this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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menby
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A space for masculine folks to talk about living under patriarchy.
Detoxing masculinity since 1990!
You don’t get points for feminism, feminism is expected.
Guidelines:
- Questions over blame
- Humility over pride
- Wisdom over dogma
- Actions over image
Rules (expansions on the guidelines):
- Mistakes should be learning experiences when possible.
- Do not attack comrades displaying vulnerability for what they acknowledge are mistakes.
- If you see good-faith behavior that's toxic, do your best to explain why it's toxic.
- If you don't have the energy to engage, report and move on.
- This includes past mistakes. If you've overcome extreme reactionary behavior, we'd love to know how.
- A widened range of acceptable discussion means a greater need for sensitivity and patience for your comrades.
- Examples:
- "This is reactionary. Here's why."
- "I know that {reality}, but I feel like {toxicity}"
- "I don't understand why this is reactionary, but it feels like it {spoilered details}"
- You are not entitled to the emotional labor of others.
- Constantly info-dumping and letting us sort through your psyche is not healthy for any of us.
- If you feel a criticism of you is unfair, do not lash out.
- If you can't engage self-critically, delete your post.
- If you don't know how to phrase why it's unfair, say so.
- No singular masculine ideal.
- This includes promoting gender-neutral traits like "courage" or "integrity" as "manly".
- Suggestions for an individual to replace a toxic ideal is fine.
- Don't reinforce the idea the fulfillment requires masculinity.
- This also includes tendency struggle-sessions.
- No lifestyle content.
- Post the picture of your new grill in !food (feminine people like grills too smh my head).
- Post the picture of the fish you caught in !sports (feminine people like fish too smdh my damn head).
- At best, stuff like this is off-topic. At worst, it's reinforcing genders norms..
- If you're not trying to be seen as masculine for your lifestyle content, it's irrelevant to this comm. If you are trying to be seen as masculine, let's have a discussion about why these things are seen as masculine.
Resources:
*The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks
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So, I read this a bit late to take part in the weekly thing, but damn was this an important read.
The biggest takeaway for me was the fundamental understanding of how boys are raised and how emotions get suppressed and how we get anger on top. The way this ties to nationalism, militarism, relationships.
I have raised a boy. With a man who has shown a lot of the issues the book talks about and over time managed to expel a lot of them. And I grew up as a woman who was kind of raised as her fathers first son, if that makes sense.
I huge thing for me personally was coming face to face with my own pathriarchal issues while reading this. I remember feeling apprehensive when my son wanted to hold my hand in public when he was fairly old. I never turned him away and did notice it at the time, but this book helped me understand what it was that I was feeling and how utterly violent that is.
The same with noticing how I have definitely felt frustrated with my parther for not "being a man" in the past, our relationship has always been very reversed from the norm. My feminine masculinity definitely has a lot of this toxicity in it.
And the part about the penis as a weapon was so important for a SA victim like myself and also again, for someone having raised a boy in this world.
So much more as well, but I have limited time atm and it's hard to articulate. But this was lifechanging. My partner is now reading it.