Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

holy shit I just looked it up and she also wrote another 4 childrens books and FIFTY-ONE for adults during this time.

And they are in no way formulaic like Enid Blyton or Barbara Cartland or even Agatha Christie (barring a certain amount of reused stock characters, well-meaning educationalists and various varieties of maiden aunt) - I would put her up there with Wodehouse.

this is delightful stuff imo

for anyone else attempting to follow along, I'm assuming after a little reading that sic's explaining the history of Just William adaptations without actually naming the series, and I am reasonably confident I've encountered none of the books, continuations, or adaptations in my life

thanks for the deep background lads

I was following the formula Trayce set

but don't you feel better for having done some productive work today

I do!

when are we gonna crack open a cold one and talk about football? y'all are making me uncomfortable af

btw the dude up above who suggested the possibility of sex being redistributed like wealth is an economist at george mason university, which, shockingly: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/385560-major-university-allowed-conservative-donors-say-in-hiring-and

good mourning!

lol

aside from being the beneficiary of systemic preferential treatment i can't think of a single thing i find appealing about "masculinity" right now

"appealing" isn't the right word, i'm honestly kind of repulsed by it but it sure does come in handy to be held to a lower standard sometimes

aside from being the beneficiary of systemic preferential treatment i can't think of a single thing i find appealing about "masculinity" right now

To paraphrase Eeyore, I am quite attached to my penis, and it to me.

happy anniversary!

The Talmud my students are studying addressed this topic of incels and experts demanding redistribution of sex, around 1500 years ago pic.twitter.com/qVGjoVGnLd

— Dov | OOOOooo (@drnelk) April 30, 2018

lol

Sages otm

that is extremely good

fuckit mordy is gonna be unbearable now isnt he

Anyway y’all can and should continue to be men without participating in “masculinity” other than in the trivial, grammatical sense. A reconstructed masculinity serves no purpose. It doesn’t serve any purpose to violent misogynists either; they need to stop being violent misogynists, not find a new way to be a “real man”.

^ otm, though I would say that

mordy grows tired of this site more and more

he probably won't even bother replying anymore

Maybe he can reply from behind a fence, in a secluded area.

lol

I was following the formula Trayce set

You were doing what you always do to me, you cheeky shit :P

i wasnt directly referencing btw at least not knowingly but im sure its the original source for the formation

mh im not sure what you were even getting at in calling it out but genuinely now pls dont as a rule translate for me ta

that should be read as fond chiding obv not scathing outrage for those that need me translated

also males are good imo

yeah thats right

missed the Just William stuff upthread

Crompton was near enough a genius and the Martin Jarvis readings were essential for my childhood

I rolled it back immediately after finding out about the source but I’m putting you back on notice, deems

Not to drag the thread back to the incel discussion, but I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend the best thing I've ever read that touches on the subject, this London Review of Books article by philosophy professor Amia Srinavasan:

Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?

Feminist commentary on Elliot Rodger and the incel phenomenon more broadly has said much about male sexual entitlement, objectification and violence. But so far it has said little about desire: men’s desire, women’s desire, and the ideological shaping of both.

As that excerpt would indicate, it's about more than just incels. It's also beautifully written and thought-provoking. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

I think, like verbal intercourse, you’re going to be universally declined if your views are repugnant

Anything titled Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex? has eroded its legitimacy from the get-go, because it puts it squarely in the province of click-bait and such unserious books as Are Men Necessary?. The answer to that question is so obviously 'no', that even hinting that the author might suggest a way to answer 'yes' is tatamount to hinting it handles the subject very stupidly.

I think if you read it you'll be pleasantly surprised, and feel a little silly for having posted that.

She waits until the final summing up of a rather long article to say:

The question posed by radical self-love movements is not whether there is a right to sex (there isn’t)

So, if by her own admission the question is NOT whether there is a right to sex, why is that question posed in the title of the piece? Because it draws attention. Like I said, the parallel to click-bait is perfectly legit.

Authors are not infrequently not responsible for the titles given their pieces by periodicals

And whoever chose such a stupid click-baity title is responsible for giving the article an immediate aura of stupidity, merited or not. Which was my point.

It's a well written and thoughtful article about the political economy of desire, and doesn't in any way validate or support incels and their ilk.

yes but aimless is grumpy tonight so

Media Literacy 101: If there's a question mark in a headline, the answer to the question is always "No."

Yeah, it's a really great article, who cares about the title.

I do think the final conclusion she draws is a bit optimistic: yes, desire can change, sometimes by conscious effort, but I don't think we'll ever arrive at a society where the majority are interested in seeing sex or relationships as that kind of work.

i think complaints about the editor go beyond the title. srinivasan is a thoughtful and an insightful writer but the whole thing comes off like a first draft - i feel good editing would have made it all the more powerful.

so here's a question: if desire _can_ change, or to rephrase, if we can change our desires, how does this play out in practice? assuming i have the genuine desire to change (many men don't), how do i make it happen?

