I didn't find this particularly enlightening either tbh, feels like it could have been written 25 years ago, which is itself a sign of something but it came off superficial to me
― Simon H., Tuesday, 17 December 2019 08:35 (four years ago) link
ilx needs a barnraising
― sarahell, Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:02 (four years ago) link
There wasn't much new there, but thought this was a good metaphor to use when discussing this stuff with people who refuse to get it
Instructing them to “respect women” and to “not get anyone pregnant” isn’t enough. As one college sophomore told me, “That’s kind of like telling someone who’s learning to drive not to run over any little old ladies and then handing him the car keys. Well, of course you think you’re not going to run over an old lady. But you still don’t know how to drive.”
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:02 (four years ago) link
how do you feel about the lads
what if yer lads started becoming the lads
what aspects of that would you feel the need to interrogate and curb if need be, what aspects might be healthy or would you not understand enough to make a call on, etc
― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:05 (four years ago) link
at my high school in the early 90s it seemed like every boy's energy was directed at not being gay or a boff, so removing the homophobia and anti-intellectualism would be a start, but even without either of those it was a toxic environment.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:11 (four years ago) link
high school is or isn't UK?
uk lad culture, the parts you know of that are ok, the parts that youd be wary of, though?
i mean i think the perspective of an ilx parent heading into this could be interesting but tbbh (and with much love) the memories of ilxors of how much they resented jocks in their own school days kind of isnt what i was looking for in asking!
― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:16 (four years ago) link
(we have twenty years of threads on one, but im not sure we have much of the other perspective, is all)
― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:17 (four years ago) link
think it's officially called 'secondary' rather than 'high' in UK but everyone called it the latter.I have little or no idea what the positive aspects of lad culture are here, I have never felt part of it.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 09:25 (four years ago) link
my boy turns 17 next month. the main difference I note between his life and mine is how much more central drugs are for his peers than they were for mine.
I am generally pro bro though
― L'assie (Euler), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 10:29 (four years ago) link
I also think the advent of public transgender consciousness might help with all of this, idk
― sleeve
i hope so? but at the same time if the issue is "how does one be a healthy well-adjusted cis man" i have nothing i can possibly offer from my personal experience!
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:10 (four years ago) link
The solution I've come to in my adulthood is if you lift weights and act confident you can get away with not acting sterotypically bro-like on most other fronts. It also helps to work for a woman-owned company with a relatively good balance of men and women in the workplace. And also I think hanging out with other "involved" dads (assuming there is a significant group who are not involved) kind of self selects for gentler and more decent guys.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:42 (four years ago) link
I sort of wish I had discovered the weights part as a youth, but IDK if that would have exempted me from toxic stuff or just thrust me into it more. Going to an arts high school with a large openly gay population also made it a lot harder to waste time worrying about not being thought gay.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:43 (four years ago) link
Can one just do the pther things and not the lifting
Asking for a friend
― Hereward the Woke (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:44 (four years ago) link
Yeah I'm sure there are a lot of ways to go about it, it just seems like making one major concession to bro culture helps you get away with not making others. Also I've come to find I like lifting weights and the way it makes me feel after.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:46 (four years ago) link
I also feel like I've read that article a million times and I always feel like there is something missing from them although I've been trying for a long time to articulate it. It's like there's some depth or nuance of the experience that they don't really capture, it becomes this very 2D sort of male pressure cooker where your entire life as a boy is just other boys punching you on the arm and calling you a bitch, and you're either that or the sort of 180 degree opposite of it and outside of "jock culture" entirely, in which case you are a skinny poetry guy or something. Maybe I just grew up in kind of an anomalous setting but I didn't feel like it was that simple. Separately I also think these articles often fail to capture what the participants in the culture get out of it, as though they're only in it because they're being tortured into it, and I mean "get out of it" in both good and more sinister senses. But the good ones are important too.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)
i don't think an article can ever convey the true experience of cis male entitlement as well as reading esby's posts can
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:52 (four years ago) link
For some reason I was thinking about my late grandfather this morning and how I grew up admiring him as a "tough guy who had a sensitive side" and thinking about how (according to his own self description) had been sensitive when he was young but had to be tough because of circumstances (growing up in a poor neighborhood, fighting in the pacific theater etc.). But then it hit me, aren't all boys born sensitive? There's no such thing as a tough baby.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:33 (four years ago) link
not reflecting on your grandfather obviously ma but of course there's growing up tough as in "learning to deal with other people being assholes for little to no reason" and then there's "learning how to become one of the assholes so you fit in" and that distinction is a part of the contest around performing masculinity
― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:36 (four years ago) link
it's amazing to me how young kids are when they start to show distinct personalities
some kids are more rough and tumble than others
― mh, Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:37 (four years ago) link
I wonder a lot about masculinity in light of Jacob + Esav (esp recently since it was the last couple parshiot) who are respectively described as a man of the tent and of the field (Gen 25:27) and I wonder if the problem in our culture is that it's too Esav focused. Nerdy or sensitive boys have always existed but somehow the dominant model for performing masculinity today became athleticism/aggression etc. I never felt much anxiety about being male I think particularly because I had this model within my community that I could aspire to and not feel emasculated because I lacked hand-eye coordination. I agree w/ the critiques above that the Orenstein piece doesn't offer solutions (I liked it because I thought it illustrated the issues in a non-judgmental/empathetic + almost ethnographic way) but I wonder if this is a possible solution. We have these models in our mythological + religious histories that we can use. xxp
― Mordy, Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:39 (four years ago) link
xxp "Says you" - a tough baby with abs, smoking a cig.
