Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Fgti otm insofar as judging ppl and "getting even" never work as intended & have terrible side effects.

I was particularly struck by the idea that overpunishing rape societally and criminally may have the opposite effect from what's intended, making it so that only the most extreme and obvious cases ever get anywhere. The idea that maybe instead we could ratchet down the level of heat over certain kinds of sexual assault and harassment might bring it out into the open more and allow us to deal with it as a society is a really smart one and one I hadn't ever considered.

I can't even consider fgti's idea dispassionately. If someone told me "as a society, we've decided that we are not going to forcefully disavow some form of racism so we can coax it out into the open and address it more humanely," my takeaway would be "you are telling racists it is open season on me"; I don't see any way to view this discussion about predator behavior differently.

the message i'm getting from this thread btw isn't "don't hang out with men" it's "don't hang out with coworkers"

― call all destroyer, Thursday, October 12, 2017 5:08 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

generally otm

what is meant by ratcheting down the level of heat? since i think for years it was the opposite, that there wasn't enough heat. i guess this is also the place to say that men are not the ones who are largely affected by sexual assault, rape, or even harassment, so it may be easier for men to regard the punishment or outcry as too harsh.

Well, I don't want to speak for fgti, but I think it's possible that both things could be true at the same time -- the problem with the criminal treatment of rape is not the level of *harshness* of punishment imo it's the lack of prosecution whatsover in most cases. Increasing sentences isn't going to lead to more rapes getting reported or prosecuted, the sentences for rapes are already -- in theory -- harsh, it's the enforcement that's the problem. And I think there's this bad dynamic right now where people still have in their mind "rape" as the guy with the ski mask breaking into a woman's apartment and not also the guy at the party with the obviously too-drunk-to-consent woman, but then when you start calling for the more commonplace second type of rape to be treated like the first kind, people think "oh, so some guy is going to get fifteen years in prison because he *made a mistake* at a party." Which of course is really far worse than just a "mistake," but I think the point is that making every incidence of this such a serious crime that it would completely ruin the perpetrator's life *in theory* only makes it less likely that the offenses get prosecuted. And instead we have a binary where people on one side think men just shouldn't be held responsible for that at all. I don't know whether this is right, I'm literally thinking about it as I type and I hadn't really considered it before reading fgti's post.

the original post wasn't about criminal punishment vs empathy, it was about *shunning*/losing careers/etc vs empathy, which is very different.

4. Sexual assault itself, if destigmatized as being a massive transgression, and rather thought to carry the same weight as, say, a DUI or a drunk driving accident, would be easier to address in dialogue, as the entire sexual viability and career of the offender would not be held in the balance, and thus an easier path toward rehabilitation

I can't really argue for a Weinstein losing his career or being shunned, fwiw, but the world is overrun with lesser offenders.

i think a DUI or drunk driving accident are incidents where people were perhaps arrogant in the sense that they thought they would be a) safe, b) not get into an accident, c) make it home without getting pulled over.

sexual assault comes from a very different place, i'm not sure that comparison remotely holds up.

I can't decouple my feelings about systemic abuse from my feelings about capitalism and hierarchy generally. imho one of the very best ways to ensure that future generations of men will be less abusive is to create a more egalitarian society and economic framework in which these power dynamics don't exist to be exploited in the first place, or at least aren't subject to conspiracies of shame and silence due to economic pressures

xpost
i'll stop trying to guess at what fgti meant, but imo the post on the whole was not about criminal punishment (and thus the long sidebar about how we criminally treat rape and sexual assault which the thread was about to go on), it was about how we deal with these men at the workplace, in social settings, as friends, etc.

That was how I took it.

DUI should be punishable by execution xxps

Also, completely shunning / banishing people from your life when they fuck up (speaking strictly of "relatively" minor offenses here) is a good way to leave your own behavior unexamined and unchallenged

i'll stop trying to guess at what fgti meant, but imo the post on the whole was not about criminal punishment (and thus the long sidebar about how we criminally treat rape and sexual assault which the thread was about to go on), it was about how we deal with these men at the workplace, in social settings, as friends, etc.

Right, and much like I put my former coworker on blast after he told me a story where he called a black man a "dumb monkey", I will continue to put on blast guys who say and do horribly inappropriate shit to me, whether it's sexist, racist, or homophobic.

A black person calling out someone for using deeply racist language against black people is somewhat of a different dynamic from men talking to men about being sexist, since the most obviously directly affected demographic isn't party to the conversation, and that makes the dismissal in that context less authoritative. (At least, I *hope* your remarks to said co-worker had considerable impact.)

