Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

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

taking advice from heinlein on masculinity is like taking advice from william s burroughs on firearms policy

Sorry ogmor, seems to be a recurring joke. Various formulations of "automated luxury communism" / "gay space communism" have cropped up here and there

Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Thread in which we gloat at every terrible person who is furious at the election result

At some point, "fully automated luxury gay space communism" arises as the ideal.

Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

Apologies if it's too flippant for some; I'm just using it to mean a better world where scarcity and greed are not the defining factors of who does what to survive.

i personally love the phrase and encourage its usage

fully automated luxury gay space communism now!

why did people assume I was talking about taking Heinlein’s specific (stupid) advice but everyone else talking about buying into the myth of hyper-competence was talking about something different?

It's cool, Tomboto. it was totally fair for you to recognize the echo, it's in the culture and worth pointing out. No one's accusing you of espousing that worldview. But once it was mentioned I felt I had to unload all my thoughts about it.

Anyways it's a digression from what we were talking about re: masculinity, where some doodz feel like they have to be more or less omnicompetent or else they suck. Right?

Another article on capitalism damaged toxic masculinity.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-queer-art-of-failing-better-penny

Quite liked this one, but think the analysis of the problem is better than the discussion of solutions.

Yes. Competence porn is terrible for your brain.

It's when the myth of hyper-competence meets listicles that society is really in danger. I'm guessing this weakness for total self-sufficiency might be, as Yerac notes, a tragic flaw particular to the United States.

See also Raymond Chandler's "good enough man for any world" exegesis on manhood from The Simple Art of Murder.

why did people assume I was talking about taking Heinlein’s specific (stupid) advice but everyone else talking about buying into the myth of hyper-competence was talking about something different?

When I talk about it, I'm mostly talking about modeling your life on Michael Mann movies. I've only ever read one Heinlein book, and it suuuuucked (The Number of the Beast).

From that Baffler piece about Queer Eye:

Women, queer people, and people of color are the people who are usually told that the problem isn’t the world, it’s us. We are told that we are to blame not only for the wreck of our own lives but also for everyone else’s as well, because we selfishly refused to flatten ourselves for the comfort of others. Men, by contrast, are perennially assured that the world is theirs, to be made over in their image. Or they were, until recently.

I know the novara/sarkar line on 'luxury communism' & accelerationism, the rest of the ironic dressing just makes it more glib & trite

anyway, I don't think responsible patronage is a moral imperative and I think there are virtues to having a broad skill set that are overlooked/undervalued regardless of what you think of self-sufficiency

that baffler article is unbelievably bad, I'm out

it's a guy's job to be running the world, get out of the guy's way.
therefor I, as a guy, have to be competent at everything in the world
i am not competent at everything in the world, so I feel like a pathetic loser
i feel like a pathetic loser and that leads to underachievement
hey, pathetic loser, why you underachieving after everyone's got out of your way?

I think this paintbrush is just a little wide but whatever
― El Tomboto, Thursday, July 26, 2018 7:33 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

laurie penny? a broad brush? you don't say????

sorry i'm not trying to one-up anyone i'm just exhausted

Yeah - it’s very much an argument by exaggeration, but I do think she captures something of the exhaustedness of heteronormative capitalist male identity.

It really depends heavily on the specific trope that Queer Eye relies on, though, of the boy-persons who never wash their sheets because they can’t figure out how to put the fitted one back on right.

Also the original queer eye totally had an episode with a trans man, that’s not new

https://i.imgur.com/nQYe88F.jpg

(no i didn't make this)

I didn't know till now that it was A Thing outside ilx.

o fer sure https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fully-automated-luxury-gay-space-communism

automation is new since rails iirc

I like the Baffler article. It's showing up a lot on my fb feed.

When I talk about it, I'm mostly talking about modeling your life on Michael Mann movies. I've only ever read one Heinlein book, and it suuuuucked (The Number of the Beast).

― grawlix (unperson)

great led zeppelin album though