Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

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

in other news I was relistening to the Purple Mountains record this morning on my first walk to the office in four months and the...male, or masculine, character?... the specific flavor of Berman's problems, the particular manifestations (feeling akin to a lower form of life compared to his seemingly socially adroit ex-partner, for instance) really hit me. and scared me, a little! the sound of trying to delineate and therefore perhaps rise above those feelings, and ultimately failing. self-knowledge not being enough. not that men have a monopoly on self-loathing of course, just that the way Berman expressed them feel distinctly specific to the weight of traditional masculine expectation or whatever.

the need for pain, glamorize it, "no pain no gain"

sure but that's not just a man thing

i think that article ends up re-essentializing a lot of shit tbh

hardly anything is "just" a man thing but one look at the Marketing of Masculinity thread should prove it's more consistently aimed at men

nothing is just a man thing and yet

Re-essentializing would consist of saying 'this is who we really are and what we need to own up to, whether we like it or not' à la Jordan Peterson, and the author specifically critiques that particular 'solution' to the 'crisis' of masculinity. The idea that 'men' should be strong enough to cope with whatever life throws their way – not just without 'bitching' about it but also by openly relishing the challenge – is a banal and uncontroversial toxic masculine trope, no ('boys don't cry', etc.)?

“just that the way Berman expressed them feel distinctly specific to the weight of traditional masculine expectation or whatever.“

Absolutely. And put that in the context of his parents, where being a man in the mold of his male role model is inseparable from being a kind of monster. Adds another layer to loving being his mother’s son - he did not love being his fathers son.

absolutely. it was always a sad album to me but the weight of it hit me like a ton of bricks this morning in particular for some reason and the ways in which it did brought this thread to mind

It does, Tracer, but it also bells the cat (for me) re. the attitude of ennobled pain. I had a couple of 'wait... I do that' moments when reading.

i think that essay sucks now tbh, tracer otm

Looks like that "carrying a desk" essay is the same one unperson linked in a year or so ago

Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

I don't think my thoughts on it have changed

that guy seems vain and joyless, a weird and bad combination

I don't think "everyone else has it worse, suck it up loser" (which many replies seem to boil down to) is a good answer to this piece

"vain and joyless" is not a weird combination at all!