Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Not to go an all fours
That is the law
Are we not men?
He who breaks the law
Must go to the House of Pain

We are Devo

Crack that whip

***SPOILER ALERT!***
http://www.tcm.com/video/470002/island-of-lost-souls-1932-movie-clip-are-we-not-men/

only just seeing this discussion now --

Sometimes it's beautiful and sometimes it's ugly. Sometimes it's clear that the relationship is founded on deep attraction, love, shared interests. Other times it feels as if the relationship is transactional.

I tend to have this view that fgti posted ... also wanted to echo what they said about "ugliness" ... in some cases that I've seen, mostly in the arts, it feels vampiric. Not just talking about the goth scene, lol. It reminds me of this "tradition" in my local experimental music community. There was (until recently) a local college that was wom*n only for undergrad and had a graduate program in experimental music that would attract a good number of women, most of whom were in their 20s. They would have concerts featuring graduate student work. And there would regularly be a handful of older male musicians (late 30s - 50s) who would attend these concerts who were "interested in what the new crop of (School Name) grad students were doing. Some of this was artistic interest but in the case of a few of them there was another type of interest, and they blended in a creepy way in this context ... like older man was anxious about his artistic relevance or creative output and ... what "better" way to validate that than the attention of a much younger less experienced female musician.

And I also want to emphasize this thing that gyac said (who had the courage to be the only ilx woman to engage with this on this thread so far)

much older men who routinely pursue much younger women should be looked at askance- don’t seek out those who know better. They have radar for people who are insecure, or sheltered, or who are vulnerable in that way.

Reading all the "me too" threads (especially the catch-all one for non marquee musicians), you can see this over and over again.

But I do think that unpersonn did say something of value by bringing up agency. Because as a woman who was once the ages in question, and who had female friends who also were those ages, and many of whom were in these types of relationships when they were younger ... I lost my train of thought there ... but, basically, denying agency tends to reinforce the objectification of young women. However, to gyac's point, these tend to be women who are vulnerable and insecure. They are working through their own shit by being in these relationships, but often, because they're dealing with trauma they experienced when they were even younger ... they aren't making really great decisions by being with these vampiric/predatory men.

I feel like most of my female friends who have been in these relationships were either victims of sexual assault by a family member/teacher when they were younger (i.e. prior to hooking up with creepy older dude), or had a father/step-father who was abusive to their mother. Someone with unperson's "rhetorical flourish" might say, these women have "daddy issues."

And even though some may have, as unperson puts it
made a conscious choice to go for it nonetheless.

there is definitely a major risk of harm involved. Maybe they are aware of that risk and are just saying "fuck it, I need to work through my demons, also I can't see myself in what others call a healthy relationship, so I'm going to hook up with this older guy who can take me out to fancy restaurants and maybe advance my career, even though I have to deal with being leered at and objectified by his creepy older guy pals, and maybe that's the best I can do?" ... but the man would ideally know that he is complicit in the harm? That just because she's going for it, doesn't mean that it isn't fucked up?

all of that otm. just want to say that the same kind of dynamic applies in gay / queer contexts too. i've engaged in that kind of transactional relationship, on the younger end, and it definitely didn't lead to me feeling great about myself. i'm glad i don't have the desire to use younger people in that way now that i'm 40, not like i even could since i don't have any kind of "stature" or "reputation" in the arts to begin with, but anyway it's a total boner killer for me tbh. it feels good to just be secure and look out for other people who are also secure for possible side fun from my primary. it's also led to a blanket "don't hook up with other people who are djs" rule now. like, i can't trust myself to mix work and pleasure like that, it's just too entangled and stressful.

"don't use your workplace / field for your casual hookup playground" is a rule a lot more people should institute for themselves imo.

