Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

re: close. i'm probably not going to watch it, but it's good to read about... i do have some thoughts

one of the ongoing challenges i have w/r/t trans media representation is the way our experiences are so often framed around _trauma_. and yes, to be queer does mean experiencing trauma, unfortunately. it's unavoidable. so often though it seems like our lives are _defined_ by it, like we don't ever get a break from it to just be _happy_.

and honestly that's kind of the impression i get from "close", you have a nice sweet story about two boys trying to navigate their feelings towards each other but NOPE queer people can't have nice things. i'm sure it's a story worth telling but i _certainly_ would not appreciate having that sort of bait and switch pulled onme. i feel like it's emotionally manipulative to dump that trauma on is in the middle of the film with no warning.

i don't know how much, if any, of this has to do with "masculinity" per se but i think it's an important topic.

I also thought the first part was visually gorgeous and the boyish intimacy carefully depicted, and the second part not exactly mishandled but drifting and less interesting. The film lacks a narrative device / force beyond what happens in the middle. Although, the way I saw it, the certain thing acted more like a revelator and early propeller into adulthood. I didn't find the dwelling on trauma melodramatic, it felt realistic enough, and the link with queerness remains open until the end iirc. It's more about facing death, guilt, and the social commentary on school harassment which circles back to gayness.

This conversation reminded me of my main boyish friendship in secondary school (early junior high), where said best friend abruptly and inexplicably rejected me from one day to the next, for about a year before he semi-apologized. It wasn't the same though, and I guess I still felt a ping of treason. Incidentally, that's pretty much the year where I found social refuge online. I had never thought of the possibility it could be related to outside perception around sexuality - I have no evidence if it was (no Close-ish intimacy or anything). Incidentally, we did find each other and became best friends again in university, and I was very surprised one day when he told me other people thought we were gay from always hanging out together / being both single (he said he wasn't surprised).

Also don't know how much that has to do with masculinity :)

i'm so sorry, table. my feeling is that relationships of all kinds tend to be very unstable at the onset of adolescence, but especially "best friends". just because it's really hard to be so close to someone at a moment when you and they are rejecting long held assumptions about yourselves and everything else, and need the freedom and space to break away from designated identities. i think this is regardless of sexuality, or bullying, but obviously those things are catalysts. there's almost an inevitability of friendships breaking up because someone who is struggling to be liberated from themselves needs to show how your understanding of them is unreliable, and that is hurtful so there's a lot of guilt that goes with being the one who changed first... but then the other person needs to go through something similar in short order.

thanks for clarifying all that so patiently, kate. it must be exhausting to constantly correct the kind of ignorant misconceptions that could probably be avoided with a little empathy and a little thought. it's logical enough that the realities are more complex. i'm sorry for having oversimplified and misrepresented your experience and others'.

"do i want to be her, or do i want to be _with_ her?" (to which the answer is, frequently, "why not both?

haha otm <3

sorry for the hurried & awkwardly worded post^ hopefully the intent is clear enough but idk

i suppose it's extremely common for 12-13 year olds to be living with a heightened burden of shame for various reasons, that include peer pressure and cultural expectations... and it's common for that burden to provoke drastic reactions like tearing yourself down or trying to escape yourself...

and honestly that's kind of the impression i get from "close", you have a nice sweet story about two boys trying to navigate their feelings towards each other but NOPE queer people can't have nice things. i'm sure it's a story worth telling but i _certainly_ would not appreciate having that sort of bait and switch pulled onme. i feel like it's emotionally manipulative to dump that trauma on is in the middle of the film with no warning.

Great discussion. Table, I teared up reading your post. The same thing happened to a close friend albeit when he and his pal ghosted him cruelly and suddenly.

