (to me at least).

Please be a good person.
all else is commentary

― markle's potion (Ye Mad Puffin)

so then, don't be evil? not sure that dictum works out in practice.

anyone else sit down to pee? was recommended to me by a friend a few years ago, and after an initial reaction of incredulity (mild offense, even) I have now come to love it - makes for a nice little break and it's never messy

it's funny tho because it's (seen as) effeminate and not something I admit to everyone

― niels

you're goddamn right i sit, with my bph standing is not really an option. the germans particularly seem to find the notion offensive, having coined the epithet "sitzpinkel".

i don't like that essay at all and silby's posts did not remind me of it

xp

So if you want to call yourself a genderqueer femme presenting demigirl, you go for it. Express that identity however you like. Have fun with it. A problem emerges only when you start making political claims on the basis of that label – when you start demanding that others call themselves cisgender, because you require there to be a bunch of conventional binary cis people for you to define yourself against; and when you insist that these cis people have structural advantage and political privilege over you, because they are socially read as the conformist binary people, while nobody really understands just how complex and luminous and multifaceted and unique your gender identity is.

yeah this essay can fuck off imo