Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

This dumbass feels like he could do with the wanting vs needing dichotomy explaining a bit more.

To state the obvious: the queer voices in this thread bringing the wisdom and I welcome it hugely. So much of this seems to me to float around question of 'who truly knows their own desire?' and, forgive me if this sounds clumsy and (again) obvious, some people have faced that shit in a way I don't truly understand or haven't had to.

"Is this because I desire what I could never have, or what repulses me? I'm not totally sure."

I think it's pretty common for just about anyone to be attracted to and desirous of strength. physical strength. confidence. health. youth. and also duh, physical beauty. but its also common for a lot of people to have torturous histories with the jocks.

When I was younger I definitely knew without knowing that one of the reasons my gay friends - and women friends - liked my company - (especially out in public in a very scary decade for gay people (and heck its always a scary decade for women)) was that I was big and tall and "not gay". i was perfectly happy to be My Bodyguard because in their presence I could be who I really was 100%. Which was liberating beyond words.

And there are expressions of queerness we haven't mentioned (if we have, forgive me): bachelorhood, asexuality, both of which refute notions of species propagation, "settling down," leisure vs work time.

I realized several years ago that my family might've accepted a workaday gayness had I been the sort of guy who needs boyfriends. I've never brought a guy "home"! I never saw the point. Therefore, they regard me as a mysterious figure who hangs out with a lot of str8 guys and women and their spouses and kids but who may or may not do icky gay things without telling them (the family).

last night i got really stoned and thought to myself: was i lockerroom dudesplaining youth and beauty to a renowned queer history professor on ilx? haha, sounds like me. i have no shame. and there should be no shame in lockerroom love. that's why people watch the olympics. the olympics and porn are pretty much the same. exploitation. doping. strange endurance contests. questionable fashion choices.

anyway, i came here to mention the Equalizer episode called *Lady Cop*. story by Kathryn Bigelow for all you future gender scholars out there. in it the Equalizer goes to far with a crooked cop and he calls his old spy boss to his house and gets drunk with him and laments that THE EVIL came out. THE MANLY EVIL. did i mention that the Equalizer is a failure as a father?

also, in an episode right after that one, the Equalizer and his son bond in the woods by nearly killing some small town hicks together and they also have a very tense wood-chopping competition with each other. that episode you could definitely teach in a course on family dynamics.

then in another episode, the Equalizer basically emasculates Burt Young in front of Burt Young's son and then teaches Burt Young how to DO THE RIGHT THING and defeat the mafia boss. the Equalizer is a tricky all-knowing father. Flawed and yet wise.

the olympics and porn are pretty much the same.

Also opening cerimonies.

Can’t believe this thread got even worse lol

Tracklist:

1. In Harness: The Male Condition
2. Earth Mother Is Dead
3. The Wisdom of the Penis
4. Feelings: The Real Male Terror

― But his face would not turn into hot Kirby (Evan)

new feminazgul album fucking rips

lol Kate

Can’t believe this thread got even worse lol

for all i know the author of the 70s book was a proto-peterson men's rights god. i haven't googled them.

― scott seward

like this is the thing i really do recommend part one of the "behind the bastards" episode on andrew tate (people i get confused: andrew tate and geoff tate of queensryche, sorry geoff), which is all about the mythopoetic men's movement. proto-peterson was robert bly, these kind of lefty hippie folks. i was involved in that kinda thing in the '90s (rich hippie uncle who was really into it for a while, a great guy, really, i like him a lot). anyway regarding chapter 3, one of the things i remember was there was a thing called "cock talk" where people would pass a dildo or something around the circle and talk about their dicks. i mean if sharing a dildo with other men what it takes for guys to admit they jerk off, that's fine i guess. i'm a pretty open-minded lady.

the olympics and porn are pretty much the same.

Also opening cerimonies.

― Daniel_Rf

sooner than you think...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cruhEl3OFyw

(also wtf somebody do chromadot recovery on this already, apparently this looked amazing in colour)

whenever i think of robert bly i think of joseph campbell. i can't say that i read any books by them but i know they were both taken pretty seriously once upon a time. there is a robert bly and bill moyers movie on youtube called *A Gathering of Men*.

i hate Robert Bly so much that one of my books is simply an erasure of one of his books lmfao.

reminded now that i learned from my freshMAN year english professor that in old english “woman” was “wifman” eg one who weaves and man was “weapnaman” eg one who uses weapons

― Tracer Hand

oh my GOD wait until you find out about the old english word "baeddel", _so much_ tumblr discourse

I've talked about it a little bit on the streaming TV thread, I think, but as it's now coming to an end I have to recommend that anyone interested in the discourse on masculinity in this thread watch the show Mayans MC (on FX via Hulu). It started out as a spinoff of Sons of Anarchy, a show about a bunch of violent drug-dealing Mexican-American bikers, but in its final seasons (4 & 5, basically) it's turned into a weepy telenovela about a bunch of aging traumatized biker dudes trying to come to grips with their emotions and become better fathers and sons! It's insane how much time these guys spend hugging each other and crying. In between murders, of course.

sons of anarchy started out with quite a bit of that too tbh

they struggled to relate to the fathers of anarchy, who had their own issues ofc

I need to go to bed so won't write a lot now but just want to say:

all this becomes so focused and intense when you are the father of a son

but somehow simpler too! Because it's very clear what my particular job is -- there is a boy who is (very likely) going to grow up to be some kind of man, and no shit, I have a lot of influence over who that man is, much more than any celebrity or writer or ideological miasma does. The central way he learns what a man is is by watching me. So this takes you away from abstract ideas of "masculinity" or really precise definitions of any kind. And yet that IS where the notion of masculinity comes from for a lot of men, at least if we grew up in a loving home; it just means "the way my father was / is." It's a big responsibility, to be a man in a way you'd be proud of your son for being.