Maybe this is so obvious as to be not worth mentioning, or I missed it but -
In the scenario where men are hanging out and drinking together and says something uncool or demeaning, sometimes it might have a more positive effect to email the guy next day when everyone's sober, and more importantly, where he's not being called out in front of his peers (cuz guys hate that shit. i guess everyone does?) idk. There are a lot of ways to handle the situation, I guess, and not all situations warrant the same blanket response.

otm^^
wow. i came here to say two things

1) I can't even consider fgti's idea dispassionately. If someone told me "as a society, we've decided that we are not going to forcefully disavow some form of racism so we can coax it out into the open and address it more humanely," my takeaway would be "you are telling racists it is open season on me"; I don't see any way to view this discussion about predator behavior differently.
i can't either. misogyny is the final frontier of reprehensible behavior that people are still asking us to "be cool" about. as a woman with a full range of experiences where being cool did not protect me, this doesn't feel sufficient.

A black person calling out someone for using deeply racist language against black people is somewhat of a different dynamic from men talking to men about being sexist, since the most obviously directly affected demographic isn't party to the conversation, and that makes the dismissal in that context less authoritative. (At least, I *hope* your remarks to said co-worker had considerable impact.)

The conversation ended. Dude looked chagrined but that was about it. He later left the company to go work with another former coworker and is still remembered fondly by several of my contemporaries; every time I remind them that he is a racist and the reaction is always "What???? He said that? No!" and then they go back to reminiscing about the good times we all had together 10+ years ago.

Dude's name doesn't come up very often because the number of people still around who worked with him has diminished dramatically but whenever he comes up, it's always from someone else and it's always a positive mention until I tell my story again, and I tell it every time.

2) i have an example of objectification to share. i have a lot of them over the course of my life (i believe every woman does) but this was the most recent and also the most shocking to me. before i tell you what happened, i'll tell you that i barely ate for days afterward (this is a symptom of extreme stress for me, PTSD i guess idk), called my best friend and told her the whole story, and have told two other irl friends about it -- both of whom reacted supportively. am i "too sensitive"? i have always been sensitive; whether i am "too" sensitive usually depends on whether a person is being defensive about hurting me.

I'll give you the short version: I was looking for a place to sit down at a music festival. and I saw a tree with a spot to rest my back on. It was next to two guys about my age (older than your average attendant but not ancient) and I asked to sit down. Because I am friendly and these duders were about my age, I struck up a conversation with the one sitting closest to me, and we proceeded to have a really nice conversation. He had an interesting job, seemed very smart, liked talking about music, had a 9 month old baby he was getting away from for the first time. I mentioned my partner, we kept talking. I chatted with his friend when he went to the bathroom. It was enjoyable. I felt like it was a pleasant enriching experience. At one point, after we had been sitting there for about 90 min he looked right at me and asked "Can we be...intimate?" and after I recovered from making sure I had heard him correctly, I said "no, I don't know what you mean but I do not want to be intimate with you" and then the guy went on rather profusely about how he wasn't talking about sex. I still have no idea what he actually meant. Not only did our conversation never fully recover from that, I felt like my trust in people had been shattered. It was really bad.

Am I too sensitive? Is this my problem and not yours? Maybe. But that's what unwanted objectification feels like for me. Thinking someone is treating you as an equal human being when in reality they are waiting to pounce feels awful. It's scary too. Makes me not trust people, and I don't like that. It's not fair.

i really don't think men consider how the mere phrasing that they use around women, phrasing that is going to be different from what they use around men, can have a negative effect and elicit feelings of being targeted.

also the most shocking to me
*the most shocking recent event, not the most shocking of all time
i'm not generally a confessional person and i can't believe i typed all that out but it felt good! it is a clear example.

xpost to simon
A black person calling out someone for using deeply racist language against black people is somewhat of a different dynamic from men talking to men about being sexist, since the most obviously directly affected demographic isn't party to the conversation, and that makes the dismissal in that context less authoritative.

while it may be a different dynamic when the person doing the calling out is the victim (be it a black man calling out a white man, or a woman calling out a sexist man) as opposed to someone from the same offending group (in both cases, in most cases, a white man), that doesn't make it any less necessary for white men to call out other white men for chronic mistreatment of women or people of color. it may make the rebuke less "authoritative" in that context, i guess. but different people respond to different forms of social rebuke. some white men are SO white manly that they don't take the advice of people outside of the group seriously. i have witnessed women standing up to men being total dicks, and as soon as she walks away, the guy just smirks to the guy friends standing around and makes a joke about mom getting him in trouble. that kind of dickhead almost takes pride in a woman standing up to him. he might have more of a response from someone in his in-group calling him out.

