Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

to blorfinity… and beyond!

i have a lot of ideas about this that i can't untangle into sentences but i've really enjoyed silby's posts itt

more multi-xps

What is the meaning of identifying as a gender other than your sex if gender is a mere vestige of a less enlightened era?

People create meaning both within and among themselves. What it 'means' for a transman to identify as a gender other than their sexual equipment at birth is a meaning the transman has created for themselves, in dialogue with other meanings generated by others. Such meanings tend to cluster together in a similar neighborhood, which is fortunate in terms of being able to live together in society, but ultimately that meaning is the transman's personal possession. So, ask them what it means to them.

<3 brad

So to sum up, "I am a man" = self-evident but can't mean anything beyond itself. But also there is a particular kind of masculinity that is toxic, even though masculinity doesn't mean anything.

It's ironic it's so hard for you to grasp what 'toxic masculinity' means, when 'Fedora Dostoyevsky' seems to capture it so well.

"I am a man" = self-evident

No, I would say it doesn't admit to any kind of evidentiary process or even some sort of Platonic discernment.

there is a particular kind of masculinity that is toxic

I wouldn't say that.

masculinity doesn't mean anything

No, it is the bare fact of being a man doesn't mean anything beyond itself. I have here construed "masculinity" as the received, performative, and culturally-determined collection of attributes commonly ascribed to people who are or are perceived to be men.

(I'm still really glad Mordy gave me this sweet dn, really works here)

it's very easy to grasp what it "means." It seems hard for you to grasp that words have multiple senses and subtexts. xp

as far as i can tell this is still the final word on masculinity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Lp_e4wUnz4

But "fedora" is just a style of crowned hat to countless millions of people, unless it has become a weighty cultural signifier, as it now appears to be to millions of others. And Dostoevsky is just a name most often associated with an author that the great majority of people have not read.

No, it is the bare fact of being a man doesn't mean anything beyond itself. I have here construed "masculinity" as the received, performative, and culturally-determined collection of attributes commonly ascribed to people who are or are perceived to be men.

― valorous wokelord (silby), Tuesday, May 22, 2018 2:07 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But if you remove all performative and culturally determined attributes as well as biological attributes from the concept of "man" what is left?

The mere fact. You're a man! I'm really happy for you.

I mean this concept I'm working with here is probably subject to some major complaints from anyone who has read Wittgenstein more carefully than I have but I think it's both kind of true and politically useful so I'll defend it at least a little bit.

silby on fire

what is left?

an extremely malleable concept signified by 'man'. which is what it always was to begin with.

I mean this concept I'm working with here is probably subject to some major complaints from anyone who has read Wittgenstein more carefully than I have but I think it's both kind of true and politically useful so I'll defend it at least a little bit.

― valorous wokelord (silby), 22. maj 2018 21:11 (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We need to go from 'being' to either 'doing' or 'becoming', etc ;)

The Fedora Dostojevski thing was an attempt at a joke, btw, nothing more. Sorry if it seemed snarky.

Please be a good person.

all else is commentary

Enjoyed yr subtle alanis morrissette reference freddie

Just found a YouTube Channel - Pop Culture Detective - doing hero's work analyzing masculinity protrayals in TV shows and media. Particularly liked the ones on Steven Universe and Big Bang Theory, and the videos go into elements of why I respectively love and despite them.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHiwtz2tCEfS17N9A-WoSSw

anyone else sit down to pee? was recommended to me by a friend a few years ago, and after an initial reaction of incredulity (mild offense, even) I have now come to love it - makes for a nice little break and it's never messy

if there is a urinal (or if toilet is trashed) will still stand, in a forest would ofc always stand

it's funny tho because it's (seen as) effeminate and not something I admit to everyone

Of course I sit, otherwise I won't have hands free to swipe on Tinder.

swipe from left to right

i lived in a house for years with one of those toilet seats that doesn't always stay up and risks at any time slamming down and showering you half-way through a piss. So I kinda got used to a sit-down wee

Yes, peeing sitting down is awesome. Any excuse to sit down really!

silby said most of what I wanted to say in these recent posts but on this specifically:

Why do we need to go out of our way to attach positive and non-traditionally feminine traits to women, girls, femininity etc. if the goal is actually that gender should have nothing associated with it whatsoever, a pure blank slate?

