Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

mordy maybe goes too far

but i can only

jesus can i

imagine posting

"I give my husband such shit sometimes because he will take up space in a conversation on a topic he has scant knowledge in or that he only knows about because of me and I give him this are you fucking kidding me look. I have to tell him that he can't just talk with authority on topics he has wrong or is guessing on"

about my wife here

just for "the lolz"

the reaction would not be an earnest nod nor a consideration that there are surely contexts where this may be true or whatever

not an attack yerac but

well obviously not all men are like that

see, rush?

I am punching up though. There is a difference. Plus, so many older ilxors here know him and they know me. I would read this to him and he would giggle because it's behaviour he's been trying to be better about.

ahhhhh

do we

do we need a non-punching up thread and does that mean we also need two such if we need the posited US/non-US threads

every thread is non-punching up thread

He's also an astronomer and we've had conversations where I tell him he needs to start considering the representation in meetings he attends, the people that take up space in calls. And if he has a female grad/postgrad student that doesn't contribute/engage vocally, it's up to him to assist in moderating those conversations. It's not that women sometimes have nothing to say, it's because there is literally no space where a man isn't talking/speaking over/interrupting to say it.

this one time this guy punched me and first i was upset bc my face hurt but he explained he was punching up and so i was cool w/ it

every thread is non-punching up thread

― Finnegans woke (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 8 March 2018 16:01 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure sure 364 days are swm day its cool its cool

xp

idk there's been some bunk posted about a final solution to the white man problem itt or w/e but we could maybe do Yerac the courtesy of interpreting her uppunching as wellmeant loving corrective to confident blabbermouth? i mean it's a dynamic i know well myself from my own domestics and one i've come to respect

obv i do actually know everything but

Open season on imago. (Isn't it always though?)

go ahead lj who was stopping you@

i won't judge yerac's relationship and i'm sure her husband has no problem w/ what she said but ime in my marriage even things my wife knows are flaws she has and that she's working on - if i were ever to comment on them, even in private and only to her, i would do so delicately bc humans have fragile egos. and i def wouldn't talk about it with other people. in general i think this is a good rule for relationships but as always ymmv.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with correcting people on facts. Like, I know my spouse didn't suddenly become a rococo furniture expert so why is he suddenly giving bad chair advice? And he's in a position where he could be more inclusive in a field that has had some public sexual harassment issues.

Yeah, we are not that delicate about such things. He's my partner, he's not a child.

"i mean it's a dynamic i know well myself from my own domestics and one i've come to respect"

i totally read this as you respecting your servants...

LOL

lol

i was like wow lj has a butler?

I often critique my farmhands on the proper way to do a champagne service.

and a cow-creamer

Yeah, we are not that delicate about such things. He's my partner, he's not a child.

many ppl who are adults aren't thrilled about ppl discussing their failings with strangers just fyi i'm not sure if you're aware

The private is political in action.

I am putting this in the same category as him playing the guitar terribly or him telling someone how to incorrectly bake bread when he's never done it before. I am not telling the world he has some tragic body odor (made up example).

hey mordy you're being a dickhead

He's being the typical dude.

i don't really feel like getting into a fight on ilx

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.

"Imaginary" is right as I reckon only a vanishingly small percentage of males feel like this on anything resembling a regular basis. Like I get that just because something is nigh-on unattainable doesn't mean ppl stop yearning for it (cf self-made man myth and all that) but I don't think this is something to get too fatalistic over

xpost No, it's cool. I am using him as an example because we've had many discussions and many examples where I LOVINGLY but seriously call him on "mansplaining" or talking over me. And I am fascinated by what compels white men to do this. Like, it's so subconscious sometimes that it's like they're sleepwalking through the actions of doing it.

"just fyi i'm not sure if you're aware"

yeah, um, this is that thing by the way. that people do. if you aren't aware...

Why the continued emphasis on whiteness? Male privilege/toxic masculinity are a near-universal given throughout space and time. Chalk it up to the need for a US/non-US thread (board, even).

It drives my wife crazy when people (especially her mom!) address questions about science-y topics to me, as if I would know (I would not, and she is far more knowledgeable about those areas). I've definitely become more conscious of that sort of thing and try to redirect the conversation.

Same for the dynamics at our weekly potluck, where in the old days it was more common for dudes to dominate the conversation (usually about books & music, since there are a lot of writers and musicians in the group).

It drives my wife crazy when people (especially her mom!) address questions about science-y topics to me, as if I would know (I would not, and she is far more knowledgeable about those areas).

Fuck, I got this for a while. Not my wife, but my sister-in-law. Whenever anyone had a computer problem in HER family, they would look to me for help and advice. I have an intermediate knowledge of Microsoft Office. They actually paid for her education in a computer-related field.

