Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Veering off-topic here a bit, but an ex used to make a very personal zine about her life based on diaries, I thought her writing was excellent, then at the age of 30 she made a bonfire of the 50 or so books she'd kept since she was 10, said they were useless and uninteresting to anyone. In a world of many terrible things this is pretty minor, especially as she seems not to regret it at all, but thinking about it still makes me sad.

Kafka would have approved, I guess.

And LL otm. Letters also served that function for several centuries.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2rIgsPlJd0

I viscerally really do not like that commercial/"film," although I am trying to parse out why. (1) Corporate social justice ads pretty much always miss the mark and there is always something gross about them doing it (2) IDK, it's just--the tone? The sort of portrayal of maleness reduced to a neverending toxic nightmare, with no one having even done anything about it until 2018/19?

I think it's encouraging that they think this stance is good for their brand, because they wouldn't do it otherwise.

I completely unexpectedly found it really moving even though I don't have the time/focus to research that url and see what, if anything, they're actually doing.

xp also true--it feels like a corporate pivot/commitment to this being the discourse of the future.

i thought it was nice that they used the terry crews clip. a friend of mine told me she used that testimony before congress as an example of leadership when the majority of her classmates included videos of sports people or corporate people to illustrate their conception of "leadership"

corporate leadership is usually pretty weak and self-serving but at least this video has the greater good in mind, even if it makes some eyes roll

The sort of portrayal of maleness reduced to a neverending toxic nightmare, with no one having even done anything about it until 2018/19?

Yeah, they're completely skewing history. #MeToo began in 17!

Marketing insider baseball: Gillette is suffering from fashionableness of beards and turning increasingly toward products for women. Men are not the target audience of this ad.

yeah well shaving sucks

like i said, corporate "leadership" is self-serving! at least this serves a wider swath of humanity than the average act of corporate "generosity"

xxp Oooh that's fascinating!

Shaving one’s face smooth every day is a weird prectice. Yet i did it for so long.

Also competition from Harry’s and dollar shave club and the like?

shaving is bad

I hate having to shave my face and I keep meaning to go try laser but ugh

wait I thought shaving was praxis

i don't think anyone should shave with a razor ever, except when you get your haircut

beard trimmer can tame facial and bodily hair if it's getting too long for your taste

this is now the shaving foibles thread

it is but I hate doing it xp

I’ve never gotten good feedback when I got rid of my cery short scruff—usually like the second shortest setting. To the contrary, I’ve gotten very bad feedback.

facial hair: uncomfortable, mild dysphoria. shaving: tedious, nick this same damn mole on my face 2/3 of the time. laser: intimidating, unknown.

Seems like a couple millimeters shouldn’t make a difference but it does.

the suffering of shaving is the feeling of toxic masculinity leaving the body

Laser hair removal on your face sounds painful

that's bc it removes so much of the toxicity in one go only the strongest humans can bare it

take a break Mordy

silby, I know there are some numbing creams that people use before laser hair removal. I preferred the digging my nails into my palms and trying to be zen method.

relax silbs - i found this great corp on the same page as you i'm just trying to hammer home the metaphysics of the situation

You guys want to talk about the new APA guidelines and really light the night on fire

?

i don't know anything about that so please give a brief description so i can weigh in peremptorily

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/science/apa-traditional-masculinity-harmful.html

Men are not the target audience of this ad.

That's really interesting. Do you think that this would be obvious to most people in marketing?

The guidelines, 10 in all, posit that males who are socialized to conform to “traditional masculinity ideology” are often negatively affected in terms of mental and physical health.

They acknowledge that ideas about masculinity vary across cultures, age groups and ethnicities. But they point to common themes like “anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.”

I agree with the analysis fwiw. I wonder what it would mean as therapy guidelines. Many dudes need more risk and adventure in their lives.

Obviously not more violence or anti-femininity.

shavings good

first shave was back in 93 iirc but i met the president in 96 and i had to pretend that was my first time cos dad was home for it and it seemed important to him

The guidelines, 10 in all, posit that males who are socialized to conform to “traditional masculinity ideology” are often negatively affected in terms of mental and physical health.

more or less than yknow anyone else like?

I’m not anti the list by any means but it was still surprising to see this kind of analysis from a neutral body like the apa

is shaving for the first time with the president a custom in yr part of the world deems

neutral? hm

The APA, complicit in torture but in a neutral way

there's no such thing as a politically neutral body but if there were APA def isn't it

Oh yeah i forgot about that. Hm

it was the first time he'd been home to spot me shaving iirc is the thing mordy

its an example of some non toxic masculinity easy now

oh the taste of yr masculinity i'm on a ride

shavings good

first shave was back in 93 iirc but i met the president in 96 and i had to pretend that was my first time cos dad was home for it and it seemed important to him

The guidelines, 10 in all, posit that males who are socialized to conform to “traditional masculinity ideology” are often negatively affected in terms of mental and physical health.

more or less than yknow anyone else like?

― topical mlady (darraghmac), Monday, January 14, 2019 2:22 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't know how it is in ireland deems but suicide is the main killer of young men in scotland. a common refrain after someone jumps in the clyde is "we never knew he was struggling". the causal link between "being a man" in the traditional masculinist sense and bad mental health would seem fairly clear

also if many of these men would "open up" to their pals they would be told to fuck off or stop being bent

i think that's true. a lot of "confessional" behavior that one might imagine as an alternative to bottling up yr feelings is similarly arrested full of toxicities so many ppl are addicted to their complaint narratives compulsively returning to them again and again. there's a healthy kind of confessional/confidence but ppl will need to be taught that it's not simple enough to say "don't bottle it in" ppl have to know how to communicate + theorize their suffering in productive ways. (neither repression nor magnification etc)

i agree mordy. it's a careful balance--it's good to know when to ask for help, but the goal has to be emotional self regulation. also i am a big believer in therapy because if you try to open up all the time to your friends that is going to be taxing on those friendships.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/science/apa-traditional-masculinity-harmful.html

― Trϵϵship, Monday, 14 January 2019 22:18 (eight minutes ago) Permalink

lol, traditional masculinity may be harmful. For example, here is a stock photo of a high school basketball team.