Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

"sure, you can go to waffle house... if you're RACIST"

could totally picture the decline of local diners combined with the ubiquity of Denny's in some areas (Waffle House unfortunately being more regional) resulting in some students asking what these "diners" were that were segregated and had sit-ins resulting in a teacher explaining, "well, they were kind of like a Denny's restaurant"

Denny's would like to strongly assure you they are not the diners of old

man that Nathan For You episode where he makes a "Holocaust remembrance" windbreaker was really ahead of its time wasn't it

Feels like the MAGA teens from the March for Life merit discussion in here

in addition to the other two threads we're discussing them in??

lol r u kidding

plz no more fronts the troops are getting thin

i mean sure

place has come alive its good

frogbs reminded me to watch more Nathan for You last night and I saw the "claw of shame" episode finally

thanks frogbs!

I feel like the cycle of take exhaustion gets shorter and shorter with each one of these events. I can't even formulate a thought on the MAGA teens at this point because they've all been mined already.

There’s actually no real reason to have a thought about any of it but as has been said we’re covering this in at least two threads apart from this one

every time I see "MAGA teens" it makes me think of We Are The Ovaltineys

This sense that we all have some kind of responsibility to act as national jury on a random verbal skirmish at a protest is sort of maddening and anxiety-producing. I'm sure the kids were being racist shitheads because they were wearing MAGA hats so case closed but social media creates this false sense of urgency to weigh evidence, form a nuanced opinion, say something original, etc.

i guess what i really mean is the variety of things on display in the videos made available -- the abrasiveness of the israelites, the aw shucks clueless entitlement of the boys, the model of spirited & stoic de-escalation from phillips (the native man); different modes of maleness on display & used in different ways. but i take the point it's been covered elsewhere.

Man alive otm. We weren't there on the grassy knoll, we don't all need to do frame-by-frame Zapruder shit every. God. Damn. Time.

P much everybody here on record as opposing racist shitheads (I think); do we all need to formulate a specific opinion on every incident?

democracy dies in darkness, etc.

Okay, but meanwhile

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/01/22/man-cited-his-virginity-reason-he-planned-kill-many-girls-he-could-police-say/?utm_term=.1142a8527668

No report on this guy's hat color

jfc

Maybe i do need to get off the internet

jeeeesus

well now he's definitely gonna get laid amirite

Maybe individualism is the problem. The fact that this guy thinks his loneliness is more valid than other people’s lives suggests a flaw in the calculus

if only these creeps could realize that 'losing your virginity' is boring and nbd

i mean i thought it was great but they should realize it doesn't stop you being the piece of shit loser you know yourself to be

Per an organizer of the indigenous rally too, one of the reasons for the rally was to bring attention to the missing and murdered indigenous women. The woman who was raped and gave birth while in a vegetative state was native american. Jayme Closs was just randomly chosen by the guy that murdered her parents. I mean it's all bad.

https://mcrumps.com/2019/01/23/letter-from-a-french-incel-phd-response-to-the-aeneid-for-incels/

Allow me to introduce myself. I am French, born and raised in Paris, but have fled this city—where a disenfranchised middle-class son cannot have roots unless he sucks the right dicks—to get a try elsewhere. This was a good choice. I managed to pull from a master degree in philosophy to a PhD program. Now I can write my name with the famous three digits put after. However, although this allowed me to develop my intellectual abilities and master many social cues, hard analytical paradigms and rhetorical tropes, this is not the most interesting part.

Shocked that someone who kept going on about how middle-class and white he is, as though either of those things or the combination are of intrinsic value, had difficulty forming connections with people.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/23/americans-views-on-masculinity-differ-by-party-gender-and-race/

http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FT_19.01.23_Masculinity_Raceeducationparty.png?resize=310,510

http://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/FT_19.01.23_Masculinity_Morethaneightinten.png?resize=310,485

also very good stuff here: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/interactives/strong-men-caring-women/

The replies on this tweet are an endless bounty of gifts.

found a new guy pic.twitter.com/i9GpFs8ZFs

— virgin (@wwwdotyoutube) February 8, 2019

I would almost feel bad for dogpiling on this weirdo if it weren't for the extremely upfront racism

I can’t

#sideoffruit

i'd watch an Odd Couple type show w/him and M4rc L01

Alright, fuck it. here goes. The Hardrocknick / Aly Ashley Jash Story.

