Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

tipsy's experience sounds very similar to mine except my dad is an extroverted ex-beatnik turned liberal capitalist

Definitely some of those in my parents' social circles.

US aggro fundieism is so alien to me that i wouldn't presume to think about it, but i've got enough experience of my own upbringing to believe that a lot of the church stuff is a secondary excuse to cover reactionary politics in a way that feels honourable and socially normie?

i definitely knew what not to do and say when i had kids though. all that stuff my dad said that made me cringe. oof. (though i make them cringe in my own special 21st dumb dad ways.)

to be fair, and somewhat strangely, i don't remember any racism coming from him. though he does say he'll treat us to dinner at the Chinaman's restaurant sometimes...

and he's completely xenophobic in a generic way in that he distrusts travel to other countries and doesn't understand why anyone would go to another country and needless to say he has never been to another country. but there isn't a specific people that he is afraid of. he is leery of "exotic" food.

but other than that...

and i did grow up in a house where i ONLY heard people of color blasting from his stereo unless he was playing one of the beloved white big bands of his youth. so, hats off to dad for that. black art was alive and well at our house. that was the foundation of my music love.

"21st century"

My parents didn't have porn but they left The Joy of Sex and Our Bodies Ourselves in the family bookcase, correctly assuming we would avail ourselves.

My parents had a copy of How Babies Are Made which I read — or had read to me, I can't remember now — as a kid, and years later I found a copy of Andrea Dworkin's Pornography on the main living room bookshelf (right next to a novel called Mom Kills Kids And Self; I think my mom may have been Going Through Some Shit), and since our house had an "if you can reach it, you can read it" policy, I read a bunch of it and became somewhat confused about what constituted sex and what constituted pornography (I remember a lot of excerpts from Bataille's The Story of the Eye were in there). Some years later, my dad caught me watching porn on VHS late at night and his response was to tell me, basically, "You know, that's not what real life is like. Women won't just have sex with you, just like that." He also told me that there was no reason to ever sexually assault someone, because you could always just jerk off.

"He also told me that there was no reason to ever sexually assault someone, because you could always just jerk off."

words to live by!

they should embroider that on the american flag.

my parents didn't care what i read. i read their copies of breakfast of champions and fear of flying when i was a kid. i don't think they really paid any attention to what i did though. so, books weren't going to be a problem.

one of my kids actually brought that up not that long ago. that we didn't care what they read or what movies they saw and that their friends had much stricter parents when it came to that stuff. i had no idea. apparently i didn't care what my kids did either. just like mom & dad!

there is a thread for everything these days:

Movies My Dad Took Me To When I Was A Kid - The Poll!

My parents got divorced when I was 11 or 12, so my dad took my brother and me to see so much inappropriate shit — Walter Hill's Extreme Prejudice, the 3D horror movie Parasite (my brother and I were so scared we actually left after the titular alien slug burst out of someone's face and shot right at the camera; my dad was laughing all the way to the car), Surf Nazis Must Die and Near Dark and Prince of Darkness back to back to back at a theater that never threw anybody out, The Road Warrior, so many more. Even before my parents split up, I remember them taking us to a drive-in for Up In Smoke, with Reefer Madness running before it.

Unitarian sex ed in my youth (circa 1982) was so frank that it was, in fact, pornographic.

My Unitarian Sunday school class got to vote on what movie to go see as our last outing. There was one vote for Terms of Endearment and ten votes for Risky Business. We went to see Risky Business, and got ice cream afterwards.

"You know, that's not what real life is like."

I got this talk but not after seeing porn, it was after a somewhat awkward family viewing of The Man Who Fell to Earth with the whole gun-as-sex-toy scene. The movie did not, thankfully, fuel a firearms fetish for me.