*albeit when they were older

i’m sorry to hear about that, Alfred—

and also, kate, thanks for your note of support. i know that something i did to him when i was 13 probably didn’t cause my former friend’s death last year, but i still wish i could apologize— and perhaps that’s another reason why this film so resonated with me, because i want to apologize to him, but also want an apology from so many people. friends, parents, the world at large— so many of us were robbed of years of being our true selves and engaging in proper social relationships because of homophobia and transphobia and prohibitions on homosociality.

i also know that this apology probably isn’t coming from many of these people or societal forces, so what i can do is move forward and try to be as kind as i can to people— to not allow the masculine urge toward dominance and brutality to take over my person.

the film just also brought home that a lot of us, no matter our gender or orientation, deserved a lot more kindness and tenderness when we were younger.

table - fair! i do have a tendency to project my own experiences on things that have nothing to do with me... it's something i'm working on... thanks for calling me on it!

thanks for clarifying all that so patiently, kate. it must be exhausting to constantly correct the kind of ignorant misconceptions that could probably be avoided with a little empathy and a little thought. it's logical enough that the realities are more complex. i'm sorry for having oversimplified and misrepresented your experience and others'.

― Deflatormouse

it's the opposite, actually! it feels really good to be able to talk about some of this stuff. it's very rare that i, honestly, am able to trust a cis guy enough to be able to open up about this stuff, and i'm super glad that your vulnerability and insight into yourself gave me the opportunity to do that.

that, _that_, is the key thing about masculinity, it's that it's _ok_ to not be right, it's _ok_ to have misconceptions. if a guy can challenge or question what masculinity is _supposed_ to be, then he can open himself to other perspectives.

as much as it's frustrating to have to ask why it's so hard for men, in fact, i feel like i have some idea. it's a very lonely thing to do. masculinist orthodoxy is fucked up and destructive, both to men and to everyone around them, and a lot of guys know that. i know a lot of guys do. if men try to hold other men accountable for their toxic bullshit, though... what happens isn't that the people spouting the toxic bullshit will just be like "gee, i never thought about it that way, maybe you're right". no, what happens is the man questioning the orthodoxy gets ostracized as unmanly and probably homosexual. i do think there was also this time, when i was younger, when there was a lot of pressure on queer men to _not_ seem unmanly, to prove that they could be just like any other man.

what i've been seeing in the last couple of years is that a lot of gay men seem to be moving away from normative masculinity, and i'm happy about that. i think there's a certain amount of pressure, not intentional, coming from trans culture that, like, if you're not going to be "manly", why even bother being a man? and i kind of went through a phase where i was exerting that pressure, i think, because i wasn't really confident in myself, in who i was. i have a lot less distrust of cis gay men than i used to. and i think a lot of that distrust is that men who conform to masculinist stereotypes do, i think, get at least some of the benefits of patriarchy, whereas the rest of us tend not to. and i don't think that's necessarily a choice men make, but it was still easy for me to resent and distrust other queer people who had opportunities i didn't.

from my perspective there is a challenge of manhood, in that there is this very strict binary concept of what's permissible. do not conform to that standard means complete ostracism from the community of men, but at the same time, men don't have the role models or the skills to engage in healthy community. it's something i've struggled with, learning those skills, and i've had a _strong_ incentive to do so. like a lot of "male privilege" is really the privilege to not _have_ to grow, to not _have_ to change, to stay miserable. my experience living among men was one of _profound_ emotional desolation. this burden of emotional labor, a lot of it is that men just... don't know how to take care of themselves emotionally. don't know how to honor or express their emotions.

it's not a new idea. i was watching this 1943 disney propaganda film called "emotion and reason", or "reason and emotion", something like that, and wow, it was awful. i mean, it was 1943 disney, the animation was great, but the actual beliefs it was promoting were hot fucking garbage. i'm just not sure you'd find people making such a bald-facedly terrible argument today. so i don't know. maybe men in 1943 were more fucked up than they are now. i wasn't around then! all i know is that i'm really sympathetic towards men. they have a really fucking hard time of it and not a lot of really good options. i've been there. not only have i been there, i went along with ideological norms that were fucking killing me because, well, because it was the best alternative i had at the time.

anyway that's kind of a long ramble and i'm not sure it makes sense.

