Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Welcome to the MANCAVE bros! Lol psych, this is for contemplating serious issues NOT raised by the men's rights movement, and also we need to stop hijacking the Weinstein thread for real.

this is maybe going to sound incredibly dumb, i'm not trying to be #notallmen or #reversepence, but these days i just don't like to hang out with a group of dudes for a night out, or a party that's all men, etc...the energy weirds me out a lot of the time. most of my friends these days all are couples and we hang out as such, but i have other male friends who will just socialize with THA BOYS and i find when i join them that the conversations just go places i'm not comfortable with a lot of the time, or the vibe is just weird, the balance is all off, etc. i don't like the "men's club" feeling. i don't know.

― nomar, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:39 AM (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agree

― mookieproof, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:42 AM (forty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I totally feel you. I am generally averse to 'dude hangs', particularly 'white dude hangs'. Speaking as a white dude, no demographic is more likely to creep me out than other white dudes.

― the scarest move i ever seen is scary move 4 (Old Lunch), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:43 AM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

same

― brimstead, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:44 AM (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the only time I'm in that situation is at band rehearsal but we aren't all white and we aren't all male so it's only intermittently when there's just a subset of us there. idk it doesn't bother me, there's no assholes in the band lol

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:47 AM (forty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Just don't hang out with assholes imo.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:48 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the classic Max Ophuls film Letter from an Unknown Woman is relevant on this point

Did you see the cuts Harvey demanded?

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:48 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"That's locker room."

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:48 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

men who feel the need to exclude women aren't usually up to anything worthwhile ime

where does the conversation go that makes you uncomfortable? i'll admit to being curious.

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:48 AM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, IDK I haven't had that experience so much. I don't hang out with anyone that much these days, but I get together with a group of guys to play music and it's mostly just talk about music, being a dad, work sucks, and maybe football in which case I tune out.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:49 AM (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seems like a thread derail anyway.

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:49 AM (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

men who feel the need to exclude women aren't usually up to anything worthwhile ime

yeah I think this is the real issue

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:50 AM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I really hate the idea of stag weekends

― good art is orange; great art is teal (wins), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:51 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in the future they will figure out a way to lower testosterone in unborn male fetuses. or something like that. i'm an optimist! #scifireader

― scott seward, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:51 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the company i work for has a large salesforce of mostly men . they come into the office from all over the country for training and meetings and want to go out in the City while they are here . I only went once and never again , the worst part was that most of them are married but when they come here it's like they are on some fucking weied free for all, it's horrible .

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:52 AM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's disgusting ^^^

it's not the testosterone -- it's the culture
we can change it if we try. y'all have kids. time to destroy the fratriarchy :)

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:54 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have a great core of friends, no assholes, but one of them keeps gravitating toward these sort of fratty activities. For example, he had his 40th birthday in Vegas, and my wife and were all, who actually does this? (So we decided not to go, since Vegas sucks - sorry, Vegas). The other week he made this half suggestion that we go back, but he added "and this time it should be just the guys!" And another friend of mine basically looked at him funny and said, "why? I like having my wife around." Which is to say I think some guys, even not assholes, sometimes get it in their head that they should do guy things in the most cliched guy way possible, and when a group of dudes, even good dudes, get that in their head, things can escalate into assholetry.

Or, like a different friend around the backyard fire pit the other night, actually take out his acoustic guitar and start strumming (and singing!) rudimentary classic rock songs. Don't do that either!

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 12, 2017 11:54 AM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^Harvey would have been a lot better off if he'd just done that tho.

― to fly across the city and find Aerosmith's car (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:00 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that's my attitude to stag parties, just complete befuddlement. "A pre-wedding party, but no women allowed!" Lol what, no, that sounds fucking terrible and dumb. Where are we going, your treehouse?

― good art is orange; great art is teal (wins), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:00 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The only all-male context I have in my life right now revolves around the alumni group for my all-male college chorus and even there enough of the guys are married to women that it's rare to have a meetup that is actually all male. (We do have an alumni chorus gig every two years, alternating between West Coast US and Japan, where the rehearsals are all-male but we are also in the middle of an activity so there's no real opportunity for things to go super gross.)

I will say that as a straight guy in this context, there is apparently some intragroup harassment that completely bypasses me; one issue that we've had in getting younger alums involved is apparently a core group of guys in their 60s-70s who make a habit of trying to prey on anyone under 30 who shows up. I knew nothing about this until one of my friends told me some stories about rescue missions he and his partner have gone on to keep things above board.

xp: lol, my wife had her 40th in Vegas, as did one of the guys I mentioned who was cockblocking old predators on the last alumni chorus trip.

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:00 PM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"we can change it if we try. y'all have kids. time to destroy the fratriarchy"

my kids were lucky enough to go to a really kind/loving/progressive school during their formative years and it totally helped form them in a really positive way. they are very quick to cry foul if they see/hear anything unfair/sexist/racist. not everyone gets that opportunity. i wish i'd had that!

― scott seward, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:01 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a core group of guys in their 60s-70s who make a habit of trying to prey on anyone under 30 who shows up.

as someone who used to attend an LGBT church (overwhelmingly white men), this is not an unfamiliar phenomenon to me

― ice cream social justice (Dr Morbius), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:03 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wholly reject the notion that ending toxic masculinity requires men not hanging out in groups together, that seems silly. I've had great groups of male friends where no such toxicity existed. But I'm all for ending what-happens-in-vegas style weekends and frat culture and the like. And there is definitely something to the idea that "good" guys will feel pressured to act in a certain guy way when in these situations. I was at an all-guy work dinner recently that got very close to crossing some lines, but thankfully a senior mgmt guy read the situation and was like "Ok, it's time to go."

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:04 PM (twenty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so happy i don't know what a "stag party" is and have to guess

and yeah i have/have had a lot of friends who are extremely "the boys" mentality. i.e. daydrinking & playing Xbox & doing blow. shit is dark. it's so stupid

― flappy bird, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:05 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

La Lechera -- i guess it's that the conversations turn towards talking about women a lot or relationships in a way that feels a bit retrograde, there's always going to be a bit of that type of flirting w/servers that makes me feel like i'm with a bunch of embarrassing uncles, and it feels kind of gloomy for some reason in a very existential dude way. i can't really explain that latter part, it's more an overall feeling i have. that's probably not a great answer.

it differs from other friends where the couples will hang out and it's just fun and easy and no one has any hangups about the lack of dude nights in that particular circle. though there are times when i'll go hang out with one of those dudes. we just don't get all together as a group to visit the secret world of men, away from the women!

we have a son, and his two oldest friends are girls. and i think that's been more helpful than any advice i could give him. i think he's weirded out by dude energy too, maybe. it's good to err on the side of caution!

― nomar, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:06 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as someone who used to attend an LGBT church (overwhelmingly white men), this is not an unfamiliar phenomenon to me

As someone who used to host trivia in the only gay bar in town that attracted a 55+ clientele, me neither. The difference here, though, is that these men were not in positions of power, comparatively speaking. Not excusing, just observing.

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:06 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Stag party = bachelor party. If they don't have those where you are, hopefully you can guess from "pre-wedding party for men" xp

― good art is orange; great art is teal (wins), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:07 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xxxxp yeah man alive otm, ya gotta call em as ya see em. Shit is pretty widespread though. I didn't go to college, but a lot of the friends I was referring to above went to art school. "the boys" / frat mentality extends way beyond actual frats.

― flappy bird, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:07 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wholly reject the notion that ending toxic masculinity requires men not hanging out in groups together, that seems silly. I've had great groups of male friends where no such toxicity existed. But I'm all for ending what-happens-in-vegas style weekends and frat culture and the like. And there is definitely something to the idea that "good" guys will feel pressured to act in a certain guy way when in these situations. I was at an all-guy work dinner recently that got very close to crossing some lines, but thankfully a senior mgmt guy read the situation and was like "Ok, it's time to go."
― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 6:04 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for the record i'm not suggesting that but then again if men really never hung out in groups that were exclusively men...hmm

― nomar, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:08 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel you, man alive, inasmuch as I have male friends (that I've known 15-20 years and who can comfortably hang out with like my mom) I can chill with as a group of just guys, so I don't condemn the practice in and of itself as much as I personally generally avoid it because the majority of my creepiest hangs have been dude-exclusive.

