Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Yeah, one thing I learned while working with kids is to never assume they have the internet or a tv or an adult at home to help.

Not sure worrying about the 'psychological effects' of collateral damage as we stride further towards absolute wokeness is quite enough tbh, especially in the US. Without a modicum of economic justice, this can only breed more resentment.

Id also think sometimes we shouldn't these threads into US/non-US so the normal world wouldn't get caught up spluttering at the nonsense hyperbole (which is actually applicable to the US like)

What % of masculinity is toxic tho

― things you looked shockingly old when you wore (darraghmac)

Oh, I don't know, Dmac. Say, 40%?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCUPY-YByK8

That sounds about right tbh

Shut up and listen is not effective rhetoric no matter who you’re trying to convince of what.

― Mordy

i find this advice works very well with _tago mago_

But I have progressive American friends who resisted Obamacare because it didn't directly benefit them. I have progressive American friends who argue for gun control and claim they'd never own a gun themselves but then say inanities like it'd be a different story "if I lived in New Orleans or Detroit".

....sounds like you don't have progressive american friends?

if the question is how do we improve THE DIALOGUE

we don't

any commitment to the DIALOGUE whether it comes through the popular shithole... jordan peterson? is that his name? it doesn't matter, there is no person who can "center the dialogue" because the conditions for "dialogue" are not met. and that is why people keep telling men to shut the fuck up.

My two cents: white dudes can benefit greatly from spending as much time as possible with people who aren't other white dudes and particularly spending as much time as possible in situations where white dudes are the minority.

oh right this was the thread

lol the male primates vs. female primates example discussed upthread came up in the jordan peterson speech i just saw on youtube. you wont believe what side he took

on a more serious note, when people talk about white men letting loose their grip on power i don't really feel like it actually...connects to the way the world works. It's treating a systemic issue, once again, as an individual behavior issue. and we have a system that specifically rewards individual behaviors. if all the woke dudes start giving up their power it leaves the worlds biggest assholes in power, rather than the ones more liable to i.e. hire female employees. of course, entrusting the system to solve these problems is also wrong...but we also all have to pay rent? idk, i feel like people haven't really thought about what letting go of power really means

another way to look at it is with Trump, who actually gets what white people are correctly afraid of: many of them would lose jobs if a truly equitable society were to take shape. I know privileged ppl who have jobs in which they coast, as the children of wealthy or powerful ppl, making 80k to moderate unimportant organization message boards or whatever. We can tell poor white ppl "no you don't understand trump doesn't have your interests at heart" and we're right bc Obamacare would help them but we're wrong in the sense that they know the truth: white privilege is a real benefit to them, even as its also destroying them, and that there actually *aren't* enough jobs to go around, and they are worried theyll lose those jobs....which is true! id argue many of them probably deserve to, of course. But this applies to many ppl whose lives began from places of greater opportunity, and why would they give it up? to 'do the right thing'? Because they want to be a 'good person'? We have a system that doesnt incentivize these behaviors, so instead we just look down on ppl for acting rationally

dont mean to otherize my own whiteness in the above paragraph but for clarity's sake i elected to refer to the group of 'white ppl' in toto without confusing parantheticals

Everyone in toto was white iirc

Actually, fuck, Greg Phillinganes tours with the current line-up, talk about erasure on my part.

Wikipedia in fact shows that several non-white musicians have been in toto. So much for my hilarious wisecrack.

We can tell poor white ppl "no you don't understand trump doesn't have your interests at heart" and we're right bc Obamacare would help them but we're wrong in the sense that they know the truth: white privilege is a real benefit to them, even as its also destroying them, and that there actually *aren't* enough jobs to go around, and they are worried theyll lose those jobs...which is true!

white men benefit from structural inequality at the expense of marginalized groups but in a lot of cases that benefit = just about being able to keep their head above water and pay bills, rent etc and asking them to give up their privileges in that situation is different than e.g. rich successful guys (who will remain pretty rich and successful whatever happens) stepping aside to allow women to direct more big budget Hollywood movies or take high profile media jobs, but when people talking about 'giving up power' these things all get lumped together? which doesn't mean that the inequality should just be accepted, but convincing people who are already in relatively precarious situations to give up what advantages they do have is a difficult task?

