Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

"vain and joyless" is not a weird combination at all!

it's v funny to go through both times it was posted and have multiple posters find aspects resonant and others insist it's bullshit. OK!

Here, as elsewhere, ethics is a zero-sum game. Always has been, always will be, n'est-ce pas?

part of a response from the other thread

i've never felt at home in my body either but that's my issue and it does nothing to change the fact that the world i live in has long been built around making white cishet people like me as safe and comfortable as possible to the detriment of everyone else

When I was volunteering for a mental health crisis line in another city, it was hard not to notice that relatively few young men called in, to the extent that when one did you kind of instantly perk up and wait to hear something out of the ordinary, or even anticipate that they might be a prank caller, which did happen from time to time. And I have to admit that sometimes I had to battle my own inclination to think of their problems as more trivial than other demographics' in order to do the gig effectively.

I think about that when I read responses like bg's here. "other people have it harder, the world was made for and by your people, you're losing life at the lowest difficulty level" etc type shit is not persuasive and not helpful and yes smacks to me of macho bullshit in its own way

you can't grapple with maleness and masculinity if you don't provide room for male angst, male-dominated spaces, and male-dominated discussions

maybe not weird definitely bad though xp.

men could stand to show themselves a little more love and kindness tbr

on that I have no disagreement, the q is how to foster that effectively. I don't have an answer to that besides the fact that the sneering dismissal you see too often from people for whom these issues (supposedly) don't arise for them *as individuals* is deeply tiresome and depressing

yeah i agree with that

crut, I am not exactly seeing a paucity of male-dominated discussions (here or elsewhere)

In the attention economy of contemporary discourse, talking about one thing means not talking about another, possibly more pressing, thing. The solution we've taken to espousing is a different kind of utilitarianism whereby you prioritize the hardships of oppressed groups with little to no regard for a favoured group's outliers. This is a logical stance, of course, but it becomes problematic when said outliers turn out to be far more numerous than first meets the eye, and this is before we even meditate on the value of individual suffering.

"white male" as "the lowest difficulty setting" also pretty much ignores class. I would venture that white woman daughter of investment bankers might be an "easier difficulty setting" than white male from family where no one went to college. And the whole "if you are losing at life as a white male it's your own fault" seems not that far away from blaming the poor for their poverty in some cases.

And I know this is tacitly about the US, but 'white Moldovan male in Chișinău', for example, is not a desirable thing to be, generally speaking.

"white male" as "the lowest difficulty setting" also pretty much ignores class. I would venture that white woman daughter of investment bankers might be an "easier difficulty setting" than white male from family where no one went to college. And the whole "if you are losing at life as a white male it's your own fault" seems not that far away from blaming the poor for their poverty in some cases.

... and this is why Gregory and Travis McMichael deserve our sympathy, really

I don't think that's what man alive was saying.

damn man alive you didn't have to go after taylor swift like that

honestly Dan I don't understand how you could possibly get that from what I said. Complete piece of shit murderers don't deserve sympathy. Retired cops also don't tend to be poor fwiw.

tag yourself i'm lazy

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElhABywU8AEWtjr?format=jpg&name=900x900

nervous stolid combo

don't have that kind of chair so idk

what is a "good sort"

earnest possibly religious and/or naive imo

a mingenue (male ingenue)

what is a "good sort"

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, October 29, 2020 11:19 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

likeable person

people actually still say that in British English

i've heard it before (in the context of british English) and I've always assumed it meant something along those lines but wasn't sure if it had some particular subtext (e.g. agreeable or deferential)

which I guess is closer to what map said

but also I assume one of those britishisms where the meaning can change with a very slight change in inflection and context

i have no idea tbr i just assumed it had a tinge of "bless their heart" to it

right, like "Oh, she's marrying John? ...well, he's a good sort" etc.

it’s an absence of the other 3 things

or the harmonious balance thereof

good sort dude doing a bad job of hiding his dark secrets imo

I found this article fascinating.