― the scarest move i ever seen is scary move 4 (Old Lunch), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:09 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The difference here, though, is that these men were not in positions of power, comparatively speaking. Not excusing, just observing.

A detail I'm leaving out is that the people I'm talking about are all on the board of our alumni organization.

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:09 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There’s also work-related male hangouts before or after meetings where the women who don’t go/aren’t invited are not given career breaks or don’t get bondy face time with superiors.

― kim jong deal (suzy), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:09 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This should probably be a separate thread, huh.

― the scarest move i ever seen is scary move 4 (Old Lunch), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:10 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's no "power" per se as far as other alumni are concerned but we do make decisions that affect the current students' abilities to tour, etc.

― Marcus Hiles Remains Steadfast About Planting Trees.jpg (DJP), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:10 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, where can we move this discussion?

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:10 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some kind of NO GIRLS clubhouse

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:12 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rolling Tree House Thread 2017

― flappy bird, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:12 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:14 PM (sixteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?!?!

"the boys" / frat mentality extends way beyond actual frats.
otm
i foolishly thought if i stayed away from broey fratty people, i could escape it. wrong!

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:15 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i agree w/ man alive. probably a better thread for all this btw but whatever

i was extremely averse to all-male situations after going to a boys' catholic high school which was frequently toxic, homophobic, misogynist, crude, awful. after that experience, when i went to college i sought out friendships mostly with women, and i now work in a profession that is 80% women.

but eventually i've found great value in cultivating close, intimate friendships with other men and that sometimes that intimacy can be facilitated by male-only environments. they don't have to be toxic.

in the past decade, i've been part of a few all-male things, all of which have been super healthy, positive, and rewarding, and have never gone into that kind of toxic gross shit mentioned itt: 1) a men's group to talk about healthy sexuality in the context of being a man; 2) a regular "dad's night out" for special needs dads (mostly autism parents) organized by a local autism/special needs non-profit; 3) a regular friday night group w/ some of my childhood male friends, mostly we talk about music, politics, food, art, film, sex too but ime some men are able to talk about sex without being fratty creeps.

though i have talked to male friends and family members that work in male-dominated professions and tbh it sounds fucking horrible

― marcos, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:15 PM (fifteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rolling No Girls Allowed Treehouse Thread (All Gender Identities Welcome)

― IF (Terrorist) Yes, Explain (man alive), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:16 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's exactly what bob pollard said
"no girls in the treehouse"

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:17 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I could've sworn there was already some "masculinity" thread

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:19 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would like to add, perhaps relevant to this thread, that my bad-vibes groups are men who work in the entertainment industry. not all of them are these bad dudes, most are not, but the conversations which wind up occurring are often...not the greatest.

― nomar, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:19 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a few xp

plus like...... most of ilx sadly

― marcos, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:19 PM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol, my wife had her 40th in Vegas
Ha! Well, women do their own shit in groups, but defending this from afar, I doubt large groups of women get together and turn into assholes the way men often do. Or at least certainly not the same way.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:20 PM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I doubt large groups of women get together and turn into assholes

lol sometimes I think there is nothing more terrifying than a gang of 10yo girls, the level of real emotional cruelty can just be insane

we're wandering rather far afield here...

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:23 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(ftr my wife made me go to Vegas with her for her 30th birthday - it was just us though. also I hated almost every second of it apart from the Star Trek experience thing)

― Οὖτις, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:24 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't get me started on kids.

BTW, per "locker room," back when the Access Hollywood tapes came out, the same friend who was anti-"dudes only!" in Vegas didn't defend Trump but did observe that the shit he was saying wasn't that different from the shit any one of us (guys) might say in private. My first thought was, not me! But my second thought was that I at least understood what he was talking about. One man's ironic quip ...

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:25 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The last time I was in Vegas, for a wedding (bride was from Vegas), was actually fine, but after that my wife and I basically breathed a sigh that we would never have to go to Vegas again.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, October 12, 2017 12:26 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

where all my gamergate bros at

outmoded. deal

I remember Andrea Juno insisting that men hanging out in groups occasionally was good for them but I didn't understand why she thought that.

Marcos- I understand the male only sexual health group but not the other examples.

I've been to one small bachelor party, maybe a dozen years ago. I had some experiences, as the only queer there (afaik), that I had not had before. (The groom behaved impeccably btw.)

FWIW my "bachelor party" was just me and my close friends getting ethiopian food and drinks and seeing some music. There was a brief moment of me and a friend talking shit about a woman we had both dated, with a sort of knowing "Okay, just this once, since it's a *bachelor party*" wink. Even that shittalking didn't get all that ugly.

Being a straight, white male has pretty much always felt weird to me inasmuch as I don't relate to most of the things I'm 'supposed' to relate to as a straight, white male. Beyond even just like sports or whatever, I mean weird-ass competitive displays of dominance and strength and machismo and whatever the hell. Just trying to describe the prescriptive aspects of maleness that squick me out, I feel like someone who's always experienced it at a remove and barely has any idea what he's talking about.

yeah I hear you.

bewar! others have trod where you wish to tread: maleness

i think progressive men who don't want the world to be the way the world has always been need to STEP THE FUCK UP. but i don't know how you change the world. i just try to change myself on the regular. and evolve. i am all for evolution. which can be difficult for people. and which is a daily process. and this is why a lot of men just choose to put their hand down their pants Bundy-style and turn on the boob tube and fuggedahboutit.

One thing I was thinking reading the Weinstein thread is how important it is for men to kind of guide other men away from the wrong kinds of attitudes and behaviors and give them an alternative. I feel like I was extremely lucky that I had this freshman year roommate who happened to have this friend from home who was at the school and who became my very good friend -- he was a very confident guy and just wasn't having any of the bullshit. My first weekend we went to hang out with some junior that one of them knew and he was being a complete piece of shit, saying gross stuff about women, pressuring us to get wasted, etc. and the guy who became my friend made an exit for us and then talked on the way home about how much the whole experience sucked, and it made me feel like "Okay, college doesn't have to be like that, I'm not going to go that route."

I'm gonna be the contrarian and say....I don't mind when my buddies wanna hang with me away from wives and girlfriends? And I like/love their wives and girlfriends. I don't see the big deal. Maybe my gayness is the x factor.

also, marcos on the other thread describing his gross toxic high school was a description of EVERY school i ever went to. and i went to....five schools. just being around that for so many years was so detrimental.

I've tried steering other men's behavior before and ime it is thankless and usually unhelpful, which is not me saying it's not worth attempting.

i have a friend whose marriage ended and he has apparently quite literally gone down a rabbit hole of cocaine and escorts. meanwhile a mutual friend told *me* that guy actually has some kind of problems w/my low-key lifestyle, like how i don't actually want to party anymore (ftr, my partying w/him involved having two beers and him having three cocktails and then insisting we split the bill, so...)

dude i don't want to hang out w/you and listen to your BS "true man" advice about how to live while you're doing lines with someone you're paying to have sex with you.

Our friend group has never done all-male things (even the bachelor 'parties' were co-ed), but there are definitely 'ladies only' nights that get organized and my wife hates it.

That said there have been issues over the years with certain dudes tending to dominate the conversation (shocking I know), so I can appreciate wanting a different dynamic. But most of us who are in relationships, y'know, like having our partner at social gatherings with mutual friends.

xp

yea that's gruesome xp

i have better friends than that guy, fortunately. i think one aspect of this is that sometimes you change and other people don't change.

Maybe my gayness is the x factor.

yeah having non-heteros in an all-male mix definitely alters social dynamics in my experience

I'm often in the exclusive company of men when I socialize, and not always all-gay. Generally things don't get gross.

or should i say, sometimes you change in one direction and other people change in another direction. xp

I didn't have to deal with much toxic maleness as a kid/teen. I'm very thankful for the friends I had back then. I had lots of time with other young men and we were mostly never gross about women, or like weird and competitive. Began to experience it a lot more as an adult, which definitely made my social anxiety worse and led to me being pretty much a shut-in.