That Washington Post article is very frustrating. I realize part of this was quoted above already, and I'm at least partially repeating other posters' sentiments, but I want to get this off my chest. The crux of it all is here:

There is something appealing, too, in the idea of gender neutrality — or at least rejecting gender essentialism — as a social ethos. After all, attaching specific traits to men will redound to women, too. If we say “real” men are strong, does that mean real women must be weak? If men are leaders, are women destined to follow?

I’m convinced that men are in a crisis. And I strongly suspect that ending it will require a positive vision of what masculinity entails that is particular — that is, neither neutral nor interchangeable with femininity. Still, I find myself reluctant to fully articulate one.

This gets perilously close to acknowledging the central problem: a "vision of what masculinity entails" that is

1. An aspirational model, rather than just a neutral description of what men are generally like
2. Particular to men, i.e. not just a collection of positive traits that women can have too
3. Not sexist against women, implicitly or otherwise

...is impossible. I don't mean that it's too politically sensitive to be feasible--I mean literally, conceptually impossible.

What people like Emba are saying (maybe without realizing it) is that if we don't give men a social script that presents them as naturally superior to women in some way just by virtue of being male, then a crisis-level number of them will drop out of society, lash out violently, or kill themselves. And I wish they would just accept that they believe this, admit it, and defend it, rather than dancing around it at excruciating length.

good discussion upthread.

i had weird views of sex, myself, as my folks simultaneously felt that sex ed should be up to the parents (though they didn't stop me from learning it in school), while also bristling at the idea of doing it.

so one day, my friend David tells me how sex works and they found out, and thought they had just gotten out of having to do the uncomfortable job.

so my dad brings me into his room and said "so David told you, huh?", and i say yes, and he asks "he tell you what goes where?" and I nodded, and he said "ok cool".

problem is David had told me that pregnancy occurs when a man sticks his finger in a woman's vagina

THEN wound up in a fundie church which basically said sex was worse than murder so I was prepared to be a virgin until age 33, and felt scared of ever having it to the point where the first time I did have it it was hilariously bad

What people like Emba are saying (maybe without realizing it) is that if we don't give men a social script that presents them as naturally superior to women in some way just by virtue of being male, then a crisis-level number of them will drop out of society, lash out violently, or kill themselves.

I think what Emba is talking about is a vision of masculinity that isn't "superior" to anything, just healthy on its own. But I agree with you that (as I said somewhere above) this kind of talk very easily slides into "well actually we WANT men to be strong silent resilient types!" or other similar clearly destructive stereotypes.

I mean, we're not going to have a revolution and all stop thinking about being "men" and "women" all at once, what we're working on is an evolution, right? Expanding the boundaries of what both of those things can mean, and who can belong to them. And also — as our nonbinary friends remind us — understanding that you don't have to belong to either of them. But as long as we have a social/cultural category called "male," then it's worth talking and thinking about how to make that category as broad and healthy as possible.

I mean, we're not going to have a revolution and all stop thinking about being "men" and "women" all at once

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

wait we're not? that's what it says on my copy of the Trans Agenda. yep. item 4A. Abolish gender. Right after "attack and dethrone God".

Oh. Wait. Wait. No, you're right, that's the old version. Let me see, I have a huge pile of unopened mail on my coffee table (yay ADHD)... oh, right. Here it is. "Replace gender with Pokemon". Well that's all right then.

I mean, we're not going to have a revolution and all stop thinking about being "men" and "women" all at once, what we're working on is an evolution, right? Expanding the boundaries of what both of those things can mean, and who can belong to them. And also — as our nonbinary friends remind us — understanding that you don't have to belong to either of them. But as long as we have a social/cultural category called "male," then it's worth talking and thinking about how to make that category as broad and healthy as possible.

I have days where I think a lot of people who are ready and willing to talk about the shittiness of men at a moment's notice don't actually want to find solutions, because having an enemy is more useful to them. Like how charities set up to battle this or that disease never actually eradicate the disease, because if they do, how do you justify the CEO's salary? And "evolution" (like "raising awareness") is very useful from that standpoint.