as much as it's frustrating to have to ask why it's so hard for men, in fact, i feel like i have some idea. it's a very lonely thing to do. masculinist orthodoxy is fucked up and destructive, both to men and to everyone around them, and a lot of guys know that. i know a lot of guys do. if men try to hold other men accountable for their toxic bullshit, though... what happens isn't that the people spouting the toxic bullshit will just be like "gee, i never thought about it that way, maybe you're right". no, what happens is the man questioning the orthodoxy gets ostracized as unmanly and probably homosexual...

from my perspective there is a challenge of manhood, in that there is this very strict binary concept of what's permissible. do not conform to that standard means complete ostracism from the community of men, but at the same time, men don't have the role models or the skills to engage in healthy community.

This is simply not as universal a condition as you have repeatedly claimed, in this thread and others. Look, I have worked in an auto parts warehouse. I have loaded and unloaded trucks on the 3-8 AM shift for UPS. I have been the editor of a porn magazine. I have been going to metal concerts since the mid '80s. In other words, I have been around a lot of dudes for most of my adult life, and the social dynamic you are describing is unrecognizable to me. Have I occasionally encountered men who acted like Andrew "Dice" Clay but weren't kidding? Sure. But the rest of us laughed at them and said, "Cut that bullshit out" and went back to talking favorably about our wives, or about movies, or sports (conversations I ducked out of because I didn't follow sports, but — amazing as it may seem — nobody gave a shit).

They may not always do so, but straight men are perfectly capable of engaging in healthy social relationships. The internet would have us believe otherwise, of course, but/because the internet is the worst mental poison ever invented by man. I'm not saying all analysis of male trauma is false, mind you, I just think the catastrophizing rhetoric needs to be dialed back a little.

unperson, pretty much all of the spaces you mention are coded as "straight."

that you mention "wives" in your post is revealing, too.

this is just to say: i know you don't like me, but want to gently suggest that perhaps your experience has been as it has because you are the "norm" which you say isn't as bad as some of us who aren't the "norm" make it out to be.

unperson, pretty much all of the spaces you mention are coded as "straight."

kate's whole post read to me as being about the hostility and loneliness she perceives in straight male social spaces, which as someone who has experienced those spaces for 50 years (and also experienced less overtly straight spaces, like working in a bookstore with a bunch of women and gay dudes) feels off. And not to be overly crude or essentializing, but I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood? Like, to quote Suicidal Tendencies, "if you're not now, you never were."

perhaps your experience has been as it has because you are the "norm" which you say isn't as bad as some of us who aren't the "norm" make it out to be

I have definitely been the "odd man out" in plenty of situations, like being the only person in the aforementioned auto parts warehouse reading a book of poetry at lunchtime. But I was not cast out for it! Which is all I'm saying, is that straight male society is not as closed-off or hostile as kate is painting it.

sure but do you think people might have reacted differently if, idk, you wore eyeshadow and lipstick as well as read poetry?

it is true that most (all?) of the biggest/male-presenting/"macho" dudes I consider friends around town are also some of the the most vocal allies of less privileged folks, but that's partly just the world I live in

^^^ same

forgot to add "straight" there but I hope that was obvious

My three best male friends are straight dudes for whom it wouldn't occur to them to leer at women, say gross shit, etc. on their own -- and one of them is single and promiscuous.

This film may be discussed elsewhere on the thread (not going to reload it all to check), but I think Everybody Wants Some paints a relatively attractive picture of an all-male community — the college baseball team. There's a certain amount of macho bullshit, but much of it is knowing or joking, and there's also genuine camaraderie and allowance for people to kind of go their own way (within some obvious limits). I thought of it in relation to this thread, because my wife said it was the first movie or depiction of male spaces and relationships that she found appealing rather than off-putting — it gave her a sense of what it can mean to be "one of the guys."