I guess this is where people are coming from with the argument that it's only socialism that can defeat gender and racial inequality, if society functions in such way that there's a safety net and no-one is allowed to fall below a certain level then ppl in privileged groups would be more likely to be willing to give up power, because they wouldn't be risking destitution? (idk maybe this is naive, and the whites/men would still never be willing to give up there privileges even if they are guaranteed a decent standard of living, most Trump voters weren't on the breadline, lots white men who are rich and successful by any definition are still resentful and unwilling to give anything up? I guess some of it is also how you define 'a decent standard of living' that you try to convince white men they would retain even if they give up power, you've got not being able to keep a roof over your head at one end and less chance of winning best director oscar at the other end, but a lot of stuff in between where people disagree about what is tolerable?)

i don't think men need to subtract themselves. partly bc it's uselessly vague and lots of men don't have any sort of privilege they can abnegate (what have any of you given up?), but more importantly, improving your understanding of how gender functions in society and how you relate to it is a positive, constructive exercise which you benefit from

I think that getting men/whites to agree to willingly give up power only has a chance of succeeding if you can convince them that they will still have a tolerable life after they give up power (even if the morally correct thing to do would be to give up that power anyway) but 'tolerable life' is about self-image and self respect as well financial/material concerns, white men 'giving up power' in the sense that fgti describes and 'improving your understanding of how gender functions in society and how you relate to it' means accepting this view of the world and of their own white male identity:

The problem with men is that we can't genocide them, can't take their votes away

So what should we do? Men (white men esp) (and non-white/non-men who buy into white male bullshit) continue to exist and continue to pollute and resist

or at least accepting the above is what it takes to meet the consensus online social justice consensus of 'understanding gender and your identity'. I can't say that fgti's view here of whiteness and maleness is incorrect, but is it possible to be a white man and accept all that and live a tolerable life, to not be filled with self-loathing and despair? is it possible to be a white male who doesn't pollute?

you can try to improve yourself but you can't transcend your whiteness and maleness, and this worldview sees maleness and whiteness as inherently toxic (again it's difficult to argue that it isn't toxic, but if you accept this I don't see how you as a white male take pride or pleasure in anything you do or any aspect of your existence without 'buying into white male bullshit' or to some extent preserving your own position in the system to an extent?) crux of this worldview is that you can never really be a 'good' white man and I think this true but also I don't think you will ever get a significant % of white men to accept this, or to white men who do accept this are inevitably fatalistic, withdrawn types who have given up on life

(imo there is some extent to which this is oddly similar to the bedsit loser alt-right/4chan worldview, the impossibility of a 'good' white man is a common feature)

those hyperbolic italics are not necessary to accept or even think about in order to improve things

i think positive discussion of gender/maleness is important but i don't think ilx could manage it

agree

that’s the spirit

for real though, you need the sort of conversations that can only happen in supportive situations in which ppl like each other and that is not ilx

ilx queering iwd with man chat

Hard to tell when srs lj

a slave to syntactical pulchritude

Let's take turns playing Master & Servant in this zero-sum game.

it's almost as if conflating the very real option to sit back and listen to other voices in specific contexts with an impossibly hypothetical dismantling of the Great White Male allows us to chat shit and do neither

dunno why you think using words that james herbert had stuck to his word processor on post-it notes in the seventies necessarily explains anything

xp

Because that's how tired, sadistic & unproductive this call for self-obliteration is.

I'm just arsing about tbh

I can't kill myself
I have to keep working to support my kid
sorry fgti

buy a generous life insurance policy
hire a hitman to kill you
kid enjoys generous financial safety net
???
patriarchy crumbles

Great posts soref ogmor d-40 still processing

tbrr ums this stuff has completely devastated my mental health and I'm hoping to process it for my own well-being

Great posts soref ogmor d-40 still processing

― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, 8 March 2018 13:15 (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosign also kudos for prompting tbh

