Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

i don't want to generalize but that's also true for me and the guys i've known who have turned toxic have been those who were lacking in confidence among other men, and deeply damaged in some fundamental way (my sense, not my firsthand knowledge), and who found their fake-ass sense of confidence and superiority thru the usual channels of lashing out at easy targets. and i find a lot of the well-known supposedly masculine man's man types who are leading the charge from the right to be almost campy and larpy in their sense of self. i don't mean campy in the gay sense, but a sort of false front of identity sense.

this is all my very small sample size. i also live in L.A., which is a vv different environment.

lol i fuckin give up. this “not all straight dudes” shit is so fucking worn out.

of course there are plenty of wonderful and amazing straight cis dudes, but the consistency and volume of the denial of the lived experiences of queer and trans people in favor of advocating for the nobility of straight manhood is fucking insane

i find a lot of the well-known supposedly masculine man's man types who are leading the charge from the right to be almost campy and larpy in their sense of self.

Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson to thread.

And not to be overly crude or essentializing, but I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood? Like, to quote Suicidal Tendencies, "if you're not now, you never were."

are you kidding with this shit??

he consistency and volume of the denial of the lived experiences of queer and trans people in favor of advocating for the nobility of straight manhood is fucking insane

In this thread?

from unperson, yeah

Christopher Rufo and Jordan Peterson to thread.

And Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Charlie Kirk etc — not strong models of masculinity by anybody's definition. I guess Rogan is pretty conventionally macho, but mostly it's a bunch of bookish dweebs. (Nothing against bookish dweebs, they are my people.)

idk I don't associate any of the positive behavior I mention with any sort of "nobility of straight manhood"

multi-xps -- do you think people might have reacted differently if, idk, you wore eyeshadow and lipstick as well as read poetry?

badly phrased question there. bcz of the way human brains work, everyone reacts differently to that which falls outside norms compared to that which falls within them. its just a matter of our constantly looking for patterns and judging if they constitute threats or opportunities.

irl what matters is not that eyeshadow and lipstick would elicit different reactions. that's a given. what matters is the reaction itself, which will be conditioned on a very large set of past experiences that will differ for each person doing the reacting. I recognize that statistically speaking, the eyeshadow and lipstick would be more likely to elicit negative reactions than simply reading poetry. I think unperson is just asking us to recognize that statistics are always backward-looking and have inherent predictive limits. iow, taking the position that "straight male society is not as closed-off or hostile as kate is painting it."

in addition, I recognize that personal experience, as filtered through one's emotional history, provides a level of personal truth that may not exactly reflect the broadest universe of facts, but has equally just claims to be truth, so that kate's view of straight male society is not an untrue version. it is a complete and verifiable truth in itself.

It's not that Straight Male Society is hostile: it's that Straight Male Society so often refuses to engage in terms other than itself.

agree w/that Alfred

right. what unperson explicitly said was that he doesn't experience straight male spaces as hostile or lonely. because it's about his specific experience as a straight cis dude, to me it doesn't make sense to ask "what about eyeshadow, what about..."

you know? because nobody is denying that those forms of violence / exclusion don't exist. but i think it's fine for a guy to express that he doesn't mind guy spaces on a a guy thread. we can have lots of criticism of heteronormativity without having to pretend like everyone experiences it the same way.

and yet somehow the queer people’s experiences of heteronormativity keep getting negged by straight people in this thread

hey guys I don’t experience racism as a white person, let’s talk about that

i don't want to generalize but that's also true for me and the guys i've known who have turned toxic have been those who were lacking in confidence among other men, and deeply damaged in some fundamental way (my sense, not my firsthand knowledge), and who found their fake-ass sense of confidence and superiority thru the usual channels of lashing out at easy targets. and i find a lot of the well-known supposedly masculine man's man types who are leading the charge from the right to be almost campy and larpy in their sense of self. i don't mean campy in the gay sense, but a sort of false front of identity sense.

This is exactly right. They're fake men.

the consistency and volume of the denial of the lived experiences of queer and trans people in favor of advocating for the nobility of straight manhood is fucking insane

That's not what I'm saying. I was addressing one specific post from kate which was to my mind projecting an outsider's view of "what straight men are like"/"what straight manhood is like" — I found it to be a very negative framing, so I responded. She wasn't saying "straight men are mean to women and trans people and queers," she was saying "straight men are mean to each other," and I simply haven't found that to be the case. That's all. But if you want to carry on with your own "denial of the lived experiences" of straight dudes, have at it.