I have days where I think a lot of people who are ready and willing to talk about the shittiness of men at a moment's notice don't actually want to find solutions, because having an enemy is more useful to them. Like how charities set up to battle this or that disease never actually eradicate the disease, because if they do, how do you justify the CEO's salary? And "evolution" (like "raising awareness") is very useful from that standpoint.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

when i talk about the shittiness of toxic (which is to say normative) masculinity, i'm not _trying_ to find solutions. i'm bitching about the way guys who follow western masculine norms keep making themselves and the rest of us miserable. it's really fucking exhausting to deal with.

the solution is abolishing capitalism. obviously. it's something the Trans Agenda is working on (item 5C) but we're having a hell of a time getting funding.

xxp lol.

one thing kate said upthread that's been stuck in my head is that so much of masculinity is "wanting to stick one's dick in someone". i feel like being hung up on that desire and having it be sublimated in all the wrong places is what masculinty is. penetrative desire that's "put in the wrong place" so to speak. i think penetration can be really awesome, of course you have to do it with someone who wants to be penetrated. go hog wild, explore it, take it to the max. it can get boring if your imagination and sensitivity aren't brought in for the ride. being the aggressive one doesn't mean the rest of yourself gets disconnected. i approach it as - mascuilinity is a fun and exciting "tool in my toolbelt" haha, it gets to be used in contexts where it's desired, where it can bring some healing through that lens, but to make it some kind of overarching code or identity that dictates the angle and frame of all of your relations, hobbies, attitudes, etc, is to, at the bare minimum, lose out on the richness of life, and potentially risk losing your soul entirely imho.

1. An aspirational model, rather than just a neutral description of what men are generally like
2. Particular to men, i.e. not just a collection of positive traits that women can have too
3. Not sexist against women, implicitly or otherwise

...is impossible. I don't mean that it's too politically sensitive to be feasible--I mean literally, conceptually impossible.

Truth bomb.

Any model of masculinity that you might draft on a "not superior but healthy on its own" basis will inevitably include characteristics that women and non binary ppl exhibit too. It's a dead end.

map so otm in this thread!

Any model of masculinity that you might draft on a "not superior but healthy on its own" basis will inevitably include characteristics that women and non binary ppl exhibit too. It's a dead end.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, July 12, 2023 11:43 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

to this point, i think seeing masculinty as a social force that anyone can draw upon instead of a rigid identity is very helpful.

otm

you guys are nice. just putting down random stuff. this whole discussion and everyone's contributions have been great and have really had me thinking about this over the last few days, more than i usually do haha.

and ftr i'm always fascinated and frequently entertained and enlightened by kate's posts - super glad she's posting to this thread - & i largely agree with her about capitalism being the bigger problem behind mascuilinty and rigid gender prescription in general.

map non-str8 fire beautiful post about toolbelts above

being a man is about having a toolbelt, qed

Any model of masculinity that you might draft on a "not superior but healthy on its own" basis will inevitably include characteristics that women and non binary ppl exhibit too. It's a dead end.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 12 July 2023 22:43 (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

daniel a stór, this post is a dead end!

like in context i feel like in order to make this your central point towards the discussion and really mean it, you'd have to go into any other thread you want to contribute to and assert a need to exclude all efforts to define anything across all categories, ever

we are, on this board especially, starting from a place where the terms involved skew negative for most of the people who are going to contribute, imo, but have there not been some great glimmers and glimpses in the past few days alone that at least show great value in attempts to find wider definitions as individuals, if nothing else?

the world corrupts everything, after all, and has done before any of us ever arrived- or allow some positive efforts that would seem like starting points for doing good, imo

at least in a thread reasonably defined and dedicated to such a cause, i feel like the urge to consistently chime in- across so many contributors- to say "masculinity is bad, don't forget" really disappointing (in the softest way of how you can imagine my saying it, honestly).

in a discussion that can be anything, can we not demand absolutes or narrowing of how people siscuss this as a basis for our own participation, however implicitly or softly?

if nothing else.....its a toxic masculine trait imo 🤗

or allow some positive efforts that would seem like starting points for doing good, imo

ignore this half fragment mess or swap -or- for -perhaps we can- or enjoy it as a garbled impassioned plea if u like

one thing kate said upthread that's been stuck in my head is that so much of masculinity is "wanting to stick one's dick in someone".

