Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

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

does a treesbro down homosocially on the regs?

:D xp

idk maybe Aimless is right - a lot of the environments I move in that would have conceivably been exclusively male in prior generations (jobs, bands, living spaces, religious institutions, stores I frequent like record/comics/bookstores) just aren't.

I suppose in a some cases this was just a natural extension of the social environment I came up in (I haven't had an exclusively male set of friends since... 8th grade?) and in others I made conscious choices (include female friends in music stuff, picked a temple that's run by women, stuck with a company for 20 years that has an explicit preference for hiring women, etc.)

But I don't feel like I made a concerted effort as much as I just feel more comfortable in these kinds of environments. Like I said upthread, yr standard aggro alphamale scenario has always been deeply off-putting to me, it just seems threatening and ugly.

i don't think it's healthy or intelligent to stigmatize male camaraderie this way. maybe men are more comfortable talking about certain issues with other men. that's fucking fine. people should do what they need.

like even the "treesbro" comment, and the idea that male friendships are "homosocial" or that there is a hidden psychosexual dimension to it. i mean, maybe sometimes? but this can't just be assumed from the outset.

homosocial is not a sexual term

in fact it's literally the opposite

i've only heard the term in reference to eve sedgwick. my apologies

maybe men are more comfortable talking about certain issues with other men

personally I can't really think of a scenario where I would feel this way, but whatever. You could make this statement a little less universal and I'd be fine with it. I don't understand it, but am happy to acknowledge that other men might have different needs from me.

i meant to write "does a treesh bro-down..." it was a typo.

i am probably a lot more bro'y than you and have socialized homosocially often in my life (though very rarely in the last 6 or 7 years)

but that doesn't prevent me from thinking that exclusively male getaway retreats to be men being men together masculinely is the greatest self-help scheme

xp shakes, that is totally fine. to be honest, i'm not like that either--like day to day, i'm mostly with women. but i think the idea that male spaces are dominated by -- as you said -- "yr standard aggro alphamale scenario," like that's the thing that doesn't square with me experience. men are just people.

There is definitely a brosphere that isn’t aggro and/or alpha but has an exclusionary quality when it comes to non masc ppl (ilx has similar elements)

I feel pretty masc but put me in a situation where there's an explicit "I don't know what phallocentric means, but NO GIRLS" sign and yeah I am instantly suspicious that someone is either about to get beaten up or everybody's gonna whip their dicks out or something

The thing is though— there are plenty of implicit signs that spaces (both physical and social and cultural) are bros only. I feel like as laws have changed, there are fewer explicit signs but the implicit ones are still there, and as an “other” sometimes the explicit signs feel more honest than the implicit ones

that bros only thread sucks for sure

Like dudes talking about sports with other dudes is just the same maleness as dudes talking about modular synths with other dudes—

But people are gonna self-select and there is value in that. It definitely is valuable to marginalized people. I am agreeing w Treeshy

Yeah. Make cliques that exclude women in situations where it’s not appropriate—a workplace, a public messagebord—are no good. But i distinguish that from men getting together—i wasn’t even really thinking of active exclusion of women, but more responding to the wariness toward male closeness/bonding i was seeing in some of these posts. I don’t think that attitude is healthy for anyone.

male closeness/bonding i was seeing in some of these posts

name names

cuz I don't think anyone was saying that. wariness towards these stupid seminars, sure, but that's not the same thing (the amount of closeness/bonding actually achieved at an Everyman seminar seems highly debatable)

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?).

- anonymous

There was others too. It was mostly in the tone—like other men are some foreign species

other men have cooties

they're from Mars iirc

is this basically just american men we're talkin about, is this that thing again

just american and irish.

and especially irish americans

amen to that latter

Yeah this take that men occasionally hanging out with just other men is automatically “creepy” is totally weird to me and I don’t really understand why a bunch of smart people are making these cartoonish assumptions about what that really ~is~. Men, like women, can feel a certain openness around just each other and it for real can be something other than a dumb frat/sports-bro/incel/Promise Keepers/masculinity re-affirmation.

Treesh OTM. Also sarahell.

some ppl itt have only ever met stupid men its good reading if nothing else

Being a kid in a pretty stoic, conservative environment and occasionally having my dad drag me along to events like building a shed over a weekend on my uncle’s piece of land out in the sticks with a few other guys (for one traditionally masc. example) was generally... really cool. Got to see a certain easiness, camaraderie, and (most significantly) tenderness from these guys that I never got to fully witness outside of a situation like that.

Yeah ideally everyone would feel just as open to people that are not like themselves, but we’re here and these avenues can be really healthy and edifying. Even to, y’know, men.

it's weird to jump to 'exclusion' when talking about hanging out with just men. someone isn't really "excluded" unless they want to be a part of said activity and we purposefully don't invite them, or we tell them they're not welcome.

A group of men hanging out together doesn't mean women were "excluded" per se. Someone isn't inherently excluded any time we decide who we want to hang out with.

I hate 'bro culture' as much as the next and often hang in mixed groups, but hanging out with a group of other men with like interests every now and then isn't going to turn us into incels.

and it isn't always intentional. sometimes you invite people from all walks and only guy friends show up. it's whatever. I like hanging out with people that I like.

Is there a name for invariably feeling like a dude but not really caring about what that supposedly means? I'm speaking for myself and myself only – there are obvious reasons to be anything but indifferent to such matters if you're experiencing gender dysphoria, for example.

― pomenitul

gender-anomic?

why would you want to talk about modular synths instead of just playing the modular synths. in an ideal world everyone everywhere on the gender spectrum would be playing modular synths together and never talking about them

I hate 'bro culture' as much as the next and often hang in mixed groups, but hanging out with a group of other men with like interests every now and then isn't going to turn us into incels.

and it isn't always intentional. sometimes you invite people from all walks and only guy friends show up. it's whatever. I like hanging out with people that I like.

― When I am afraid, I put my toast in you (Neanderthal)

I was sure you were going to say "Neanderthals" instead of "incels" and had a laugh when I read who posted it.

i realize me bruvas aren't as advanced as the Magnons but fuck them and their frisbees!

according to a dna test, I’ve got an above average amount of neanderthal dna. how it came into my possession, don’t need to know

why would you want to talk about modular synths instead of just playing the modular synths.

why would you want to talk about which album by a band is better than other albums by the same band, or assign numerical ranking to songs by bands and artists, rather than just ... listening to music?

drag em sarahell

Lol

I would like to congratulate myself for not posting a long confessional post i drafted about how I am afraid I’ve undervalued my male friendships through the years

Future biographers would have loved that shit but no dice