Oh, cool, gyac's here. Bye-bye!

I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood?

just think about what you’re saying here for a minute. “i don’t know if I fully trust a block person’s perspective on white America”. “i don’t know if i fully trust a gay woman’s perspective on straight women” etc. Why not? It’s different from yours, sure. What’s “untrustworthy” about this viewpoint ? That it sees things through a different lens? And?

It’s a really interesting series of posts from table and I’m genuinely not understanding what the difficulty is in parsing that straight male spaces are often exclusionary to those who either fall outside or are perceived to fall outside either category. What exactly are people saying “well IIIIIIII and my friends aren’t like that” think that they are saying here?

Why bring Barry into it

very true, he would never

the rushomancy post that unperson was responding to seemed to make a lot of assumptions about what unhealthy masculinity entailed. for instance that it was about being emotionally closed off. it seemed to assume that this was both a fact and that it was the 'wrong' way for any human to be. I don't agree with either premise.

just think about what you’re saying here for a minute. “i don’t know if I fully trust a block person’s perspective on white America”. “i don’t know if i fully trust a gay woman’s perspective on straight women” etc. Why not? It’s different from yours, sure. What’s “untrustworthy” about this viewpoint ? That it sees things through a different lens? And?

An outsider sees things about a group that those inside it may or may not see, and can offer a "have you thought about this?" that can be quite valuable. But because they are outsiders, they also cannot see certain things. So their perspective is...get ready...not 100% trustworthy. Because it's incomplete. Outsiders often think — and claim — that they see members of a group better than those members see themselves. It's flattering to think so, but it's not always the case. The outsider perspective is frequently reductive, even when it's not rooted in grievance.

It’s a really interesting series of posts from table and I’m genuinely not understanding what the difficulty is in parsing that straight male spaces are often exclusionary to those who either fall outside or are perceived to fall outside either category. What exactly are people saying “well IIIIIIII and my friends aren’t like that” think that they are saying here?

― ydkb (gyac),

The discussion's fine, and as a gay man I like to hear about the experiences of straight men in this climate; sleeve and tipsy didn't offend me. We're having a conversation.

It's a problem when examples and anecdata become totalizing experiences.

I’m genuinely not understanding what the difficulty is in parsing that straight male spaces are often exclusionary to those who either fall outside or are perceived to fall outside either category.

Nobody's having any difficulty understanding that. But that's not what we're talking about right this second.

ty Alfred, also sure I present straight but am actually not fwiw

lol unperson so your perspective as a straight dude is "complete"? I'm not sure how it ever could be when you dismiss other people so easily

just a tip, whenever you start a sentence "Not to be (x)" you are in fact being (x) so you should have a lil' think before continuing down that road

ty Alfred, also sure I present straight but am actually not fwiw

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve),

I am so sorry.

Oh I didn't in any way mean to suggest those spaces can't be both warm/friendly (if you ARE one of the guys) and exclusionary (if you aren't) at the same time. Of course they can and are — country clubs are the same way! Also fwiw my experience of male spaces growing up as a straight cis male was deeply variable, I have definitely experienced plenty of aggressive male bullshit and there are many varieties of men I have no interest in spending any time with. I'm a weirdo and mostly bonded with other weirdos, male or female.

lol unperson so your perspective as a straight dude is "complete"? I'm not sure how it ever could be when you dismiss other people so easily

No, of course not. Standing where I am, I see things you can't see. Standing where you are, you see things I can't see. What part of that is unclear? Take a step to the left or right, maybe it'll help.

just a tip, whenever you start a sentence "Not to be (x)" you are in fact being (x) so you should have a lil' think before continuing down that road

Thanks; professional writer for more than 25 years, when I do things I do them on purpose. It was a rhetorical flourish.

how many threads will unperson express something kinda vile on this year? it's been like once a month lately

hmmm. i think this is actually a great opportunity to compare and contrast!

when i started talking about a movie i hadn't seen in a thread where people who _had_ seen that movie were talking about it, table gently and sensitivity pointed out that i was perhaps projecting my own experiences onto that movie (which, again, i hadn't actually seen). table then followed up by explicitly thanking me for my message of support.

this was a case in which i was, really, pretty clearly wrong. i was exhibiting a behavior pattern i've exhibited in the past, and it's not really a good behavior pattern. when table spoke up, though, it was in an extremely gentle manner.