We discuss music, movies, politics, our sex lives in an adult, non-gross way, problems with dating/wives/girlfriends. They find it more helpful than I do. I don't see anything wrong with me for wanting to see them a couple times a month without their spouses and girlfriends. In fact, if anything, in Hispanic culture there's too much of an obsession with couples doing everything together.

I've tried steering other men's behavior before and ime it is thankless and usually unhelpful, which is not me saying it's not worth attempting.

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Thursday, October 12, 2017 5:54 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel like this is a massive public health issue and want to do something about it, but I have no idea where to begin

"I don't see the big deal. Maybe my gayness is the x factor."

i would be totally happy to hang out with a group of gay guys. i miss hanging out with gay guys. living with gay men in philly and knowing a wide range of gay men was one of my favorite things about living there. living in squaresville can suck sometimes.

i think men should make sure they listen to a lot of music by artists who are not male and read a lot of books by authors who are not male. that sounds like a very simple thing, but it's important.

i will say though on behalf of my squaresville that the men i know and am friends with tend to be mellow/creative/metrosexual/progressive/not gross/freak folkers and i can't say enough good stuff about them. but i don't really hang with men outside of music events that much.

xps: I would definitely not categorically exclude gay guys from the group of men who think they can let loose with their misogyny once they think it's 'just us guys'.

i mean a lot of the men i know COULD be gay if they just tried harder. those are the str8 guys i get along with best.

Several straight friends are gayer than I am.

i think men should make sure they listen to a lot of music by artists who are not male and read a lot of books by authors who are not male. that sounds like a very simple thing, but it's important.

― nomar, Thursday, October 12, 2017 1:03 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally. I can't really shut up about it, but I've been somewhat obsessed with Adrianne Lenker/Big Thief lately. The first song on the new album has been having a huge affect on me, the way I see male-female relationships, sex, etc., it really puts some things together that I sort of was subliminally aware of but hadn't allowed myself to get in touch with. In general her lyrics are so humanizing and I find her very therapeutic to listen to.

*effect

I would definitely not categorically exclude gay guys from the group of men who think they can let loose with their misogyny once they think it's 'just us guys'.

this is def true but gay misogyny is a different beast, it's coming from a different place where the sexual frustration/aggression angle doesn't come into it

xp

The most heinous group I know is around an acquaintance/former lover who never lets an opportunity to shame women slip by.

this is def true but gay misogyny is a different beast, it's coming from a different place where the sexual frustration/aggression angle doesn't come into it

I don't really buy that. The misogyny I've seen from both straight and gay men revolves around demeaning women and reducing them to objects that are at disposal; whether they want to touch them sexually or not doesn't drive the behavior, which manifests similar patterns of diminishing, gaslighting, and undermining.

one of cyrus's best friends has a gay dad - this kid has two moms and two dads for the total western mass package - who is totally into 80's/synth/disco and when he comes around i try not jump on him with madonna talk but i get starved! rupaul was his roommate in the 80's! how can i resist?

some sorta x-post

The misogyny I've seen from both straight and gay men revolves around demeaning women and reducing them to objects that are at disposal; whether they want to touch them sexually or not doesn't drive the behavior, which manifests similar patterns of diminishing, gaslighting, and undermining.

otm

Nomar OTM about reading books by women, listening to music made by women, experiencing art made by women. I've made a concious effort the last year to read more women, and I don't know if it has profoundly altered the way I see thee world, but it's also helped me understand some subleties abt the experience of women in the world. Idk. I try, but I'm no paragon of virtue. I think especially when I was younger, late teens/early twenties, I probably said lots of inappropriate or terrible things when hanging out with dudes. But it's important to be work at being better and acknowledge the fact that by making (even ironic) sexist or racy jokes we are perpetuating a bad thing.

Ass far as hanging out in male groups -- I think a significant portion (20%?)of my socializing is in a male only environment, but it's never organized or thought of in those terms. There are a couple of guys I get together with once or twice a month to listen to 78s. We're just the only ppl we know who are nerdy about that music at that level, and we're all happily married. Rarely does the topic of wives come up; too busy talking about alternate takes and who was playing 2nd guitar on a session. If anything, we most often express how thankful we are to have partners who indulge our weird hobbies and other quirks.

Helen and I don't go out with other couples very much in a "double date" kinda way, but our neighborhood pals are a healthy mix of men and women. A group of people coming over for dinner or to listen to records is never one or the other. Definitely having close friends who are women has helped me to be a better person and more concious of my words/actions.

Maybe ILB should stop having FAPs :(

i think w/the exclusively male nights out i've had, there is this sense of MEN, TO BATTLE, for tonight we etc etc. it's a little lame. i do have a few male friends with whom i have some record listening parties and talk audio shop and equipment and the like, though we've also had women involved w/both (just not most of the time.) that feels a bit more natural as opposed to a "just the boys" night out.

you need a gay man in your life, nomar

maybe it's because i think my friends skew younger but if there happens to be an all-dude hangout it's unintentional and ends up being like record shopping/listening and beers and n64 basically. and it's usually 2-3 guys, never like a big posse

xp no kidding, i mean none of my bros want to talk about saint etienne w/me

oh so you all take it seriously this time

This discussion has prompted me to try and remember the last time I hung out with just guys (who weren't my brothers)...and I honestly think it could've been a decade or more ago.

Like the closest I can think of was an all-male anxiety group (organized and run by my then-therapist, a woman). And that isn't quite what I'd call a 'hang'.

Heh, it's actually kind of a problem that a lot of my straight male friends are musicians who often want to talk to me specifically (and not my wife) about music shit that only we care about.

My gay friends want to talk about books (but are way better about including everyone in the conversation).

Wow, you guys have whole groups of friends!

I often see a conversation on twitter where
1. women will talk about how men have a responsibility to challenge problematic comments made by male friends, esp when in all-male groups
2. a bunch of men will respond saying that avoid hanging out with the kind of guys who say stuff like that, or avoid hanging out in all-male groups altogether because they find them toxic
3. women will respond saying that this is not helpful/an abrogation of responsibility etc, that men who consider themselves 'allies' or whatever have a duty to engage with these ppl/situations.

idk, befriending ppl you don't enjoy spending time with solely so you can admonish them for their bad behavior seems unlikely to end well for anyone? to actually maintain those friendships imo you would have to pick your battles to a certain extent, let some things slide, be complicit up to a point, and where do you draw the line? but I can see the logic of saying that a guy who avoids this kind of environment to keep himself 'pure' is actually doing less to help than someone who hangs out in groups that are problematic but makes some attempt to push back against that.

probably fresh off a Soy Cuba screening, and who could blame them? even i'll admit that Mayakovsky makes me feel a certain way. i would never dare to speak for somebody else's experiences of course. it seems to me that Ghodsee uses state socialism quite uncontroversially as a way to help people think more deeply about the economic and political realities they take for granted. i don't see fetishization but then again she never called my friend poor so why would i

xp

Day also a noted Oakland transplant who sidelined Black Oakland natives in discussions around BLM and DSA involvement. Truly an awful person.

Tabes if I read you right and those are very good and important posts the point isn't that the ideology inevitably leads to hate it's that it was instituted by states run by hateful fuckers

Jacobin remains a burning clown car.

Kristen R. Ghodsee

This is what I meant by saying we should look to the Eastern European socialist countries. They were really good at building institutions like the Young Pioneers and Komsomol, similar to Boy Scouts or Eagle Scouts. These civic organizations provided systems people could ascend through and feel accomplished. They provided alternative sources of esteem besides wealth accumulation and physical domination. Germany today still has a density of civic organizations. In the United States, as Robert Putnam wrote in Bowling Alone, we’ve lost these.

fucking tankie

Table, are there any female / feminist / queer / lesbian thinkers at all, whose work you can engage with without immediately going to this kind of 'she was rude to a friend of mine' / 'she quoted someone PROBLEMATIC' in her work' criticism?

And do you do this same kind of 'ooh, he quoted someone problematic!' criticism every time a male queer theorist invokes e.g. Foucault because he was a convicted pedophile?

Because I've spent several months now reading the archives of this website and I've seen you do this kind of cancellation-by-academic-gossip on almost every thread about any well-rated lesbian thinker that I've searched for. It's really noticable, and I wonder if you're aware of this pattern?

