Hit the nail on the head:
Many commentators have noted that it is predominantly the political right that is talking about how to be a man in the first place.
From the socially progressive perspective, there is a lot written about how not to be a man, but far less on how to be one.
That second link is actually great
It’s really easy, on the left and just in politics generally, to think of things as being zero-sum. So there’s this fear that if we start helping men, then we’ll just have forgotten about women and there won’t be space or time for women anymore. I think that’s a mistake. We should be able to do two things at once. We can recognize that both women and men are members of our society and we should want to help everyone.
100% this is how I see it.
There’s also the fact that because progressives in the mainstream have not really taken up the masculinity question, the people who have taken it up tend to be on the right and often they tend to be problematic figures. You see incels and men’s rights activists and Ben Shapiro burning Barbies, and there’s a fear that if you speak up for men, everyone’s going to be like, You seem too interested in this. Are you one of them? It’s a branding problem.
I really hate that “men’s rights activist” is automatically a bad thing, and is even written here as bad. When you push that it’s sexist to put forward men’s issues, it feels inevitable it will turn men away. We have issues, we suck at building community lately, but we need to be able to talk about them without being shamed or chastised or branded. To the point above, it does not take away from women, at all, to let men have a space too.
We kind of created this space where the good men were too scared to talk, and the ones who did are Andrew Tate types pushing the most vapid interpretation of masculinity.
i.e. Tate exists because he’s such a piece of shit he wasn’t worried about speaking out. Tate thinks his counter culture is good and truthfully it’s why he’s been successful. He’s effectively a voice in an empty space which gets him lots of ears.
With Tate, unlike Peterson, there’s no pretension to anything virtuous. It’s just, Hey, the world hates you. The world wants to make you weak, wants to make you soft, so take what you can get, crush your enemies, abuse women, double down on everything they hate about you. It’s the weak person’s vision of a strong person. It’s the 19-year-old Nietzsche reader who didn’t make it past the preface.
That’s exactly how I feel. It’s empty junk food masculinity.
Masculinity to me is to build and mold yourself, to care about the right things and people, to be confident in your own inner strength, and to be supportive to those around me. It’s a perspective rooted in archetypes yes, and also Augustan stoic philosophy.
It’s okay to want fast cars and hot girls, but I think it’s pretty weak to make those outward rewards the core of yourself.
Yes, there is a gender divide in the polls, which is concerning. It is not as big a divide, though, as between urban and rural, white and black, or old versus young. I think we need to be careful about finger pointing like this.
If we play up these divisions too much, how then will everyone be able later to come together to somehow again blame the left for the failings of the two parties?
I mean, i don’t have to ask how to be a man or “masculine” because I don’t care about gender roles
That’s the power of embracing the social construction of gender. You can be whatever you are and feel comfortable with yourself. That has given me far more life satisfaction than meeting any masculinity litmus test ever. Also leaves more time and emotional capacity for things and people that matter.
Gender roles aren’t just something you adopt, it’s something others try to put you in. It’s great that you don’t care, but the people around you still care and will annoy you with how they think you should behave based on some gender role they think you should fit into.
Anybody who’s a real man isn’t gonna have to try that hard to be something already are.
The left: “All men are rapists!” “Kill all men!” Men: Drift further and further to the right The left: surprised Pikachu face
I think men treating women like sex objects happened long before anyone said “All men are rapists” seriously. How does anyone address the historical (and current) context of subjugation and oppression women face under men (who do hold a large majority of positions of power)? I think reducing the conversation to what you said is, frankly, the tactic of the right, and it’s really easy to give up on learning that context if one takes a victim complex, like when anyone attacks white people or Christians or straight people or cis people or cops, and ignore everything related to why those groups might have that hate towards them.
How can you address that context if you say “Not all men” and then do nothing to address the original critiques in the first place? If you pretend like the conversation starts and stops at the logical disproving of “All men are rapists,” then will you simply ignore that marital rape exists? Will you ignore that women do have higher rates of being sexually assaulted and that we make it hard to do anything about those assaults?
I, sadly, think of “All men are rapists” as a defensive mantra. That we, as a society, have to teach girls and women to fear men because we failed at multiple other points. It isn’t true, and it probably isn’t a great attitude to take, but I don’t know that I can fault anyone for having that view.
False dichotomies and flat truisms don’t start conversations tho, they end them. Yes, men have been treating women like sex objects since forever, but men have also NOT been treating women like sex objects - it depends on which men you’re talking about. And that sentiment does NOT equal simply ignoring that marital rape exists. The world doesn’t consist solely of extremes.
Think if you said getting AIDS was something gay men did. Statistically pretty true - the vast majority of AIDS cases among men are gay man - but do you think that would be a productive way to approach the subject?
But it was an issue before. And it’s an issue now. So the phrase isn’t really the issue. It’s an excuse to do nothing because you aren’t the problem, whereas before the excuse to do nothing was that you didn’t know about the problem. And if they say “Some men are rapists” to make you feel better, fuck if it isn’t an excuse to do nothing because you’re not one of them.
It is the responsibility of all people (and thus all men) to stop sexual assaults, and to blame people that are far more likely to be the victims of those assaults for making rhetoric that is extreme in response is to expect a perfect victim that did, does, and will do nothing wrong.
If you would like to use the AIDS epidemic as an example, it would be to treat the gay men as wrong when they said they should seize control of the FDA. It’s, technically speaking, not helpful, and there were many working in the public health sector trying their hardest to help those affected by AIDS… But, like, you understand why they said that, right? There were definitely protests before that where nothing happened, where their issues were ignored, and their were people in the government who were to blame.
Yes I understand why people say antagonistic things when they’re angry or passionate about something. What I’m saying is that it does no good to turn potential allies into adversaries by hitting their hot buttons. Unless you want your content to only be read by people who are already on your side. Not that echo chambers are all bad - tbh sometimes we need them. The issue before was that there have always been men who treated women like objects. It’s also always been true that there have been other men who didn’t. The phrasing isn’t THE issue but it is AN issue, and it’s avoidable by not hanging onto the idea that there’s only one conceivable way to say something.
No MEN are supporting trump. Those are cowardly boys.
Interesting strategy, just keep throwing insults instead of discussing the issues causing men to favor Trump and his brand of authoritarianism.
I mean it’s their fault they don’t like your candidate…
“Look what you made me do”
Wow we are sooo close here, you seem to almost get it but then fall back.
Imagine treating a group of strangers like shit and hurling insults at them… Then for some reason they don’t have any interest in supporting your candidate of choice.
:gasp: It’s like people react to the energy you put out…
"That’s the one, mommy! That’s the man that caused me to favor trump!!!"
Every one of those chuds should have to put his decrepit ball sack in their mouth for ten seconds. Shameful bigots.
Because they are whiny pussies that blame everyone but themselves in their victim complex.
Just like trump
American machismo is tied to American militarism which is tied to American imperialism which is tied to American capitalism. If you want to reimagine a different masculinity, be prepared to unpack a whole lot more.
