Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

idk man others on this thread didn't seem chill with people momentarily forgetting to check their privilege

I think many of us resort to rewinding our clocks and thinking about our individual experiences and behaviours because we're trying to understand this level of reaction that incels exhibit
Correct.

― pomenitul, Thursday, December 13, 2018 8:30 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Agree, and this happens frequently and I said so several days ago: I think posters itt have been doing an ilx speciality, which is, in seeking to understand, are looking for commonalities with the phenomenon. This often results in a) ppl being less critical of the problematic thing, and b) over-identifying with criticisms of the problematic thing. Like, "Oh now we're vilifying all socially awkward young men who feel unattractive? I had that experience and it scarred me so maybe we should be more sympathetic to men who self-identify with this hate group, maybe if we just understood them more..." and so on.

NOT that men don't suffer or don't deserve mental health or don't need community, and NOT that falsely masculinized roles and expectations aren't harmful to men's health (they 100% are). But those things can be (are!) true and at the same time it can be true that no one needs to over-identify with fourchan incels or whatever who are attracted to hate groups who are being discussed at the time.

It's been invoked already itt, but I really cannot stump hard enough for group therapy/couples counseling in helping to resolve these issues. Its inordinately helpful in learning to own your own butthurt.

xp -- terrific post, IO

any man who immediately claims "I'm not sexist" in the face of generalized criticism...

Sexism is not a state of being, but a quality that can inhere in a thought or action. While very few men (or women) would be able to draw this distinction, there is a somewhat instinctive tendency to react against it, just as there is an instinctive reaction among men to rebel against assertions that "all men are alike" coupled with the assertion that their likeness consists of something immoral or unpleasant. This is on a par with young boys asserting that all girls have cooties.

It is easy to feel the injustice of being existentially in the wrong. But it is perfectly fair and right to call out particular statements or actions as sexist, by connecting them to wrong assumptions or harmful consequences.

I often think to myself, do men know that it's all optional, they don't have to do that

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Thursday, December 13, 2018 8:17 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like yo.

no one needs to over-identify with fourchan incels or whatever who are attracted to hate groups who are being discussed at the time

I completely agree with this. I'm just not convinced that it's what happened itt. Correct me if I'm wrong (and I mean this sincerely – perception does matter here), but most male posters who reminisced about past situations resembling inceldom came to the conclusion that despite whatever external factors may have contributed to their (self-)loathing at the time, sooner or later came the acknowledgment that they were very much to blame, which is precisely what incels are unwilling to do.

tbh when ppl say "oh you can just opt out of manhood" I just....have no idea what that means, practically speaking

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I mean this sincerely – perception does matter here), but most male posters who reminisced about past situations resembling inceldom came to the conclusion that despite whatever external factors may have contributed to their (self-)loathing at the time, sooner or later came the acknowledgment that they were very much to blame, which is precisely what incels are unwilling to do.

― pomenitul, Thursday, December 13, 2018 8:56 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that started to happen and yes, that's a good thing. But it's exhausting for women (and several women said this on the other thread) to wade through this process every single time. It's not a remote logic problem being considered and turned this way and that, that we can consider without personal involvement. We feel it like a punch in the gut or a tidal wave of nausea. We have been harassed, stalked, assaulted, blamed, not believed, insulted, ignored, and taken our broken selves to therapy or whatever, and gotten our shit back together. And we are trying to tell men what is up. And we get: "This is exactly the same as telling girls they have cooties."

Claro. I see how it is.

Seems to me the best one can do is to take that as a given, be vigilant and to be constantly interrogating one's choices, language and behaviours - past and present - and accept a certain amount of oscillation/fucking up. Fwiw, my post about the strip club was implicitly an 'I've been shit; I'm trying to be better' post. And probably an 'ooh, look what I've seen' boast. I dunno.

In telling men what is up after your having been harassed, stalked, assaulted, blamed, not believed, insulted, and ignored, are you telling them that all men are alike in harassing, stalking, assaulting, blaming, not believing, insulting, and ignoring women? If so, I submit this is unjustified. If not, then you have misunderstood what I wrote.

xpost I don't think there was any contention about that^^^. Personal experiences are fine in trying to understand incels if that's your methodology. But If a person has in the back of their minds the epidemic of men murdering or raping their wives and partners and strangers on the street and how victims of sex trafficking will get longer sentences than men who rape, Trump Kavanaugh Bolsonaro etc etc it's irritating to constantly and excessively come across hurt man feelings if some generalization about the awfulness of men is expressed, such as, men in groups sometimes do terrible things they wouldn't do by themselves and thus men in groups can be terrifying for some people. Apply that to virtual men in groups, the incel community/doxxing/online mob mentality etc.

xpost what inorbit just said.