This isn’t academic gossip— it’s stuff that I have experienced because I know these people.

This is a classic move when you have a massively disenfranchised population that poses a threat to social stability. You need to placate them.

can't say i think of this person as a feminist thinker based on her ideas

But fwiw, I admire Spivak, Puar, Berlant, Gail Scott, Nicole Brossard, Nora Fulton, and any number of other lesbian/queer/feminist thinkers.

A 2016 paper tested the relationship between monogamy and male violence and found that having a partner did indeed reduce violent male behavior.

also, i frankly don't believe this paper because women are usually killed by their male partners. but i'll read it i swear

This isn’t academic gossip— it’s stuff that I have experienced because I know these people.

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Saturday, October 11, 2025 8:38 AM

yeah it's kind of a thing about "the personal is political"... a lot of people who have even really interesting critical takes are...

well first off a lot of them do tend to have a good deal of privilege, because "leftist theorist" isn't a really well-paying job. and in fact they tend to be the more successful ones, because they don't have to worry about things like "how am i going to pay my rent this month". so those are the theorists people often talk about. well, it's more than that, the people who are privileged and mindful of it aren't necessarily as successful, because the way things are set up now, the nature of white supremacist capitalist patiarchy, people who behave badly _are_ going to be rewarded more than people who don't.

i don't think privilege is inherently a bad thing, it's not something to feel guilty or ashamed of... at the same time if people aren't mindful of their own privileges, when people think of their own privilege as "normal" and take it for granted, it's easy to just talk a lot of fucking bullshit. i say this as someone who has a certain amount of privilege herself. i've said some dumb ignorant shit, i'll probably say some dumb ignorant shit in the future, and i think it's important for people to be accountable for the things we say and do.

at the same time people are gonna have different takes on this. i think your criticism of, for instance, donna haraway is appropriate, since the personal _is_ political, and at the same time "a cyborg manifesto", as a work, is something that's pretty influential on me, even if i don't necessarily agree with its central thesis. i'd probably feel differently about it if i'd encountered haraway personally. it's a tricky thing to navigate.

I think Kate brings up something really important here. That both 'the personal is political' and 'separating the work from the author' can both exist.

This isn’t academic gossip— it’s stuff that I have experienced because I know these people.

My snappy reply here would be 'oh so it's not academic gossip, it's just namedropping' but I'm going to go deeper than that.

My discomfort here is exactly on that 'the personal is political' level. Because a lot of your complaints about these female theorists do come down to personal issues. 'She was rude to someone.' or 'She failed to be supportive to another person'. Are these issues that you raise about male theorists? Because there is a huge double standard whereby men are judged by their work, the ideas (and it's understood that writers are fallible human beings whose lives don't always live up to their ideals) while women are judged by their likeability. And a lot of these criticisms: being rude, failure to support others - these are failures of femininity. Women should be polite, supportive, helpful to others, likeable. These things are not seen as failures in men.

Do we even know whether Foucault or Zizek or Deleuze and Guattari or whoever were rude or likeable? Or are you able to address the work of difficult men while acknowledging their difficulty?

This is a classic move when you have a massively disenfranchised population that poses a threat to social stability. You need to placate them.

can't say i think of this person as a feminist thinker based on her ideas

Ivy, do you understand that Ghodsee here is describing the existing system of patriarchy under capitalism? To describe something, to detail how it works, does not mean that the speaker agrees with it. You're falling into the Sara Ahmed trap here: 'if you name a problem, you become the problem'.

A 2016 paper tested the relationship between monogamy and male violence and found that having a partner did indeed reduce violent male behavior.

also, i frankly don't believe this paper because women are usually killed by their male partners. but i'll read it i swear

And again, I believe you are failing to recognise the context around this pullquote. That Ghodsee has been talking about Capitalism's need to control political violence, economic and social unrest - and that the terrible bargain that capitalism struck was to replace men's political and economic violence *outside* the home with the ability to exercise complete violence and social control *inside* the home. That's literally the next sentence that she writes after your first quote:

I write about how historically, one way to placate angry young men who may destabilize an economic system beset by vast inequality is to give every man a wife so he can be a dictator in his own home. When men feel disempowered in the public sphere, they can channel that frustration at home: “At least in my own house, I’m a king.” This is an ancient technique for social stabilization.

I agree that the phrasing of the exact pullquote you chose was ambiguous, in that it didn't specify that she was talking about two kinds of violence (especially when taken out of context) but I think that the context of the surrounding argument made it pretty clear.

Because what I think is happening here is that Table comes in with his personal 'this woman is awful and unlikable' assertion which makes others pre-disposed to read the whole interview (airing some pretty uncontroversial theories of marxist feminism) in a negative light.

So now, instead of talking about the issues around masculinity raised in the piece, we're onto this personal character assassination of this woman being an awful person. When I think the interview did describe and explain well some bad and negative phenomena, and attempted to envision solutions.

"Men have been promised this terrible bargain under patriarchy - and they blame feminism for taking it away from them, instead of blaming capitalism." How is that even remotely controversial?

I'm constantly asking my feminist friends for books on how to be a better person, specifically how to be a better man. One of the most terrifying and yet insightful books I was given was See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill. Who studies intimate violence, partner violence, domestic violence, violence against women and girls. It was terrifying, because reading it, I saw so many elements of myself in it, that I hadn't recognised, because I thought of myself as 'one of the good guys'. It was a difficult read. Painful in places. I'm not ashamed to say I cried. I thought as a queer, that I had done a lot of work around shame. It turned out I had not addressed *that* shame.

But this woman who works with some genuinely terrible men who have done truly awful things - she says many of the same things. Intimate violence comes from men's desire to control - which is deeply embedded in a sense of male shame. I think of the work that feminist biologists have done, in terms of recasting testosterone not as a violence-inducing hormone, but at *status*-seeking hormone. Western society gives men only two avenues to status: money or violence. Men who have been denied status, self esteem, control over their own lives because of capitalism - they are taught by patriarchy to take out that shame on women.

Socialism in Eastern Europe got so many things wrong, but - I have a lot of friends in East Germany who will say this - there is a lot to be learned from Ostalgie. Giving men sources of self esteem and status and control, that are not to do with economic status, and not to do with domination of women - that IS something that works to reduce male shame, and reducing male shame is one of the most effective things for ending VAWG.

I think this is the core of the interview:

In order to attract partners and get social esteem, men were not invested in making more money, which wouldn’t work in a socialist society anyway (because there wasn’t anything to buy). In this context, women chose partners based on attraction, mutual compatibility, shared interests, and affection — not on whether the man could pay the rent, which was irrelevant, because you had housing from the state. These states also provided child allowances, childcare, and paid job-protected parental leave. Under socialism, men had to be attentive and good partners in order to attract women.

The result, as I documented in my book Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism, was that men ended up investing in being interesting guys that women wanted to be with. Of course, this improved gender relations!

After socialism, once wealth became important for attracting women, men found that it was much easier to just get money than to be interesting. This shift was obviously bad for women, but it was also bad for men. I’ve talked to men who grew up under socialism who say that after 1989 or ’91, they were never really sure if women were with them because they loved them or because they needed their money. They have an idealized view of relationships before capitalism because if a woman was with you, it was because she genuinely liked you. That made men feel secure.

That capitalism encouraged these young men to exchange something difficult yet meaningful (building connections) for ease. Yet in having that seeming ease, they found they had lost their security.

What capitalist society “gives” men wives? Arranged marriages had their origins in pre-capitalist societies. The rise in the West of the concept of marriage for love coincided with the rise of capitalism in the 19th Century.

Etherwave, I don’t know who you are, but I have been vocal about my issues with all kinds of thinkers on this site. I have followed this through in my everyday life, where I have signed onto petitions and testimonials calling for the removal of sexist and abusive professors (Gh0pal Bal4krishnan, B4rett Watten), men in the radical community (Dav1d Br4zil), and so on. I know I can always be better, but your bugaboo about me naming bad behaviors only in women is utterly baseless and seems more about wanting to score points than anything else. If you actually cared about this, then you wouldn’t have come right out and accused me of lopsided, sexist behavior. When I provided a list of thinkers that I do enjoy and cosign, you ignored it. My conclusion is that my criticism of the people involved in this particular article rubbed you the wrong way since you agree with its conclusions, and that’s the real issue at hand.