— DeepThroatBDN (@BdnDeep) February 10, 2019

oh my god

Anything I would say here would be inappropriate for the internet.

how come the mildly entertainingly horrible ones always end up being the total and complete scum of the earth

actually, never mind

this is really good imo:

https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/

weird that it talks about the symbolism of the punisher without reference to don pendleton's executioner, though

ok

I thought this piece on sex, male domination and abuse was interesting, and I have found ppl's attempts to take solid definite lines on the topic unconvincing - https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/evewdm/why-i-decided-to-start-kink-shaming-myself

I'm struggling to find a line between "consent makes everything fine" and "anyone who wants to be spanked is ultimately feeding the patriarchy"

i don't think it's possible for there to be solid, definitive lines on the topic! like, ok, i'm personally biased, but i don't think construing a relationship as having a permanent, fixed power dynamic is totally healthy. obviously there's a desire to differentiate kink from abuse in a concrete, testable way, but "safe", "sane", and "consensual" are all relative terms. the real benefit of kink is not the "ssc" mantra but its overriding insistence on communication and negotiation in relationships.

i do think there's a difference between kink-_shaming_ - beating oneself up or judging oneself as "bad" for having certain thoughts or desires - and kink-questioning. maybe some people are into kink, in part, because they grew up in abusive environments and internalized it! that doesn't translate to "i shouldn't be kinky" imo; it translates to "having this knowledge, what do i do with it?"

Expelling catharsis and sublimation from the bedroom (or art, for that matter) is a recipe for libidinal disaster.

sure, but all sorts of things can be done in the name of catharsis, so again: what's the criteria for determining when they go over the line?

so, yes - there are important differences between sex and fantasy, shame is unhelpful, some people are better at keeping things separate than others, and people aren't really sure how they feel about things more often than they usually admit. how much regret or self-disgust can you feel before it no longer falls under 'healthy self-exploration'?

everyone's sexuality is formed in a frequently abusive, sexist &c. society, even those without any obvious kinks, and while ppl are good at pointing out the relationship between the private and the social, it's not clear to me exactly what we should be aiming for when trying to navigate through

I'm tempted to say that the underlying tensions are because sex & desire are about mutability* and will immediately incorporate and pervert any attempt to judge or legislate it, but even if that's right, what do you do with it?

*there's a bad joke about becoming in here somewhere

There are no criteria, or rather none of them are set in stone, and things are bound to remain undecidable. I'm fine with this.

it's default position to drift towards but it bothers me that it suits abusers and makes any sort of accountability very tricky

Unquestionably. 'I'm fine with this' is my way of saying that I have no adequate response to this most legitimate of concerns. There's an underlying passivity and powerlessness at the heart of the matter that I'm not certain we'll ever overcome, even should we choose to obliterate ambiguity (which isn't feasible to begin with).

I saw two threads in that article that are distinct and different.

The desire to have violence exerted upon oneself by a partner is something that I’ve found empowering and enjoyable— I’m not fancy, I just like to get hit. The root of my desire for this is the enjoyment of the pain itself, and also the trust I have for my partner in exerting that pain.

The idea that a partner might hit me for any reason than my own pleasure, or with my explicit invitation, is revolting to me, and if it ever happened (and it has) it is as upsetting as the author described in the above article.

I do not associate any sort of shame or childhood experiences with the desire to be hit... it’s just something I enjoy, both physically and as a trust exercise with a sexual partner.

The whole second half of the article, describing emotional abuse— that’s a whole different thing, and unrelated, in my experience.

If one has a particularly low self-esteem, one is highly susceptible to being held in thrall of emotionally abusive people. If your partner is saying stuff like “I hated you when I first met you, but I grew to like you,” or “you look so cute with your beard; you looked ugly when you shaved,” and other such things, these manipulative statements read internally as “truth”, not as “abuse”.

If you dislike, or hate yourself, hearing people put you down sounds “real”. It fulfills the part of your brain that has always told you that you’re garbage, and worthless, and that all the people who have treated you well in the past don’t actually love you. When emotionally abusive people, in turn, stop belittling you to praise you or express love to you, it is the most addictive feeling one can ever experience. Full body dopamine rush.

I don’t see too much of a link between “the tendency to fall into emotionally abusive relationships” and “the desire to be dom’d by your partner”— but that’s just my experience. If anything, being emotionally abused by a partner made me extremely reticent to be dom’d— I sought more control in my life, not less.