And we get: "This is exactly the same as telling girls they have cooties."

You can make a valid point without deliberately misquoting me.

apropos of nothing, I would just like to point out that ILX thread search results for "girls" (I was looking for that girls room thread ref'd above) are pretty horrifying. Early 2000s seem like the definite low point.

Do you feel like male ILX posters are generally oblivious to the gender-specific issues you face as women (not trolling, once again, it's a genuine question)? I personally draw a distinction between 'addressing men in general (i.e. more or less half of the world population, which does indeed tend towards the despicable)' and 'shooting the shit with 2018 ILX dudes/lads'. Not to say we who haunt these pages are utterly devoid of misogyny (that would be absurd), but I don't think it makes sense to thrust the burden of male representation so thoroughly upon us. I would be more supportive of generalizations about men in another context (in most other contexts, actually), as a matter of priority.

tbh when ppl say "oh you can just opt out of manhood" I just....have no idea what that means, practically speaking

― resident hack (Simon H.), Thursday, December 13, 2018 12:57 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Here are some cool practical ways to stop being a man that I've tried to do since I decided I didn't need to front like I was a man

0. Stop being a man
1. Talk quieter
2. Adopt more compact body language
3. Shave your face
4. Listen to women
5. Dress provocatively
6. Focus on being nonthreatening to those around you in public
7. Identify miscellaneous social scripts of masculinity you've adopted and stop doing them
8. Strengthen friendships with non-men

Patriarchy survives only as long as it continues to coerce perfectly ordinary people into being men

silby do u think that some ppl are born men and it isn't a choice and if not how do you account for transmen? similar question re performativity. i see a whole bunch of problems w/ your argument here that i wonder if you've thought through at all?

0. Stop being a man
1. Talk quieter
2. Adopt more compact body language
3. Shave your face
4. Listen to women
5. Dress provocatively
6. Focus on being nonthreatening to those around you in public
7. Identify miscellaneous social scripts of masculinity you've adopted and stop doing them
8. Strengthen friendships with non-men

check check and doublecheck!
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimg3.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20140528231244%2Fgameofthrones%2Fimages%2F8%2F81%2FVarys-Profile-HD.png&f=1

are u guys taking silby's posts literally cuz I detect some humor there, maybe that's just me

mea culpa if he's just taking the piss

I mean number 5 and 6 seem pretty contradictory...

also lol this thread, prior to it I thought silby was a woman and Yerac was a man

live and learn I guess

lol

I've thought about all this a lot actually but thanks~ xp

so can u explain or

I'm always both joking and not joking

I'm not really competent to address the relationship of trans men with cis masculinity but it's been brought up itt before in response to my posts. I think that in a world without gender-based oppression, which is what we're all working towards, the category of "men" wouldn't exist, and that people who are trans men now will be freer in that world too.

I typed and erased like a dozen potential responses to that list which means this is an excellent time to bounce.

it seems like you're suggesting that ppl who identify as male are identifying with oppression and that without oppression there'd be no men but i think this is *&*problematic*&* for many ppl and despite what i think is yr good intentions in promoting it maybe deserves a rethink but ya know keep on joking/not joking you devil you ;) xp

silby is awesome.

xpost I don't know who pom's thing was addressed to, but I am constantly surprised (not really) about the huge blind spot a lot of men have regarding women. And I say all of this shit in real life if I come across men who are at varying levels of trying to catch up. Men just really don't seem to do very well processing generalizations about them as an unchoosing group to belong to, whereas other groups, that is our daily life. This may come off as being a shitty thing to say but yeah, unless I have met you or you have some really distinguishable posting characteristic, I can't really differentiate between a lot of posters, so nothing is really aimed at specific people as to who they are. I just see a lot of floundering here sometimes that is super annoying because these ideas of maleness and masculinity have bad, violent direct impacts on women.

if you're waiting for the day you can make generalizations about a group and not have individuals of that group be offended you're going to be waiting forever

I guess I should add that I have absolutely no problem with the behavioral points of silby's list

silby's post has made me feel a bit:

https://consequenceofsound.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/screen-shot-2015-07-29-at-8-41-22-am.png

I have problem with talking more quietly, I'm fairly inaudible as it is.

