Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

oh come the fuck on treeship

if you want me to mock these people i can. nobody has been that mean on here.

otm, i think we're all saying "this doesn't resonate with me" for reasons x y and z. if this has a positive effect on some men then cool, great. there's a lot of shit out there that works for people but seems dumb as hell to me.

Is there a name for invariably feeling like a dude but not really caring about what that supposedly means?

“cis male” iirc

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, October 25, 2019 8:45 AM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I knew that was coming, but even if it's a half-joke, I don't think that's true at all. A lot of dudes very much care about their dudeness and what it stands for.

― pomenitul, Friday, October 25, 2019 8:47 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

as I've suggested before, reducing your maleness to a bare fact is a perfectly sensible way of being a cis male. You're right that plenty of cis men care about their dudeness and what it stands for, but if you want it to stand for nothing, do you need a new entry in the accursed aristotelean gender taxonomy to support yourself in that? Or can you just keep doing what you're doing?

I'm sorry treeship, but "my beard means something" is just funny at its core

it's very

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeX2ZI5KL3E

(ps I have a beard)

This is a beard! And for me it's a symbol of my individuality, and my belief... in personal freedom.

haha

I didn’t read past the part of the article I quoted above. But i do think people need role models, and I sympathize with people who don’t know who they want to be in the world—what values they want to manifest—which is I think a bigger issue than gender.

do you need a new entry in the accursed aristotelean gender taxonomy to support yourself in that? Or can you just keep doing what you're doing?

I'd much rather do the latter, but at times this indifference feels odd in relation to friends for whom gender is an existential, day-to-day concern.

I suppose the best way to describe it is as a noncommittal, lethargic or neutral sense of 'masculinity'. An active, ever-questioning approach to gender neutrality seems exhausting compared to what I simply (don't) experience by giving it no thought whatsoever except on a purely speculative level, as an issue affecting the lives of others. I like to think that if I had been a woman, the bundle of qualia that I deem to be my 'identity' would be the same, more or less. It's not that it doesn't matter at all (like, I can't imagine myself dating men), but (my or your) gender just feels… secondary and I have no idea why those Everyman dudes care so much about it.

I think "toxic masculinity" is a pleonasm: masculinity, or at least manifestation of it, is by definition toxic. It should not be manifested. Having, or trying to find, purpose and identity based on your male gender, on masculinity, is a completely alien concept to me. It's clinging to stereotypical notions of what it is to be masculine, which is almost always a perpetuation of an age old, extremely conservative notion of what a man "is" or "should" do or be.

But i do think people need role models, and I sympathize with people who don’t know who they want to be in the world

Yes Treesh, but a role model for a man does not have to be a man. I sympathize with people who don't know who they want to be (lord knows I've no clue myself most of the time), but the answer can't lie in amplifying one's gender, surely. That's just clutching at a straw, it's overreaching. It's as absurd as deriving meaning or identity from the color of one's skin.

xps Pom 10% otm.

lol Pom 100% otm I meant :)

jordan, I want your writer friend to go to the adult boy scouts workshop he mentions. I was more interested in that one.

if I had been a woman, the bundle of qualia that I deem to be my 'identity' would be the same, more or less

hmmm.

ime, identity is strongly shaped over time by the dialectic between one's present self and one's continuing experiences, plus a lot of selective forgetting and rationalizations. I can easily imagine that starting from the same circumstances, but minus the Y chromosome, my experiences would have invariably been different, if only because society does not socialize females and males the same and a divergence of one's experiences as each gender would be both very significant and unavoidable.

I think "toxic masculinity" is a pleonasm: masculinity, or at least manifestation of it, is by definition toxic. It should not be manifested. Having, or trying to find, purpose and identity based on your male gender, on masculinity, is a completely alien concept to me. It's clinging to stereotypical notions of what it is to be masculine, which is almost always a perpetuation of an age old, extremely conservative notion of what a man "is" or "should" do or be.

With more time and not on my phone I might be compelled to construct a full argument pushing back on this but the bottom line is that I’m a week from 40 and I neither relate to this nor see myself ever adopting this position.

But I also don’t mean I’d construct an argument against your own relation to the concept of masculinity, I just don’t think I will ever relate to it the way you do.

That's cool? (I just turned 40 this year) xp

xp That's fine imo! It's just how I feel.

i am a man and am masculine and I'm fine with that and it does colour my perceptions and my experiences of the world. i just don't strive to be "god-emperor professor-patriarch the marlboro man" and chide myself when i don't meet that bizarre conception

that should be "self-perception" rather than perceptions

ime, identity is strongly shaped over time by the dialectic between one's present self and one's continuing experiences, plus a lot of selective forgetting and rationalizations. I can easily imagine that starting from the same circumstances, but minus the Y chromosome, my experiences would have invariably been different, if only because society does not socialize females and males the same and a divergence of one's experiences as each gender would be both very significant and unavoidable.

That's fair. The inclination to serenely intuit one's 'core' identity as irreducible to gender is more or less available to a given individual depending on a slew of historical, geographical, and socio-political factors. But in most of the West, these divergences are far less marked than they used to be.

