Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

:))))))))))))))

Eliza <3

I've only really lurked here, briefly breaking cover to talk about shitting on work time, but...

Yesterday evening my boy (12) was playing Fortnite online with two mates. We regulate how much he plays, but as it's half-term and he'd just finished football training, we let him have an extra session. Anyway, about an hour in, we could hear him calling his sister in (she's 9). My wife followed up on why he was calling in her in, and it turns out he'd be encouraged, by one of the other boys (also 12) to say that when she was dead, someone was going to rape her dead body. My wife managed to get it out of him; the Xbox was shut down. His violent response is almost a separate/side issue and something we'll deal with.

I guess it's brought a bunch of things into focus for me - most of which have been discussed here: male insularity, the toxic elements of masculinity, emboldened online behaviour etc. I'm going to speak to both sets of parents - not out of a spirit of apportioning blame, more because a) I'd want to know and b) it's been brought into my house and I don't see that I have any other choice - and ban the Xbox for an extended period. I've also discussed in-depth with my boy precisely why this is so offensive and dangerous. Thankfully, he's responded exactly how I'd want him to (a mix of innocence, self-disgust and contrition), so that's something.

Boys are going to test the boundaries with this stuff and I get that, but jesus, what am I creating/harbouring here? I'm not about to start conflating 'war! gaming! violence!' hysterically (well, not much) but how do we educate and protect against all this?

uncool controversial opinion: gaming and violence are not as distinct as people who game (ie all of ilx) might say

so much more concern over boys watching porn than on the endless murder games

I'm curious abt the relationship between the games themselves and the culture which has evolved around them. I think there's particularly something abt the dynamic of chatting away distractedly as you concentrate on fantastical violence that is fertile ground for glib dehumanising conversation

yeah, it all feels v disconnected from healthy human development

also the flippant ease of abuse on smartphones is tied into this, you cunts!

teen boys were horrible shits when i was one, back before online communication was common, and i'm fairly sure they have been horrible shits throughout human history

i'm not at all sure that online gaming has made them more horrible in general, but it has def made it easier for them to widen their circle of shithead acquaintance

it's the vacuity of it though

in what sense? it's not like #teens were earnestly debating the finer points of wittgenstein with each other before xbox live was invented

no, but they learnt that everything they did had real emotional consequences, for better or worse. online gaming discourse is couched in these ridiculous layers of irony where popular youtubers will scream in mock-rage when they get fragged and talk about rape or use racist epithets and the kids who watch 4000 of their videos per day can't distinguish sincere from ironic so you wind up with all of youth being thus kind of aimlessly profane drone army of depressed twats

chinaski's son just learned that his online behaviour had real emotional consequences, because chinaski seems like a good, properly attentive parent

not to get all #notallgamers but 'online gaming discourse' is a spectrum, like any other discourse, and parents should be taking an interest in what their kids are watching and doing online and making sure they're not imbibing a steady diet of poison imo

all of youth being thus kind of aimlessly profane drone army of depressed twats

and not to get all #fuckcapitalism but kids are growing up in a world with increasingly narrow opportunities so no wonder they're depressed - it's not all pewdiepie's fault

those who shout loudest and most obnoxiously get shared the most. yeah it's a spectrum, but pewdiepie is the most-watched for a reason. and it's not because he offers escape from socioeconomic degradation

btw feminism is cancer

^^^have had tutees say this to me

m8 YOU'RE cancer

uncool controversial opinion: gaming and violence are not as distinct as people who game (ie all of ilx) might say

Sure, but neither are action movies and violence, or comics and violence. Vidya games up the ante by being a more active hobby, but it's pretty clear our culture's been worshipping violence for ages, and it's not a conversation people enjoy having because it still feels PMRC. I keep meaning to read up more on cultures that have a very violent pop culture but low rates of actual violence.

youtuber culture is a related but separate issue I think; you get that kind of discourse outside gaming too, and of course you get a lot of gamers that couldn't be further away from it (the Polygon crew for instance).

it is undeniable that wars breed violent atrocities like maggots from a dead horse. the cognitive dissonance of killing people leads first to desensitization, then to the dehumanization of the enemy, which then may extend to dehumanizing all humans including oneself. war is known to be extremely alienating to many combat soldiers.

first person shooter games generally depict war and casual violence. they also tend to become as much like immersive virtual reality as the technology allows. it is reasonable to think that spending hundreds of hours immersed in lifelike virtual war could have psychological effects on some of its players that might be similar to the desensitizing effects of real warfare, though not as extreme.

counterpoint: no it is not reasonable to think that.

there is a massive gap between the emotional and psychological resonance of violence in games and in real life. they are barely related past the surface

so, you are saying that it could not possibly have any psychological effects on any of its players?

that might be similar to the desensitizing effects of real warfare

to quote you

but less extreme. to quote me.

so, you've contradicted my conclusion, but your justification for the contradiction is that there is a gap between the psychological effects of war and of immersive virtual war. but your point doesn't contradict what I said, which acknowledged such a gap.

i'm saying the gap is so pronounced as to make your point unreasonable. your description "lifelike virtual war" is self-evidently preposterous if you take just a single moment to think about the difference between being in a war and pressing buttons on your couch.

