Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

For some reason I was thinking about my late grandfather this morning and how I grew up admiring him as a "tough guy who had a sensitive side" and thinking about how (according to his own self description) had been sensitive when he was young but had to be tough because of circumstances (growing up in a poor neighborhood, fighting in the pacific theater etc.). But then it hit me, aren't all boys born sensitive? There's no such thing as a tough baby.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

you have clearly not been watching enough animal planet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsVk7MNNAeQ

"hehehehe i like bud!

― surm"

everybody likes bud these days, even people who don't live in oregon

i've been called "boss" a few times but it's always when someone is trying to upsell me on an air filter at an oil change place.

like, half the farmers/fishermen i know write poetry, and most of the honours class lads still go home to play in the parish cups

― Banáná hÉireann (darraghmac)

i think there's something in that, tho of course the Irish acceptance and appreciation of poetry is hardly a universal

― a very powerful woman in the dog world (Noodle Vague)

ahem

www.fisherpoets.org

I hate "boss".

Jai Alai is the official sport of genderqueer

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive)

is _that_ why it's banned in the phillipines, i thought it was the rampant match fixing

I get "hey man" a lot more than "dude" and it was somewhat refreshing

― mh

you can have the best of both worlds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AaiQVAG0gQ

I hate "boss".

Likewise, and "chief" is even worse (I get that now and then).

My tortured joke above was for the "favorite board game" question. "Sorry" is a game (may be only cards, no board) and the joke was that Canadians say "sorry" a lot (and they pronounce it "soary").

i get 'boss' at the bodega; it's not great, but whatever

Lol, nickn. I had assumed your joke was "oh wait, lacrosse is the official sport of CANADIANS, not lesbians" since iirc lacrosse IS the official national sport of Canada.

Likewise, and "chief" is even worse (I get that now and then).

― nickn

sorry about that

(nb i am not canadian)

I saw a film noir about a jai alai player who got murdered by one of his many mistresses, after he got her pregnant, then left to go pro in Cuba. He did not seem genderqueer.

when I worked in a caff we used to call the boss "chief" just to wind him up. "Squire" is even better for insincere displays of respect.

Can't beat 'big yin', ask Bobby Gillespie.

was watching a doc about Clarence Adams (black US soldier who defected to China after becoming a POW during Korean war) and he said how initially he was spoken to quite cordially (and often addressed in some Chinese word for comrade or something) in his first period in China, but then in the early days of the Cultural Revolution he noticed people started calling him "mister". And he said something like when you become a "mister" that means you are less than a human being and are in grave danger + you need to get yr ass out of there fast!

I chuckle to myself when Asian taxi drivers call me "boss".

guessing they called him "shifu" which is just used for taxi drivers and repairmen ime. if someone isn't referring to you as some sort of long-lost family member then it does sound like they are distancing themself from you.

my mom still calls some people 'cheap charlie'.

Seamus Heaney was given a minute's silence before the All Ireland Final at Croke Park in 2013; can't think of many other countries where the equivalent would happen.

Not maleness/masculinity content but

As a PSA, I don't find it particularly informative or insightful

I mean have you seen one ever that like ~blows your mind~?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtulL3oArQw&feature=emb_logo

I don't think that worked: https://youtu.be/BtulL3oArQw

nicely written piece linked to by cory doctorow on twitter. i don't personally identify with a lot of it but thought it was insightful:

https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/identitieswhat-are-they-good-for/articles/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-man

the original twitter thread for reference

Patriarchy's dirty secret is that it sucks for men, too. There's been an ocean of ink spilled over "toxic masculinity" but until I read @phil_christman's "What It's Like to Be a Man" in the @hedgehogreview, I couldn't crisply define it.https://t.co/EMmjV4AUWw

1/ pic.twitter.com/s3xSKEOwsN

— Cory Doctorow #BLM (@doctorow) July 12, 2020

that's a really good piece, indeed

I inexplicably think I should know how to install drywall, among many other things, and have the Hank Hill-esque insecure feeling when someone is working on my house. Luckily, I do not feel the need to hover over the furnace guy so I can say things like “oh, using a socket wrench there, huh?”