I mean, he's not fully done cooking yet so the jury's still out on what kind of a man he'll be, but my 19-year-old son has taken a lot of his ideas of masculinity from his friends' dads and other men in the community, rather than me.

I doubt that any of this crosses my son's radar screen. I don't know if/when he'll ever be able to grasp messages about what type of man to be or not be. Generally he's very simple and very sweet.

As far as I can tell, his schoolmates have been kind and accepting. This is a huge change from how "special" kids would have been treated in my childhood - at least where we live, there seems to be a lot less casual cruelty on the playground. Perhaps the cruelty has simply moved elsewhere (online, Mar-a-Lago, YouTube)?

i woke up this morning with the word "synecdoche" in my head. that's what it is, that's how penises get treated. as a synecdoche for "man". not in public, in public it's wearing trousers, even though it's been acceptable for women to wear trousers in america at least since, like, the 50s or 60s. anyway trousers is a terrible synecdoche for "man" and so is "penis". they're about equally bad, to be honest.

the only charlie kaufman thing i've seen is one of the episodes of "get a life" that he wrote. it wasn't very good. then again "get a life" as a whole probably hasn't held up too well. i wonder if the handsome boy modeling school record has held up.

you know, come to think of it chris elliot's work of that era does have some interesting things to say about masculinity. i'm not gonna rewatch "get a life", though. maybe i'll rewatch "the garry shandling show", i always got "get a life" mixed up with that show. i was really disappointed that when the butthole surfers appeared on the garry shandling show they didn't play "revolution". i mean seriously. why, if you're the butthole surfers, would you go on the garry shandling show and play a song that's _not_ "revolution"?

i think i should mention at this point that i haven't really gotten a lot of sleep this week.

Synec-dicky

xp so interesting, I would say my son has had close to zero contact with any of his friends' dads (and the same is true for me and his friends, except for the handful of his friends whose dads are independently friends of mine.) Other men in the community.... some of his teachers I guess? But not very many are men. I would literally say more than half of his lifetime conversation with adult men has been with me. Is that weird?

eephus - no. I don't remember interacting much with adult men until high school or maybe college? I think of myself as having lived in a very feminine world, dominated by mothers and sisters and teachers.

“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.”

what this reminded me of is some article I read about Why That One Kid Insists on Wearing Shorts All Winter, according to Exasperated Adults. i googled it once because a couple of my neighbors were giving me shit for doing just that. One of the theories was the boys think feeling cold is wimpy, so it was a way of showing how tough they are. LOL. they interviewed a kid who said it was a way of demonstrating his autonomy to classmates. his parents couldn’t tell him what to wear. he came to regret it because it was freezing, and being known as the boy who wears shorts, he was embarrassed to switch to pants.

for me, it’s about transforming myself. i want to become less brooding and intense, more playful and less "cool". becoming who i wanna fuck, to borrow from another poster and thread though i don't remember which. plus the synthetic fabric feels good and I like looking at my ankles.

about this,

That I still often desire those who represent some of that masc behavior is another subject entirely, but is also part of this conversation for a lot of gay dudes. Like, some of my favorite "scenes" (iykwim) involve jocks and lockerrooms. Is this because I desire what I could never have, or what repulses me? I'm not totally sure.

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.

is this specific kind of gender fluidity specifically a gay or gay male condition? because some of us are drawn to imitate appearances and behaviors that turn us on even though they don't necessarily square with our values? and how do those values change after slipping in and out of different roles for a long period of time? assuming attributes that on some level repulse you seems like an opportunity for growth. to grow your empathy, to stop hiding or feeling ashamed of what you really want- at least, those are two of the positive outcomes i've experienced.

you could be talking about something entirely different, of course. but.

i love wearing waxed canvas and gym uniforms and I also love wearing eye glitter and feather boas once in a while and all of it feels extremely indulgent, like the fulfillment of a wish almost. the former two are sexually charged, and they're all sort of forbidden, the masculine items in the sense that the boy from the article is embarrassed for anyone to know he wants to wear long pants. it's not what people expect of me, or it wasn't when i started. putting it on is confessional.

athletic attire pushes me to participate in life instead of just observing, and whatever hang ups i have about conformity feel healthy to undermine. that is to say, while it's taking me out of my comfort zone, it's not totally disagreeable. waxed canvas suggests someone who hunts and kills animals, which is maybe the single most repulsive act to me personally. man as operator of puncture, breaching and opening vessels (such as other lives)... just to use words other than "penetrating". there's an obvious dissonance because it's armor, but it has a fortifying effect.

