Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

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!

it's v funny to go through both times it was posted and have multiple posters find aspects resonant and others insist it's bullshit. OK!

Here, as elsewhere, ethics is a zero-sum game. Always has been, always will be, n'est-ce pas?

part of a response from the other thread

i've never felt at home in my body either but that's my issue and it does nothing to change the fact that the world i live in has long been built around making white cishet people like me as safe and comfortable as possible to the detriment of everyone else

When I was volunteering for a mental health crisis line in another city, it was hard not to notice that relatively few young men called in, to the extent that when one did you kind of instantly perk up and wait to hear something out of the ordinary, or even anticipate that they might be a prank caller, which did happen from time to time. And I have to admit that sometimes I had to battle my own inclination to think of their problems as more trivial than other demographics' in order to do the gig effectively.

I think about that when I read responses like bg's here. "other people have it harder, the world was made for and by your people, you're losing life at the lowest difficulty level" etc type shit is not persuasive and not helpful and yes smacks to me of macho bullshit in its own way

you can't grapple with maleness and masculinity if you don't provide room for male angst, male-dominated spaces, and male-dominated discussions

maybe not weird definitely bad though xp.

men could stand to show themselves a little more love and kindness tbr

on that I have no disagreement, the q is how to foster that effectively. I don't have an answer to that besides the fact that the sneering dismissal you see too often from people for whom these issues (supposedly) don't arise for them *as individuals* is deeply tiresome and depressing

yeah i agree with that

crut, I am not exactly seeing a paucity of male-dominated discussions (here or elsewhere)

In the attention economy of contemporary discourse, talking about one thing means not talking about another, possibly more pressing, thing. The solution we've taken to espousing is a different kind of utilitarianism whereby you prioritize the hardships of oppressed groups with little to no regard for a favoured group's outliers. This is a logical stance, of course, but it becomes problematic when said outliers turn out to be far more numerous than first meets the eye, and this is before we even meditate on the value of individual suffering.

"white male" as "the lowest difficulty setting" also pretty much ignores class. I would venture that white woman daughter of investment bankers might be an "easier difficulty setting" than white male from family where no one went to college. And the whole "if you are losing at life as a white male it's your own fault" seems not that far away from blaming the poor for their poverty in some cases.

And I know this is tacitly about the US, but 'white Moldovan male in Chișinău', for example, is not a desirable thing to be, generally speaking.

"white male" as "the lowest difficulty setting" also pretty much ignores class. I would venture that white woman daughter of investment bankers might be an "easier difficulty setting" than white male from family where no one went to college. And the whole "if you are losing at life as a white male it's your own fault" seems not that far away from blaming the poor for their poverty in some cases.

... and this is why Gregory and Travis McMichael deserve our sympathy, really

I don't think that's what man alive was saying.

damn man alive you didn't have to go after taylor swift like that

honestly Dan I don't understand how you could possibly get that from what I said. Complete piece of shit murderers don't deserve sympathy. Retired cops also don't tend to be poor fwiw.

tag yourself i'm lazy

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElhABywU8AEWtjr?format=jpg&name=900x900

nervous stolid combo

don't have that kind of chair so idk

what is a "good sort"

earnest possibly religious and/or naive imo

a mingenue (male ingenue)

what is a "good sort"

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Thursday, October 29, 2020 11:19 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

likeable person

people actually still say that in British English

i've heard it before (in the context of british English) and I've always assumed it meant something along those lines but wasn't sure if it had some particular subtext (e.g. agreeable or deferential)

which I guess is closer to what map said

but also I assume one of those britishisms where the meaning can change with a very slight change in inflection and context

i have no idea tbr i just assumed it had a tinge of "bless their heart" to it

right, like "Oh, she's marrying John? ...well, he's a good sort" etc.

it’s an absence of the other 3 things

or the harmonious balance thereof

good sort dude doing a bad job of hiding his dark secrets imo

I found this article fascinating.

This way of understanding what it means to be a guy, the particular masculine code and set of virtues it espouses, the heroes it holds up for emulation and admiration: none of this appeared in a vacuum. All of it is deeply rooted in the past couple of decades of American history, in everything from the constant imperial wars overseas and their long-term effects to the rising gap between those with college degrees and those without. There are longer-term precedents and archetypes at play as well, and I’ll talk about them, but this all crystallized in the very recent past. It’s a genuinely 21st-century American development, and I want to explore what it means.

It was linked on the Bro Culture thread.

My question after reading it was: to what extent is this behaviour inextricable from the right-wing/conservative mindset?