Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

i've never felt at home in my body either but that's my issue and it does nothing to change the fact that the world i live in has long been built around making white cishet people like me as safe and comfortable as possible to the detriment of everyone else

if lots of hetero white men feel that way then doesn't that indicate that it's not *just* your issue, it's something that's better understood in structural terms and not just as an individual failing?

I'm not suggesting that this is where bizarro gazzara is coming from but I feel like there's a tendency with social justice-y type takes towards this "stand on your own two feet, you are the master of your own destiny, if you are a failure or experiencing mental distress that's on you etc" angle for those who meet some threshold of privilege? (and where exactly the line is drawn is always in flux, so no-one can ever be sure that they won't end up on the 'being to blame for your inevitable failure' side rather than the 'victim of circumstance side'?)

that's OTM too.

I quite liked reading this article which is perhaps related in its perspective on how males move through the world https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2018/07/20/feature/crossing-the-divide-do-men-really-have-it-easier-these-transgender-guys-found-the-truth-was-more-complex/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5335c0f026bb

I'm not suggesting that this is where bizarro gazzara is coming from but I feel like there's a tendency with social justice-y type takes towards this "stand on your own two feet, you are the master of your own destiny, if you are a failure or experiencing mental distress that's on you etc" angle for those who meet some threshold of privilege?

This is literally what Jordan Peterson says, so how the heck does that get blamed on 'social justice-y types'??? Also, fuck the phrase 'social justice-y types'.

'social justice-y type TAKES', not 'social justice-y types'

'these trump voters/alt-right guys/incels/whoever are blaming X Y and Z for their failure when they should be blaming themselves' is a trope you see on the left a lot? mediocre white men who are having to compete on a level(er) playing field for the first time and angry because they are exposed as sucking, and that sucking is very much an inherent personal failing, this seems like a common analysis of where we are now from ppl on the left?

You are conflating two things. Trump voters / alt-right guys / incels constantly scapegoats other people for why they fail, and the left is good at pointing that out. But the left is also aware that the patriarchy / capitalist society are to blame for the woes of white people.

Saying to incels 'No, it's not ok to blame women for not wanting to sleep with you, or wanting society to force women into sleeping with you' does not mean we go full Jordan Peterson on them. That's what Jordan Peterson does.

playing field for the first time and angry because they are exposed as sucking, and that sucking is very much an inherent personal failing, this seems like a common analysis of where we are now from ppl on the left?

Yes, the whole mocking "you're failing at life on the easiest difficulty setting" argument is def a thing you hear

I've seriously never heard it. You need to listen to different podcasts, mate.

Not on podcasts, and not espoused by anyone I'd take seriously, just bandied about as a snark on social media / Reddit etc

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/

xp

/ilx

There's nothing about failing and blaming white men in how's life's text, it's just a way to explain white / male privilege.

'these trump voters/alt-right guys/incels/whoever are blaming X Y and Z for their failure when they should be blaming themselves'

― soref

i only see "they are blaming x y and z for their failure when they should be blaming capitalism", tbh

ftr I have seen the "white men who are unsuccessful in life are pathetic losers who failed on the easiest difficulty setting" on numerous occasions, this is not something soref made up. mostly on twitter and I generally assume it's just people trolling for "white tears" and/or pushing back on white men blaming minorities for their problems. it sometimes seems a little mean but I think complaining about it comes uncomfortably close to tone policing and/or privilege denial so *shrugs*

anything talking in general terms of "success" and "failure" in life is p indefensible imo

i was reading a little bit last week about jodie whitaker's costume for doctor who where she talked about liking it for its "androgyny". i'm not seeing it myself. in what part of the world are culottes "androgynous"? that's a kind of obnoxious aspect of masculinity for me - unless i want to wear cargo shorts (ugh), i'm obliged to keep my shins and ankles covered at all times.

