Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

^ 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.

I’m liking what I’ve read of that article so far.

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

Thing I’ve been wondering about in the last couple of years is whether we’re able to do this at all, since there seems little ability (online, at least) to discuss anything without the accompanying moralizing and looming threat of tainted moral purity. Things have narrowed to the point where the only way most folks can handle any issue is by moralizing and shaming some particular individual about it.

Like, there doesn’t seem to be much of a way to interrogate any not-broadly-accepted idea because there’s a whole lotta people who operate on the premise that “talking about” = “legitimating”, which ain’t too far from the reactionary stance of “depicting = endorsement.”

This isn't hugely insightful or even that well written, but I think it's worth a look anyway -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-43956366

It’s quite touching in its way.

It’s interesting that he urges that something should be done, but he doesn’t quite know what:

So the first thing I would say to anybody in that situation now is: Do take it seriously.

And we should think about intervening if we notice it. How we do that, I'm at a loss to say because if someone had asked me about it, I would have denied the problem. But some people will be in a position to notice.

Yeah, I find it refreshing to read personal stories that are ambiguous and lacking in clear morals, feel like they are rarer and rarer these days

It might have been a defence mechanism on my part, but I developed a deep feeling that it might be wrong to approach women and that it might be an imposition on them. I was certainly never going to be that guy who "used" women.

I felt women had the right to go about everyday life and enjoy a night out without having anyone approach them.

I can certainly relate to this part.

Yup.

Yeah actually as someone who's been single for [redacted but prolonged period of time] reading that was extremely touching, thanks for sharing.

A woman never asked me out - that would have been nice! Perhaps it was less acceptable to do so at the time.

That's one social norm from the patriarchy days that really needs to leave the planet ASAP.

the first two times a girl invited me to participate in any such activity i was so confused by the donegal/mayo slang employed for the purposes that i blithely declined

You hear those cliches of teenage fumbling - well, I wasn't a teenager, so I found I knew what to do.

10/10 humblebrag

It might have been a defence mechanism on my part, but I developed a deep feeling that it might be wrong to approach women and that it might be an imposition on them. I was certainly never going to be that guy who "used" women.
I felt women had the right to go about everyday life and enjoy a night out without having anyone approach them.

I can certainly relate to this part.

― JRN, Thursday, May 10, 2018 8:42 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup.

― Simon H., Thursday, May 10, 2018 8:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can definitely relate to the defense mechanism part. But part of it is also not getting good signposts from my parents about sex. I remember my mom sitting me down after she caught me watching MTV (yes, we were guided by the PMRC in our house). She made a very exasperated statement about how "sex can be fun!" which threw me for a loop because my parents mostly lacked any indicators of sexuality or fun. "But," she continued, "the kind of sex they showed on MTV devalued women as people." Around the same time, I remember reading an article in the Utne Reader that expressed a similar sentiment. I can admit that this was true to an extent.

But no one told me what fun sex was if not for the screaming, smiling girls in bikinis prancing around on MTV Spring Break or throwing themselves at Bret Michaels and Vince Neil. I had male friends later who were more sexually forward with girls, and successful, without being too unhealthy about it as far as I know, but by then I had something locked in my mind that made it very hard to approach girls.

I lost whatever confidence I had after high school and during my twenties only dated women who actually threw themselves at me. Not to get gross about numbers, but there weren't many, with multi-year dry spells. I even missed a few gigantic hints from people because my social anxiety wouldn't relent.

This post is probably too long and too personal but w/e.

Never once sat around stewing about how anybody fucking owed me anything though.

Not too long and personal, most of this rings true for me too. What I wonder about these days is how much my parents can be said to have successfully raised me - on one hand raising me with feminist values was absolutely right, on the other hand I don't think I had the skills to equip me to deal with the world. It's something I'm thinking about a lot as my sons approach their teenage years, my eldest is probably going to be as naturally socially awkward as I was.

I liberated myself from the constant desire to have a girlfriend or something and now I take in strides and boy it feels good. It helps that had some breakthroughs in my career recently, have a strong network of friends and a fantastic family, I can't imagine lots of people have been as lucky as me in that regard. I realized after the fact, that it has been more about social pressure and the idea of having a girlfriend than truly wanting to be with somebody.

A few months, I was at a lecture and a woman, a brillant author whose work I admire (Julie Delporte check her out if you can read french), discussing her #metoo moments. That was touching, and then she was calling for everyone to just devaluate sex a bit, to take it down a notch, the same way some people on the left were asking that our neoliberal society could be about something other than growth, that we younger people could be less focused on fucking all the time and I think it's on the money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BelKVNu5mcM

something other than growth

lol

It helps that had some breakthroughs in my career recently, have a strong network of friends and a fantastic family, I can't imagine lots of people have been as lucky as me in that regard.

I get the impression that a lot of the incel message board posters guys who have difficulty forming relationships with other folk in general, both platonic friendships (with either men or women) as well as romantic relationships - and part of the problem is that they respond to this by idealizing the idea of a romantic relationship as some kind of hollywood happy ending - they can't make friends or make a success of everyday life/work/general human interaction and the only solution they can imagine to this is a romantic relationship where they find the one person who loves them and understands them and cares for them, if they found their *true love* then it wouldn't matter that they're a loser as far as the rest of the world is concerned? I think this is a big part of the all-or-nothing way they talk about sexual relationships, that they maybe wouldn't think of it that way they were getting love/respect/affirmation from other sources?

(and the one place where they maybe are getting a degree of affirmation and comradeship is from the incel message boards themselves, which obviously just binds them tighter into these ways of thinking?)

there is something about being alone that can make you lose perspective and bottle up feelings so that the stakes seem huge you become incredibly tense and self-conscious (while staring with envy and incomprehension at how impossibly relaxed and 'normal' other people seem)

lol

― j., Friday, May 11, 2018 11:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

terrific contribution

I have some extended family members who are socially and culturally isolated (living a long drive from basically anything other than one another and people exactly like them). Their politics, their views on women, and their views on race are... somewhat unreconstructed.

It's not the whole explanation for toxic beliefs, but I do believe that that isolation plays a role. I kinda feel like my NEET brother-in-law would have more realistic ideas about women if he... uh... knew some actual ones.

Isolation definitely plays a role; it’s why living in a small town or rural area is bad for you.