also i kept typing out "DJP otm" as part of several other messages that i typed and then erased as the thread continued to progress, but DJP otm

that doesn't make it any less necessary for white men to call out other white men for chronic mistreatment of women or people of color

yeah if I implied this I REALLY did not mean to

xp to LL: I don't think you're being too sensitive either, but can I ask -- how much of a role did the fact that he was a married guy with a baby and you had a partner play in how it felt? I mean if you had been single and he had been single and he struck up a conversation with you (and putting aside the weridly gross pickup line he used), would you have felt the same way just because you don't want having a nice, enriching conversation with a man to necessarily have to lead to him wanting to get with you?

Simon, you're 100% otm wrt the problems of capitalism but the problem for me is always shoring up that gap between the way I'd like the world to operate and the way it actually operates. The question I always come back to is: how do we incentivize equality, empathy, basic decency, etc. within a context which fundamentally undermines those notions? How do you incentivize e.g. standing up to one's sexist boss when it may come at the cost of a promotion? Like, in that scenario, I'd put decency before no-holds-barred hustling but there would be no material incentive for me to do so. I'm just more okay with being poor than I am with being a shitty person. It's kind of a facile example, but there are countless instances where people are faced with similar decisions between maintaining decency and status grabs, and I don't know how you encourage people to choose the former in a society where the common good is deemphasized in favor of me gettin' mine.

"Can we be...intimate?"

what a bizarre thing to say. ew. like even if he meant "emotionally intimate" how gross, and also how easily misinterpreted and stupid.

I was talking about this thread with my wife and discussing my/our male friends in general and she did remind me of a guy who was in our social circle for about a decade and how weird/creepy/sexual he could be. He was never threatening or outright but he def lacked boundaries and just felt entitled to erm express his sexual thoughts and opinions inappropriately and people called him on it constantly, to little to no effect. He turned up at a show we were at last year and my wife was like "I am not talking to you" towards him. I didn't really interact with him either beyond a brief exchange of pleasantries. The really weird thing about this guy and how he got that way is... I blame his mom, who raised him largely on her own. I met her and hung out with her on numerous occasions and her eagerness/openness to discuss her son, his sexual proclivities, and sexuality in general with him in public, and with other people in public, just made me think man wtf here is the problem right here - dude was never given any boundaries cuz his mom didn't want to "shame" him or make him feel inhibited, and he turned into an adult with no inhibitions or sense of boundaries, it was just fucked up.

xp

An anomaly in the guys I hang/hung out with, but I had to be reminded of it. My social circle is a good deal smaller now than it was back then, and I had forgotten.

it's about effectively fostering a culture of mutual respect and making sure everyone understands what that looks like from the get-go.

Yes. Model the behaviors you want from others, and to the extent that you have control over community culture/group norms in any situation, there's nothing wrong with being direct and purposeful about stating what acceptable behavior looks like. Have some measure of alertness for low-level comments like, "Women always takes things so seriously" or any kind of gender absolutes being trotted out for you--it's a test. There will be a follow-up comment eventually and it will be worse. It's not that everyone is an evil genius, it's just normal human behavior to see if people agree with you and then build on that. Put your standards out there and expect people to meet them.

The question I always come back to is: how do we incentivize equality, empathy, basic decency, etc. within a context which fundamentally undermines those notions? How do you incentivize e.g. standing up to one's sexist boss when it may come at the cost of a promotion.

Unfortunately I feel the answer to this is that you can't. The mode of production structures all. For now the best thing we can do as men is to police each other more effectively.

Am I too sensitive? Is this my problem and not yours? Maybe. But that's what unwanted objectification feels like for me. Thinking someone is treating you as an equal human being when in reality they are waiting to pounce feels awful. It's scary too. Makes me not trust people, and I don't like that. It's not fair.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Friday, October 13, 2017 4:23 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You are absolutely not *too* sensitive, LL. You've been deceived, lead on to believe you had a nice, even meaningful, contact with a stranger (which can be amazing things). I can imagine you were shattered. It destroys trust in other people, which indeed is not fair. Next time you'll wonder when this particular cat will come out of the bag. It instill suspicion when you do not want it, didn't deserve it, didn't ask for it. It being after 90 mins almost (almost) makes it seem worse than when it's right off the bat. You invested in a contact and when you didn't expect anything like this anymore, bam, there it was.