I love that "What It's Like To Be A Man" article. It's silly but witty enough. It's kind of a think piece version of the article that I really want to read, which is, "Why is Jordan Peterson such a Jordan Peterson: neurological explanations for patterns of male victimhood"

xp europe & east asia for starters

I liked unperson's article! This part was good:

The other inescapable problem with the idea of Man as Protector, even more fundamental than its propensity toward hierarchical violence, or its empirical falseness, is this: Protectors always fail. Stare far enough down the corridors of time—as men do in the watches of the night, in the interstices of the day, while driving, praying, holding a baby—and all you’ll see are threats. Every car is a murder weapon, every bruise a malignancy. The world is the sort of place in which statistical probability reaches down like a giant and swats us and our loved ones away. You cannot be a protector any more than you can be a changeling or a fairy princess.

By this I don’t mean, of course, that we should give up. Men will not stop worrying about their wives, or their husbands, or their children, or their friends and coworkers and dogs, or about the little patches of civilization to which they may feel they’ve contributed. Nor will women, or the nonbinary (a category that I sometimes think includes most of us). Love itself commands us to do whatever we can. But there is nothing specifically masculine about this responsibility. (An enraged mom is a proverbial terror.) It also imposes on men a burden that would drive anyone insane; it ties impossibility to our very identity. Despite what’s been communicated in every action movie ever made, nobody is wily enough to stave off mortality in every instance. Do everything you can about the dangers that are clear and present, but anything beyond this is folly. Simply being a good person is hard enough without the additional burden of being a mythical creature.

This bit also seemed extremely applicable:

Without quite meaning to, Harvey Mansfield also offers a useful explanation of how the mere desire to bear risks for a loved one does so often drive a person willy-nilly into an ugly politics of dominance. “Honor is an asserted claim to protect someone,” he writes, “and the claim to protect is a claim to rule. How can I protect you properly if I can’t tell you what to do?”9 He judges the “entire enterprise of modernity,” with its emphasis on Machiavellian foxiness over lion-hearted classical courage, as “a project to keep manliness unemployed,” and sees some limited hope for its revival in the war on terror, still fairly new at the time he wrote these words, which we now call, with fatalistic humor, the Forever War.10 Talk about a claim to rule! But the destructive logic that Mansfield identifies here most often works itself out closer to home than Iraq or Afghanistan. It works itself out in those men who have lived mutely at the center of a stage for so long, providing, or pretending to provide, or believing they provide, for a family that falls apart, or that fails to materialize in the first place, whereupon they pick up a gun and bring the curtain down on the whole play. How can they protect you properly if you won’t let them tell you what to do?

while driving, praying, holding a baby

who says men can't multitask

I don't really recognize or relate to most of that.

Certainly I feel driven to protect my family from harm and discomfort and even mild inconvenience as much as I can. My protectiveness expresses itself in a totally different way, though; it's not nearly so dark as that expressed above.

I guess I worry about how things like a day at the beach or a hike might go wrong, and I hope that there's a way I can be prepared or plan or set things up to avert problems. Do we have enough snacks and water. First aid kit. Sunblock. Are all the phones and devices charged? Maybe bring a portable charger just in case. Do I have the tickets? Who has the tickets; I thought you had the tickets. If we lose track of the nonverbal child is he wearing his ID bracelet? Does the older one know our mobile numbers? What about towels. Are towels too much of a pain to carry, will there be towels there? Should we bring his life vest or borrow one when we get there. Gas, fuck, I forgot to get gas. Be right back.

That's driven by intense love, a wish for things to go well. Selfishly and pathetically, a wish to not be blamed for something foreseeable that went wrong. Not out of a wish to dominate and control. And it's not as dire as "what if there's a kidnapper or a zombie ninja shark"

I also don't relate to feeling like I need to deny myself comfort. Hell, I feel like I deserve _extra_ comfort as insulation from the buffeting of the world. I wear the most comfortable and functional clothes in existence. I eat well and drink heavily. I exercise only on the way to other goals, not as an end in itself.

For me, the really incongruous message up there is moisturizer. I am not being _denied_ moisturizer, I would just never think to use it because I feel fine without it. My wife would probably applaud if I did more little cosmetic things like that.