― ꙮ (map)

booming post, loving your contributions here

ok i'm gonna get into the weird shit here. the following is _very_ nsfw so, you know, be advised.

one of the things that i could never quite figure out is that i never wanted to stick my dick in _anybody_. i did do it, i felt like it was important and god dammit, i was going to keep trying it until i figured out how to like it. i mean hell, it worked with _trout mask replica_. unfortunately, it turns out that trout mask replica is a hell of a lot easier to understand than my dick. physically sex felt good and all, but at the same time it just felt _wrong_ and i kind of hated it, and i didn't have any idea why.

so anyway, i get grs, and i'm _terrified_, by the way, scariest damn thing i've ever done is get my dick cut off, and it turns out it's great, i wake up and i'm just "ohhh, _this_ is how it was supposed to feel all along". i had no idea i had genital dysphoria until suddenly i didn't anymore.

so, ok, here's the weird thing, turns out i really like topping with a strap-on. idk, i wasn't expecting it either! i like penetrating, i like pelvic thrusts. it's fun, it feels good, and honestly, for me there's nothing "masculine" about it.

everybody's different, mind you, different people will view it differently. same way, my lack of desire for penetrating people with my factory equipment, a lot of trans women like that stuff just fine. i'm just talking about me here. you can enjoy penetrating orifices without having to be a man.

the strap on gives more of a Doc at the Radar Station vibe

i'm not bad, i'm just ge-net-ic-ally mean

funny, back before "cis" was coined, people would sometimes use the word "genetic" to mean approximately the same thing. they had buttons, i don't know who, the transsexual menace or somebody, that said "better dead than genetic".

I have days where I think a lot of people who are ready and willing to talk about the shittiness of men at a moment's notice don't actually want to find solutions, because having an enemy is more useful to them. Like how charities set up to battle this or that disease never actually eradicate the disease, because if they do, how do you justify the CEO's salary? And "evolution" (like "raising awareness") is very useful from that standpoint.

Trying to understand who men's shittiness would be useful to and for what, in this analogy. "Evolution" is just a description of what's happened to our concept of gender in the last few centuries, what's continuing to happen. It has changed, it has adapted to changing economic and cultural circumstances, we have adapted it. That evolution could point to some eventual genderless future, where the concept doesn't really register, but clearly that's not the phase we're in now. A lot of people (in society, not itt) are having trouble just adjusting to the idea of gender fluidity, we're a long way from gender abolition. (Not saying that gender abolition isn't a worthwhile goal or idea, but I mean ... this whole thread is specifically about ideas of masculinity and male-ness.)

Anyway on a quasi-related note this thread and the comments are interesting. (Ties into expectations of masculine vs. feminine roles in a household.)

I’m a feminist.

And somehow, by virtue of being married to a cis-het man in this society, I’ve still managed to end up with an unfair physical and mental load and it’s unfair. And I don’t know how to undo it and we don’t talk about that enough.

— The Madwoman in the Classroom (@heymrsbond) July 12, 2023

booming post, loving your contributions here

+1

darra, I don't know if I've fully grasped your post tbh, but I think the thing about a definition of masculinity is that it matters imensely to so many people's self-image, so we're not in the realm of philosophical pedantry: whatever norms you set up will be something that, if it were to suceed, some would grasp towards and others would avoid based on their identity. And not being accepted because you fall outside of a set of parameters or, conversely, being excluded because you're living up to them when that is not supposed to be your identity hurts. I speak from experience here.

