this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2022
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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:

  1. Questions over blame
  2. Humility over pride
  3. Wisdom over dogma
  4. Actions over image

Rules (expansions on the guidelines):

  1. 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}"
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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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I want to state up first I get it, I'm on the right side, most of these men are awful, and every man-o-sphere influence is awful. Andrew Tate belongs in a 6 foot deep hole, or a hole in the back of his head. Joe Rogan should be sent to the Hague.

But when dudes complain, even about genuine issues, we have a tendency to just attack them for it. If a guy complains that being short can kinda suck (and it can. More so than just getting girls, it can hurt your career and everything.) People, even leftists, tend to just call them a sad manlet or something. Same thing with dudes complaining they can't get a girlfriend, are they not alienated under capitalism? I'm not saying we have to coddle the incels, but we could do better at presenting a future, a better one, maybe?

The discourse about height, and dick size, are both stupid but here (in this safe space) can I admit that there's a point to both? They affect people, it's a real thing.

And back to the Joe Rogan's, I feel bad that men and boys get sucked into that. I have some pity for them, these desperate losers.

Anyways, Im sure I'm going to think this is dumb, but I just can't help but feel like there's a gigantic community of extremely disaffected people that while I mostly loathe, I also really feel bad for. I don't think it would've taken much to push me there, I grew up in a good environment with some good role models, but without that, left to the wolves, I'm as susceptible to the grifters as everyone is.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

100% correct and based. I get annoyed sometimes because I see female presenting(or perhaps just appearing) people say things like "it's not my job to help emotionally stunted men." Which yeah, I guess technically it isn't, it is unfair that a lot of women have been used as crutches for men and that isn't good, and you don't always have the energy for it. That's all fair, but it was someone's job, and that person failed. This is a hard problem to fix alone, you cannot get better at relating to other people and seeing them as human without other people being present. And are they going to talk to other men about it? The people that in many cases berated and hurt them to instill this belief, this emotional weakness? It's not any one person's job to fix a broken man they are around, but it is all of our jobs to help each other. If you saw someone bleeding out in the streets, would your first thought be "it's not my job to get them to the hospital"? I'm not expecting every woman or female presenting person to out themselves in harms way to help every man they meet that isn't perfect, I get lack of emotional space, personal trauma or just general distaste for the work, and genuinely valuing their own time, but the smugness some people post about this with is disgusting. You should never be proud you saw someone hurt and didn't help them.

And the doubling down on sexist language towards men. It's not okay to make fun of a guy for being short, or not being muscular, or being shy or nervous, or any of the other things which it is just mean to mock people for. It doesn't break down gender walls, it reinforces them. It also reinforces transphobic rhetoric. If being a short man is bad, or not having facial hair, or not being muscular, and so on, for men but not for women, seems like anyone with those traits who wants to live as a man would feel like garbage all the time. It also breeds the idea men are stronger and more brutish than woman, and deserve more abuse because they can take it. The fact that I, living as a man, have been called sexist because when a woman insulted me I insisted her back is absurd. She is not porcelain and I am not steel. Anyone who disagrees with that is not a feminist.

I'm lucky to have had supportive men and women growing up, and now have people of all genders around me who encourage emotional vulnerability and openness, and don't expect stock masculinity from me. I wish everyone had this opportunity. Until they do, it's my job to try and provide it for them, so they don't fall to the manosphere. Because it is tempting, it's easy to blame all your problems on others if they seem adversarial to you, and society blame your problems on them, or their problems on you when you're still growing. The solution is the same as it always is to us as leftists: we reach out, educate, and build solidarity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If being a short man is bad, or not having facial hair, or not being muscular, and so on, for men but not for women, seems like anyone with those traits who wants to live as a man would feel like garbage all the time. It also breeds the idea men are stronger and more brutish than woman, and deserve more abuse because they can take it. The fact that I, living as a man, have been called sexist because when a woman insulted me I insisted her back is absurd. She is not porcelain and I am not steel. Anyone who disagrees with that is not a feminist.

I feel this on a deep level. I lost a lot of "friends" years ago over it. I'd been putting on some weight because of depression and age catching up to me, and somebody I hadn't seen for a while showed up and said:

"Whoa, damn dude, you're really packing on the pounds!"

To which I responded:

"Thanks! Your moustache is coming in great! Hitting menopause already?"

Probably not my most gracious moment, in retrospect. But they're all still friends and I'm not after that incident.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This isn't like my issue or anything, but from afar it does seem frustrating that there are legitimate grievances in the men's rights community that are interesting and very compatible with feminism, but because the community has so many toxic dildos in it discussing any of those grievances serves as a red flag for being an MRA psycho.

I imagine it is like being a serious academic who happens to have good historical evidence that there was actually only 9 million people who died in the Holocaust, not 12 but you could never actually share your research with anyone because they would just lump you in as a Holocaust denier.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

this is why conceiving of 'men's rights' as dichotomous or separate from feminism (which is not 'women's rights') is so harmful. legitimate complaints about the standards patriarchy imposes on men are folded into reaction against femmes instead of against patriarchy, the actual instigator

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think you really get what I'm saying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

There is a wider discrepancy of power amongst men than there is within any other gender. If you average it out and compare it, it's almost ubiquitously higher than the others, but the intra-gender spread is incredibly wide and this causes a cascade of problems.