I relate to dealing with uncomfortable situations as they are rather than trying to change them, but I don't think this is because of socialization or because of some need to deny myself comfort. It's just a dumb, tunnel-brained way of thinking. Oh, I'm cold and in an uncomfortable chair and things are arranged in a way that makes it harder to do whatever task I'm working on? I guess this is my life now.

I disagree with most of what he says but it leads me to consider various definitions of masculinity I hadn't heard spelled out like that before.

I would characterize what he's talking about as less a rage to protect than being socialized into the idea that your masculinity is one day going to be tested, and you need to spend an inordinate amount of resources (in the sense of time and emotional labor) preparing for that. And once you've invested enough time and energy into the preparations, that now makes up a fair amount of your identity, and you start forgoing more mundane ways you can be a better parent/partner/friend because you figure once you pass the big test, all the smaller things you've neglected will be forgiven. But the tests are either myths, or vanishingly unlikely to occur.

However I TOTALLY relate to carrying a desk on your back a mile and a half (and even thinking it odd). I lived 15 years without a car and I think I accepted a ride... twice. In a blizzard.

How gendered is that? I dunno.

The brokest years of my life (shivering in cut-off heat, rummagine through the couch to find enough change to buy pasta, dodging the landlord, doing temp work with the flu) were spent about four miles from my parents' house. It would have taken one phone call and a five-minute taxi ride to make everything fine, and that was a phone call I either couldn't or wouldn't make. All my sisters borrowed money, moved back home from time to time, etc.

erm, NOT even thinking it odd

Agreed, fhaze. I think that's a good encapsulation.

cosign; this is very well put

your masculinity is one day going to be tested, and you need to spend an inordinate amount of resources (in the sense of time and emotional labor) preparing for that. And once you've invested enough time and energy into the preparations, that now makes up a fair amount of your identity, and you start forgoing more mundane ways you can be a better parent/partner/friend because you figure once you pass the big test, all the smaller things you've neglected will be forgiven

YMP (and this is not a critique, just a postulation) - I think your family made it gendered. There are plenty of families where the opposite expectations are levied; the boys get help for the asking and the girls feel like they shouldn’t ask for anything.

The idea that grit and toughness are masculine qualities is completely weird to me. Hurting yourself by climbing the “hold my beer” stupid stunt ladder is pretty masculine, but the person at the top of that ladder is basically always going to be your mom pushing your head out.

otm some of this is mostly how you were brought up (about protectionism, the labor of preparedness, foregoing your own comfort).

This was kind of a fun article. I know often when I go to restaurants servers will place the wrong dish (red meat for me, salad or fish for him), the wrong drink in front of each of us, mistakenly assume where the bill is going, who is ordering the wine, when I order the wine they mistakenly give the taste to the man. https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2018/july/eating-in-dallas-top-steakhouses-gave-me-a-bellyful-of-misogyny/

F hazel's upthread truthbomb is really scarily accurate about a dynamic I have seen in my life.

Scene 1: Puffin saves the day (details unimportant and probably really trivial).

Scene 2: Mrs. Puffin: hey, bonehead, you left the milk out on the counter.

Puffin: but... but... I saved the day earlier!

Mrs. Puffin: yeah and, you still left the milk out.

FIN

An important thing I have learned is to remember that not everything is about my honor/ reputation / pride / ego. Sometimes need to relearn it.

The idea that grit and toughness are masculine qualities is completely weird to me. Hurting yourself by climbing the “hold my beer” stupid stunt ladder is pretty masculine, but the person at the top of that ladder is basically always going to be your mom pushing your head out.

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, July 25, 2018 4:34 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah not for nothing but I 100% identify with a lot of those points in that piece, even though I am a woman person--I'm just obsessed with the mythology of hyper-competence. But I acknowledge that I am slightly further from the norm for my gender and that those traits and beliefs are generally coded as "masculine."