My response to that is: one of these women has acted like a class antagonist to myself, people that I know, and others who have fewer resources than her. Why should I give credence to anything she writes about class, or men, or anything else?

I should say, too, that as someone who seems so connected to the realm of queer and feminist theory, your apparent snideness about gossip was surprising. Gossip is what women and queer people have used to keep their communities safe for…well, for centuries! And just because someone is a woman doesn’t mean they are safe to be around or trust!!

Because I've spent several months now reading the archives of this website

― Etherwave

Have you really? Interesting. It seems to me that mayyyybe you spent several years on this website.

sorry to have read the words in this review as if they were making the argument “what we as feminists need to base our thinking on is what we can do for men” just because that’s something that’s said in the interview

personally my unpopular answer for what is to be done about the problem with men is that men should idealize and become lesbians

personally my unpopular answer for what is to be done about the problem with men is that men should idealize and become lesbians

― ivy.

i definitely understand that perspective. i had it myself for a while. becoming a lesbian helped me to become so much of a better person, it helped the people around me to become so much better people, that yeah, i did for a while feel like "damn everybody should take estrogen". i've eventually, with the help of a number of folks around here, including tabes, come to a... i hate to use the word, a more _nuanced_ understanding.

i am a lesbian and i also very much like men, advocate for men. there are plenty of transmascs out there.* what i like about transmascs is that they're _not_ superior versions of men, they're not "role models" for how men should live. they're all just, like, people first. i find value in seeing how different trans guys negotiate being a man differently. it also has really helped me come to an understanding of how patriarchy affects men. my perspective on masculinity is colored by the fact that i was told i had to be a man, that i hated being a man. i didn't understand why anybody would want to be a man, and eventually i've come to the obvious realization that people are different. trans men _want_ to be men, for the most part. i also find a lot of value in the experiences of cis gay guys, because there is an experience queer men have that i didn't have as someone who thought of herself as a "straight man". with queer men, it's much more acceptable to be an _object of desire_. the way sexual subject and object are implicitly gendered under patriarchy, it's fucked up and it sucks. it makes sense that so many people, when they come out as trans women, also wind up coming out as bottoms or subs, because of the way patriarchy feminizes the idea of being an object of desire, which isn't inherently gendered!

* (yes, it's perfectly possible and reasonable for trans men to be lesbians, but that's not _idealized_ lesbianism, it's a practical thing just cuz of how being queer works functionally. also, to be clear, not all transmascs are men.)

the guy i keep coming back to when talking about manhood is a guy who posts to youtube as "swolesome"... he's helped me learn a lot about the ways patriarchal standards do affect men, the bullshit guys are supposed to deal with and how it affects, like, normal, everyday guys. he's just one guy, he can't speak for everyone. at the same time, i do appreciate that he's done the work, that masculinity is something he's actively chosen, actively affirms, and i appreciate him talking about the challenges he faces, challenges that don't really have anything to do with being transmasc.

the first thing, i think, to be done with the "problem with men" is to realize that there isn't, in fact, a "problem with men". men aren't the problem. patriarchy is. it affects different people in different ways, but we're all affected by it, affected negatively. so no, i don't think everybody should become lesbians. i've absolutely discovered over time that plenty of women, particularly white women, _do_ act to promote patriarchy, whether we're straight, queer, cis, trans... there's clearly no hormonal immunity to patriarchal bullshit. which in turn is why i value tabes calling out hypocrisy and bullshit when he sees it. he's just one guy, he doesn't speak universal truth, i don't necessarily agree with him all the time. i've found that what he has to say is valuable. i've learned a lot from listening to him, _particularly_ when my first impulse is to get pissed at him for what he's saying or how he's saying it.

men aren't the problem. patriarchy is

correct!! which is why i dislike this theorist’s framing

so no, i don't think everybody should become lesbians. i've absolutely discovered over time that plenty of women, particularly white women, _do_ act to promote patriarchy, whether we're straight, queer, cis, trans... there's clearly no hormonal immunity to patriarchal bullshit

being a lesbian doesn’t mean loving these particular women imo. it’s about loving WOMEN, idk if that makes sense. and loving women = actively undoing and combating patriarchal impulses and its social outgrowths

bc to love women is to acknowledge that they’re people

i also think as trans women we know acutely how patriarchy fucks with and fucks up men as well. the thing is we do have to save them. my politics don’t deliberately exclude men. but i dislike a feminist politics that puts the onus of fixing men on women

xp: thanks for these thoughts, kate. you hint at something that i think is important for me to acknowledge, and that is that of course i act in ways that uphold patriarchy— i am not immune. i try to undo this every day.

but calling out people for acting badly, no matter their gender, is important to me.

i also think that one difference between some of the thinkers that Etherwave is speaking of and the men that they mention is that the men are almost entirely dead— my mentioning the obvious fact of Foucault’s pedophilic tendencies won’t change much, but mentioning that someone like Sophi3 L3wis has some somewhat shifty stuff in her past has bearing on the present, afaic, and how seriously we can take certain of her ideas. Again, just my opinion, but something that occurred to me when rereading the posts

I'm constantly asking my feminist friends for books on how to be a better person, specifically how to be a better man. One of the most terrifying and yet insightful books I was given was See What You Made Me Do by Jess Hill. Who studies intimate violence, partner violence, domestic violence, violence against women and girls. It was terrifying, because reading it, I saw so many elements of myself in it, that I hadn't recognised, because I thought of myself as 'one of the good guys'. It was a difficult read. Painful in places. I'm not ashamed to say I cried. I thought as a queer, that I had done a lot of work around shame. It turned out I had not addressed *that* shame.

ok. long, complicated thoughts. one of he ways i came to terms with IPV, intimate partner abuse... some cis women who were friends of mine recommended i read "why does he do that?" by lundy bancroft. he's a guy who talks about the mindset of abusive men, what drives them, how they behave. it helped me a lot. it helped me understand and accept that my partner _was_ abusive. their behaviors, the way i reacted to their behaviors... it just opened my eyes. as someone who was AMAB, i was never taught, i never considered that i could be an abuse victim.

and it's a complicated thing to talk about because bancroft does see it in strict gendered terms, that men are abusers and women are victims. it's just not that simple. you as a queer man, of course, will know it's not that simple. it's not about gender, it's about a _pattern of behavior_. and that pattern of behavior, that norm, is patriarchal. it's really hard to talk about being a sexual assault victim, because my abuser was a cis woman, because i am a trans woman. because people have all these ideas and preconceptions around this stuff. i'm not claiming victimhood as a badge of valor, i'm not judging or demonizing my abuser as a person. she was genuinely a good person who did some stuff that was not good, not acceptable, and that behavior did not come out of her being a _woman_ but out of her replication of patriarchal models of control, power, and authority. it's not a _personal_ problem - it's a systemic problem that affects us all personally in different ways.

i struggled for a long time with what it meant to be a "good man", and then i started estrogen, and i realized oh, wait, that was just never in the cards for me. the problem wasn't "good", "good" i can do. "man" i couldn't. i don't know why. i'm sure there's a reason, but i don't really care what it is. it just didn't work out for me. and i would think, god, i feel like i was lucky, what are these people who are actually guys supposed to do?

and the answer is just, honestly, is in a lot of the work you're doing. is recognizing that you are not immune, nobody is immune, to doing fucked up patriarchal shit. and that it's not a reflection on you personally. you're _responsible_ for what you say and do, but guilt, shame, those things _don't work_. that's why i keep advocating so hard for men, because men have so much guilt and shame over their urges and desires, and the truth is that there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THEM. it's behaviors, behaviors that might not be fully under someone's control, and _that_ doesn't make someone a bad person either, it just means that we have to live with the consequences of our behavior.

gender doesn't make people violent or nonviolent. hormones don't make people violent or nonviolent. these things can and do change the calculus, but at the end of the day, people are just _people_. if there's a problem with masculinity, it's that the acceptable ways to "be a man" are so limited, so constrained, in ways that "being a woman" isn't. expressing vulnerability, kindness, compassion, being _homosocial_, it's so stigmatized. even among gay men homosociality is stigmatized to some degree.

this big burden patriarchy places on men is that men always have to _provide_. patriarchy expects women to put out in one way, and men to put out in another. men always gotta _prove_ themselves under patriarchy, prove that they're a _real man_. it's bullshit.