I don't have time to type rn I have some work to do lol but I think this is a good format for this discussion and I appreciate every voice involved

xpost
most life insurance policies have a suicide clause where they won't pay for suicide or a time period, say, 5 or 10 years of having had the policy before they would pay for a suicide, looked into it

tbf the main obstacle to the sin-eating destruction of masculinity would be that.. most ppl really like it. the system works. being a socially successful, sexually charismatic male is the greatest feeling in our collective imaginary (or genes?), as such a person enjoys the greatest freedom. not even the most pious socjus ppl or queer ppl wd be willing to give it all up in the last instance, as they r human too and so are inserted in our sick games of libidinal satisfaction like everybody else, which inevitably boils down to the dyad of fem/masc. most women are cursed to being attracted to masculine men and loving them, etc.

the men who are worse off from the masc competition and actively resent it are few. ''beta'' guys, like the anomic rootless young men who flock to daddy jordan peterson or the r/incel saddos, usually just want to find an exit from their subaltern maleness so that they can magically become Handsome Chad too.

idk. a biotruth: the problem of 'men having the power' looks like it's rooted in differences in body strength & capacity between the sexes, & we can only try to manage it in palliative ways but never really end it

that's why you hire a hitman! it's not suicide, it's murder! it's fuckin airtight bro xp

the problem of 'men having the power' looks like it's rooted in differences in body strength & capacity between the sexes

love to see the maths on this one

(imo there is some extent to which this is oddly similar to the bedsit loser alt-right/4chan worldview, the impossibility of a 'good' white man is a common feature)

― soref

the key word in the above is in scare quotes. pretty much everybody in the world except for white man has had to confront people in the world not thinking they are 'good' because of their racial or gender identity! now all of a sudden this language is being used against white men - not even in the sense that it's used against women and poc, but in the insistence that people be judged by their _actions_ and not some nebulous notion of innate "goodness" - and they're scared and angry. i don't think there's anything wrong with white men being scared and angry. i don't think there's anything wrong with white men being fragile or weak. what is wrong is the increasingly desperate and unhinged attempts for "validation" these fragile, weak men seek from svengalis like jordan peterson, or by attempting to continue the "dialogue" on their terms, or with hashtags like #notallmen. white men who cannot accept or deal with non-male, non-white perspectives, who choose instead to cling to increasingly implausible power fantasies, are useless. worse than useless, really.

I mean, historically I'm sure that has played a significant part in reinforcing male domination, much like the travails of pregnancy (cf. Beauvoir), but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'we can only try to manage it in palliative ways but never really end it'. How useful is this extra oomph in a technologically advanced society? Aside from its almost vestigial function as an indicator of 'good genes'.

xp

I've brought this up in the past, but I'm still curious, how do Eastern European white males fit into this model?

Asking for a friend.

rush, #notallmen is not a beta male hashtag its a hashtag used to co-opt every man into #toxicmasculinity

It's International Women's Day today. I think to put things into perspective, you have to remember that during a lot of our lifetimes, women only just got the right to open their own bank account, get their own credit card, keep a job while pregnant, divorce their spouse, had the idea that a spouse could rape them accepted. This wiki page has a list of international legal rights collated. It's important to remember how intertwined all of this is, family dynamics, abusive households, women being unable to leave, the trauma passed down to children for example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_legal_rights_(other_than_voting)

now all of a sudden this language is being used against white men - not even in the sense that it's used against women and poc, but in the insistence that people be judged by their _actions_ and not some nebulous notion of innate "goodness"

I think it's something more than insistence that white men be judged by their actions though, because what their actions mean and the consequences of their actions are shaped by the fact that they are actions being carried out by white men, there's a sense in which it doesn't really matter if you're a man who does the 'right' thing because your position as a white man and the huge impersonal society-shaping forces of race and gender will always count for more than any good or bad actions you as an individual might perform - I think this is maybe kind of similar to what fgti is getting at where he talks about white men being woke being a dead-end because they are retaining their position in the system but with a veneer of virtuousness?

this is maybe a tension in the online-social-justice movement or whatever you want to call it, on the one hand there's a hyper-focus on shaming people from privileged groups who have said/done the wrong thing in some particular instance, but there's also implicit in their worldview the idea that any individual choices or actions a specific person makes will count always be less significant in forming their identity, and in what impact they have on the world than their race and gender? (NB I'm not disagreeing, I think that this is probably correct)

how can you type that and then decide you agree with it

its and watch the word choice here toxic

yeah what the fuck

that isn't even socially just. it implies fixity of gender for one thing, and it denies racial nuance. it is abysmal thinking