-

there's an argument to be made that this was the behavior i was engaging in when i talked about my experiences with manhood, certainly. i do think it's maybe a little more complicated than that. i would say that i was overgeneralizing - maybe even universalizing - my personal, subjective experience. your response was to give your own personal, subjective experience (some of which turns out to overlap with mine - as it happens, i, too, loaded trucks on third shift for UPS). i think it's... understandable that you might have a little bit of hostility towards what i'm saying. (i'm not meaning to be too pointedly critical of your post in that. i just don't know of any other way to interpret the emotional component of your response.)

and then you follow that up with:

And not to be overly crude or essentializing, but I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood? Like, to quote Suicidal Tendencies, "if you're not now, you never were."

i do deliberately continue to read and post to the maleness and masculinity thread. you're right, i'm not a man, and having thought about it a great deal, i have conclude, at least for now, that i never was a man.

i think there is something that some men, maybe even a lot of men, don't seem to really process. people who are members of non-normative groups _have_ to be knowledgeable about the lives and experiences of normative groups. we don't have a choice. i'm not a man, i am a women, but i've learned that _all women_ have to know men, and manhood, _extremely_ well. men, on the other hand, can be totally ignorant of women's lives and experiences, and often are.

i would argue that any non-patriarchal conception of manhood _needs_ to listen to and take into account the experiences of people who aren't men, since the primary people who are hurt and affected by patriarchy _are_ non-men. to deny the right of non-men to speak on men's issues is to deny the idea that patriarchy is a bad thing that needs to change.

further than that, i do believe that trans people, as a whole, have particular insight and wisdom into gender, and particularly into masculinity, that cisgender men don't have. no, i never was a man, but i lived as a heterosexual man for 43 years, and i do think that experience is _relevant_ - _more_ than that of a cisgender man, because i, like most trans people, have the ability to look at multiple categories of gendered experiences, and evaluate them comparatively, from the position of lived experience.

your focus seems to be on your _particular experience_, which is one of healthy and socially appropriate functioning as a man. this is, again, a problem a lot of men seem to have - difficulty distinguishing between their _personal experience_ as a man and patriarchy as a structural force. it's _extremely frustrating_ to experience. even though my criticisms of normative masculinity are arguable overgeneralized, they're _not criticisms of you personally_, unperson, and my subjective perception is that you're acting like they _are_ personal criticisms.

what's the benefit, unperson? what's the benefit to you of not trusting trans people's perspectives on straight manhood? what do you get out of it?

anyway it is fully possible to "understand" something you're not 100 percent "inside" of if you're fucking steeped in it for crucial decades of your development

i think that kate's points are well taken, and furthermore / in addition it's fine to introduce anecdotal data from Straight White Guy that complicates the theoretical framework of Masculinity. if we don't look at the raw data, how can we refine our theory? they work together to help us see the whole picture.

i think at the end of the day, unperson was responding to what he perceived as somebody speaking for his own experience. so he chimed in with his experience -- and just his experience. i think that's ok on the maleness thread.

we can also take into consideration's table's and Alfred's points, and use this as an opportunity to explore the unspoken ways in which masculine spaces exclude or hurt. but that doesn't mean that unperson can't share what it's like for him as an individual example.

or did i miss something?

i mean fine we can totally cede this thread to the men who really know what straight male spaces are like

(ffs)

i posted before i saw kate's most recent post but just want to say i like her post very much, and i hope unperson takes it to heart. specifically about her trans-ness informing her perspective on heteronormativity.

you have rejected masculinity, therefore i can't completely trust your perspective on it because you must have some bias against it, that causes you to not apprehend how wonderful these spaces are, how we can read books around each other and refrain from calling each other f*gs, it's beautiful

i think at the end of the day, unperson was responding to what he perceived as somebody speaking for his own experience. so he chimed in with his experience -- and just his experience. i think that's ok on the maleness thread.