"the mythology of hyper-competence" is very well said!! IO it is good to see u on the ilx <3

you can just say "the movie Ronin"

u totally get me

I was also raised in basically a cult of suffering, under the influence of which I went from devoting myself to Evangelicalism to marching band to Scottish dance--it's all about the suffering. I identified with that too.

unofficial thread anthem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poXaa5RDMSI

I remember my mom came right out and said, when I was in my early twenties and already married, that she had endeavored to make our home cold and unwelcoming when my brother and I were kids so that we'd grow up independent and move out as quickly as possible. I moved out immediately after graduating high school, though I did wind up living at home again after a year or two. My brother joined the army right after high school. (He hasn't talked to my mother in well over a decade, but that's due to other factors.)

(She also told us that she was very glad she'd had sons, that she had never gotten along well with other girls and wouldn't have wanted to raise a daughter.)

in orbit

obsessed with the mythology of hyper-competence

oh hell yeah. My stepfather and father-in-law both worship at that altar: *be* the guy who can change oil, know where the best Vietnamese food is, order it in correct idiomatic Vietnamese, work a chainsaw, effortlessly understand economics, reset a dislocated shoulder, teach a class on Shakespeare, comfort a cranky baby. Fortunately my bio-father is a notoriously unreliable fuckup and wiseass. Otherwise my collection of male role models would be untenable.

xp europe & east asia for starters

― ogmor

oh fuck, so it's cultural appropriation too? damn i was looking forward her episodes

For me, the really incongruous message up there is moisturizer. I am not being _denied_ moisturizer, I would just never think to use it because I feel fine without it. My wife would probably applaud if I did more little cosmetic things like that.

― nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin)

moisturizer is great, so is exfoliation, i recommend both strongly

^^^ extremely otm

I’d definitely made significant progress towards being the person in YMP’s paraphrase of Heinlein describing Competent Man, but along the way I forgot to renew my driver’s license for >545 days, so I’m kinda useless outside of major urban areas and it’s fine which has been important for my growth as a person, I think.

how do you measure up to Rush's New World Man from Signals?

I actually strongly dislike that Heinlein quote and avoided it deliberately. Pretty sure when Heinlein needed heart surgery he went to a professional - indeed, a specialist! - rather than an amateur heart surgeon.

My problems with the Heinlein thing can be grouped into several broad objections. Apologies in advance for the long-windedness of this but I don't know how to say it shorter.

One, it denigrates the expertise and dedication of people actually do know how to correctly fix a toilet, repair a car, prune a tree, make a souffle, wire a light socket, deliver a baby, build a beautiful cello, or unclog a blocked artery.

"Everyone should know how to conn a ship" is basically "fuck you, experienced ship captains. Any schmuck with a For Dummies book could do as well." If I'm in a ship approaching a rocky shoreline at night, I'd prefer the pilot who's put in some work, gone through a long apprenticeship, and passed a certification process.

Second, if everyone did everything for him or herself, the whole sector of the economy devoted to providing other people with services that they either can't do (or don't want to do) would collapse.

I know we're all rooting for Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism here, but in the meantime there are a lot of people who rely on service-sector employment to feed their families.

DIY is fun if it's what you want to do, but it's not morally superior to hiring someone. In fact, one could argue the opposite! If you can afford to, you ought to be hiring house cleaners, lawn mowers, etc. (With caveats. As much as possible, hire locally, directly as opposed to through a service, and pay generously in cash.)

Everybody has a different line in the sand on this, and it can involve going down a rabbit hole of class and privilege. For some, hiring a house cleaner is something only spoiled rich people do; for others it's a welcome sanity-saver.

Basically, it's not a moral virtue to choose not to rely on other people or enter into mutually advantageous relationships with them. This can be a sad and closed-off way to live and it smells of privilege and libertarian politics.

Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communis

what is gay doing here

I know we're all rooting for Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism here, but in the meantime there are a lot of people who rely on service-sector employment to feed their families.

Heinlein was rooting for rugged individual libertarian space crypto-fascism.

Which is part of why I'm a bit puzzled at the idea of taking his advice, especially on a masculinity thread, tho I understand good thoughts can come from unlikely sources.

Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism

future Arctic Monkeys album