Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

xp to in orbit
my grandfather (who died earlier this year) was never necessarily off-color but had the weirdest dynamic with women after the death of my grandmother nearly thirty years earlier. there's something to the idea that the attention of women is currency in how he related to people. that's not atypical for people who aren't used to being alone, but being around him became very one-note because he had a list of topics that he knew would interest people or get female sympathy and as he became senile, every conversation was just going through that checklist.

I mean, I'm all for treating the elderly with respect and humoring them, but this maternal bit you mentioned definitely sounds too familiar

Yeah but at the same time she was mothering him he was sexualizing her. Like she was putting him in a fatherly role, and he was putting her in a wifely one. Gross.

feel like i've seen that dynamic work in reverse and it's just as creepy.

"like how? silver birch? sycamore? palm?"

Cedar and Willow are big.

see also: Mike Pence calling his wife "mother" for a glimpse of the dynamic from the other end of things

Oh heck my parents call each other Mom and Dad all the time. I don't think that's necessarily directly related to what I was thinking of, although let me never discourage anyone from hating on stupid traditional gender roles/performances.

I’ve never heard my mother call my father by name. He is always “Papa,” except - now that he’s a grandfather to my nephew, he’s become “Grampy”

i never wanted a mommy. so many men want mommies. i mean i like my mom. she's nice. i actually hugged my mom last weekend and told her how much i loved her and how she was the best mom to me. she's losing her marbles. figure i should use every opportunity. i know for a fact that my dad has referred to my mom as mommy to me and my mom has referred to my dad as daddy to me in conversation as an adult and it always felt a little weird to me but they are definitely the products of the fabulous 50's.

I was talking with a parent friend of ours (lesbian couple w/two kids) about their experience w schools out near Walnut Creek and she was telling me about their 5th grade son getting harassed/called a faggot for having long hair. And I was like "damn some things never change"

are they still near the W.C. or did they move to San Francisco?

so many men want mommies.

troothbomb

some of them want nice, indulgent mommies, and others want domineering, controlling mommies, and they are often willing to pay at least $200/hr for that

Tbtf women are encouraged to regard their husbands as surrogate fathers too. You know, someone big and strong who'll take care of you and protect you and solve your problems. Of course it's ridiculous and insulting to everyone involved to make the gender performance the important thing instead of a reasonable burden of responsibility to your family no matter what gender you perform.

xp lol

I do know one last vestige of my fab 50's parents in me! ALL my kid's friends call me Scott and it has always felt kinda wrong to me. I got used to my kids calling me Scott. And yet, at this late date, it would feel weird to me if all their friends started calling me Mr. Seward. It's rare when I feel like a fuddy duddy like that. When I think about it, it's probably a good thing. Respect for elders nonsense always kinda dumb.

FWIW, I call H "mom" sometimes but only in front of the kids. I can't get used to parents being called by their first names by five year olds.

When my kids start having friends over more regularly, none of them are calling me by my first name. This is non-negotiable.

I guess if they befriend an adult, that adult can call me by my first name, (e.g. "Dan, all of this is totally innocent, why are you calling the cops?")

Your real name is HI DERE, right?

that's Mr. Dere to you, buddy

I actually call her "Ema" (hebrew for mom) in front of the kids, which kind of works bc I didn't call my own mom that, so it doesn't leave me feeling like I am referring to my own mom.

do you write her name high on that silver screen?

again, this is that progressive western mass thing. my kids called all their teachers by their first names too. there must be some serious prog-ed literature on the subject.

loling about mommies

this is one of the reasons some men scare me -- if they cannot fuck you, and you are not their mommy, you don't exist/have no purpose. if you do manage to exist, they let you know they think you don't deserve to exist. this is at the heart of restricting reproductive rights and patrolling women's sexuality in general. see also mike pence and mother or anyone who thinks that way and expresses it openly

it really provokes an existential fear

Sarahell they moved from SF to Pleasant Valley (i think thats it?) A few years,ago

Xp

Scott, it actually comes from Quaker educational theory! (Which had a strong impact on Dewey, et. al.)

As both a Quaker and progressive educator, I rallied to get my students to call me by my first name and the school administration came down on me (in my first year) like a ton of bricks.

Now that I’m much more established, I might try again.

xp - Pleasant Hill?

That's it yes

oh this does all remind me of the time that i was at the local market and the cashier -a woman - said to me "where's your little helper wife?". i was kinda stunned! at first i didn't know who she was talking about. i was picturing a troll woman in a tree knitting. i just said "uh....at home?" i told maria and it STILL bugs her and this was years ago. sometimes we go there and i get out of the car and ask if she's coming with me and she'll say "i don't want to go in there. i'm not your little helper wife." ouch! it stung. i only told her because i HAD to tell someone. the olde tyme residents here are very trad. i mean most of them voted for hillary, but still trad. very quiet on sunday.

xp - lol at living somewhere for at least 20 years and not knowing the names of suburban towns near you, esp. ones that appear on BART system maps.

