Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

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

okay which one of u fux0rs made this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1flcGrb81M

Dalym

2 days ago

I enjoyed this video, though I wonder if this issue applies to most Incels. I agree that internet incels are mostly reactionaries, though there are single virgin men who don't carry that baggage. Most of my friends and me are virgin men approaching 30. I'm 28.
We're left leaning mostly, though I'm the only actual socialist as in I want worker owned production.

I feel there will always be some straight men that simply can't attract women, and that's fine, that's life. I continue my education, earn well, improve myself, and volunteer where I can, and that by itself is good.
Good for goodness sake is what sustains me, and I appreciate the many women I'm friends with as a result of my attempts at romance.

I hope to adopt one day, though single men generally can not adopt without much hurdles. If not, I'm happy on the path I'm on, and I'll die with no regrets.

I expect to be called some variation of cucked, white knight, and/or soyboy by some non leftist watching. : P

is it wrong to feel that being this guy would be even more abject than being someone who spends their days on incel forum ranting about chads and stacys? I mean, yes, it is, but still

itd be like worrying which area of venus you landed on in yr underwear tbh

(Dovetailing in from another thread...)

I spoke with a friend last week about how if the basic tenets of BDSM were understood by everyone, a great deal of misunderstanding regarding consent/coercion might be avoided. Specifically not regarding violence, but regarding penetration. The fact that so many people (men) cannot conceive, themselves, of the "desire to be penetrated", forms (what I think is) the basis of shitty male behaviour-- that they think women have to be persuaded, coerced, or pressured into doing something that the men themselves cannot possibly conceive of being pleasurable (or even necessary).

On the Weinstein thread, somebody stated that they could not conceive of "the desire to dominate" as being a healthy thing. I think the "dom" position is often equated with people having violent urges-- and, I've been told, the BDSM scene is populated by many men who assume dom roles with this misconception. "Doms" are there to get off on being useful, on being of service. The "sub" is the one in control, calling the shots. Violence is only a by-product of a reverse-power dynamic.

I think a lot of it comes down to partners discussing in very clear terms what their expectations are, what they want to happen, what's out of bounds, and what steps they can take to put on the brakes of things go too far.

Couples that steer away from that kind of detailed communication are bound to run into trouble.

I know plenty of doms who are service doms, and they're all great people. Is it true, though, that all doms, or at least all True Doms, are service doms? Even if this is so... I read "Mother Night" and more or less agree with its central thesis, though I'd phrase it as "We become who we pretend to be". Is there a danger, then, in adopting the pretense of dominance?

From the sub side things get more complicated. "Topping from the bottom" is frequently discouraged in BDSM circles. Sacher-Masoch himself was an abuser. The trick to submission, to my mind, is getting more or less what one wants without asking for it.

Overall I feel that BDSM sex is, generally, more consensual than vanilla sex, because it does involve negotiation. There are still a lot of complications when one starts thinking of consent in other than absolute terms.

Having been raised as a man, one of the things I have the most trouble doing, to the extent that I find it basically impossible, is consenting to something I'm less than fully enthusiastic about. This causes problems.

The fact that so many people (men) cannot conceive, themselves, of the "desire to be penetrated", forms (what I think is) the basis of shitty male behaviour-- that they think women have to be persuaded, coerced, or pressured into doing something that the men themselves cannot possibly conceive of being pleasurable

this strikes me as a fairly major assumption to be basing anything at all on tbh

it must be amazing to be able to believe hypotheses like that

i cannot conceive of that

Well, I said "so many", not "all". Even I kind of never really grasped the notion until fairly recently.

i couldve bolded all of the excerpt tbh

not an attack it just struck me as .... nonsense

Ya i kinda read that and thought i could not relate and came from left field

It's like that popular tweet "If you've ever tried to put your finger up a straight guy's ass during sex, you'll know that they actually understand ongoing consent, withdrawal of consent, and sexual boundaries very well. They act confused when it's our bodies."

men failing to understand or devaluing passive sexual roles has been going on at least since roman times, men taking umbrage at any suggestion they might not have something completely sussed even longer

"Doms" are there to get off on being useful, on being of service. The "sub" is the one in control, calling the shots. Violence is only a by-product of a reverse-power dynamic.

this is so, so, so otm

If a man were of the type that they wouldn’t mind something up their ass, I’m sure some would like it if you do it to them without consent, just as some might have a preference for letting them know before you do it

Making a blanket statement that sticking up something up a guy’s ass is equivalent to putting a penis in a vagina is the nonsense

i couldve bolded all of the excerpt tbh

not an attack it just struck me as .... nonsense

― dele alli my bookmarks (darraghmac), Wednesday, August 1, 2018 7:16 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

personally could use a break from you being willfully thick everywhere on here

personally take one

fgti i was hopping on bus, that wasnt meant to be as brusque as it looks there btw

don't be *too* willfully thick, some aren't into that