Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

i haven't been following this thread but this kind of unspoken dynamic is one reason i just can't hang with most dudes these days. there's just a weird one-up-mans-ship vibe/energy that's present, even if it's in a lighthearted non-hostile way or whatever. i just don't play that game.

Got a haircut this morning at a barbershop run and mostly patronized by black and Latino dudes. The conversation was mostly about home ownership; the barber next to me was talking to his customer about mortgage rates and the virtues of a town house over a regular house. My barber didn't talk to me about anything because I give off a don't-talk-to-me vibe, plus he doesn't speak much English. But I've had conversations there with some of the other barbers; one once asked me if I'd ever been to Lincoln Center. There's never been that kind of macho competitive atmosphere described above, whether or not I'm part of the conversation. A lot of the time these guys are talking about their problems - health issues, bills, stuff like that.

Just an extra data point.

yeah, but we socialize them - hopefully! - by consistently telling them it's not ok to go round hurting other kids

you guys ever hear of these books? i have them at home. i don't know what people think of them now. i guess a lot of people didn't like them at the time. they are interesting though. kubrick was a fan!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Genesis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Territorial_Imperative

anyway, his big thing in the territorial book is that almost every male of any species is all about territory and then sex.

nice post unperson, I love barber shops, kinda miss having the $$$ to visit one on the regular (reduced to shaving my head myself these days)

one of the best things about following sports (besides the emotional investment and sporadic payoff) is that it gives you something to talk about w/ most men of any socioeconomic background. i've had so many conversations with taxi drivers about sports (and the few times they weren't interested in sports we talked music instead).

i get my hair cut in a salon staffed entirely by women but they do a really nice job w/ my hair and i like talking about music w/ them so i don't really feel compelled to find a male barbershop.

it's true that my hatred of professional sports cuts me off from that kind of default male convo but it just makes me resent them more tbh

xp

i spend a lot of time talking to men my age and older in the pub, just talking about whatever, and the vast majority of that conversation isn't one-upping or banterish

xpost to unperson right on man, it's good to hear examples of that, i don't know maybe i'm just more sensitive to it. like at work, some guys are just incredibly taxing to have a conversation with because they have to be all "big boy pants" all the time. it's probably all in my head. idk just bullshittin to make myself feel like a better man.

the phrase "big boy pants" will never not be funny

i always feel really uncomfortable in barbershops... i'm incredibly self-conscious and not all that stereotypically masculine-looking, though

there used to be a barbershop mini-chain around here called MAJOR LEAGUE TRIM which was staffed by women and catered i think almost exclusively to men.

Not just another guy-salon, MLT is a chopshop laser-focused on mannish needs: each seat boasts its own flat-screen, and the whole wi-fi'd shop's strewn with men's mags -- for a nourishing dose of softcore before a vicious shampoo/conditioner cycle.

i've been in warehouses populated by particularly lecherous men inc one in camden where the bathroom wall was literally wall to wall w/ softcore pornography. it made me feel extremely uncomfortable. if we could socialize this out of men or at least shame them into only looking at pornography at home in private i think that would be a good step forward.

even mellow men who weren't particularly rowdy as children will still play 400 hours of shooter games a week and watch tons of violent movies and watch tons of aggressive porn and tons of bone-crunching sports and fantasize about how they would survive in a zombie apocalypse or become champion of MMA when they can't sleep at night. so, you know, you have to watch out for the quiet ones too. ted bundy was a very articulate person.

my nightmare world of men of the future is something like what i see in one of those shows on Netflix streaming about the modern day Mafia or Camorra in Italy. it's probably a heightened version of reality but just these empty vessel types drinking and snorting drugs and killing everyone and fucking and caring about no one else.

I have to speak to my barber in Spanish, but her Spanish is rotten too, so it works out.

i did kinda enjoy that dumb Revolution show on Netflix because it was all about the power going out around the world and how that immediately made everyone go completely stone age. i fear that for sure. it seemed realistic! not the show, but the response.

also, i will watch any show with Juliet from Lost on it. cuz i kinda love her. but in a non-sexual way? she's just cool looking. though i don't want to watch the fairy tale show she is in. too girly. kidding. it just doesn't involve the end of the world. if it did, i would be there.

The barbershop I went to today (and have been going to for about six months now) is called Knockout and has boxing posters on the walls and a big TV showing, I think, ESPN; there was a panel discussion going about NFL football while I was there. Before that, I used to go to a Mexican-run place called Nealtican where the TV was always showing Latin pop videos. I liked it better there, but the wait was much longer.

you guys get a lot of haircuts

not nearly enough acc to my wife

i think the last time i went to a barber i was 10. sam's barbershop. sam laforte. he was a wonderful guy.

3-4x a year for me

Always tended to go to old Italian barbers.

About seven or eight times. Hair matters, especially when you like to comb and style the three you've got.

guys just have evil in their hearts

Barbershop thread escalated rly quickly

I go every 4-6 weeks.

Twice a year barbershop (good Iranian who set up shop around here), twice a year diy maintenance.

Hi! I am in a classroom all day pretty much every day, and I want to co-sign a few of the thoughts YMP and others had. As much as we’re in an era of dismantling gender essentialism, there are developmental/socialized/hormonal tendencies that make the cis-male and cis-female experience really, really different in school. Depending on the outside culture/school/student/teacher, these differences can be hugely over- or under-stated, but they’re always there, and they’re profound in their effects.

