Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

We have def had a related convo somewhere before like

yeah, we have. back on the train with Bald Billy I guess lol

tbrr a lot of what I think my stance on gender is I owe to people esp. women in my life who have generously made time for my anxiety over it and to people esp. women who have addressed my shitty behavior with me directly and gotten me to reflect on it, most especially of all my partner, that's just something I wanna say b/c people are giving me compliments

Can I ask ppl to interrogate this a bit more? We have def had a related convo somewhere before like, "If I feel okay as and identify as a man, then isn't everything I do by definition 'masculine' because I am doing it from within my accepted gender identity?" Which I think is otm, and is similar to how I feel about being a not-always-super-feminine woman or not doing what's expected of me w/r/t my gender.

I've been thinking about a lot of stuff related to this recently - mainly because of trans-related issues within the school system and trying to educate myself and be as open as possible. It's made me interrogate, in trying to think myself through the process of what it must be like to feel 'not at home' or something like that, what someone who ostensibly does feel 'at home' actually feels like - ie myself. And I only find an absence, or perhaps more precisely I only find a whole load of assumptions and layer upon layer of discourse markers and detritus. Which is to say, it seems most (all) aspects of my performative masculinity are adopted and interchangeable - whether personal or, and I choose my words carefully here, imposed. I feel I'm of an age (in my 40s) where most of this stuff doesn't necessarily matter any more - at a personal level - and it's been revelatory just how much can be cast off. It's also been interesting working in a department with what are, ostensibly at least, some incredibly strong female colleagues, and navigating what's expected, what's acceptable and what one can do with and do without.

Not to say that there aren't whole aspects of my behaviour which aren't sub-or-unconscious, and still need appraising and thinking through, and I don't necessarily feel any the wiser about the trans and gender issues, but the whole - ongoing - process has been revelatory all the same.

None of which really answers any of your questions, but still.

Do you feel like male ILX posters are generally oblivious to the gender-specific issues you face as women (not trolling, once again, it's a genuine question)?
generally, idk. occasionally/periodically absolutely YES. i could point to times where i was like WHOA but IO was also super otm about us having endured a lot of stuff, picked ourselves up, worked on working through it, and continued to try to engage. i know it sounds weird but i actually don't want to relive every shitty experience i have had just so someone remembers that people have those experiences.

as a community, yes i think ilx has some reckoning to do with gender-specific issues. (see the post above about threads with "girls" in the thread title, see also: tolerance of trolls-for-lols, socks, deception, and disingenuous behavior in general.

IO is making a lot of sense and i appreciate the respect she is getting for her ability to distill complex shit itt

what does your identity as a man look like? What is important to you about it? When do you feel most (and least) "manly"? Can you think of some aspect of your identity that, if it were gone, would you make you feel like NOT a man?

these are good questions everyone should ponder in relation to their gender (funnily enough these questions were explicitly raised in a parent exercise for my kid's preschool co-op a little while ago).

since the manly thing to do here would be to weigh in with my own personal experience as a man (lol), let me just say that for my part currently the only things about my identity I consider "manly" are in relation to my family, where I am a husband and a father and in many senses filling traditional roles (breadwinner, buttwiper, font of useless knowledge no one actually wants to hear about). idk if those things make me feel "manly" (which, tbh, is really not something I ever think about) but they are certainly traditional male roles that our broader society expects ppl like me to fulfill, so its more an acknowledgment that that is the social milieu I am operating in than any deep personal identification with the concept of masculinity. I am very conscious of the fact that I am 24/7 modeling what it means to be a husband and a father to my children, and in that sense I am trying to make sure that that includes a lot of things that are not typically construed as masculine (compassion, preparing the majority of our meals, cleaning the house, crying at stupid movies etc.)

xps

oh, and not interrupting people (incl women and girls of course) in conversation. I was raised in a family of non-stop bantering/arguing where everyone talked over each other (lol Jews) so this has been maybe the most deeply rooted thing to try and course-correct.

Manly, hate that word!

everybody overtalked fernandohierro itt

xps it's your responsibility to provide the dad jokes

I still have about 40 posts to catch up reading but...

If you don’t have female friends then something is up with you
Thanks Yarec

If you hang with fellow straight dudes then something is off with you
Great, I won’t hang with anybody I guess

This obviously doesn’t apply to all straight dudes hanging out #notallmen
Whatever

Stop making this all about you. Something something you ever wonder why there are less females posting on ILX
.