I always felt like I wasn't cute enough to have older dudes want me in that way ... the closest I got to this dynamic was this Irish dude (as in he was from Ireland), M1ke Delaney, at a former workplace who would let me stay on the clock for an extra half hour while he complained about his ex-wife and his lazy brother-in-law that he helped get a job but was not grateful enough, and how hungover he was all the time, and he missed his kids, and some more about the horrible ex-wife, and how stupid the sales people were, and I got a bit of extra money, and he taught me how to use Excel to do the billing, and I got to fill in for him while he was on vacation.

and then I got to be interim manager after the company fired him for calling one of the sales people "a stupid fucking bitch" ... but again, the thing we're talking about is not that.

haha yeah i mean if you can get something by pretending to like a jackass and there's no sex involved that's a little different. i'm all for that tbh.

i'm just realizing that there was probably a specific moment when the bigwig older dj in my small city, j3ss3 w4lker, turned on me, and that moment was when i didn't pick up what he was putting down about hooking up with him. slc is a small enough place that there are quite a few of these types of scumbags in positions of power, and if you don't play along, you end up .. not djing / doing whatever it is you want to do. i ended up having to completely change my format from 'underground cool house and techno' to 'megan thee stallion and kesha' in order to keep at it after being stonewalled by that dude and his crew. and i'm STILL running into these kinds of people all the time, one owned the first bar i played at last summer, another works at the current bar i play at. i'm finally at the point of realization that none of the people i encounter while doing my job are my friends.

by play along do you mean "sexual acts" or just metaphorically "sucking his dick"?

haha, so it was after this gig we played together, the first one he had asked me to play with just him after a few months of me trying to be like "i want to dj with you guys". i was sick as a dog with a cold, the gig was a pain in the ass, like the setup was a nightmare. all of the interactions i had with him that night were sort of like ... this guy expects me to constantly kiss his ass and make sure he feels cool all the time, to the point of some pretty ridiculous situations. afterward i gave him a ride home. he was giving me pouty eyes and telling me how he was lonely. i was like "nope" wished him good night and naively thought my general friendliness that night while i was sick as fuck would lead to further work with him.

the following summer there was a situation where i booked a bar for a pride friday party. three days later, they basically steamrolled over me and stole that weekend. i agreed to it if they would let me play a "prime time" slot. ladies and gentleman, i did not play a prime time slot, i played warmup again. after that, i was like fuck these people and unfollowed all their socials. last year when i did my insta recap, j3ss3's right-hand man, m4tt d4ufenb4ch, posted to my ig feed "i'm glad you found your flow here!" to which i thought but didn't reply "yeah no thanks to you shitbag". m4tt and i were friends for a few years before i figured out everything he did in the context of friendship was transactional. anyway, rant over.

if anyone cares this is n3w c1ty m0vem3nt in salt lake city, just awful pretentious people who play boring fucking music at self-important parties.

good for you! also fuck them.

yeah! thanks :)

my scant experience with the professional dj scene (dating a few, hanging out in the booth occasionally, hanging with bookers) is that it is jam packed with transactional interaction

dating apps are a great reminder of what so many people really think about men and how they should present themselves.

looking at someone's profile right now that says "a man's man is preferable because if you walk in wearing skinny jeans, my family is probably going to roast you and i can't stop that." i'm an extremely skinny person, and if i wear normal fitting pants (what people under 30 wear, now) i look like i'm wearing jnco's. so i wear pants that are on the skinnier side and i do my best to be confident and tell myself that i look okay in them. but surf some of these apps for like 10 minutes and i realize that yes, a ton of people are silently judging me all of the time. ps fuck missouri

also, very much not the correct thread for this, but just saw someone that showcased a picture of them with elon musk! jfc that might be one of the biggest, clearest red flags that has ever existed

It's okay! I wear Xtra small shirts and skinny jeans in a croqueta-butt town

"a man's man is preferred" is insta dealbreaker for me.

Pants are a historically loaded article of clothing.

"Loaded, that is!"

https://i.imgur.com/YKDH4dP.jpg

Historically speaking.

Charles II would like a word

I don't know, if I ever read about another "brave" photographer who has made a career out of showing how vulnerable, skinny white boys can be sexy too, i'm gonna throw up.

Vulnerable skinny boys are the only boys I find sexy FWIW

Rona Jaffe’s novel The Best of Everything has a great depiction of a relationship between a young, somewhat naive woman (Gregg) and an older successful man, and how their different intentions can lead to tragedy. It prompts the question of how culpable the man is for failing to see how the power imbalance can be damaging, despite not having any intention to harm.

Hello Cat Person!!

I was going to make a list of the vampiric musical men in the rolling thread sarahell referred to but I didn’t feel like it was worth my time. Thanks to gyac and sarahell for their otm posts itt. I don’t have it in me to explain this anymore.

