Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

"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.

i liked that wapo article. it was interesting and it brought up a lot of stuff that i think about on my own.

"if you're measuring your masculinity by social norms you've already lost imho"

sometimes - a lot of times - this is just how people learn how to act. they don't have anything BUT the social norms around them. because most people are norms and want to act like the other norms. which is why i liked that article. it points to a positive direction for male energy. and maybe that will become the norm. probably not. but its nice to be positive.

i like your last post a lot, map. for the record.

oh hey thanks. it's nice to hear your perspective. the norms thing makes sense, but idk i find it depressing. i skipped ahead a bit in the article and there are some things i agree with, sort of half-heartedly. my pov here is queer to the core, so i'll lay that card out on the table. i think the lessons of queerness apply to everyone and that everyone is a little bit queer. but i recognize most people do not want to reckon with that. for the ones who do, i want to be able to validate that voice, because validating my own queer voice is how i've made my way through the grim heteronormative landscape the article provides a broad overview of without snuffing myself out.

i came home today to my 14 year old son hanging out in the back yard with two of his friends. they had rigged up the piano bench as a bench press and were spotting each other with weights. shirts off. i don’t know where this stuff comes from. certainly not from me. they weren’t being particularly macho about it though which was kind of touching. they were encouraging each other and bickering about how much weight was on the bar. still i was this close to going over to the stereo and putting on zz top or something really loud.

lmao! zz top!

they sound really sweet.

there is so much baggage when it comes to lifting weights but lots of people like it because it feels good to feel strong!

so um

is wanting to end maleness and masculinity now considered passe / reactionary / terfy / otherwise pathological in some way? is it very offensive to call for this?

all this softer non-toxic masculinity sounds quite nice and maybe I'd trust it more if I'd ever met it irl

i'm end-maleness-adjacent tbh but i enjoy aspects of mine too much and don't want to make myself miserable for a credo. also speaking as someone who has little power in the world, the male privilege of not having to engage can be really fucking nice! i don't want to give that up either. sorry not sorry.

i liked your post above a lot better than i liked the article itself

aw thank you :)

from that article:

"I’m convinced that men are in a crisis. And I strongly suspect that ending it will require a positive vision of what masculinity entails that is particular — that is, neither neutral nor interchangeable with femininity. Still, I find myself reluctant to fully articulate one. There’s a reason a lot of the writing on the crisis in masculinity ends at the diagnosis stage."

and this:

"People need codes for how to be human. And when those aren’t easily found, they’ll take whatever is offered, no matter what else is attached."

i really have enjoyed and learned from people here on this thread. there is a lot here! and i appreciate people being able to share their own stories. i haven't been on here in a while. this thread, i mean.

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.

This is very true and dovetails with a thought I had while reading the piece which is that people (dudes, mainly, but also op-ed columnists) need to stop getting hung up on universals. The key to being a "good man" is finding the right context for yourself. There are "masculine virtues" but they're not identically applicable to every situation in life. So figure out how to deploy those virtues in a way that makes you a valuable part of your immediate circumstance. Be the guy who volunteers at the animal shelter! Be a church elder who offers people useful life advice! Or whatever! Be that kind of man!

I've actually been thinking about whether there's something I can do as a volunteer/lecturer/advisor to dudes in my town. I mean, I've managed to build a pretty successful career and publish four books with only a high school diploma. I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I have life advice to offer! But I'm not affiliated with any religious institution so I don't even know how to get in a position to share what I think I know with people.

all this softer non-toxic masculinity sounds quite nice and maybe I'd trust it more if I'd ever met it irl

This reminds me of that fake Gandhi quote about Christianity — "Christianity seems great; I hope to meet a Christian someday" or some variation of that.

Reporter: "What do you think of Western civilization?"

Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."

is how I have usually heard it.

- Bob Marley

maps post is very good but the free running part coming out of nowhere does crack me up, it's like a little rhetorical flourish that I could imagine werner herzog doing or something

I too have free running vids recommended on my youtube algorithm, along with vids for something called "assault style" inline skating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KuiKWt4Wz0

I'm personally pretty resistant to "crisis of masculinity" framings because they so often end up as a yearning for a lot of the exact stuff we're trying to evolve our way out of, socially and politically. But I accept that the definition of "a man," a sense of what it means to be one, is important to us on some level, at least in our current circumstances. And so of course I want that definition to be broad enough to include me, for a start. And one that gives my sons a lot of agency and options in finding and defining themselves.

