Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

when I drive down the roadway I think "concrete" and then I furrow my brow and sigh, "rome"

actually I do probably think about Roam by the B-52s three times a day

I've often thought of the parallels between Commodus and Trump (for example).

men think about the next smack off every day

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/men-think-about-roman-empire-tiktok-trend/675341/

this week in “when tiktok jokes escape their confinement zones”

I've often thought of the parallels between commodes and Trump

I asked my husband, and after some pressure he said about once a week, but upon further questioning it turned out he just thinks about Rome itself once a week because he does a lot of travel research.

My answer was almost never but I do think about the napoleonic wars and/or the age of sail about once a day. I guess that’s similar as a conventional dad history interest but a particular interest in Rome maybe has this whiff of TheWest classicist fascism about it?

I think about lead poisoning pretty frequently, and I guess that ties into the (sometimes hypothesized fall of the) Roman empire. I dunno why I or anyone would regularly fixate on ancient Rome, but I imagine lots of people do think about World War II a lot. I know I do, one way or another.

My answer was almost never but I do think about the napoleonic wars and/or the age of sail about once a day.

It's the French Revolution for me.

for professional reasons, have been thinking about almost nothing but rome for the last month and expect to continue this way until at least mid-march, but on average it's prob only a few times a week.

was Seward in it

american civil war def my idea of the classic example of whatever we're talking about. i should think about the american civil war more tbh.

personal go-tos are the 30 years' war and the bronze age palace system lol; the latter is more or less the same as being rly into, like, pern

One day I'll finish Wedgwood's book on the Thirty Years War.

but a particular interest in Rome maybe has this whiff of TheWest classicist fascism about it?

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 15 September 2023 22:41 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i just think maybe as a message board we could maybe just fucking stop, yknow? lads?

I was asked by two people today about Rome. Rarely, though I've been meaning to re-read Mary Beard's SPQR. When it comes to Europe I'm an early medieval to early modern lad with some Napoleon sprinkled in.

SPQR is fun.

Been thinking Lazio thoughts this week

but a particular interest in Rome maybe has this whiff of TheWest classicist fascism about it?

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, 15 September 2023 22:41 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i just think maybe as a message board we could maybe just fucking stop, yknow? lads?

i think thats fair tho!

but we're far from establishing the latter from the current meme turned thinkpiece

Studying something and glorifying it are, y'know, different things.

I wouldn't characterize my thoughts about ancient Rome (or, for that matter, the American Civil War) as glorifying them. Any more than looking at a weather forecast glorifies rain.

i never think about Rome that wild

fwiw there is def a type of Guy who's bought into rvturn nonsense and posts about the Roman empire a lot, these ppl's engagement with the actual history are unlikely to be any deeper than with Kant or Greek philosophy or any of the other "western culture" signifiers they pick up

Does this mean any study of the Roman empire is now suspect no of course not and no one's suggesting it is.

its .... literally suggested in what i objected to

Not a Rome guy myself. If I have one of these it's probably fin-de-siècle France and World War I.

Sonething having a "whif" of something does not mean it's intrinsic to it darra, as non-nazi wearers of asymetrical haircuts can attest.

lol, I rarely think about or evoke Rome but literally just yesterday my gf was wondering why basically no one outside of the Jewish world pays any attention to Rosh Hashanah (or the many other holidays in this month alone) and my response was 'thanks, Constantine!' So guilty as charged, I suppose.

xp "is now suspect" is your own wording, thats not the same as retreating to "intrinsic to x" which is your new position so afaic im being clear and consistent here

I do not think something having a whif of something means anyone indulging in it is suspect either! Subcultures grab hold of signifiers all the time, it's just a thing that happens.

the whole British imperial identification with Rome and the distorting effect histories in that tradition have had on our imagination is something you still have to reckon with though since it's a huge part of the literature in this language (and it's probably one of the things that draws the fascists in)

i said "whiff" here to be deliberately vague because i couldn't be bothered to do the work of thinking exactly what my point was.

i guess i have two questions:

would this meme/joke would work just as well with any other classically dad history interest (US civil war, WW2, napoleon etc.) rather than rome?

obviously being super interested in any of these topics is usually benign, but it's also possible to be interested in them for fashy reasons. in 2023 is that more true of an interest in rome than the US civil war or WW2 or napoleon or whatever?

i think yes to both questions but 🤷🏻‍♂️. i do think the way men read history is interesting for this thread.

Well there are def fashy ways to be interested in the American Civil War or WWII but those rather give the game away which is part of why Rome would be more attractive I'd wager.

To return "my" preferred era, the leaders of the French Revolution were all obsessed with Rome too - the Republic rather than the Empire of course.

just fwiw, I hardly ever think of Rome.

i think of Greece a lot more, but that makes sense if you know anything about me.

also deems, fair!

I'll be teaching Plato and Gorgeous Gorgias in my rhetoric class on Monday.

the whole British imperial identification with Rome and the distorting effect histories in that tradition have had on our imagination is something you still have to reckon with though since it's a huge part of the literature in this language (and it's probably one of the things that draws the fascists in)

― Left, Saturday, 16 September 2023 13:39 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

also think this is valid

like not arguing there "ways" to be interested and to exhibit interest in this stuff that carry that whiff

Historian Cornwell also points out that Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus, or Elagabalus, the Roman emperor from A.D. 218 to 222, is frequently presented in ancient sources as experimenting with cross-dressing.