Caitlin is coming to save us lads: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/01/caitlin-moran-whats-gone-wrong-for-men-and-the-thing-that-can-fix-them

Thank heavens.

And yet, confessing this seems unthinkable. We have yet to see the advent of the Average-Penis-Size Jesus, who will break this taboo, and discuss it, in a way that brings progress and relief to all.

How are you a professional writer about gender and you've never heard of Howard Stern??

is "the thing that can fix them" the new "that's okay and here's why"?

or rather ... "that's okay and here's why" was the new "one weird trick" and now we are back to "fixing" as opposed to "acceptance" ?

I don't see what acknowledging the existence of small penises is supposed to solve.

Dudes have run almost everything for thousands of years. They have filled culture with their thoughts and expressions and feelings. Shakespeare, Milton, Updike, Nabokov Roth, Kerouac, the Beatles and the Stones: dudes. Every U.S. President? A dude. Every Pope? A dude. Dudes are not underrepresented in popular culture.

We've been over this, and apparently my opinion is unpopular, but I continue to boggle at the notion that what we need is more talk about dudes and what makes them tick. They have been telling us, for millenia.

indeed! and if we do need to discuss it then in the future maybe we should confine it to the rolling maleness and masculinity discussion thread.

Ye Mad Puffin, def not gonna go to bat for this particular combination of topic and person bringing it up, but the patriarchy has pretty clear delineations for which conversations about dudes are allowed and which aren't. These have obviously changed over millenia but there's all sorts of taboos that have to be maintained to uphold traditional heteronominative structures. It's not like anyone who talks about this stuff is under the illusion that it ain't dudes who keep these convos from happening.

I'm not sure that troubled young men, many lower-class, are going to be won over by "LOL, you and John Updike have it so tough".

I continue to boggle at the notion that what we need is more talk about dudes and what makes them tick

in terms of acculturation everyone starts at zero and every day there are new babies who'll need to learn what their society believes they should learn about their gender. one side effect of staying silent in the belief that dudes like Shakespeare, Milton, Updike, Nabokov Roth, Kerouac, the Beatles and the Stones are the final word on dudes and what makes them tick is that we'll be stuck there. you may want to reconsider the desirability of just keeping the definitions we inherited and not updating them.

We've been over this, and apparently my opinion is unpopular, but I continue to boggle at the notion that what we need is more talk about dudes and what makes them tick. They have been telling us, for millenia.

― pomplamoose and circumstance (Ye Mad Puffin)

i'm definitely on team "more talking about dude stuff"

yes, there are people who have been telling us about dudes and what makes them tick for millennia. andrew tate. jordan peterson. and since these people are the loudest and the most heavily promoted by patriarchal institutions, well, their perspectives are privileged.

i spent decades trying to figure out how to be a "good man". ultimately, i failed at that. maybe it was never in the cards. maybe it was never possible for me. and maybe if we had a healthy shared understanding about what "manhood" was, i might have figured out that i didn't belong there _far_ earlier than i ultimately did.

the frustrating thing is that i really feel like i understand better what it means to be a man, how to be a _good man_, better than i ever did when i was trying hard to be a good man. there are things i could say, perspectives that i might have to bring on the topic, but what man would listen?

because that is, in fact, the secret to being a good man. not just listening - but listening to _different perspectives_.

i think swolesome has a lot of good perspectives on manhood. maybe some people listen. i try to listen. here's his channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCqRukfgKf-

i do still _want_ to understand men. not because they run the world or whatever but because i think being a man his pretty cool. i'm honestly a pretty big fan of manhood, and it sucks that it gets stuck to all this fucked up shit.

modern-day notions of manhood and masculinity have not been around for "millennia" - there is no single patriarchy that has dominated all cultures. what is considered masculine in one place and time is not the same as what is considered masculine in another place and time. just because andrew tate and jordan peterson are able to successfully market their bullshit doesn't mean they reflect a historical consensus.

i spent decades trying to figure out how to be a "good man". ultimately, i failed at that. maybe it was never in the cards. maybe it was never possible for me. and maybe if we had a healthy shared understanding about what "manhood" was, i might have figured out that i didn't belong there _far_ earlier than i ultimately did.