D-40:

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

This is a booming post, frankly. I agree that the problem is first a systemic problem (and, once the US have finally implemented single-payer health care and stopped issuing CCW permits, then, even if anti-woman anti-black sentiment continues to exist, it at least won't nearly be affected in life-threatening terms). But arriving at that place where these legislative changes can happen? doesn't that have to come from a position of social change?

I'm sure you read that Mother Jones article about the bright young Oklahoman? https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/donald-trump-2016-election-oklahoma-working-class/

We have a system that doesnt incentivize these behaviors, so instead we just look down on ppl for acting rationally

I think about this all the time when thinking about gun nuts, and the "cold dead hands" rhetoric-- people criticizing my facetious "we can't genocide them" seriousjoke? they fucking started it--

I really do think that the fight needs to be won by psychologists who can figure out ways of convincing so-called the "right wing" why their viewpoint is entirely buttressed by faulty logic and an ignorance of statistical data-- won by propagandists and speech-writers who can rebut a "city on the hill" aphorism with a better aphorism that suggests, at the very least, "women are safe in our country", or something else

xp you're posturing for an audience that has no need for it and on the basis of what would seem to be a sophomoric understanding of the topic at hand

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?

It's kinda like, no matter what you do, you always lose.

xpost No, it's cool. I am using him as an example because we've had many discussions and many examples where I LOVINGLY but seriously call him on "mansplaining" or talking over me. And I am fascinated by what compels white men to do this. Like, it's so subconscious sometimes that it's like they're sleepwalking through the actions of doing it.

― Yerac, Thursday, March 8, 2018 10:33 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can completely relate to this, and I wonder why the hell it's a mode of conversation I'm used to? Part of it was being really into reading about all kinds of different things as a kid, and my patient mother letting me stand and "converse" with her, which was really her doing some task while I enthusiastically yammered about whatever thing I got into reading about that week.

_obviously_ not everyone was a voracious reader with a patient mother, but there's this entire mode of "conversation" that's just telling long anecdotes or spewing information with little interplay that I experience a lot more with male friends and coworkers than I do with women. and I'm aware of it, and am guessing Yerac's husband is, too!

I mean, I've jokingly said "I've got to warn you, I'm a talker" when introducing myself to people. But that's a joke, not an excuse for being bad at interactive conversation, especially when talking to someone who is socialized to not interrupt you, or feels like they're not allowed to.

it's not that the speaker even necessarily thinks they're an expert, but by talking over others, they become the de facto "expert" because they never bothered to ask if anyone else had ever baked bread or w/e

He's being the typical dude mordy

xp - I know plenty of women that do this, too, (me included) but it almost always involves anxiety and/or alcohol

there's also something to the "whoa, I wouldn't say things about my wife like that" thing

it's cool to be someone not saying rude things about a significant other, especially when I've listened to older dudes talk about their marriages in "ball and chain" terms and wonder why these fossils are still talking to me. but there's also the element of trusting people to have an understanding about what their partner would be cool with, discussion-wise

I have a few married couples I hang out with where I get the exact same discussion of small grievances, in the same terms, whether they're both present or just one of them. And I have that relationship with both spouses

i've never experienced neither anxiety nor alcohol, obviously

True story: we were at a pub quiz last month and he acknowledges that I am a thousand times better at trivia than him. There was a question about what facial feature in House Hapsburg was elongated due to inbreeding. I was staring off into the distance because, I dunno, I was looking to see where the restroom was or the question was poorly worded. He started to define to me what inbreeding is and I loudly said "Are you seriously explaining what incest is to me!?!" Our team laughed.

Yeah, when I go off on a topic it usually involves alcohol. But I also know a lot about the topic and if someone corrects me or knows more than me, I stop talking and listen.

it can be fun to bullshit, to see how far you can push it; but i don't have an SO to complicate that.

(I only know a lot about maybe 3 things, so I keep my mouth shut unless one of them comes up)

xpost Meaning to say, if I start to soliloquiz it's usually on a topic I know a lot about and not something I am pulling out of thin air.

honestly, Yerac, I wouldn't be apologetic about those anecdotes about your husband -- I see it as indicative of what long-term intimate relationships are like. I thought it was funny and apt.

ha, the first autocomplete on Google for Habsburg is "Habsburg jaw"

Oh, I am not apologetic. This should be a teaching moment for the dudes on this thread who find it distasteful and need to learn the difference. But thanks!

Sometimes when I go out to dinner or some other with his work colleagues (international crowd) I think about whether I should say anything when a controversial topic comes up. But then I say fuck it. I've asked before if it bothers him. But it doesn't because he usually agrees or just thinks it's funny.