Socialism in Eastern Europe got so many things wrong, but - I have a lot of friends in East Germany who will say this - there is a lot to be learned from Ostalgie. Giving men sources of self esteem and status and control, that are not to do with economic status, and not to do with domination of women - that IS something that works to reduce male shame, and reducing male shame is one of the most effective things for ending VAWG.

― Etherwave

again i'm gonna say that an important way of reducing male shame is to stop talking about it in terms of violence against women and girls. it's patriarchal violence. women and girls aren't the only victims, and men and boys aren't the only perpetrators. in terms of the rest of it... self-esteem, status, control, what i would say patriarchy deprives men of most is this sense of _belonging_. john donne said "no man is an island" in 1642 but patriarchal white supremacist capitalism still denies this self-evident truth, still promotes this idea of rugged individualism. men aren't supposed to _cooperate_, they're supposed to _compete_, for status, power, supremacy. you fight to get to the top, and you fight to stay there, and it's lonely at the top, as apparently schopenhauer said. not just that, when you're at the top, you're _responsible_, for everybody, everything. everything has to have a cause, and that cause has to be _you_.

that's so fucked up and miserable. it's not even good capitalism. capitalism sucks in a lot of ways but it, like, conceptually differs from mercantilism because it _doesn't_ view everything as a zero-sum game, that one person winning means another person losing. i haven't read adam smith, but my undergrad intro to macroeconomics taught me, correctly or incorrectly, that the whole idea of capitalism was that when people worked together it could provide _mutual benefit_. well, if that was the idea, it doesn't seem to be much in evidence these days.

yeah, belonging is good. whether it's the boy scouts or a bowling league or the church of your choice or i guess kosmosol? it helps, though, if what people have in common isn't fucked up and bigoted and, like, _wrong_. i mean to me it makes sense that 4chan succeeds, because it's one of the only places on the internet that isn't controlled by corporate capitalism. at the same time it makes sense to me that 4chan is as fucked up as it is because jesus christ the whole thing was created because SomethingAwful wouldn't allow to post sexually explicit drawings of underage characters. that's not exactly what i'd call a healthy basis for community. 4chan is patriarchal as fuck, racist as fuck, and that _doesn't_ mean everybody there is a white man.

4chan has taught me a lot about the systemic nature of patriarchy. trans women who come from 4chan just have stratospheric levels of self-loathing, a monomaniacal focus on passing, and an ignorance of queer history so profound that they came up with a whole bunch of new words for longstanding self-loathing queer concepts, like "hon" for a non-passing trans woman. what really helped me break through this "trans women good, cis men bad" level of oversimplification was finding out about femcels. these people transition without ever challenging the underpinnings of patriarchy that were making them miserable in the first place. someone is an incel and says "the world is unfair, i can't get laid, i'll take estrogen and become a woman", then they find out that they can get sex but that what they really want isn't sex, but to be held and loved, then they start calling themselves "femcels" and say "the world is unfair, i can't find anybody to love me for who i am". and it's super dumb because a lot of these guys, i'm not sure they actually _want_ sex. patriarchy tells guys it's not ok for them to want to be held, to be cuddled. guys in particular are so touch-starved. we're all touch-starved, moreso the more time we spend behind these fucking screens, but guys in particular, so many of them are so clearly and obviously touch-starved and the only language they have for it is "getting laid". i don't think that when "femcels" take estrogen it changes what they want, necessarily. i think it gives people an opportunity to say, well, what do i really want?

and to me the obvious next step is to ask "what's keeping me from getting that?", which in my case is partly the fucked up ways i was taught to behave by patriarchy and partly material conditions beyond my direct control. and then the question arises "what do i do about that?" which has a two-part answer. individually it means i _am_ empowered to stop behaving in the fucked up ways i was taught. that is very hard for anybody, 43 years i was doing that shit, and it takes a lot of work, a lot of practice, and in order to do that i had to _stop acting out of guilt and shame_. it wasn't effective. that was the hardest fucking thing for me, and i think it's the hardest fucking thing for a lot of people. people need to own our shit, to be responsible for the consequences of what we say and do, without _identifying_ with what we say and do, without allowing those things to define _who we are_. and that's hard because it's conceptually and ideologically opposed to individualist patriarchal white supremacist capitalism. it's _necessary_, though, and it's extra necessary because it leads to the second part of the answer.

the second part of the answer is for a person to stop making something about them individually, to stop thinking of themselves as solely an individual. nobody is going to change material conditions _individually_. it's just not possible. bill gates isn't going to end malaria. they're giving money to an extremely large network of _people_ who are working to make that happen. people who have knowledge, who have lived experience, that bill gates doesn't. for me, being a "good man" means acknowledging that one isn't "normal", that nobody is "normal", to not blame other people for one's own problems, and to listen to people one trusts with a genuinely open and curious mind, without assuming that one is right oneself _or_ that the other person is right.

incels and femcels kinda don't do any of that shit.

the whole "femcel" thing is extra fucked up because "incel" was originally a social justice term coined by a cis woman as a means of...

well, women have better sex under socialism, right? that was where "incel" originally came from. and this 4chan community, they're so ignorant, so blinkered, that there are these people who call themselves "femcels" who not only aren't aware that "incel" wasn't originally coined by a man, wasn't originally coined as a gendered term, but who are coming up with this term which, well, just keeps them miserable and in denial about the systemic roots of their oppression. taking estrogen is not going to fucking _fix_ anyone, it's not a miracle cure, it's not going to make someone _happy_. what it does is give people both the opportunity and the necessity to challenge the fucked up bullshit they were doing and that they've internalized. well, that's very difficult, and it takes a long time and a lot of work, and there are always people who are new to "transition", who are new to living life as a queer person, and if someone's on 4chan, well, they've got fucking terrible role models.

which, i mean, radical acceptance i guess. it's not like trans people have ever had great role models. leslie feinberg was a fucking tankie, and they also did really good work. kristen ghodsee is a fucking tankie and i don't find as much value in her work.

i also think that one difference between some of the thinkers that Etherwave is speaking of and the men that they mention is that the men are almost entirely dead— my mentioning the obvious fact of Foucault’s pedophilic tendencies won’t change much, but mentioning that someone like Sophi3 L3wis has some somewhat shifty stuff in her past has bearing on the present, afaic, and how seriously we can take certain of her ideas. Again, just my opinion, but something that occurred to me when rereading the posts

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table)

precisely! this really gets to what i was saying about leslie feinberg vs. kristen ghodsee. when you're dealing with the literal death of the author, i feel like i have more latitude about what to take and what to leave. personally, i'll take transgender liberation and leave the tankie shit. with ghodsee, yes, you can take a positive message from her writing, but there are people who can and do advocate for those ideals without holding up the fucking Young Pioneers as the standard to which humanity ought to aspire.

having rejected the patriarchal white supremacist capitalist order _does_ necessitate that the left do a lot of boundary policing. the most obvious example that springs to mind is that while i strongly support the palestinian people, i strongly oppose the genocide the israeli government is perpetrating, i oppose anti-semitism just as strongly. there are a lot of opportunists who see the genocide of the palestinian people as an opportunity to promote anti-semitism and i am absolutely constantly vigilant. opposing the israeli government is not anti-semitism, and it doesn't mean that nobody who opposes the israeli government is an anti-semite. when people talk about "the left destroying itself", or "leftist infighting", this is generally the kind of shit they're talking about. when the mainstream opposes trans rights, it's easy for people coming from that perspective to see the fight for trans rights within leftism as "the left destroying itself". obviously, that's not my perspective.

bc to love women is to acknowledge that they’re people

― ivy.