same here tbh ... even though I wasn't born with male anatomy, I was raised to look to these standards/codes because they were the dominant ones. Why be a woman if you could be a man?

neil cicierega is my masculinity role model. a straight white cis man who's been fully and deservedly accepted by fans of all identities because he's quite simply so gentle, along with his creativity and absolutely non-cruel (yet brilliant) wit

modern-day notions of manhood and masculinity have not been around for "millennia" - there is no single patriarchy that has dominated all cultures. what is considered masculine in one place and time is not the same as what is considered masculine in another place and time. just because andrew tate and jordan peterson are able to successfully market their bullshit doesn't mean they reflect a historical consensus.

― c u (crüt)

it's true that the model of patriarchy promoted by tate and peterson differs in substantial ways from that offered by, say, theodore roosevelt, or cato. at the risk of oversimplifying (reduce, oversimplify), the variances in ways patriarchy manifests are... not my primary concern. my concern is the existence of patriarchy _itself_, the notion that men, however defined, ought to _rule_ over people who are not men, however defined. that, i would argue, _does_ reflect a historical consensus.

the thing i find hardest to express about my prior gender experience was the that "cis male" is a _default gender status_, it is _normative_. men, by and large, just don't _have_ to think about their gender. and this gets seen as a "privilege"... well, it has aspects of it, but i don't think ignorance is necessarily a privilege!

Here's Christine Emba at the Washington Post with her own "how do we redefine masculinity" take: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine-emba-masculinity-new-model/

She doesn't really offer any prescriptions, but some of the guys she talks to have interesting thoughts.

the thing i find hardest to express about my prior gender experience was the that "cis male" is a _default gender status_, it is _normative_. men, by and large, just don't _have_ to think about their gender. and this gets seen as a "privilege"... well, it has aspects of it, but i don't think ignorance is necessarily a privilege!

yeah! i think of myself as "male by default". i've considered that i might be trans or nonbinary, or more accurately, i've tried not to consider it too seriously because i'm totally unprepared to deal with more major upheaval in my life than i already have at this point. but a couple of weeks ago i was filling out a form in the hospital and they asked me if i identify as male or something else, and it's the first time i've been asked to really *actively* or deliberately identify as male. that was a struggle!

needed a checkbox for "i really haven't thought about it enough", "i'm not sure" or "i'll get back to you"

that or "none of your business"

the thing i find hardest to express about my prior gender experience was the that "cis male" is a _default gender status_, it is _normative_. men, by and large, just don't _have_ to think about their gender. and this gets seen as a "privilege"... well, it has aspects of it, but i don't think ignorance is necessarily a privilege!

This is such an interesting observation, and one that I’ve thought about for years and years, albeit with a divergent feeling about what you call “ignorance”, and I’d describe as “the privilege of non-engagement”. I’ve always felt that that privilege is the gold ring of male privilege, the psychological aspect that isn’t statistically definable but is, in my opinion, of high value.

xps oh man i couldn't get through even a few paragraphs of that wp article, my eyes blurred over and just saw "panic over lack of worker discipline."

the good news about masculinity that many people seem to miss is that it has sooooo much room in it that you can literally just make it fit "you." there are no rules and a million possibilities. in fact you can add feminine qualities to it for spice if you want, but like you don't have to, it doesn't have to be hyper-gendered either. and you can change it up literally every day, or every couple of hours. AND you can fashion an infinite variety of personal progress narratives or "quests" or whatever you want if you're craving like a masculine linear thing. they just have to be personal with lots of space and not too mediated by like instagram or your career or whatever. if you're measuring your masculinity by social norms you've already lost imho. idk, that last statement comes from the fact that i've been really into going inward lately - movement, breathing, meditation, in the moment stuff. and god do i crave gentleness! and kindness! men are fucking traumatized, dehumanized. i want a huge fucking capacity for gentleness and kindness, to myself most of all.

i'm sure this sounds a little silly, but i'm truly amazed by "free running" and parkour athletes i follow on instagram, all of them men iirc. without knowing much about the culture / organization / economy of the sport, just seeing men be so creative with their bodies, doing ephemeral works of art in cities on the street. it seems heroic to me somehow, not sure i can articulate why very convincingly.