What can i say all the pleasant places run together

Speaking of tree names, the guy who was one of the philosophical forces of the school my kids went to is Chip Wood:

https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/product/responsive-school-discipline/

lol school discipline + wood chipper

I kind of crack up when my parents mostly say "your dad" or "your mom" when talking about the other to me, but for a while they'd slip up and say a name and go "Mary.. uh, your mom, said.." and by now they just say whatever because I am pretty sure I don't get confused if they refer to each other by first name lol

sorry to sidetrack the maleness thread, but I was thinking how this got super off track when my grandfather was ill because my dad referred to him as "my dad" or "your grandpa"

meanwhile, grandpa had both of us in the room and was asking where my dad was, because his dementia was really cranking up

identity is fleeting

Kind of went on Facebook crusade/rampage within a closed Judaism discussion group today (interesting group that ranges from chassidic to completely secular queer leftists and a few non Jews as well). A couple of people suggested that orthodox laws of gender separation would help prevent assault, which is ridiculous. But I was encouraged by the wide range of responses including from orthodox men who said no, you can only better educate men and root out abusers.

how is this a maleness thread? i thought we'd be discussing boxing and bottle openers.

yeah mista morbz is right if ya ain't discussing the great John L. Sullivan why this thread ain't worth a plug nickel!!!

But I was encouraged by the wide range of responses including from orthodox men who said no, you can only better educate men and root out abusers.

To my great surprise one of the best communications I got about this was from my (conservative) rabbi

I should say: one of the best communications I got from a fellow man

https://splinternews.com/i-didnt-want-to-be-one-of-those-people-i-was-i-am-1819711373

More #metoo in the Jewish community

https://medium.com/@jblistman/when-i-was-nineteen-years-old-elie-wiesel-grabbed-my-ass-10370829c4bd

I think one good thing about all this light is that it helps us get away from the idea that, because there's so much bad politics that enables sexual assault, that you should expect people with good politics to not be sexual assaulters. I don't think it's like that. Their ideas about masculinity were born in the same vat as were yours or mine. Men who struggle for civil rights are different from men who devote their life to corruption and oppression in MANY IMPORTANT WAYS but in this ONE important way they are alike.

I agree.

We really need some way of accepting that men in general do bad things without this collapsing into normalisation or greying everything into business as usual, nothing to see here. Actually I'm not sure about the term 'accept' here either. Urgh. You know what I mean probably.

Sort of acknowledging that there aren't any angels, only a lineup of progressively worse human beings who at one extreme need work and at the other extreme need putting away.

I thought this was quite good also:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/10/18/men-of-the-world-you-are-not-the-weather/?tid=ss_fb-bottom&utm_term=.3bcc972fd806

I mean like is there any reason you would rationally be surprised if you learned Paul Wellstone had sexually assaulted someone? Prince? Barack Obama? Terry Pratchett?

https://splinternews.com/i-didnt-want-to-be-one-of-those-people-i-was-i-am-1819711373

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Friday, October 20, 2017 12:29 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I remember I was very inexperienced with anything [ sexual ] at the time, and, you know, I hadn’t been with anyone or anything like that before. I think back then I just didn’t realize how to go about something, what even asking consent was and things like that. I thought someone just went along with it, and it just happened.

I related to this a bit. I think that is the heart of a lot of backlash and male anxiety around this subject -- that for a lot of young men (and some not so young ones), approaching women and sex are just, like, hard. And of course this is intertwined with a toxic culture that gives us unrealistic ideas about the free availability of sex to anyone with a penis, as though if you *can't* have sex with someone easily on any given night you must be doing it wrong (and, indeed, if you can't have sex easily with someone obejctively way out of your league).

I would be genuinely surprised at Obama
Xp

I related to this a bit. I think that is the heart of a lot of backlash and male anxiety around this subject -- that for a lot of young men (and some not so young ones), approaching women and sex are just, like, hard.

I related to this too. It reminded me of when I was a 19 year old college student and we had a few friends hanging out in our dorm room, including this one woman who was flirting with me all night. Late that night after everyone else had left, without asking or saying anything, she climbed into bed with me. By this time I understood all sorts of situations where it was inappropriate to touch or make 'sexual advances' on women, and knew all the things that didn't constitute consent, but sneaking into my bed and clutching my body wasn't one of them. Did this constitute consent? Why *else* would she flirt with me all night and then jump into bed with me? But I decided no, this wasn't consent, or maybe I just said or did the wrong things, but all I remember is that I was intentionally unresponsive and scared to do anything for fear of it being perceived as assault, and about a minute later she climbed out of my bed and left the room.

Unlike that "Chris" guy being interviewed, I did the right thing, but here I am well into middle age and I still talk myself out of seemingly every possibility for a sexual encounter. I mean, do people actually ask each other "can I fondle your hips?" or whatever? I'm glad teenage boys are now taught in school that it's illegal and wrong to take advantage of inebriated, sleeping, or simply uninterested women. But sometimes I think they should be taught how to properly initiate sex and lovemaking as well.

See, again, I guess we're not "supposed to", but I do genuinely sympathize with some of these "incels" or whatever. They have a right to be angry. Not at women - that's utterly stupid - but at a societal norm of "maleness" that never teaches males how to relate to women, either sexually or non-sexually. I mean, Jesus, as best I can tell the only people even promising to teach men how to initiate sexual contact are the fucking PUA scammers!

Maybe I'm in the minority (not to get all hashtag-notallmen-ish about it) but I don't think gentleness / respect / consent / boundaries should need to be taught.

Plenty of people seem to be able to figure it out without lessons.

Plenty of people seem to be able to figure it out without lessons.

Bullshit. They were taught; it just happened at an early enough age that by the time they entered the world, it seemed innate. But it wasn't. Children are clay-brained primates. Everything good about adults was forced into them by responsible authority figures while they were still clay-brained primates.