why does someone have to be a lesbian to acknowledge that women are people? ti grace atkinson coined the term "feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice". she is also a white "woman-identified woman" (i.e. anti-trans bigot). i do think that looking at things from a historical context is really important. one of the things i value about tabes is that he has an academic grounding in this kind of stuff, which i frankly don't, just a smattering of stuff i picked up while spending a lot of my life behind a screen. i think it's pretty awful, honestly, that academic work isn't more readily accessible to the public - something that isn't the result of "ivory towers" or elitists, but of capitalism. anyway i wish i could cite and intelligibly speak on the critiques of ti grace atkinson. i did a quick web search and i came up with something by zein murib from a book called "terms of exclusion", published in august 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197671498.003.0004 Pages 67–104.

i genuinely know nothing about zein murib (or ti grace atkinson, for that matter), and i have access only to the abstract. (tabes, if you got any input on murib's work i'd be really interested!) murib seems to be addressing a critique that's pretty well-accepted within queer studies - the idea that second-wave radical feminist theory came up with some pretty terrible shit in ways that are intrinsically intertwined with its centering of white womanhood. this is something i push hard because i see the commonalities in practice so strongly - racism and transphobia go hand-in-hand. opposing transphobia is meaningless without also opposing white supremacy. my go-to example of this is joan rivers accusing michelle obama of being "a man" on fox news in the mid-2010s - the entire concept of "transvestigation" springs from rivers being just openly fucking racist. patriarchal concepts of gender are just _incredibly highly racialized_. it took me a while for that to really click with me.

i love being a lesbian. i think being a lesbian is great. i don't believe men have to become lesbians before they can respect other people.

i also think as trans women we know acutely how patriarchy fucks with and fucks up men as well. the thing is we do have to save them. my politics don’t deliberately exclude men. but i dislike a feminist politics that puts the onus of fixing men on women

― ivy.

no, we don't have to "save" or "fix" men. i do know some trans women who say things like "estrogen could save her" or "got another one". i understand the impulse, i understand the systemic biases that lead to that outcome and at the same time we're not actually trying to convert people! the truth is that this whole idea that we "convert" people has always been really ridiculous to me. like i'm going around to random guys saying "here, try this hormone, it'll keep you from having hard-ons and if you keep taking it long enough might cause your dick to permanently shrink". that's... that's honestly gonna be kind of a tough sell. i'm not saying you _can't_ be a guy and think that's a good idea, but my impression is that guys generally like having hard-ons and don't want smaller penises.

the reason we don't have to "save" or "fix" men is because _men aren't the problem_. men don't _need_ "saving" or "fixing". estrogen didn't save me. estrogen didn't fix me. estrogen changed me, changed me in ways that gave me the opportunity to become a stronger, better person. to me the crux of the problem is this idea that men need to be "saved" or "fixed". guys do all this dumb shit because they're afraid that if they do this shit they won't be a "real man". i guess to that extent what you call "being a lesbian" might help - letting go of all the baggage, of all the preconceptions attached to manhood. like, for me, for a long time i wanted to know if i could really be a woman, what right i had to call myself a woman, and the way i got there was by letting go of this idea of manhood, the idea that i _had_ to be a man. i think that _process_ could be valuable for anyone. not everybody is going to come to the answer i did, which is that there was nothing i really liked about being a man and that i was a lot happier and better off when i did girl shit, despite the incredibly amounts of bullshit women under patriarchy go through.

i do know some people who have "detransitioned", and they tend to not understand when i say i'm proud of them. because to their mind, they've failed. i don't think of it that way. i see people who "detransition" as people who are making hard choices and doing what's best for them. if someone tries fucking around with gender and determines that no, they're a guy, i don't see that as a failure. i wish more guys _would_ be open to that! to me, if someone's gone through this process of genuinely questioning, being genuinely open-minded rather than bargaining or coming up with excuses as to why they "have" to be this gender or that, that makes people stronger, better people.

i _do_ think i have an important role in opposing patriarchy, but not primarily because i'm a woman, not because i think ending patriarchy is somehow "women's responsibility". i think that role specifically stems from me being a _white_ woman, because patriarchy does go hand in hand with white supremacy. to me, the data bears this out. i just look at the insane numbers of white women who voted for trump... and i see people chastising them for "voting against their own interests". to me, the problem is that they're voting for their own perceived interests as white people, because they're voting as white people for a white supremacist, and that supporting white supremacy is more important to them than advocating for themselves as women. that, to me, is a problem. not even a _moral_ problem, though of course supporting white supremacy is pretty fucking evil.

one of the things i've learned about as a trans woman is about privilege, is how it works. is that privilege is a double-edged sword. embracing it, working to conform to the norms of the "privileged" community, is necessarily buying into a lie. any "male privilege" i had was dependent on the social norm which says that _men are better than women_. this is simply just not true. my white privilege is also dependent on this social norm which is just, like, completely opposed to reality. the social benefits i get simply by virtue of being white are measurable, objective, and real. they're also based on fucking lies, on ignorance and hatred. i believe we're better off when we build our lives around values that are validated as being effective by evidence, not values that are driven by ignorance, fear, and shame.

why does someone have to be a lesbian to acknowledge that women are people?

idk! you don’t! but it’s baked-in to true lesbianism for me. anyway i will stop talking about this bc i’m not steeped in theory nor do i know which theorists are transphobes

feel like my words keep getting twisted into other people’s essays

i also wasn’t even talking about saving men by making them trans women!

i am probably wrong about everything i’ve said in this thread, anyway good luck men

and i don’t mean to make anyone feel bad by bouncing! i just feel out of my depth, or like i’m trying to explain something i don’t have the language to say

and idk i feel like i was a lesbian long before i realized i was a woman or started taking hormones

you're good, for the record i didn't bounce cuz of anything that happened after i posted, i just wrote myself into exhaustion and then was too tired to read ilx for three days :) much love to everyone.

A lot to take in here, but I did have something funny/interesting to add about this comment of table's from a few days ago:

Like sorry, I don’t think it’s just western imperialist propaganda that led so many people from Eastern Europe to want to fucking leave those countries when they were under Soviet power. I grew up in Eastern European immigrant communities in the US— it’s insulting for some tenured fool from UPenn, of all the fucking places, to claim that life was better under Soviet rule. In a sense, the article brings up an obvious idea written about by many people, then shoehorns it into an extremely tenuous framework to support a suspect ideology.

I became friends with this woman from Hungary, she was more "a friend of friends" but we hung out a bunch when I visited there. She is beautiful and charming and extremely English-fluent and for all the above reasons was oftentimes hired, in the 90s, as a "host" for visiting Western dignitaries, to keep the diplomatic visits lively and interesting. She told me a story about hosting a visiting American politician-- I can't remember if it was Ted Kennedy or Warren Christopher or what-- but it was some old Clinton-era Dem dude and the conversation was vivacious.

She told me that the politician would ask her, "so, how does the quality of life compare, now, to life under Soviet communism?" And she'd reply, as she'd been instructed, and as was prudent, that things were better now. The politician would peer at her knowingly, and say, "really? Everything is better?" And she would smilingly reply that yes, things were better, across the board.

The visit went on for several days, and the politician asked my friend this same question a few times. Toward the end of his visit, she felt relaxed and convivial enough, and the next time he asked, she gave him a straight answer. I have to paraphrase from memory what she said:

"Of course everything is better now, but there are certain things that are missing, too. Where I lived, in our apartment building, we basically had one TV, and we set it up in the courtyard and it was became somewhat of a social meeting point. Everything we needed there was a waiting list, yes, but there was a certain sense of community that we had, looking out for each other, taking care of each other. I can't say that we were happier then, but there was definitely something that was lost after the Revolution."

Apparently she spoke at length about the specificity of this feeling, and what it was that she missed, but the whole time she talked, she saw the politician's face darken and constrict and all his affability closed up. "You should be grateful for what Europe and the US have done for you," he snapped, and their rapport dissolved and never returned for the rest of the visit.

I bring this up because I've heard similar stories from, say, Bruce's Cuban husband, who extremely fled homophobic Castro Cuba, speak to me about certain positive aspects of living under Communism that one would struggle to pin down, like a broader psychological effect of it all. And also of course on the flip side I've heard the opposite, mostly from friends who left USSR or other post-collapse Soviet countries, who have nothing but negative memories.