I don't think I have any qualms in saying that yes I think masculinity is bad, so's femininity, so's the whole shebang of gender expectations. That doesn't to me mean men are bad or that masculine traits are always bad.

I'll admit that yes my stance is also a dead end to some extent on this thread, I just feel a bit alienated by how important it seems to so many ppl to either rescue masculinity or be stuck in a feedback loop of denouncing it when I think we could be moving on. Map's post of masculinity as an energy that anyone could employ situationally is interesting in this context imo.

im not sure anyone is arguing for norms (norm's?)

otherwise all good and agreed 👍

This is such a great thread. Not to say that we're not all implicated and dealing with it to some degree or another, but it's interesting to see this being argued (formulated? codified?) at a relatively abstract level. I work in a school with 11-16yr olds and am seeing it acted out daily; where it feels more lived than known if that makes sense.

Obviously, school is a brutal environment; often I'm just looking for simple ways to talk about this stuff that doesn't alienate and exclude.

Anyway, my main contribution is to say keep talking please.

To clarify: I try to find ways to work with the 'known' part of that formula, or to institute it, which is difficult to impossible when there's no shared language or conceptual framework as such, or when the conceptual framework has already been hijacked by fuckwits like Tate and Rogan.

Norms

https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/44/66/2043153462-norm-peterson.jpg

surely we could unhook, at least partially, a set of codes and behaviours from sex assignment.. i mean, plenty of gay and trans people already have, eg maybe we don't talk about "masculinity" but people being "butch"

personally i am really into certain aspects of butchness.. also super into certain aspects of femmeness, and i wouldn't want to lose the delight and deliciousness of either one

that said these are not just clothes you can put on and take off - there's something else going on here, right?

it is interesting to me - and i think i've mentioned this on one of the trans threads - and kate i'd be v interested in your take, and many of youse others too - how on the one hand it seems pretty clear that normative ideas of manly or womanly attributes are deeply problematic and often repressive or at the very least limiting, and on the other hand the vast majority of people - including many (most?) trans people - feel that deep down they ARE either one or the other, that there is an essential core of man-ness or woman-ness upon which their gender identities are built. all of us are probably good anti-essentialists and judith butlerians, so how do these things square?

Very good question Tracer, I have no answer but am also interested in what others think. Personally I don't think I do have that "deep down feeling", I don't feel trans or non binary but also don't see my cis masculinity as anything deeper than, like, historical contingency. But clearly a lot of ppl, cis and trans, do.

Ngl, I also have wondered about this question quite a lot, and often feel stupid and bad for doing so. If being against gender essentialism implicitly means that gender and its signs are socially and politically constructed, sure— I agree. But does this mean that being a man or a woman is just a vibe, and that gender dysphoria and dysmorphia are aberrations? I certainly don’t think so, but then that leads me back to questions about binary thinking, gender spectrums, and how in many cases, where one falls on the spectrum is ever in flux, mutable, and that the option to move however one wants along that spectrum should be enshrined as a basic human right.

right, that's the contradiction i keep returning to, that if gender is constructed, a performance we learn, how on earth to explain the trans experience which in many cases starts extremely young and feels rooted in something quite... dare i say.... essential??

toolbelts available to all imo

on the one hand it seems pretty clear that normative ideas of manly or womanly attributes are deeply problematic and often repressive or at the very least limiting, and on the other hand the vast majority of people - including many (most?) trans people - feel that deep down they ARE either one or the other

otm I think this is an excellent distillation of some underlying conundrums in this whole discourse.

Personally I don't think I do have that "deep down feeling", I don't feel trans or non binary but also don't see my cis masculinity as anything deeper than, like, historical contingency. But clearly a lot of ppl, cis and trans, do.

I more or less feel this, but then I wonder to what degree feeling that is also a function of privilege — to not feel particularly wedded to or defined by one’s gender is surely easier if you happen to be straight cis male.