Incidentally, Evryman comes off as a distinctly American phenomenon. For instance, while associations between one's trade and one's 'masculine' identity appear to be quite common across the globe, work is just such a crushing, hyperbolic presence in these guys' lives that I can sort of see why they would end up feeling inadequate. Other cultures have a far less exacting approach to work-life balance in general, and I assume that ends up having an effect on how men view themselves (and women too, obviously!).

Absolutely Jim, that is what I was getting at. All these men searching for how to "be more manly" (when they are already the very definition of man: they are men! (apart from Devo, Devo are Devo) when being a man alone is already manly enough? How manly do you want to get? And more importantly: if you feel the need to extrapolate your manliness, that is a problem of insecurity that I can relate to. But amplifying your gender will not solve whatever identity crisis you have.

The first time a man reckons with manhood is when he tastes his first penis.

Then the superstructure of masculinity shakes, slightly.

lol

^^ lyrics from a Radiohead deep cut, should've been on 'Kid A' if you think about it. xp :)

manly enough to impress the women who have "I like beards" in their dating profiles
manly enough to feel like a peer of men in the social group you admire, which is largely homosocial
manly enough to be sought out for manual labor, fixing things, opening jars, because those things code as male to you and your cohort
manly enough to comfortably align your own self-image with that of a ideal personified by a fictional character or celebrity that codes as masculine

kicking squealing gucci little piggy

:D

hehe

feel like I should note none of those things code as especially interesting or important to me, although when a bartender asked if I could open a particularly stubborn jar recently I did momentarily feel something like pride when I twisted the lid off with ease

being a man alone is already manly enough? How manly do you want to get? And more importantly: if you feel the need to extrapolate your manliness, that is a problem of insecurity that I can relate to. But amplifying your gender will not solve whatever identity crisis you have.

I feel like so much "inspirational" writing historically has focused on manhood = maturity & heroism. I grew up regularly getting holiday cards from my mom with quotes of Rudyard Kipling's "If" for example. So, I get that insecurity and identity stuff being ascribed to manliness ... I sure aspired to a lot of those romantic views of manliness. I still do? ... Oh yeah, and I'm female. But as the dominant gender, the default, with female being "other," why wouldn't I want to be masculine?

Totally otm. Said "inspirational writing" is what starts off the fucking bible, for one. Of course anyone would want to aspire to that, since the beginning of dawn we're (literally) being told man is strong and dominant and earning the money etc. The fabric has been entirely wrong, for millenia.

actually™ in the first version of the creation story in Genesis man and woman are created coequally, and jointly designated the masters of earth:

And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth.”
27 And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
28 God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”

You can just see the fool writing that breaking the 4th wall and giving it his best osamathumbsup.jpg

I've got to admit, proclaiming the entire social structure and history of the last couple millenia was just outright wrong is a bold take

I mean, interrogate what we've learned and build -- it's not all water under the bridge, it's what we've built our current society on for better or worse -- but I'm not sure "this was all bad" is going to do anything for us

One nice thing about the 100+ millennia of prehistory is that it provides a lovely blank slate upon which to project one's beatific visions of paradise. Genesis is just a particular early version of such projection. New and better projections are being imagined by someone even as we speak.

my mid-70s biological father (with whom i have spent roughly one day or evening with per year) has recently gotten into something like this. he had a depressive breakdown circa 2000 and got married soon after; had another a couple years ago and got into the men thing. i vehemently do not want to know the details, but it seems to be helping him. he now says things like 'love ya, bud', which is weird as hell but whatever.

he said he's a 'mentor' to a 38yo guy who fervently wants to find a wife, though, and the vague outlines sounded a little incel-ish. making friends is nice, but gathering in groups that exclude non-men seems creepy.

anyway, good piece, and 'land-grant accent' is a great phrase

I counted and I have had ~16 male roommates in my life. A little under half seemed able to competently take care of themselves without need of female or parental intervention. One of them (42 yrs) just got married last year after internet dating for 2 months with a woman from the philippines. They appear happy. It seemed highly unlikely he was going to be able to find an american spouse. I used to get annoyed with him because he would monopolize the washer all the time to just wash one pair of white jeans.

camo print yoni egg for the soul

Serious applause/lolz at this

gathering in groups that exclude non-men seems creepy

yeah I think this is discussed upthread but somehow I have managed to avoid situations like this for most of my life (hating sports helps)

very impressive

I ... don't feel like it is? Like, I don't feel I had to make a concerted effort to work in workplaces that hire women, or live in living situations with women, or have friends who are women, or whatever.

Treesh wtf

Gah, I am pretty uncomfortable in male-only groups unless they include men I already know well and have things in common with. I am not very good at stereotypical dudely conversation (Uh, sports? Shooting small animals? Punching one another in the arm?).

Most of my life has been spent in very female spaces. In 25 years I have had a male boss... twice. Recently had to work for a guy for a while and I managed ok, but it unnerved me. Fortunately the nature of my work is that it changed back after less than a year and I was relieved.

yer a west coaster, Οὖτις, and I think that helps, if only that more of our institutions were established at a time when women's rights were further advanced.

Gah, I am pretty uncomfortable in male-only groups unless they include men I already know well and have things in common with. I am not very good at stereotypical dudely conversation (Uh, sports? Shooting small animals? Punching one another in the arm?).

there was this one website i used to post to that was mostly men called ilxor.com

very toxic. always talking about punching each other.

mostly men =/= male-only. it's a step.

drag em treesh