"cross-dressing"

Dio says Elagabalus delighted in being called Hierocles's mistress, wife, and queen.[82] The emperor reportedly wore makeup and wigs, preferred to be called a lady and not a lord, and supposedly offered vast sums to any physician who could provide him with a vagina.[82][83] For this reason, the emperor is seen by some writers as an early transgender figure and one of the first on record as seeking sex reassignment surgery.[82][84][85]

"Elagabalus is also alleged to have appeared as Venus and to have depilated his entire body. ... Dio recounts an exchange between Elagabalus and the well-endowed Aurelius Zoticus: when Zoticus addressed the emperor as 'my lord,' Elagabalus responded, 'Don't call me lord, I am a lady.' Dio concludes his anecdote by having Elagabalus asking his physicians to give him the equivalent of a woman's vagina by means of a surgical incision."

yep, just your average cross-dresser

Elagabalus being one of the most despised emperors

my feeling about rome nerds is that it's one of those things that i'd call "culturally gendered". i honestly don't agree with the way lewis webb is quoted in the article:

“Ancient Rome was of course patriarchal and violent,” Lewis Webb, a historian of ancient Rome at Oxford University, wrote in an email. “But it was also a diverse place: there were numerous forms of masculinity, women could have agency and power, and there were multiple gender expressions and identities, as well as various sexualities.”

i mean that's _true_ but if you're using elagabalus as an example, this is someone who was roundly condemned by everyone as the Worst Emperor Ever. like sure, if you were a woman you could have agency and power like, for instance, julia domna did, but she doesn't really get held up as a hero. which of marc anthony's wives were lauded by the romans? not fulvia. _certainly_ not cleopatra. nope, octavia, who spent all of her time simping for marc anthony and raising her children.

elagabalus is a hero for a lot of outsiders, not just trans women but artaud, who called her "the crowned anarchist". did i mention i'm an anarchist as well? it's her _resistance_ to rome, though, rather than her allegiance to it, that fascinates me.

rome is interesting, but enlightenment civilization treats it as the root of Enlightened European Culture and... well the truth is that it _is_, rome was built on slavery, conquest, and plunder, the roman "republic" was blatantly oligarchical. as a trans woman, i find caesar's legion in Fallout: New Vegas (a video game with tremendous importance to trans women) to be representative of the true spirit of Rome.

I'm afraid all I know about Elagabalus comes from Horrible Histories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ESsouohLg

mary beard actually gave a really interesting lecture on elagabalus... she's really good on roman history and i think she makes some points about the nature of ancient history. someone like elagabalus is essentially a mythological figure. roman historians were all pretty strongly moralistic... the idea of the Five Good Emperors is a renaissance notion, but to my mind it tracks well with the tendency in Roman history to categorize emperors as "good" or "bad". and since historians tended to make shit up in order to support these categorizations, it's damn hard to know what's true or false about elagabalus. particularly since shortly after elagabalus' reign rome went through a fifty-year societal collapse, and so his reign isn't exactly terribly well-documented.

that's what fascinates me about ancient history, roman history in particular... how much of it is just... false. the seven roman kings, for instance, _hugely_ mythological. rome has twelve months, and we assume at some point there used to be ten, because the seventh through twelfth months were originally named "fifth" through "tenth", but nobody can say for sure _when_ exactly those first two months showed up.

the fascinating thing for me is that rome is a culture that had in some ways completely different values, completely different mores, despite the superficial similarities sometimes. for instance, being queer wasn't stigmatized. the infamous poem known as "catullus 16" exemplifies this to me - answering charges that writing poetry made him effeminate, he responds with "I will fuck your mouth and ass", which is just a fundamentally different framing than our current understanding of queerness. elagabalus wasn't hated because he had sex with men - many highly regarded emperors did the same. he was hated because he was _effeminate_ - and this was, in particular, associated with bottoming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVDvdGI6S-E

The John Zorn album Six Litanies for Heliogabalus has one of the single most upsetting pieces of vocal music I've ever heard on it (Mike Patton literally sounds like he's gagging and choking to death).

The John Zorn album🕸 _Six Litanies for Heliogabalus_ has one of the single most upsetting pieces of vocal music I've ever heard on it (Mike Patton literally sounds like he's gagging and choking to death).

The John Zorn album Six Litanies for Heliogabalus has one of the single most upsetting pieces of vocal music I've ever heard on it (Mike Patton literally sounds like he's gagging and choking to death).

― read-only (unperson)

that's the intent, right? the rose petals on the cover are, i assume, a reference to the story of elagabalus having a party and smothering the guests in rose petals (it's the thumbnail of the video above).

anyway. clearly elagabalus means a lot of things to a lot of people, and one of them is "dude this emperor was totally extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeme". which by all accounts they were!

I never think about Rome

a number of my european-descended peers in this part of the americas have very nebulous ties to an ancestry that’s many generations removed and the homogenization of culture means the closest many get to ethnic historical roots is in rediscovery

when people from that milieu get really into rome it tends to mean something different compared to people who could be digging around in their garden and discover some roman tiles. not always in either case, but often

that mary beard lecture has been a very enjoyable watch this afternoon

It has been entertaining to me how many people have been like "Well, actually ..."

I almost never think of Rome but maybe I should. I will say that visiting Rome had a lot more impact than I expected.

My main rhetorical use of Rome is reminding Christian nationalist types that there is no Senate in the Bible but there was one in Rome, and our governmental/philosophical roots are classical and Renaissance as well as Anglo-Saxon/Christian.