There’s a book called Der Klang Der Familie that’s an oral history of the German techno scene, specifically the emergence in the late 80s to the late 90s that has some interesting takes on the East/West Germany unification. A lot of the venues and art spaces/communes that popped up (like Tresor) specifically made use of spaces that were abandoned and repurposed in the former east Berlin, and a handful of interviewees are wistful about the time before the fall of the wall.

Once in a while I'll talk to someone, always an American, when I leave Miami who expresses mild Fidel nostalgia

I don't necessarily have 'fidel nostalgia' but I still think it's badass that little Cuba (with their Angolan allies) took on apartheid-era South Africa in an epic showdown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cuito_Cuanavale

Oh, I'm aware. My grandparents' generation -- not his cohort -- went to Angola.

yeah, that wiki article says they eventually sent 55,000 troops.. no small gesture

I knew a guy back in Jersey who fled to the US from Portugal in the early 70s to avoid being sent to Angola.

Of course there were positive aspects of life under Soviet or Cuban iterations of Communism. But to have some tankie academic making six figures lecture to us plebes about how things were better really sticks in my craw. I bet she lives in a 1.5 million dollar Victorian in West Philly with her husband and sends her kids to fucking Friends Central just over the city line.

Whenever someone like that talks in similar tones, I want to ask them whether I can just move into their house, or whether they can loan me ten grand.

Cuba policy, as you might imagine, is a fraught one for me. Most of my family fled, several relatives of friends were condemned to die by order of Che Guevara, and acknowledging this puts me on the side of Miami's most reactionary Trumpist elements.

Ya tabes I wasn’t alikening you to anyone in that story, it just reminded me of it and I didn’t want to forget

Oh yeah, I got that fgti, appreciate it. I was just trying to explain why this particular type of thing really gets me going. There’s a fun meme image i like with a white hetero family, one boy one girl, the works, in a large modern kitchen. The caption reads “when you’re a radical academic” and honestly it is one of the realest memes about academia i have ever seen.

will never forget being in the kitchen and overhearing my dad ask his Russian girlfriend if she did cartwheels when she was a child and her responding acidly "no. we were starving".

"I don't necessarily have 'fidel nostalgia' but I still think it's badass that little Cuba (with their Angolan allies) took on apartheid-era South Africa in an epic showdown"

Back in the 1990s Larry Bond wrote a series of techno-thrillers that dealt with a plausible modern war scenario - Red Phoenix had an invasion of South Korea by North Korea, Cauldron had the evil Franco-German EU teaming up with Russia to subjugate Eastern Europe, and Vortex had the hardline apartheid government of South Africa invade Namibia, which resulted in Cuban forces counter-invading South Africa. There are few things more manly than Larry Bond novels. Just look at the man. The smart hair, the Hawaiian shirt, the glasses. That is peak masculinity.

But, yes, I remember wondering why there were Cuban soldiers in Africa. Because there were! There actually were in the 1980s. It was one of those things that was reported briefly on the TV news in the UK but not very much. Russia had so much money and Cuba had so much pent-up anger that the two nations were prepared to help out Africa in the struggle against oppression. In the novel the Cubans are portrayed as the good guys, which isn't something you'd expect from an author who occasionally co-wrote with Tom Clancy.

If there's one thing those books taught me is that your friends today might be your enemies tomorrow, and vice-versa. Cauldron is particularly fascinating. I remember during the Greek debt crisis wondering what would happen if France or Germany used military force to confiscate Greek assets. How would The Guardian put a positive spin on that? But in the end it fizzled out and the Greek debt crisis blew over. Now Lidl has a whole section of Greek yoghurts. It's old news now.

There’s a fun meme image i like with a white hetero family, one boy one girl, the works, in a large modern kitchen. The caption reads “when you’re a radical academic” and honestly it is one of the realest memes about academia i have ever seen.

lol, i searched for it hoping to see it. when i still thought that academia was my path, i really got suckered by the bios of a few 'radical' types - in an info studies program of all places. it took getting through that meat grinder of a program and then working for a few years in an academic library to lose all of my illusions about truth and righteousness being fostered anywhere near a college or university.

i've been sort of pondering masculinity and its performance lately as i relax a little more into the social milieu of my gym. i spent years being really anti-social at gyms. i ignored literally everyone. i avoided eye contact at all costs. i was scared of everyone. lately though a lot of my fear is dissipating. i'm still very focused on the actual lifting and i don't really talk to anyone. though today i complimented someone on their squat. but anyway now that i'm not as scared i'm just noticing things. noticing that with most people, their body language is relaxed and friendly. even though there are a lot of walls up (like there was, more so, with me once upon a time), men like to be admired by other men. i'm no different. i enjoy being clocked. i like that you can tell people are sizing you up. when i do a particularly good and heavy set and i can feel the guys around me instinctively looking out of the corners of their eyes and then when i'm finished and i reflexively glance over they're looking at their phones. they can't even help it. this is why men get loud with the grunting when they're lifting - they want other men to notice. and the truth is that somewhere deep down that act garners interest even if it's quickly covered by a sort of embarrassed looking away. and to be clear, i'm anti-grunt because breath control is one of the most important parts of lifting heavy weights and if you're grunting there's a 95% chance you aren't breathing right so you aren't doing the best lift you can. i'm big into silent sets.

i like the transitory little pecking orders that form and then recede. i like the muted longing that results in gazes and body language relaxing as you focus on the work in front of you next to other men (and women) doing the same. i love seeing a thick woman bust out a killer power clean. i've also noticed the women who are scoping out the men - they are there. and i like being identified and watched by them. i've found myself even fantasizing about it a little bit - i'm like 80-85 tipped "gay" on the kinsey scale so you know. idk it's all a little silly of course, not something to put too much stock into, but it's fun to play. masculinity is a little performance that can be fun to play. it's a tricky balancing act between authenticity and self-consciousness. it makes it so much easier, i think, to convincingly perform it, or to perform it from an authentic place, when we remember not to put any stock in it, like at all, because trying to grasp at anything just ensures it slips through our fingers.

If there's one thing those books taught me is that your friends today might be your enemies tomorrow, and vice-versa. Cauldron is particularly fascinating. I remember during the Greek debt crisis wondering what would happen if France or Germany used military force to confiscate Greek assets. How would The Guardian put a positive spin on that? But in the end it fizzled out and the Greek debt crisis blew over. Now Lidl has a whole section of Greek yoghurts. It's old news now.

― Ashley Pomeroy

"strange bedfellows", they say. that's the thing about politics, it kind of... relies on turning people into abstractions. i think that's a necessary evil. there is always a question for me of "whose side are you on", because i can like someone a lot personally, and we can be really kind and friendly to one another, and then they go and vote for trump. to them that behavior is totally abstract, and to me it's not. to me it's personal. there's gotta be a better word for it than vonnegut's "granfalloon", isn't there? this whole pile of people who support the patriarchy, and whatever reason they have for it, it's a stupid reason. i don't think of those people as "enemies" but they're certainly not allies.

it's one of the reasons i'm so much against ideologies, because i'm so much in favor of people. because all around me i see people who are better than the archaic, broken institutions we're shoehorned into.

I respect all of map’s post but I could see myself grunting instead of farting because I am juvenile, and also as I’ve rolled into middle age I need to figure out how to adjust my life to fart less.

I notably hate fart humor, but I just… jeez, my body is just not behaving right and I feel like I’ve sadly come to understand all the terrible man grunt/fart jokes. I am that sitcom character

The problem with the crisis of the man in literature is that most of the novels discussed sound terrible. Just can't finish this.

https://clereviewofbooks.com/into-the-manosphere-leah-abrams/

For this reason alone, I think reading the manosphere is fruitful. There’s an answer for all of us, including subjects of the patriarchy, on the pages inside.

we're all subjects of the patriarchy. i think abrams makes a good critique about the tendency of white men writing about patriarchy devolving into navel-gazing. i think her critique is well-justified and pertinent. she's not writing for men's benefit, nor should she.

i'm not a literary person; my world isn't a literary world. for me, these books offer me no answers, but that's probably because i don't really have any questions.