eye glitter, on the other hand, draws the fear and vulnerability out of me. it fosters an instinct, above all, to withdraw from danger (predation, persecution), but also to nurture myself and others (laundering and making my bed, brushing my dog's teeth and clipping his nails, brushing the fur of my plush animals and tucking them in).

i have a toy tea set which i play with and utilize in a divinatory context. it evokes the physical and psychic heaviness of ancient Zhou bronze altar sets, and so bridges that world with Disney animation and Tiffany's Table Manners for Teenagers. there's a flattening of distinctions between regression and play therapy, theater, ritual and transformation- all of which i'm pulling from this very potent object that, really, is taboo for me to use because i'm not a child. and i don't want to misappropriate or dilute terminology that the trans women and men use to communicate their own needs and experience, but i will say that there's a healing aspect to playing with girls' toys.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/810iIqRO-hL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76974

as to the question of where is the true, authentic self in all of this- is there a gendered (or other) identity that "feels right" in the way some transgender individuals talk about, the answer for me might be "no." just speaking for myself, so far everything i do is a roleplay that on some level i feel distanced from, and i don't think i'm anything more than my responses to the stimuli that agitate me. if you strip all that away, i just feel abstract. i can keep plumming the depths, and it's bottomless, but it seems also to be hollow. table's post about how his own masculinity evolved in opposition to heteronormative aggression is really beautiful, i envy that in a way.

and i realize simply stating that i don't exist in a vacuum doesn't make me masculine or feminine, nevertheless, my gut is that the difficult task before me is to feel unburdened by the emptiness instead of trying to solve it.

Anyway, I do not see a "crisis of masculinity" in the world my son and his friends inhabit. It feels to me like the kind of thing I read innumerable newspaper articles about but which don't match what I see locally (see also: downtown is a no-go zone of burned-out buildings and street crime, groceries are twice as expensive as they were in 2019.)

I realize that writing this can be invalidating so I am really not trying to stomp on other people's experiences, just recording my own.

hey scott, if you're still reading this count me in on the people who would like to see you post more, if you feel like it.

When I was younger I definitely knew without knowing that one of the reasons my gay friends - and women friends - liked my company - (especially out in public in a very scary decade for gay people (and heck its always a scary decade for women)) was that I was big and tall and "not gay". i was perfectly happy to be My Bodyguard because in their presence I could be who I really was 100%. Which was liberating beyond words.

there is so much here and if you ever want to expand on any of this i'm interested to hear more

Anyway, I do not see a "crisis of masculinity"

that's because the cure has arrived:

https://spy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/tucker-carlson.jpg

can’t really find any other discussion of it, so want to post here about Close, the film that won the Grand Prix at Cannes last year.

it is a rare portrayal of the love and tightness of friendships between pre-teen and early teenage boys, and how homophobia and traditional notions of masculinity brutalize young men as a way of disciplining them into brutal subjects, whether conspicuous or repressed.

i have a lot of thoughts about it but mostly find myself reflecting on it and crying. how even a queer kid like me was brutalized and acted brutally toward others. it’s an absolute scorcher of a film imho, tho of course many of the US film critics were unfair to it because apparently all films need to have reasonable and legible endings and character motivations. anyway— i can’t stop thinking about this film, and plan on writing about it soon, and thought that maybe it could spur some interesting discussion here.

The homophobia I definitely got, the brutality not so much. Probably because my father was a man who would much rather be left alone with a book than seek out conflict. It was only later that I understood that he was plenty aggressive, but entirely passive about it, as he was about everything else in his life.

Anyway, the film sounds very much worth watching.

It started promisingly, but once A Certain Thing happens it loses its focus, and you could argue that this second chapter is the crucial one.

I can totally see what would make viewers love it.

I totally disagree

But I’m at work at the bar, so don’t have a lot of time to respond in-depth.

But I’m at work at the bar, so don’t have a lot of time to respond in-depth.

But I’m at work at the bar, so don’t have a lot of time to respond in-depth.

But I’m at work at the bar, so don’t have a lot of time to respond in-depth.

But I’m at work at the bar, so don’t have a lot of time to respond in-depth.

damn, sorry about that lmfao

lol

I just think that all the criticisms I’ve read of the film “losing focus” don’t actually offer any examples. The main protagonist is lost— and I don’t understand what’s wrong with a film portraying that lostness instead of enacting perfect narrative forms and resolutions.

I tried.

Yeah, I guess I just disagree. Makes me think of when a fellow student in a queer lit class said that Wojnarowicz was being “melodramatic “ in one of his iconic essays. Just reads as not wanting a given work to be real, frankly

And melodrama is a legit vehicle for anything.

table, do you work at a bar just wondering

not sure he has time right now tbh

anyway I had my butt operated on (see ILTMI) and it brought thread related stuff up for sure, still processing

keep dunking, i blame Zing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I couldn't resist, sorry!

more to the point, I am not familiar w/the film being discussed but have this bookmarked now so I can try to keep up