i don't want to generalize but that's also true for me and the guys i've known who have turned toxic have been those who were lacking in confidence among other men, and deeply damaged in some fundamental way (my sense, not my firsthand knowledge), and who found their fake-ass sense of confidence and superiority thru the usual channels of lashing out at easy targets. and i find a lot of the well-known supposedly masculine man's man types who are leading the charge from the right to be almost campy and larpy in their sense of self. i don't mean campy in the gay sense, but a sort of false front of identity sense.

this is all my very small sample size. i also live in L.A., which is a vv different environment.

lol i fuckin give up. this “not all straight dudes” shit is so fucking worn out.

of course there are plenty of wonderful and amazing straight cis dudes, but the consistency and volume of the denial of the lived experiences of queer and trans people in favor of advocating for the nobility of straight manhood is fucking insane

i find a lot of the well-known supposedly masculine man's man types who are leading the charge from the right to be almost campy and larpy in their sense of self.

Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson to thread.

And not to be overly crude or essentializing, but I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood? Like, to quote Suicidal Tendencies, "if you're not now, you never were."

are you kidding with this shit??

he consistency and volume of the denial of the lived experiences of queer and trans people in favor of advocating for the nobility of straight manhood is fucking insane

In this thread?

from unperson, yeah

Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson to thread.

And Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk etc — not strong models of masculinity by anybody's definition. I guess Rogan is pretty conventionally macho, but mostly it's a bunch of bookish dweebs. (Nothing against bookish dweebs, they are my people.)

idk I don't associate any of the positive behavior I mention with any sort of "nobility of straight manhood"

multi-xps -- do you think people might have reacted differently if, idk, you wore eyeshadow and lipstick as well as read poetry?

badly phrased question there. bcz of the way human brains work, everyone reacts differently to that which falls outside norms compared to that which falls within them. its just a matter of our constantly looking for patterns and judging if they constitute threats or opportunities.

irl what matters is not that eyeshadow and lipstick would elicit different reactions. that's a given. what matters is the reaction itself, which will be conditioned on a very large set of past experiences that will differ for each person doing the reacting. I recognize that statistically speaking, the eyeshadow and lipstick would be more likely to elicit negative reactions than simply reading poetry. I think unperson is just asking us to recognize that statistics are always backward-looking and have inherent predictive limits. iow, taking the position that "straight male society is not as closed-off or hostile as kate is painting it."

in addition, I recognize that personal experience, as filtered through one's emotional history, provides a level of personal truth that may not exactly reflect the broadest universe of facts, but has equally just claims to be truth, so that kate's view of straight male society is not an untrue version. it is a complete and verifiable truth in itself.

It's not that Straight Male Society is hostile: it's that Straight Male Society so often refuses to engage in terms other than itself.

agree w/that Alfred

right. what unperson explicitly said was that he doesn't experience straight male spaces as hostile or lonely. because it's about his specific experience as a straight cis dude, to me it doesn't make sense to ask "what about eyeshadow, what about..."

you know? because nobody is denying that those forms of violence / exclusion don't exist. but i think it's fine for a guy to express that he doesn't mind guy spaces on a a guy thread. we can have lots of criticism of heteronormativity without having to pretend like everyone experiences it the same way.

and yet somehow the queer people’s experiences of heteronormativity keep getting negged by straight people in this thread

hey guys I don’t experience racism as a white person, let’s talk about that

i don't want to generalize but that's also true for me and the guys i've known who have turned toxic have been those who were lacking in confidence among other men, and deeply damaged in some fundamental way (my sense, not my firsthand knowledge), and who found their fake-ass sense of confidence and superiority thru the usual channels of lashing out at easy targets. and i find a lot of the well-known supposedly masculine man's man types who are leading the charge from the right to be almost campy and larpy in their sense of self. i don't mean campy in the gay sense, but a sort of false front of identity sense.

This is exactly right. They're fake men.

the consistency and volume of the denial of the lived experiences of queer and trans people in favor of advocating for the nobility of straight manhood is fucking insane

That's not what I'm saying. I was addressing one specific post from kate which was to my mind projecting an outsider's view of "what straight men are like"/"what straight manhood is like" — I found it to be a very negative framing, so I responded. She wasn't saying "straight men are mean to women and trans people and queers," she was saying "straight men are mean to each other," and I simply haven't found that to be the case. That's all. But if you want to carry on with your own "denial of the lived experiences" of straight dudes, have at it.