This is it. I read kate's post (obviously) and responded with "that's your perspective, which I think is off-base; here's why. And here's my perspective."

to deny the right of non-men to speak on men's issues is to deny the idea that patriarchy is a bad thing that needs to change.

Who's denying your right to speak? I'm hearing you and responding. It's a discussion. I consider your perspective valuable. I hope mine is as well. Perhaps the end goal is a kind of triangulation — you tell me what you see from your angle, I tell you what I see from my angle, and maybe we arrive at a guess about what's in the blind spot between.

i would argue that any non-patriarchal conception of manhood _needs_ to listen to and take into account the experiences of people who aren't men, since the primary people who are hurt and affected by patriarchy _are_ non-men. to deny the right of non-men to speak on men's issues is to deny the idea that patriarchy is a bad thing that needs to change.

awkward and clumsy phrasing here, i think - reading it over again i think i'd say people who aren't cis men here instead

Just a quick humorous diversion...you know that billionaire who's spending millions and engaging in radical diet 'n' exercise regimes (and literally injecting himself with his 18-year-old son's blood) to try and look "young"? Take a look at what he looked like five years ago:

If you're gonna go from this to this for $2m a year, some of it should at least have been spent on heroin pic.twitter.com/nobKyvEg1c

— Dave Mc 🇨🇦🇺🇾🇳🇱🇹🇳🇪🇦 (@davemc99) August 14, 2023

This is a person with a very twisted vision of masculinity.

Who's denying your right to speak? I'm hearing you and responding. It's a discussion. I consider your perspective valuable. I hope mine is as well. Perhaps the end goal is a kind of triangulation — you tell me what you see from your angle, I tell you what I see from my angle, and maybe we arrive at a guess about what's in the blind spot between.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

i feel like you're misreading what's going on here. i'm not viewing this as some sort of discourse where we both air our views and come to a common understanding. there's no Both Sides here. what you said was wrong and i was trying, as gently and respectfully as possible, to communicate to you why and where you were wrong. of course i've gone and blown that now, but other cis men here seem to have read and appreciated what i said, so it was still worth doing imo.

Just a quick humorous diversion...you know that billionaire who's spending millions and engaging in radical diet 'n' exercise regimes (and literally injecting himself with his 18-year-old son's blood) to try and look "young"? Take a look at what he looked like five years ago:

― but also fuck you (unperson)

dude would've gotten way better results from estrogen, just sayin'

I think he's not chasing masculinity so much as some equally twisted vision of "youth" or "vitality" or something.

Anyway, I think some of the tangle in this thread is the ever-present danger of totalization — that maleness or men or men's spaces or sense of community or relationships are or should be this or this. Which I don't think anyone is really actually saying, but there's a tendency to read things as declarations or flag-planting rather than partial or conditional perspectives on complex questions. (Which doesn't mean people can't be wrong or shouldn't be challenged, obv.)

Straw men suck.

i feel like you're misreading what's going on here. i'm not viewing this as some sort of discourse where we both air our views and come to a common understanding. there's no Both Sides here. what you said was wrong and i was trying, as gently and respectfully as possible, to communicate to you why and where you were wrong. of course i've gone and blown that now, but other cis men here seem to have read and appreciated what i said, so it was still worth doing imo.

― Kate (rushomancy)

wow, that was unnecessary of me. apparently i'm an asshole today, sorry about that.

No worries. I am either a gaping asshole or a much worse writer than I like to think I am, because I seem incapable of making a point anyone gets.

stick to jazz

i think if you can see how this

I don't know if I fully trust a trans person's perspective on straight manhood

doesn't equate to this

I consider your perspective valuable.

then most of the conflict would cease to be a mystery? you did eventually seem to admit the totality of patriarchy can't be fully grasped by one perspective alone, so i'm not even sure where the former statement came from.

sorry, i think i'm injecting myself where i don't belong and will stop posting

going back to Close - for what it’s worth it was only Lukas Dhont’s second film. I think he is an amazing emerging filmmaker

I can understand the criticism from David Ehrlich: “Once again [a reference to Dhont’s first film Girl], a vividly affecting vision of adolescent identity is upended by a sudden trauma so intense that it bleeds into every other scene of the film”. The trauma in the middle of the film was intense, but Ehrlich wrote about it as if it was only about that trauma.