What you're describing here is shame—an extremely painful negative self-image which is not tied to specific actions or qualities I dislike about myself

― The house from the popular "Our House" song (bernard snowy)

continuing from nine hours ago - sorry if i'm fucking up the thread flow here - i'm very personally familiar with shame. however, on reflection i don't think i've had any true free-floating shame. all the shame i've had comes from somewhere. i've particularly felt, for most of my life, a lot of shame about being gender non-conforming. it seems to me that a lot of incel language (and if you want to come up with a different name for them, go for it, i'm not a prescriptivist and my calling them that doesn't, for me, imply any level of belief in their particular delusions) is about expressing that same discomfort. they don't conform to the social construct of masculinity and are deeply ashamed of this.

there's also, somewhere in there, an implicit acknowledgement that this particular masculine social construct is incredibly toxic. they envy the "chads", but there's very little pretense that the "chads" are anything other than completely awful people. this is complicated by their programmed sexual desires, which are often for constructed women/objects as superficial and artifical as the "chads" they hate/love.

it's super fucked up that they think this is all somehow natural and believe that being like this is the only option they have and succeeding at this grotesque heterosexual charade is the only chance people have to be happy.

i'm super on board with silby's suggestions, my only disagreement with them is silby's suggestion that it's easy. i find that directly dealing with gender requires mindfulness and intentionality. but over the past couple of weeks i have been interrogating what mostly unconscious behaviors mark me out in the world as "male" and what it looks like, how i feel, if i refrain from those behaviors.

I want to complicate the "straight male friends" point by noting that I think it's especially necessary, if men are to assist in breaking toxic masculinity, for men to be friends with men in order to do that--all the while bearing in mind silby's list & the other ways available to us to contest the worst aspects of male superiority when we see it.

I've given this some thought and I think what I recoiled at in silby's list was the implication, maybe a misinterpreted one on my part, that aesthetic choices about how to present oneself can help to unfuck patriarchy in some way. because frankly I'm not interested, in the context of my own life, in shaving as activism. I would feel like a moron.

which I suppose is another way of saying that the way in which I do relate to incels isn't primarily the shared awkwardnesses or whatever, it's the fact that they have been lured in by a cult of death, which to my mind is what capitalism itself is (especially now), and I guess it makes me wish I felt I could do more than try to be nice to people in my everyday life. I want to be able to shake these dumbasses and explain what real structural oppression and horror is. and I think my shame stems from the fact that my frustrations, the feelings themselves (not the target nor supposed source) are too close to home to be able to do that effectively, ever

And yeah I can and do do all the nice and reasonable actions that have been listed in this thread, and I treasure my female friendships and especially the surprising number of opportunities I've had to offer emotional support in dark moments, but at the end of the day I feel absolutely no better about life and what I can bring to it than those dumbass kids do

I want to complicate the "straight male friends" point by noting that I think it's especially necessary, if men are to assist in breaking toxic masculinity, for men to be friends with men in order to do that

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 14 December 2018 01:02 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its also imo important to do this with ppl that eg on msg boards constantly express wildly sweeping toxic opinions towards 'men'. i too feel that being tactical-not-real friends with ppl exhibiting these problematic behaviours is exhausting and thankless but, while the need is there, we will pls god find self-appointed martyrs to do the necessary

Idk capitalism and patriarchy are large and I am small, yknow?

xp

I didn't really mean to come at you like that silby, this whole discourse just depresses me endlessly

That’s understandable. It’s ok to have some compassion for yourself imho

hmm sounds fake but ok

At some point it needs to be mentioned that not all incels blame woman. I remember reading an article about the founder of some incel group on the net and how woman blaming became widespread but lots of the original losers that bonded never took that stance and just chose to ignore it. I’m sure some newcomers must have took the “I’m merely a dysfunctional loser (with possibly some mental or behavioral diagnoses)” stance as well. I don’t mean to interrupt the current gender discussion but felt the need to post this after having read 2 posts signifying that incels blame all women.

#notallincels

I really don't know what's going on here right now, but the question of what actually signifies masculine or feminine for you personally nowadays is interesting. I honestly don't care because it's everchanging and once you have any bit of power (money, status, support, platform) you can fuck it up however much you want. Indigenous americans and the five genders, two spirits had it right ages ago. You can posses masculine and feminine traits together or be transgender and it just was. If i had to determine where the masculine and feminine traits were between me and my spouse...he's a lot taller? I like cheese more? I am much, much more pro-moisturizing. There really shouldn't be that much of a divide.

“Incel” refers to people who subscribe to the hatefful ideology these people have. It doesn’t just mean “people who have trouble getting laid.” Those are just called people.

Xp mr duck

For clarification, I think the question is very interesting but for me personally I don't care about people exuding obvious feminine or masculine traits, because I think they should be interchangeable and non-gendered, and I think people adhering to that idea is going to hold them back.

I just realized I should ask pom how my approach to whatever problem is problematic.

I've given this some thought and I think what I recoiled at in silby's list was the implication, maybe a misinterpreted one on my part, that aesthetic choices about how to present oneself can help to unfuck patriarchy in some way. because frankly I'm not interested, in the context of my own life, in shaving as activism. I would feel like a moron.

― resident hack (Simon H.)

i feel like a moron on a fairly regular basis and i don't feel like it's a sufficient reason for me not to do something. but i also don't shave as activism, or to abolish patriarchy or capitalism or any of that shit. i shave because i don't like having all that hair and i'm willing to a certain extent to pay the cost of not conforming to arbitrary and stupid gender norms.

if you like having a beard and want to keep it, please do, but i find it's generally a good idea to question one's habits and be willing to change them or even just experiment with them. and i feel that that willingness to make what are often, yes, aesthetic choices, does have a role to play in challenging patriarchal culture.