How should I take that exactly, are you the train or the sad bald person

I think people should do that if it makes them feel more themselves. But if they are more comfortable having a beard, watching sports, and being “masculine” I think people should do that, whether they are cis or trans or whatever. I don’t critique people’s gender presentation because it’s a personal thing and a psychologically charges thing.

mordy you were offended i told anecdotes about my spouse. I can NEVER please you.

NB i was specifically addressing Simon’s question about how to practically disaffiliate oneself from manhood

xps a little of all the above.

Yeah people can “opt out” of being a man but I definitely don’t want to and no one should do it because they feel ethically obligated that’s ridiculous.

And like mordy said, an implication to sayinf it’s bad ro be a man is that trans men, who suffer from dysphoria, are identifying with an oppressive identity which seems like not the best thing for them to hear

I will probably regret posting itt, but on the other hand I’ve already had one highly emotive argument this evening so why not!

Also I didn’t read every single reply in depth so don’t @ me if I’m repeating you accidentally, you can just ignore this response.

This:

One of the ways men bond is by demonstrating collective power over women. This is why business deals are still done in strip clubs, even in Silicon Valley, and why tech conferences are famous for their “booth babes.” It creates an atmosphere of complicity and privilege. It makes rich men partners in crime. This is useful if you plan to get ethically imaginative with your investments. Hence the half-naked models, who are all working a lot harder than any of the guys in shirtsleeves.

I connected this immediately to the discussion about incels. I’ve read incels’ thoughts on women and they’re pretty frightening but they’re an extreme extension of what is described above. Incels don’t think of women as fully human - they call them “femoids”. They spend their time fantasising about hurting and humiliating women. They talk about having daughters that they won’t educate and sons that they will. It sounds stupid and most of this is pure pathetic fantasy. But. But. But.

To a large extent this is the distilled sentiment of misogyny that permeates the world to different degrees. The strip club example is interesting because to me the idea of actually going to one is quite old fashioned and I don’t think I know anyone who’s actually been to one! The defensive responses were really intriguing to me because I’d never considered people my age or a bit older going to one. It’s not strip clubs themselves that are the problem, the point is about doing business there. The point is that women are decoration, not participants. Objects, not fully people. It’s about power in aggregate, not people’s individual experiences.

It’s funny people mentioning getting Yerac and silby’s genders wrong cos I’ve been constantly mistaken for male online. One of the reasons is that I often choose a neutral or not obviously female name and there are loads of reasons for that; the other is that I tend to be fairly direct/blunt/aggressive. But over the years I tend to qualify what I say more, pull my punches a bit and I definitely try not to contribute to threads like this because honestly, the response can be overwhelmingly negative and after years of it, it’s easier just to scroll past and not participate. But I do think places like this do need female voices and its generally not a great sign ime when female posters start dipping out.

Yerac, I'm on board with almost everything you said, but that blind spot you mention is nowhere near as massive here as it is, well, almost everywhere else. Don't you think it warrants a different approach to the problem?

xps

My gender is underspecified anyway and it’s gratifying that I confuse people.

nah.
xpost

That’s a good post gyac. I agree that passage certaibly speaks to a dynamic with this sexist subculture we’re discussing.

gyac, i have a gender neutral name too and just write how I want to write and say what I want to say and it has served me well my entire life; people are surprised a lot when I show up for job interviews or meetings.

Yeah people can “opt out” of being a man but I definitely don’t want to and no one should do it because they feel ethically obligated that’s ridiculous.

― Trϵϵship, Thursday, December 13, 2018 9:55 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can I ask ppl to interrogate this a bit more? We have def had a related convo somewhere before like, "If I feel okay as and identify as a man, then isn't everything I do by definition 'masculine' because I am doing it from within my accepted gender identity?" Which I think is otm, and is similar to how I feel about being a not-always-super-feminine woman or not doing what's expected of me w/r/t my gender.

So I'm enjoying silby's posts too but to be a little less tongue-in-cheek and also I hope address Treezy's point, my question is, what does your identity as a man look like? What is important to you about it? When do you feel most (and least) "manly"? Can you think of some aspect of your identity that, if it were gone, would you make you feel like NOT a man?

Can you name one thing that you feel obligated to do in your man identity that you DON'T like? And one thing that you feel expected to do that you DO like?

I think there's tons of room for self-discovery and self-definition talk.

silby, io, and yerac are nailing this really well and to me self-evidently so

xp!

We have def had a related convo somewhere before like

yeah, we have. back on the train with Bald Billy I guess lol