This way of understanding what it means to be a guy, the particular masculine code and set of virtues it espouses, the heroes it holds up for emulation and admiration: none of this appeared in a vacuum. All of it is deeply rooted in the past couple of decades of American history, in everything from the constant imperial wars overseas and their long-term effects to the rising gap between those with college degrees and those without. There are longer-term precedents and archetypes at play as well, and I’ll talk about them, but this all crystallized in the very recent past. It’s a genuinely 21st-century American development, and I want to explore what it means.

It was linked on the Bro Culture thread.

My question after reading it was: to what extent is this behaviour inextricable from the right-wing/conservative mindset?

I didn’t buy the transition in that article that seems to be the thesis statement

“ The tactical lifestyle craze, a natural outgrowth of this particular slice of Bro Culture, is the logical endpoint of all this. ”

I mean how is that the "logical endpoint"? It's like saying religious fundamentalism is the logical endpoint of all religion. Certainly it can go in that direction, but more often it doesn't.

What I liked in the article is that the author actually gets at what's appealing about these "bro cultures," which I don't think is touched on often enough.

I do not for one second buy the idea that this is a new phenomenon in our broader culture from the past 20 years.

For example: Zubaz happened while I was in high school

The article's version of Bro Culture is closer to fascist culture than the version offered by the sillier posters on this message board, which is that fascism = anything short of open borders & the elimination of nation-states.

I mean, you're an Islamophobe, so pretty much anything you say about any issue doesn't carry much weight with the true left of this board anyway.

I mean, you're an anti-semite, so pretty much anything you say about any issue doesn't any weight with anyone good of this board anyway.

I was going to post something about how despite being offended by Sanpaku's "excess immigration is why labor conditions are bad for real Americans" and "the first few weeks of the pandemic proved democracy is bad" (these are paraphrases if you need that pointed out) posts I don't think he's a fascist, he's more like a nationalist authoritarian technocrat. But idk, I'm not a political theorist, is that not fascism?

I have no idea what Sanpaku posted, and I'm no political theorist either. But I think that the key to fascism is the promotion of violence as a good. Fascisms can differ on what that violence is directed against, but the idolatry of the warrior is its heart.

I think “violence is good” implied in some of these positions but you’re right it’s not the main point.

tl;tb;dr

jk I actually did read it, but where he may think his conclusions are a bomb dropping, I was like, "We know, dude." We know because bros harass, belittle, condescend to, assault etc us--I can only speak as a woman but gnc and LGBTQ people could say the same. They love their code and other bros more than they love their loved ones, or justice, or intellectual rigor, or anything that doesn't align with their identities. We know.

it's an aesthetic and it's a thing that liberalism doesn't really have, except one that very bland people can see, i wrote not a very good essay about this in college :/

i've never seen table post anything anti-semitic, btw

tactical bro youtubes are the triumph of the will of our time

I have no idea what Sanpaku posted, and I'm no political theorist either. But I think that the key to fascism is the promotion of violence as a good. Fascisms can differ on what that violence is directed against, but the idolatry of the warrior is its heart.

― All cars are bad (Euler), Thursday, December 17, 2020 9:46 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

idk you criticize ppl on this board for having too broad a definition of fascism and you offer up this... very broad definition of fascism

it’s famously difficult to define because it’s played out so differently in history but the “fasces” i.e. bundles of sticks forming one strong weapon i think point to the animating principle which is subsumption of difference in service to a single overarching nation-state, and if you are not down with The Project then that weapon turns on you

jk I actually did read it, but where he may think his conclusions are a bomb dropping, I was like, "We know, dude." We know because bros harass, belittle, condescend to, assault etc us--I can only speak as a woman but gnc and LGBTQ people could say the same. They love their code and other bros more than they love their loved ones, or justice, or intellectual rigor, or anything that doesn't align with their identities. We know.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Thursday, December 17, 2020 5:43 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i didn't read much of it, but i found it very banal.