Have some measure of alertness for low-level comments like, "Women always takes things so seriously" or any kind of gender absolutes being trotted out for you--it's a test. There will be a follow-up comment eventually and it will be worse.

Yup. Letting borderline-of-acceptability remarks or behavior go unremarked upon is an excellent way to make sure that worse trespasses occur down the line.

reminded of when i was watching Billy On The Street with the kids and we were laughing and he was doing that thing where he just runs up to people and maria got disturbed by it when she came in the room and if you watch that show you will notice that when he runs up to a man he usually will say "excuse me sir!" and not be quite as crazy so that he doesn't get beaten to death but when he approaches women he goes totally nuts and just runs up and screams in their face and it completely freaks them out and scares them. and i don't know if i would have noticed the difference in approach if maria hadn't gotten disturbed by it. he definitely thinks its HILARIOUS to scare women. i still think he's funny. but it is handy to have a live-in reality check. it totally makes me see things with different eyes.

you guys would love to hear my classroom stories from the '70s

i don't see any positive value in maleness, or any ("heterosexual") definition of masculinity that isn't toxic. what's the point of hanging out with other guys and talking about, like, batman or some shit? batman isn't important. i'd rather talk about the weather. i'd rather talk about actual important things, like emotions and shit, but guys aren't supposed to talk about their feelings - that makes them weak and feminine.

i'm not surprised that trans people have become more visible in the world today. gender is a construct, and "masculinity" is defined in an increasingly restrictive way that doesn't meet the needs of a lot of biological males.

my worst case suspicion regarding that "can we be intimate?" comment was that it was put out there as a test of sorts, like one that if you responded positively, then it was all good, and if you responded negatively, he could backtrack and say "oh i just meant can we confide in each other about something, ha ha."

i mean i don't even know why you'd say it in either scenario, it was dumb and inappropriate.

Yes. Even though I should really know better by now, my first instinct on those occasions I do hang out with other men is to never betray signs of vulnerability. xp

@ man alive -- totally honestly -- if we had both been single and established that during our conversation, my reaction to his question would/might have been different! Hard to know for sure since the last time I was single was a very long time ago. However, the fact that we had established through conversation that he was a married new dad and I established that I am happily partnered, yeah I felt safe. I thought we had communicated that we were not trying to seduce one another, that we were relating as two people. I liked him right up to that point where he asked me if I wanted to "be intimate".

xposts to simon
oh, my bad! i think i did misunderstand you because i was reading it in the context of your previous post which mentioned that shunning people can lead to the failure to examine oneself.

i knew it was a test -- that's why it was so disturbing
i am not naive, i'm sensitive :)

I thought we had communicated that we were not trying to seduce one another, that we were relating as two people.

yeah, this makes a lot of sense in that scenario, I would say it was the reasonable thing to assume

"Can we be...intimate?"

this is weird and creepy and upsetting but i think maybe not (necessarily) 'objectification'

the "can we be intimate?" question was definitely odd and (at best) inappropriately worded. Instead of backtracking/obfuscating he should have just apologized.

one reason i would consider it objectification is bc i guess you have to consider if he'd have said it to a friendly dude who had sat down under the nearby tree.

The most important social skills I've developed as an adult male (in real life if not always on the internet) is a) knowing when and how to apologize and b) knowing how and when to shut the fuck up.

He shouldn't have asked. It's a fucking weird thing to drop on someone, particularly after 90 minutes of conversation where it's established that you and the person you're talking to are in relationships and, per LL's story, no part of the preceding conversation included the words "open relationship" or "swinging" or "looking to get my groove on".

one of the frustrating things about it is that we have this culture where everybody is individually responsible for his or her words and actions and it stops there, and if you start talking about looking at the larger picture people think you're denying individual responsibility. I hate this way of looking at the world. Maybe if "masculinity" involved people learning to acknowledge their emotions and express them appropriately men wouldn't all be fucking asshole jerkwads, but no, nobody wants to say there's a problem with masculinity, it's just that "men are jerks", full stop.

If all he really wanted to do was move to a more personal/probing realm of conversation I suppose the standard convention would be "can I ask you a kind of personal question" or something like that. (Personally I wouldn't do that in that context.) xps

as i mentioned, going from being on equal footing to being desired "intimately" is objectification
openly desiring when it has been clearly established that desire is inappropriate

he did apologize and the saddest moment was when we had gotten up to go see a performance and he said "i'm making you uncomfortable aren't i?" and i was like "well" and he said goodbye and left. it was disappointing to me. the whole situation was disappointing.

"can I ask you a kind of personal question"
this would have been totally ok