That's about as far as I'd take my analysis.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I mean yeah it's completely true that in a perfect world we shouldn't be attacking people for having small dicks or being short or whatever, but I also do think there can be some contextual usage there too. A person who prides themselves off of being "Grrr I'm rugged traditional conservative white man who rules over women and minorities" is going to be particularly irritated if it's pointed out that he's short. Men with ego issues might be better pointed out as "They're compensating for their self esteem issues" but I also can acknowledge it's funnier to say that they have a small dick because that makes them very very upset and is likely a part of their self esteem problems to begin with. These hypermasculine conservative assholes and their idealogy is after all, one of the major creators of these self esteem issues around men being "too short" or dicks being "too small" to begin with.

On the other hand there is a very valid point "This hurts the good people with self esteem issues over their body just as much" so I try to refrain from it overall, but I do think that hypocrisy can be pointed out sometimes. Like a Nazi "superior race" dude being traditionally unattractive or disabled or something else the Nazis would hate seems fine to point out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

but I also do think there can be some contextual usage there too.

fuck that, there's no tactical "x is gay" or calling black conservatives the n-word, or abusing fat comrades to get a shot in at trump that he'll never see.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Good post. Patriarchy hurts us all, cis men (and even tall, packing, white cis men) included. Even those who largely benefit from it still have legitimate grievances, and the reason that so many cis men gravitate rightwards is that the rightist platform actually addresses those grievances (terribly of course). Many spaces on the left ignore or belittle the legitimate grievances of men in order to center the discussion around their advantages under patriarchy. That's technically having your priorities straight, but if men have brushes with leftist discourse and are made to feel lesser over their patriarchy-built insecurities, they will absolutely not be drawn in.

Discourse about how patriarchy largely benefits men is still necessary, but the time to bring it up is not when a human being is expressing vulnerability about how they have been made to feel lesser by the impacts of patriarchy. This is true whether you're trying to recruit for a platform, or just trying to be a decent human being. Dick size and height are two classic examples.

As always when any remotely related discussion comes up, I'm gonna plug The Will to Change by Bell Hooks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

aw man, you dug this up from a year ago. What a terrible thread? Im not sure how you found this, whats up?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The comm is revived, made a comment because I volunteered to help keep it clean due to the subject matter

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I feel like this thread got a weird amount of heat, I sort of accidentally sounded like I was sticking up for Andrew Tate, bad vibes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah personally I'm not a big fan of dick shaming. It just feels like an extension of body shaming in general and something we should be above as leftists. Though I will say it's ridiculous how men today who are 5'9", my own height, now think that's somehow short and not the norm for north american men. Hollywood, porn, capitalism in general have skewed the fuck out of people's perception of reality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah, this has been an ongoing struggle at least as long as I've been in feminist spaces (one would assume much longer). I remember it getting rehashed many times back on ShitRedditSays, back when that was a relevant place. And I agree, Hexbear is kind of shitty about men's issues - not the worst by far, but also worse than SRS was ten years ago, so nothing to be proud of.

Body shaming isn't good, no matter how many people are about to jump out of the woodwork to tell me they only do it to acceptable targets (fuck off with that bully logic).

Men should be able to wear colorful clothing without society judging them. "just be queer" isn't actual advice (some unfortunate sods just aren't born that way). Telling people "ignore what society thinks" is ignoring the problem in the first place.

Societal expectations that men are stoic islands with no emotions or needs are, indeed, really fucked up and damaging.

You don't have to have a solution to these problems, and if you don't, the best thing to say is "yeah that sucks," or "I've been there," not "not a real problem" (fuck off), or "women have it worse" (yeah we know).

There's a big obvious difference between MRA types and just men talking honestly about how the patriarchy affects them negatively - MRAs don't actually want to fix these things, but instead to use them as a cudgel to tell GSMs their problems are fake. If the conclusion someone is pushing isn't "uppity women should know their place" then it's probably genuine. And yes, you can tell MRA types to fuck off, if they show up.

It is a shame that we don't have a leftist, feminist, positive example of masculinity to point people at. I agree with folks here that it'd be a worthwhile project. We also talked about it back on SRS 10 years ago and nobody has gotten it off the ground. Do it if you think you can. If it helps, I think the most obvious starting point for that is some dudes running a fitness youtube channel.

One simple thing that SRS did that Hexbear doesn't is to call out gender policing (:gender-policing:). Dropping instances of gender policing in the dunk tank would probably help people internalize that this is a bad thing that should be called out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Joe Rogan should be sent to the Hague.

Wait what?

I thought he was just some dumbass who takes steroids and has a podcast.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I thought he was just some dumbass who takes steroids and has a podcast.

one of the biggest mistakes people make in assessing the political character of public figures is to imagine that what they do is simply "neutral" by default and that it would require some effort on their part to play a reactionary role. But when American society is fundamentally reactionary, capitalist, imperialist, colonialist, racist, and plagued by all kinds of phobias towards marginalized groups, then someone like Joe Rogan plays a reactionary role simply by sitting around and talking. Whether he realizes it or not, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. His audience defends him by saying he lets on "both left wing and right wing people." But if you notice, the farthest "left" people he lets on are Social Democratic people like Kyle Kulinski and libertarian whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. He lets on far more right wing influencers than left wing influencers by default, but most of who he has on are simply capitalists. Celebrities, athletes, CEOs. These are by default going to be members of the bourgeoisie who have a heavy stake in maintaining the status quo. He also lets on CIA assets like Yeonmi Park. And Joe Rogan himself being a multi billion dollar business owner who advertises products, is himself bourgeoisie. Even if he had never said anything prejudiced (which he did) he is fundamentally just a capitalist.