I think I find non-toxic masculinity in my friendships. I have a lot of male friends who are thoughtful and analytical about their feelings and experiences of things, but also like to just shoot the shit about the NBA. We have an all-male poker game (although the same circle also has periodic couples poker nights), and a group of us all go out together for each other's birthdays. We've taken some road trips together. It's all very guys-being-guys stuff, we listen to a lot of Rolling Stones and drink whiskey. But besides arguing about music and sports the conversations are also about aging parents and dealing with kids, checking in on each other and our spouses, there is an inherent caring energy about our relationships.

first off +1 to weightlifting. if someone's strong and well-built that's attractive. the thing is, a lot of the narrative and culture around weightlifting is toxic as fuck. Swolesome, who I know I mention a lot, is a fitness coach and does a good job talking about this. He's built and is a _super_ hot guy, but "fitness" in masculine culture isn't emblematized by guys like him, it's people like the Liver King, who fucking juice.

ok i'm gonna do it, i'm the living embodiment of the meme of the guy pouring a giant bottle of olive oil on a salad and the olive oil is labeled "the problem is capitalism"

the problem is capitalism

everybody talks about "creating good male role models" but the truth is there are _plenty_ of good male role models. boys don't see those role models. boys and men don't see these role models. they see andrew tate and jordan peterson. none of us should fucking have to know who jordan peterson is. none of us should fucking have to know who andrew tate is. but all the capitalist media outlets promote this shit and profit from this shit and deny any sort of accountability for platforming toxic bullshit, oh it's not my fault, oh it's not my fault, just like the bbc says it's "not their fault" for writing an article on trans people where their literal only source is someone who calls for the genocide of trans people.

and this is capitalism because it insists on ignoring systemic factors, "there's no such thing as society" don't you know, except when something you don't like happens and then we live in a society. i'm corrupting the morals of the youth, i'm an agent of the "trans agenda", there is no "cis agenda", "cis" is a slur, actually.

“The average hoodie made these days is weak, flimsy … ” growled a YouTube ad for a “tactical hoodie.” “You’re not a child. You’re a man. So stop wearing so many layers to go outside.”

that's the sort of shit that's normative. that's what boys and men are taught. the solution to bad speech isn't more speech, it's to _stop fucking blasting out the bad speech over every loudspeaker in the fucking world_.

and the people controlling capitalist systems of power are never, ever, ever going to do this of their own free will. ever.

ok, there, i said the thing, i had to say that, i feel better now.

to be clear, fgti is right, not having to engage with one's own gender _is_ a privilege. absolutely. current norms of masculinity, though, are so ludicrous, so disconnected from reality. if any man, anywhere, feels shame for _wearing a hoodie_, that's, to me, that's a textbook example of how patriarchy hurts men, and the only way i know for individual men to stop suffering, to free themselves from that shame, is to, well, choose to engage with one's own gender. at some point the costs outweigh the benefits.

i started off on this whole rant about how silly it is that men get all their advice on what women want from _men_ rather than _women_ and then i realized, wait, come on, i'm not wholly ignorant of why this might be. i wasn't ever a man but i was taught to think like one, to view the world like one. and i was afraid to talk to women. i was afraid to talk to women because i was never taught how to do it appropriately. i was so, so afraid that i might wind up accidentally abusing someone. and looking back i do think there are times when i... treated women in a way that, if somebody treated me like that today, i'd call that really inappropriate, because i wasn't born knowing this stuff, and the stuff i was taught, the stuff i was taught was bullshit.

this, ok, to me this is the single biggest problem with masculinity and whenever anyone starts talking about it there's this instant "#notallmen" defensiveness. and i will say - _there is an actual fucking problem here_. and it's not women, it's patriarchy, but having said that, i think there are a lot of forms of feminism that promote patriarchy. trans-exclusionary feminism, just to go for the low-hanging fruit. i'd definitely argue that trans-exclusionary feminism promotes patriarchy.

and something else i'd argue promotes patriarchy is the duluth model. to me it's really linked a lot to these essentializing gendered ideas. the idea that IPV is something that _men_ perpetrate against _women_ is, to me, this is a variation on what to me is the most horrifying statement i've ever heard a feminist make, which is that "only men rape". i'm just appalled that anybody would say that.