In all seriousness though, that's OTM.
I'm always a little surprised to learn how common it is for fathers to try to raise their boys to be sociopaths, and how rare the reverse experience (my own) is.
― icy bike chain rain (zchyrs), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:40 (four years ago) link
― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 18, 2019 12:36 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
I think it was more like "learning to deal with someone who is trying to slash you with a knife" or "learning to knock out one of the other guys with a brick and run when you are surrounded by 8 guys who might otherwise beat you near death"
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:40 (four years ago) link
yeah i realise i was playing it as gently as possible :D
― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:42 (four years ago) link
but y'know, same applies - the ability to physically and mentally defend yourself is a virtue, sure, but there's this fine line in most cultures about where defending yourself begins and ends, and i think i streak of "necessary" cruelty is often considered a masculine virtue, not always openly
― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:43 (four years ago) link
I really don't think it was a fine line at all in the situations he was put in -- the Italian kids in Chicago hated the Jewish kids and if you were on the wrong block you'd get beaten and had to defend yourself. I don't think my grandpa bullied anyone, but he may never have told me.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:52 (four years ago) link
no of course, i was abstracting, not thinking of anybody's individual experience.
― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 17:54 (four years ago) link
mordy posts reminds me of the contempt in the part of ulysses' "here is my son, mine own Telemachus", it's a good observation.
growing up in a rural/fishing society, the aura of masculine mystery thats given to guys in these (or any) primary industries needs piercing, for sure.
but a society that seems to always pit these guys against eg academic achievers if theyre put into a shared space needs examining rather than simply accepting that this animosity is natural and inescapable.
as with a lot of these questions, i find myself wondering if a small community was a serious advantage in this and other facets. theres wasnt space for people to fall into cliched roles, and nobody was a stranger that could fit into a neat 2d role in your worldview (and vice versa)
― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 18:00 (four years ago) link
like, half the farmers/fishermen i know write poetry, and most of the honours class lads still go home to play in the parish cups
― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 18:02 (four years ago) link
i think there's something in that, tho of course the Irish acceptance and appreciation of poetry is hardly a universal
― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 18:04 (four years ago) link
I wonder if the problem in our culture is that it's too Esav focused.
The problem is that it's too Simeon and Levi focused! Yes those two fucking maniacs get their comeuppance when dad dies but the idea that "yes I murdered every man in Shechem but what was I supposed to do.... NOTHING?" is a normal male thought process is bizarrely still present in the contemporary world
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 18:38 (four years ago) link
Also as someone raising two boys in the UK I wonder what the culture is like here, and if it has changed since I was a teenager. We don't have jocks really, but we certainly still have the lads.
I suspect we might have jocks if rugby was the national sport and not football.
― Soup on my lanyard (Tom D.), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 18:54 (four years ago) link
I didn't need another reason to hate rugby, but I'll take it.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:41 (four years ago) link
in the US rugby is the official sport of lesbians
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:42 (four years ago) link
there's also a lesbian rugby following in the uk
― xmas respecter (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:42 (four years ago) link
while at the same time it is the sport of the uk equivalent of the preppy country club date rapist in an 80s US film
― xmas respecter (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:43 (four years ago) link
Instead of printing that article they should just have printed that sentence.
― Soup on my lanyard (Tom D.), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:47 (four years ago) link
ime the rugby society are the worst people in any university, ours was led by a man called "keemo" which was a nickname they'd given him because he didn't have any hair.
― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:49 (four years ago) link
wait, I thought roller derby was the official sport of lesbians
― Simon H., Wednesday, 18 December 2019 19:50 (four years ago) link
that too. Also basketball and soccer.
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 20:22 (four years ago) link
what I actually mean is that as a USian I associate rugby almost exclusively with lesbians whereas surely in the Commonwealth it's mostly lads what play rugby
I guess Megan Rapinoe being the most famous US soccer player means people might mostly think of lesbians when they think of soccer here too.
― Swilling Ambergris, Esq. (silby), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 20:23 (four years ago) link
Never heard of this lesbian rugby business. It's totally what the jocks at my school played.
― No language just sound (Sund4r), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 20:42 (four years ago) link
(which was in the Commonwealth but I have also spent a lot of time in the US without hearing of this association)
― No language just sound (Sund4r), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 20:46 (four years ago) link
my lesbian daughter has never heard of rugby as a lesbian sport but we live in France where rugby is probably the second biggest sport (unless pétanque counts)
― L'assie (Euler), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 20:49 (four years ago) link
I always thought softball was lesbians' sport of choice.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:03 (four years ago) link
ok boomer
― insecurity bear (sic), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:14 (four years ago) link
lesbians' sport of choice is any sport they enjoy playing or watching others play
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:17 (four years ago) link
Lacrosse was the sport of choice amongst lesbians in my day.
― nickn, Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:22 (four years ago) link
Jai Alai is the official sport of genderqueer
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:29 (four years ago) link
we need to dig deeper into this, for example, what is the lesbian board game of choice?
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:31 (four years ago) link
Sorry. Oh wait, that's Canadians.
― nickn, Wednesday, 18 December 2019 21:33 (four years ago) link