Xp
You seem to think incels all follow the same long list of hateful ideologies. The original web group did not have widespread misogny or racism.

(Xp was to Trees)

I don't give a fuck about facial hair one way or another and I have no earthly idea why anyone else should tbh, of all the fucking things

oh god are we really making original intent arguments about fucking INCELS now, jesus christ kill me now

I don't give a fuck about facial hair one way or another and I have no earthly idea why anyone else should tbh, of all the fucking things

― resident hack (Simon H.)

unfortunately tsar peter i is not responding to my emails

Original and current intent dummy

There are still a large, very large amount of men who recoil at facial hair on women.

i'm not sure how ridiculous this sounds, but i feel like i've caught a few hints of some positive and non-controlling, non-death cult aspects of masculinity from listening to daniel ortberg every week on the "dear prudence" podcast and detecting or maybe imagining idk some changes in tone from what i'm assuming are the hormonal and certainly overall aspects of transitioning. like before his voice started noticeably dropping i feel like he was somewhat more clipped and business-like in his responses, but after the tone of his voice really started changing it seemed like a tenderness and almost a surplus of feeling arrived where there wasn't any before. i feel like aggression is so socially over-determined to equate to testosterone when it feels right to me to suggest that there are other emotional affects related to that hormone and what it does in male bodies including tenderness and sentimentality. also i've noticed him judging bad actors, especially men, as not behaving "honorably" -- i like how he uses that word. it attaches a masculine-coded virtue to treating others with respect and equality.

i feel like hearing more from people who transition from female to male would be really helpful for me in constructing a gendered masculine identity that i don't have to constantly pick apart.

There are still a large, very large amount of men who recoil at facial hair on women.

Of course. I got to see my mother bleach her mustache many times, from early childhood on, and felt it brush up against my face many times, and I still hold that as a strong associative memory.

What I don't see is how me shaving will help other men be less awful about their feelings towards women with facial hair.

good post map

simon h. facial hair shouldn't be associated with either gender as to whether it makes someone more masculine or feminine. Both grow body hair, both grow facial hair.

another thing is i think that our preferences regarding the presentation of our gender have been blown up into this sort of cancer in american society with rules and anxieties and fascisms because .. idk our society is fucking sick. but looking at the gendered part of our identities, ultimately i feel like it's one separate part of many, not the overlaying transparency that makes everything "work," you know? like it's a fun and charming part of us and a fun part of sex (at least for me), but when it starts to bleed into other parts of ourselves with socially administered, toxic rules of conduct, that's when i feel like it's time to put it in its place as a small and separate part of many that make up ourselves, not THE MOST IMPORTANT PART that we have to CONSTANTLY PRESENT or else we're worthless.

simon h. facial hair shouldn't be associated with either gender as to whether it makes someone more masculine or feminine. Both grow body hair, both grow facial hair.

My anecdote was meant to make clear that I understand this but apparently that didn't work.

No, I get it. But I am also thinking about women who can grow almost full beards and don't get an easy choice about whether to remove it or not.

another thing is i think that our preferences regarding the presentation of our gender have been blown up into this sort of cancer in american society with rules and anxieties and fascisms because .. idk our society is fucking sick. but looking at the gendered part of our identities, ultimately i feel like it's one separate part of many, not the overlaying transparency that makes everything "work," you know? like it's a fun and charming part of us and a fun part of sex (at least for me), but when it starts to bleed into other parts of ourselves with socially administered, toxic rules of conduct, that's when i feel like it's time to put it in its place as a small and separate part of many that make up ourselves, not THE MOST IMPORTANT PART that we have to CONSTANTLY PRESENT or else we're worthless.

― macropuente (map), Thursday, December 13, 2018 10:30 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

best post in the last 500 posts or w/e it's been

I really hope that whole post was about masculinity.

xp i'm glad you thought so, i feel like realizing this has given me a lot of space to "be masculine" in small ways i like without letting it overwhelm my other qualities with gender anxiety. part of the issue with masculinity in american culture is its aggressive totalizing, but gender is like a small flavor component in a dish -- america keeps dumping cupfuls of it in everything, and it's obsessed with slightly modifying the flavor of the ingredient so it's more "authentic" but ultimately every dish just becomes overwhelmed with that insipid flavor and boring / monotonous as a result.

The problem of masculinity isn't an American problem. Americans just have happen to have more guns and more freedom of religion that pretends to not sometimes blatantly subjugate non-straight men.

Yep agreed it is intersectional, I’m just looking at that particular intersection because it’s what i know best.

Somehow, I am not sure that "dudes, pls chop off your beards" is what the Combahee River Collective had in mind

i feel like hearing more from people who transition from female to male would be really helpful for me in constructing a gendered masculine identity that i don't have to constantly pick apart.

― macropuente (map), Friday, December 14, 2018 3:10 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a line of inquiry I've thought a lot about too that's guided a lot of my reading & gratefully-had convos on this subject with trans guys I've been close to or dated. This article is interesting on the subject:

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=.179c354c1823

interesting article hoos and good posts map. that's the kind of thing i always hoped this thread could be about.

the "are beards sexist?" line of inquiry is by far the stupidest thing i've seen on ilx.