i know why i'm so upset about this today. i'm upset about this because last weekend i talked to a friend of mine, a trans woman who finally, after a year of us hoping for her to do it, left her spouse. cw ipv she told me about that this weekend, about how her ex railed against "men" all the time, and even after she transitioned, even though my friend's ex used her name and pronouns and everything, when it came to abuse? when it came to abuse, she was a "man", and everything her ex did to her was "self-defense". against her "violence". like, she would raise her voice sometimes. that was violence. and the physical violence her ex repeatedly perpetrated against her, that was "self-defense".

and honestly, i've been through that too. i've seen that same bias. my ex abused me and we saw a therapist and the therapist wouldn't listen when i tried to talk about it. because, i think, she saw me as the "man" in the relationship. and it's taken me so, so long and so many people telling me that what she did to me was abuse to even start to accept it. because that therapist was the _professional_. and the people who were telling me i was abused, sure, most of them were women, but we were all _socialized male_, so really, what did any of _us_ know?

that's a side rant, though, again, feminism _isn't_ the problem, feminism isn't _a_ problem. the problem is that _men are not taught consent_. they're frustrated because a lot of women, you know, tend to view men as threats, and that's not fair to them. and that perception men have, that perception _i_ had pre-transition, for me, it's true. i'm attracted to men, i like men, but i have a hard time trusting men. i'm afraid to even admit in public that i do, in fact, like men, because of the _kind of men_ that will attract, because of how those men will treat me, how they will come after me, and because for them to do that is _acceptable_.

what makes for healthy masculinity? i don't know for sure, but for me, part of it is _holding toxic masculinity accountable_. not _women_ holding _men_ accountable. men holding _other men_ accountable. in ways small and big. i was a spy, you know, i was secret agent in their midst. i know how men talk about women when we're not around. i've heard it. and there was so much pressure to not stand up, to not challenge it, and a lot of the time i _didn't_. because it's me and ten men and wow i know what _that_ sounds like and i was afraid, you know, i was afraid that if i spoke up _they'd know_. i'd blow my cover.

i wish i had spoken up more, but at the same time, i don't feel guilty, i don't feel ashamed for not doing it. guilt and shame aren't going to "fix" masculinity (i don't like that framing, i don't like the "broken/fixed" framing). men do need to be empowered, but they don't need to be empowered to... well, ok, they _do_ need to be empowered to clean their rooms, but they _also_ need to be empowered to _speak up against other men_. none of this "bros before hoes" shit. i mean you want to stop being an "incel"? stop calling us "hoes" behind our backs and stop putting your "bros" before our basic fucking rights. like, how fucking hard is that?

i mean, seriously, i'm gonna get real here, what do you think, i'm frigid here? you think women, we're all frigid, we're not _attracted_ to men, we don't _thirst_? guys, i am a _complete slutbag_, and it's not "because i'm trans". you want to talk toxic masculinity, how about we talk about the _complete erasure of female sexual desire_? you want to talk about the ways consent is fucked up, i know what i was taught, that i had to be the _aggressor_, that sex was a _thing of value_ that i had to coerce women into reluctantly parting with. that just fundamentally is _not how sex works_. patriarchy makes fun of negotiation, they say it's not _spontaneous_, they say it's not _sexy_. oh, do you not think negotiation is "sexy"? too fucking bad.

i wasn't taught any of this shit either. i've had to learn this shit too. i've had to learn that consent isn't just about making sure the other person doesn't say "no", that "oh god, yes, please" is a possibility and it is a _good one_. i'm really glad to have had the opportunity to learn that lesson. and the way you get there is by _listening_ to us, by _respecting us as equals_ - until and unless _we negotiate otherwise_.

or, i guess, a man can choose to make fun of these ideas as "woke" or "P.C." or whatever term of derision the patriarchy is employing this week to distract men from noticing the way they're slowly grinding us all down into nothingness. personally i think the first option is probably the better one for us _collectively_, but me personally? i'd much rather be with the girls.

"tactical hoodies". he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me, right?

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

― Stars of the Lidl (Chinaski), Saturday, 1 July 2023 bookmarkflaglink

The high rates of middle aged male suicide place a dark note on this ridiculous all-over-the-place piece.