Oh, cool, gyac's here. Bye-bye!

I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood?

just think about what you’re saying here for a minute. “i don’t know if I fully trust a block person’s perspective on white America”. “i don’t know if i fully trust a gay woman’s perspective on straight women” etc. Why not? It’s different from yours, sure. What’s “untrustworthy” about this viewpoint ? That it sees things through a different lens? And?

It’s a really interesting series of posts from table and I’m genuinely not understanding what the difficulty is in parsing that straight male spaces are often exclusionary to those who either fall outside or are perceived to fall outside either category. What exactly are people saying “well IIIIIIII and my friends aren’t like that” think that they are saying here?

Why bring Barry into it

very true, he would never

the rushomancy post that unperson was responding to seemed to make a lot of assumptions about what unhealthy masculinity entailed. for instance that it was about being emotionally closed off. it seemed to assume that this was both a fact and that it was the 'wrong' way for any human to be. I don't agree with either premise.

just think about what you’re saying here for a minute. “i don’t know if I fully trust a block person’s perspective on white America”. “i don’t know if i fully trust a gay woman’s perspective on straight women” etc. Why not? It’s different from yours, sure. What’s “untrustworthy” about this viewpoint ? That it sees things through a different lens? And?

An outsider sees things about a group that those inside it may or may not see, and can offer a "have you thought about this?" that can be quite valuable. But because they are outsiders, they also cannot see certain things. So their perspective is...get ready...not 100% trustworthy. Because it's incomplete. Outsiders often think — and claim — that they see members of a group better than those members see themselves. It's flattering to think so, but it's not always the case. The outsider perspective is frequently reductive, even when it's not rooted in grievance.

It’s a really interesting series of posts from table and I’m genuinely not understanding what the difficulty is in parsing that straight male spaces are often exclusionary to those who either fall outside or are perceived to fall outside either category. What exactly are people saying “well IIIIIIII and my friends aren’t like that” think that they are saying here?

― ydkb (gyac),

The discussion's fine, and as a gay man I like to hear about the experiences of straight men in this climate; sleeve and tipsy didn't offend me. We're having a conversation.

It's a problem when examples and anecdata become totalizing experiences.

I’m genuinely not understanding what the difficulty is in parsing that straight male spaces are often exclusionary to those who either fall outside or are perceived to fall outside either category.

Nobody's having any difficulty understanding that. But that's not what we're talking about right this second.

ty Alfred, also sure I present straight but am actually not fwiw

lol unperson so your perspective as a straight dude is "complete"? I'm not sure how it ever could be when you dismiss other people so easily

just a tip, whenever you start a sentence "Not to be (x)" you are in fact being (x) so you should have a lil' think before continuing down that road

ty Alfred, also sure I present straight but am actually not fwiw

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve),

I am so sorry.

Oh I didn't in any way mean to suggest those spaces can't be both warm/friendly (if you ARE one of the guys) and exclusionary (if you aren't) at the same time. Of course they can and are — country clubs are the same way! Also fwiw my experience of male spaces growing up as a straight cis male was deeply variable, I have definitely experienced plenty of aggressive male bullshit and there are many varieties of men I have no interest in spending any time with. I'm a weirdo and mostly bonded with other weirdos, male or female.

lol unperson so your perspective as a straight dude is "complete"? I'm not sure how it ever could be when you dismiss other people so easily

No, of course not. Standing where I am, I see things you can't see. Standing where you are, you see things I can't see. What part of that is unclear? Take a step to the left or right, maybe it'll help.

just a tip, whenever you start a sentence "Not to be (x)" you are in fact being (x) so you should have a lil' think before continuing down that road

Thanks; professional writer for more than 25 years, when I do things I do them on purpose. It was a rhetorical flourish.