Well, if we accept that our original desires are (at least partly) the result of social conditioning, of being bombarded by images of what "sexy" is supposed to be, etc. I guess we can hope that immersing ourselves in different visions of sexuality, experimenting, might lead to our desires changing, too. There's no guarantees of that, tho, as I think the author herself implicitly acknowledges.

Thing is I might have sounded a bit judgemental when I talked of that "majority", but really I kinda count myself amongst them - and I don't think it's just men, either! I have difficulties imagining that anyone but the most ideologically committed individuals of any gender or sexual orientation would want to view their dating lives that way. Mostly we like what we like, and while our fantasies don't entitle us to any fulfillment in real life trying to work against them is unlikely to lead to any kind of satisfying life, imo.

So I think really in the end the most we can do is to create an environment that is more open to different kinds of desire, hoping that future generations won't get the same messages drilled into them that we did, or at least not to the same extent. That's the endgame of a lot of gender issues, in my experiences - trying to help our kids be less fucked up than we are.

Ross Fucking Douthat references that piece in the NYT today (touting it as an opposite "extreme" to the Robin Hanson one because he's a gigantic fucking asshole)

xp

The point of that piece though is that while we say "we like what we like", our desires are shaped by political and economic forces that can and should be interrogated.

one of the complicated things about this w/r/t sexuality, though, is that in many cases our childhood experiences seem to be key to how we're wired. the fact that something has been written doesn't necessarily mean it can be rewritten.

which i'm not particularly thrilled about, because there's a slippery slope there to the old trope of regulating society "for the children". my biggest issue with that argument is that very often we don't know, can't foresee, the long-term effects of what we're doing until it's already done and dusted. i feel like it's more ethical to make decisions for our own sake rather than acting _in loco parentis_, even if acting _in loco parentis_ is an inevitable effect.

in my case i've tried for decades, literally, to try and figure out why i am the way i am, and i've come up short. no answers, only pretexts and excuses. ask the questions, sure, but expect or trust answers!

...also, leave out crucial words at random. that's very important. _don't_ expect or trust answers, i mean.

The point of that piece though is that while we say "we like what we like", our desires are shaped by political and economic forces that can and should be interrogated.

Yes I know, and I agree with that point! The trouble, though, is that merely accepting that a desire is shaped by political and economic forces that one might despise doesn't make that desire go away. Which is why I accused her of excessive optimism in her conclusions - Srinivasan suggests that desire can be changed, and sometimes conciously so - I don't deny that it's possible, just that I don't think that proposition is likely to get many people onboard and, even if it did, desire is murky enough that we would by no means be guaranteed any kind of success.

one of the complicated things about this w/r/t sexuality, though, is that in many cases our childhood experiences seem to be key to how we're wired. the fact that something has been written doesn't necessarily mean it can be rewritten.

Yes this is true, and part of why I'm skeptical towards changing desire as a project. But at the same time I wouldn't be too dogmatic about it - there are plenty of examples of ppl who "found out" that they have a different sexual orientation than they previously thought relatively late in life, and while you can attribute that entirely to repression and social pressures, I tend to think human sexuality is a bit more complex than that.

which i'm not particularly thrilled about, because there's a slippery slope there to the old trope of regulating society "for the children". my biggest issue with that argument is that very often we don't know, can't foresee, the long-term effects of what we're doing until it's already done and dusted. i feel like it's more ethical to make decisions for our own sake rather than acting _in loco parentis_, even if acting _in loco parentis_ is an inevitable effect.

I'm not sure we're thinking of the same kind of thing when we talk about "regulating society" here. The examples I gave - of making different kinds of desire more visible in society - I *suppose* that can turn out to be damaging on some abstract level but I'll take that risk because not doing so seems pretty clearly damaging to ppl here and now. Things get dicier when we think about what desires are wrong, or damaging - which is why, as the article states, sex positivity has largely glossed over these issues. How to talk about these things, and how to create the kind of balance where the interrogation of those desires doesn't mean shaming the ppl who're already settled with them - that's the thing the article grasps at, and as smartly as anything I've read on the topic. Which is why I do have to disagree with your "first draft" assesment - if some of it feels a bit muddled that's because that's where we're at with this topic, at this point in history.

fwiw the other gender issues I had in mind when thinking about acting "for the children" were to do with, as per Cordelia Fine's Delusions Of Gender, how much gender discrimination still happens in the thinking of ppl who're for gender equality, unconciously - we can try to be as aware of these biases as possible for ourselves, but I think future generations truly might be free of them in ways we probably will never be.