Because while the end of gender as a category is the best idea in the long term you can't act according to that in our current reality in the same way that saying "I don't even see colour" is not a good way to be anti-racist. Any positive traits associated with feminity should, in the long run, be seen as simply positive traits that anyone of any gender can decide to adopt or not, same for masculinity.

i took a look at that youtube channel and especially liked the one about stalking
it's not surprising that young men learn that dogged persistence and "not taking no for an answer" is the path to their dream girl's heart but irl it does not work and is harmful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ1MPc5HG_I

Silby’s posts reminded me a bit of the essay here:

https://aeon.co/amp/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

which I know was quite unpopular but still thought-provoking (to me at least).

Please be a good person.
all else is commentary

― markle's potion (Ye Mad Puffin)

so then, don't be evil? not sure that dictum works out in practice.

anyone else sit down to pee? was recommended to me by a friend a few years ago, and after an initial reaction of incredulity (mild offense, even) I have now come to love it - makes for a nice little break and it's never messy

it's funny tho because it's (seen as) effeminate and not something I admit to everyone

― niels

you're goddamn right i sit, with my bph standing is not really an option. the germans particularly seem to find the notion offensive, having coined the epithet "sitzpinkel".

i don't like that essay at all and silby's posts did not remind me of it

xp

So if you want to call yourself a genderqueer femme presenting demigirl, you go for it. Express that identity however you like. Have fun with it. A problem emerges only when you start making political claims on the basis of that label – when you start demanding that others call themselves cisgender, because you require there to be a bunch of conventional binary cis people for you to define yourself against; and when you insist that these cis people have structural advantage and political privilege over you, because they are socially read as the conformist binary people, while nobody really understands just how complex and luminous and multifaceted and unique your gender identity is.

yeah this essay can fuck off imo

reactionary ass horseshit

cis doesn't mean you're the absolute embodiment of manhood or womanhood nor does non-binary mean that you've necessarily slipped outside of those categories, being non-binary is often v determined by those existing categories, GOD this is so stupid

needless to say i do not identify as non-binary bc i think i'm so special that no labels could possibly apply to me, nor do i know of ANY non-binary people who insist that cis people should call themselves cis, who gives a SHIT

I know a lot of guys that sit to pee. I have historically told any guy that he needs to sit the fuck down too if I have to clean a shared bathroom.

reilly-cooper really going to town on those darn snowflakes

having acquired ulcerative colitis (and later crohn's disease) starting from age 14, i became a seated pee-er by necessity, and would not go back.

That is such a strange shame for men to hold. Peeing sitting down. wtf.

I am a reasonably committed sit-down wee-er. The only shame I've experienced recently is sleepily trying to sit-down wee in the middle of the night, with the oftentimes attendant problem of needing a wee in the middle of the night, and weeing through the gap between the seat and the pan.

I do both depending on how I feel but there’s absolutely tons of shame in it. At my last job guys would actively monitor how you use the bathroom and diss people for standing in a stall!

At my office there is one cubicle* in the men's toilets, anyone using that to piss (if they don't have to for some medical reason) can go fuck themselves

(*this is against health & safety regulations but when I tried to report it to the council they wouldn't take any action unless I was prepared to be public about it being me who reported it, and I was not prepared to do that.)

What I don't get about the anti-sitting faction: If you need to do both functions, you naturally sit down, don't you? You don't, like, sit to poop and then stand up to pee midway through. Or vice versa. Or do you?

I haven't done an extensive survey for obvious reasons, but clearly at least some sitzpinkling is okay among even the manliest of men.

tough to hit the target with a hardon while standing, but impossible while sitting

fyi

That was my middle of the night problem.

mozeltov on yr midnight health tho

A sheynem dank.

no way i can urinate while sitting like that

my member is too long, to keep to specifics

I have heard that the USA keeps its toilet water very high( or maybe you're just a shower - good for you )

re. doing both functions ( xps to ye mad puffin) is that shitting in public is almost taboo in a number of places. I don't think I know anyone that had a poo at highschool for the whole 5 years - maybe because no-one wanted the shame of being suspected of weeing in the cubicle?

I poop at work every single day

Wait what thread is this