Sure, but neither are action movies and violence, or comics and violence

I returned two comics to the library yesterday: one was a romance about a C18th Paris seamstress who gets hired by the palace, and discovers that her mistress is in fact the crown prince, who loves wearing dresses but cannot tell anyone bar his major-domo; the other was about a man dreaming of having his head squeezed between large, soft buttocks. Also read two that I picked up at VanCAF last week: one was about a girl with an enormous crush on a friend telling him so at a party; the other was about a man being given a pair of kitty-patting gloves by a friend as a gift.

pushing buttons on yr couch not so different from modern drone warfare tbh

I guess my conclusion is preposterous because I used a phrase you thought was preposterous. But your description of playing a first person shooter game as entirely consisting of "pressing buttons on your couch" seems kind of disingenuous. When I watch a nature documentary on PBS and I use the remote to adjust the volume, I am pressing buttons on my couch. Are you saying these two experiences are identical?

but yeah, spiralli and bg otm

Even the ridiculous cesspool of hypermasculinity in most multiplayer online spaces is pretty far detached from actually killing another person. Drone operators have been already been known to get serious PTSD from facing the results of their actions.

I returned two comics to the library yesterday: one was a romance about a C18th Paris seamstress who gets hired by the palace, and discovers that her mistress is in fact the crown prince, who loves wearing dresses but cannot tell anyone bar his major-domo; the other was about a man dreaming of having his head squeezed between large, soft buttocks. Also read two that I picked up at VanCAF last week: one was about a girl with an enormous crush on a friend telling him so at a party; the other was about a man being given a pair of kitty-patting gloves by a friend as a gift.

I mean sure, and you can easily find video games that are unrelated to violence in the same manner. I love Bagge and Bechdel and Franquin and Fujio and tons of other comic artists that don't feature violence, but what kids are experiencing via shooters now? I'm not entirely convinced it's so radically different from what I got from Punisher and shitty Image comics in the 90's, is all I'm saying.

I got punched in the head 4 times and this piece of shit says “are you a man!!”

Fuck this garbage

My point is destroy
Gender. It’s so ridiculous and toxic

Candy Crush has certainly not changed the way I think about candy.

going outside to hurl cockatoos at pigs, brb

How was it then.

I spoke to both sets of parents. One boy has a particularly unothordox home life, by all accounts (I wasn't offered/didn't ask for more detail), which gives me a comfortable line of causality. My boy has responded largely how I hoped he would, so I guess that's that for now.

Fwiw, I'm mostly on the 'non-correlation' side when it comes to the link between violent video games/films/comics and affect disorders. I'm uneasy about the casual brutality of the language but I do think the boundary-pushing is an essential part of growing up and ego formation yadda yadda. I grew up with Arnie and Sly films (and the first wave of available violent games - albeit shitty Spectrum ones) and I'm alright. Unless a kind of supernatural irritability counts as an affective disorder.

Glad that your kid has reacted well!

I think the argument that's worth taking seriously at this stage is that it's not that culture makes individual people violent, much as it doesn't make ppl sexist or racist either, but that a culture of violence impacts on society as a whole in the same way that a culture riddled with the aforementioned isms does.

Thanks, Daniel.

I talk myself round in circles with this stuff - to the point where I both believe in nature and nurture and all points in between.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/nathan-larson-congressional-candidate-pedophile_us_5b10916de4b0d5e89e1e4824

idk man

idk

whatthefuckingfuckfuck...

Come on man. Really? Gotta be satire.

he's been leaving a trail of dutifully reported stories from reputable news outlets

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/03/nathan_larson_virginia_public.html

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2018/jun/05/canadas-niceness-is-the-very-reason-its-young-men-radicalize

I've seen this take coming up in different forms and in different place and it is something I want to address. People blaming progressivist for making the world where suddenly men are more violent are idiots looking for a text to be published.

1. males have been violent across eras and geography and it's kinda time we accept it as the default mode, that's the only way we can create the law that will protect future victims.
2. creating laws that protect future victims is how we go from medieval witch-burning shit to a society in which is up to transsexual to decide their gender and marry someone of the same sex. it works. progress works.
3. the work is never done because injustice is ever-existing. thanks to fuckers like the people she is so sorry for.
4. we can be proud of a country's progress when it comes to human rights without ignoring the current issues.

To me it's akin to blame the rape victim on being flirty 'ah if only you hadn't created this society standard someone willfully misunderstand, this wouldn't happen'.

In many ways, Canada is indeed a progressive country, and our legislation – like the trans rights bill that Peterson so despised – arguably shows a continued commitment to creating an equitable society. At the same time, the idea that we’re already a tolerant, liberal country is often a stumbling block for Canadians. We do not like the suggestion that we still have work to do – although you don’t have to look much further than our government’s treatment of indigenous people to understand that we have a long way to go before the reality of Canada catches up with our perception of it. Because most Canadians already have a fixed idea of how good our country is, we tend to be sensitive to even the mildest criticism. If someone points out that we’ve said or done something bigoted, the reflexive response is “but I couldn’t possibly have, because I’m not a bigot; I’m not wrong, you’re wrong.

This cognitive dissonance between who we think we are and who we actually are is fertile ground for people such as Peterson, who provide quick answers in lieu of productive soul-searching. According to him, the real problem is “identity politics”, which are wielded by “social justice warriors” who want to destroy free speech.”

Also on a purely inside-hockey Canadian tangent, not many Canadians I knew thought there was no work to do when Harper was elected in 2011.

Long post short toxic masculinity is toxic because we allowed to be toxic, not because some people view progress with a sense of accomplishment.

Yeah, both that article and the Jeesse Brown piece that made the NYT a while ago suffer from a similar flaw imo, although their conclusions are different: assuming that the presence of sometimes radical reactionaries in Canada who garner international attention (even if to a lesser extent than in other countries) is somehow reflective of some unique trait in the country. All it really means to me is that Canada is not immune to international trends.