All the barbershops around me are staffed overwhelmingly by Vietnamese women. I haven't had my hair cut by a Max or Sam or a Tony since I was in high school.

Interestingly, these are exactly the same barbershops as I went to in my childhood. They look and smell exactly the same; same stuff on the walls; same gumball machine; same magazines.

I prefer it this way, because Max/Sam/Tony wanted to talk about sports (which I couldn't do then and still can't).

my barber (amazonian, non-binary, leprous, made of figs) has this really amazing aftershave i can't get enough of

I had an old-school barber in North Beach that I went to for a long time, older latino guy from my neighborhood, he was great but he had to shut his shop and the last few times I went to a barber shop is what at this *super* old school place in the financial District, which looked and smelled like old bankers from WWII, w the occasional chain-smoking-in-a-scarf gay barber. I kinda loved it tbh. But it was pricey.

All the barber shops around me seem to be run by russian or central asian (e.g. uzbeki) jews.

Codelia Fine's The Gender Delusion is a good book about how difficult (impossible?) it is to establish hormonal factors outside of socialization.

sure it could be that by 4yo boys are already socialized to roughhouse and girls are socialized to be more attentive

You say that like it's far-fetched but I think it's pretty clear a four year old is already going to be influenced by a ton of socialization! Not exclusively pertaining to gendered behaviour, either, just in general.

The starry-eyed crunchy hippie parents who only give their children ethically-sourced gluten-free unisex toys still see loads of stereotypically gendered behavior.

These hippie parents don't live in a vacuum, though (well, I suppose some might be sufficiently off the grid, but then where would they get the toys?); parents aren't the only factor influencing kids.

scott my parents had a copy of the territorial imperative -- it had an exciting-looking dust-jacket

i asked my dad once if it was any good, he said "not very"

https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780689100154-us-300.jpg

i like to cut my own hair with a clippers in the mirror and pretend i'm getting ready to pull off one last mission

There’s a raging debate about “pre-academic” kindergartens, and specifically about the danger of reducing free-play time (which favors no gender) in favor of guided skills or “building block” skills which often favor students with more-developed fine motor skills and greater socialization (read: girls) over boy-rambunctiousness.

my son is currently in the former and let me tell you, there is a lot of boy-rambunctiousness

(by which I mean a pre-academic preschool/kindergarten program for 3-5 year olds that is p much all free-play time)

Where I live, kindergarteners are expected to read and write. Preschools are expected to get them ready for this reality.

When I was a kid the goals were like "not eating paste." Offa my lawn etc.

"it had an exciting-looking dust-jacket"

the jackets and the type and the illustrations inside are what made me buy them. they are very handsome books. and there is a lot of interesting info in them that i never knew. facts and stuff. good stories. he was a good storyteller. i just don't know how they are viewed today. i'm no expert. he apparently influenced The Naked Ape and books like that in the 70's. so he did have a pretty big cultural influence. and he influenced Kubrick's 2001 and Clockwork Orange apparently.

i imagine it would be gathered in under ev psych now, all the problems that entails (in fact that may be why my dad didn't think much of it): quasi-darwinian just-so stories to back up what you thought or hoped people shd be like (in this instance psychotically aggressive)

mum and dad also had a book which proved that humans had been aquatic mammals for a while after they stopped being apes, and that's why we have curly public hair under our arms (sadly i don't recall its title)

hese hippie parents don't live in a vacuum, though (well, I suppose some might be sufficiently off the grid, but then where would they get the toys?); parents aren't the only factor influencing kids.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 1:10 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This argument was more salient to me before I had kids and saw how much difference there was between my two daughters even before age 2, respectively. Not that much socialization occurring pre-2.

Didn't you have siblings of whom you could've made the same observation tho man alive

(fwiw, I think sibling order irlf birth is a massive input into personality either way tbh)

yeah seeing how much personality traits become evident really early on was eye-opening as a parent

xp

"quasi-darwinian just-so stories to back up what you thought or hoped people shd be like (in this instance psychotically aggressive)"

there is a part in the African book where he mentions that humans likely evolved from a species of ape now extinct who were very violent and who invented weapons and that we did not come from the peace and love vegetarian primates and i had no idea if it was true but i wanted to believe it because Trump.

w/parenting and masculinity, it goes w/o saying that there are parents (and not just dads!) who will allow or sometimes implicitly encourage some of the less-decent aspects of masculine behavior bc they don't want their sons to be soft. my son had a friend whose behavior was horrible and never checked by his dad, it was usually dismissed as a boys-will-be-boys thing. up to and including the last time we saw him at this kid's birthday party, when they were in a bounce house together and the kid grabbed my son by the neck and dug his fingers in and flung him around. the dad went over while this was happening, and i figured he'd tell him to cut it out, but instead he pulled out his phone and snapped a pic!

my wife had steam coming out of her ears and we cut off contact after that when our son told us he didn't want to see him again (and fortunately this coincided with us no longer going to the same preschool as that kid.)

mum and dad also had a book which proved that humans had been aquatic mammals for a while after they stopped being apes, and that's why we have curly public hair under our arms (sadly i don't recall its title)

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/413dcQq1KHL._SL500_SX373_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

that behavior isn't exactly limited to boys, since girls can have unchecked rough behavior too, but it was part of a larger picture there with that friendship and with other random boys he'd bully at playgrounds. xp