It’s junk

220, 221, whatever it takes

xp - don't you have an older house that is plaster & lath? ... installing drywall, while a useful skill (i def need to brush up on it), in some cases is less relevant depending on the age and construction of a given building or buildings in a region ... and that is my butch nerd insight of the day.

I've found that the best way to justify not being a DIY handyman-type is to own no more than a few basic hand tools, so I never have all the tools I need to do anything more complicated than, say, hanging a picture or fixing a leaky faucet.

Who purchases a Riverside Chaucer and a copy of the Go-Betweens’ 16 Lovers Lane before he gets around to pillows?

pictures of people who seem to have figured out how to live

I inexplicably think I should know how to install drywall, among many other things, and have the Hank Hill-esque insecure feeling when someone is working on my house.

― solo scampito (mh)

for the true male experience, bob dylan gives some tips on hanging drywall in the first episode of the second season of "theme time radio hour"

Don't think I even know what drywall is. it might be a us/uk difference thing though. I am extremely incompetent at most manual work.

Aka plasterboard.

Guess we just don't put up as many walls as a nation. I have put up lots of shelves and hanging baskets, no walls.

It's true, the Romans had to take care of it themselves.

Yes, plasterboard.

Was always confused by this when Dan from Roseanne would talk about it, I used to imagine him dry stone walling.

This is the newest iteration of toxic masculinity: toxic male mystification

When hanging drywall you need to get a bit for your drill/driver that is like a Phillips head screw driver with foreskin.

it's interesting the stuff that resonates w/ me about the Christman piece that resonates (lack of comfort w/ self, needless physical discomfort, defaulting to shoddinesss) and find totally alien ("each meeting of men can turn into a fistfight") though I'm sure it is describing real sensations, idk maybe that describes your homosocial interactions but it doesn't ring at all true for mine

err too many resonates in there you get it

Drywall was always called gyprock when I was growing up.

Sounds easy to hang tbh. Annoying/hard work but not difficult

I know the etymology there is “gypsum” but I think even so it’s not a good name

voting for "uprock"

it's interesting the stuff that resonates w/ me about the Christman piece that resonates (lack of comfort w/ self, needless physical discomfort, defaulting to shoddinesss) and find totally alien ("each meeting of men can turn into a fistfight") though I'm sure it is describing real sensations, idk maybe that describes your homosocial interactions but it doesn't ring at all true for mine

Haven't read this piece yet but most of the time when ppl talk about the toxic burden of masculinity I feel pretty alienated from the conversation because I was mostly always proud over not being the ideal that trad nasculinity strives towards (which is not to say that masculine hang-ups didn't/don't manifest in me in different ways). Pays to remind myself my experiences are not universal and I guess more men feel that burden than do not.

that essay contains approximately one metric tonne of humblebragging imo. and like

Think of the way “beta male” has become a category we all half-believe in

uh??

is it really a newsflash or even surprising that men have spent their unearned historical capital tinkering in the garage or just assuming a maternal figure will one day buy them pillows? how does that 'suck for men' again? because he carried a desk on his back one time?? WHY IS THIS AN ESSAY

c doctorow says "spend your life denying you care how you look while tormenting yourself with painful exercise you're not allowed to admit hurts, nor may you admit that you're doing it because you worry about your appearance"

guy. there is NOTHING men like talking in the locker room more than how sore their muscles are and how bad they fucked up their back last month. NOTHING.

I've never actually been in a locker room so I wouldn't know.

how do you live with yourself, Tom *shakes head*

It's true, I'm a mouse.

I can hang drywall, but I prefer to just constantly belittle it, subtly undermining its self-esteem until it hangs itself

Tracer as a former quasi gym rat who never enjoyed exercise I can tell you for certain that plenty of men never "bond" over that sort of thing. It is just as often a solitary experience.

But I would add that in many of those interactions seem to exist to reinforce the need for pain, glamorize it, "no pain no gain" etc etc