macho macho men

The Old Assyrian Stuff

By in beards, macho macho men No Comments

The fact remains that all the great literary rows you read about were between bearded men, whiskered men, critics who looked like bursting horsehair sofas, and novelists who had forgotten to shave for years. The Edinburgh reviewers were beavers to a man. The connection between whiskers and caustic criticism is not hard to see.

There is probably nothing which so soothes a man and puts him in a frame of mind to see only good in everything as a nice, clean shave. He feels his smooth, pink cheeks, and the milk of human kindness begins to gurgle within him. What a day! he says, as he looks out of the window. What a kipper! he says as he starts his breakfast. And, if he is a literary critic, What a book! he feels as he takes up the latest ghastly effort of some author who ought to be selling coals instead of writing novels.

But let a man omit to shave, even for a single day, and mark the result. He feels hot and scrubby. Within twelve hours his outlook has become jaundiced and captious. If his interests lie in the direction of politics, he goes out and throws a bomb at someone. If he is an employer of labour, he starts a lockout. If he is a critic, he sits down to write his criticism with the determination that by the time he has finished reading it the author will know he has been in a fight.

You have only to look about you to appreciate the truth of this. All whiskered things are testy and short-tempered—pumas, wild cats, Bernard Shaw, and—in the mating season—shrimps. Would Ben Jonson have knifed a man on account of some literary disagreement if he had not been bearded to the eyebrows? Can you imagine a nation of spruce, clean-shaven Bolsheviks, smelling of bay rum?

There is only one thing to be done. We must go back to whiskers. And there must be no half-measures.

It is not enough for a critic to have a beard like Frank Swinnerton’s, which, though technically a beard, is not bushy enough to sour the natural kindliness of his disposition. We must have the old Assyrian stuff, the sort of beards Hebrew prophets wore—great, cascading, spade-shaped things such as the great Victorians grew—whether under glass or not has never been ascertained.

— P.G. Wodehouse, “Back to Whiskers,”  Week-end Wodehouse

The clean-shaven Patrick Kurp can attest to the truth of this, given his boundless indulgence of potboilers, bodice-rippers, and emotive poetry. On the other hand, though, consider the prevalence of beards among today’s young hipsters, a demographic typically unacquainted with either combative ferocity or literary taste. Has cultural evolution decoupled the beard from its traditional representation of masculinity? Did facial hair serve to camouflage, as it were, the real marker of manliness to which we should have been paying attention? Grip strength has been in alarming decline in recent decades. You can bet the old critics of whom Wodehouse spoke all had, in addition to their majestic plumage, a firm, bone-splintering handshake. Today’s bearded youths prefer fist bumps and half-hearted lean-hugs; their feeble hands need only enough strength to keep their omnipresent phones from clattering to the floor. Is it any wonder most of the online literary sites wallow in touchy-feely solipsism? What is best in life? To crush your rival’s metacarpals, to savage his self-published memoir, and to hear the lamentations of his Twitter feed. We’ve fallen far from the old ways.

Shoulders Too Broad for a Girl

By in gender, identity, macho macho men, ohferfucksake No Comments

Jessa Crispin:

A truly progressive man, then, would be one who rejects the social and economic advantages that come from hegemonic masculinity and patriarchal conformity. A “feminine flourish,” as Cremin puts it, of perfume or lipstick or a silk blouse, would undercut a man’s power immediately in both the workplace and on the sexual market. But why is that still true, other than because men are heavily invested in retaining old forms and modes of power, and are unwilling to take even the smallest step toward voluntarily relinquishing it—as well as having a disinterest in, or belittling viewpoint of, femininity and women, and a fear of being mistaken for gay? You know, small things like that. The feminine potential that lies within men is often spoken about in terms of caretaking and parenting within marriages and nuclear families—which are forms of patriarchal control, too—rather than with regard to exploring sensuality, beauty, and softness.

I suppose I stand corrected. When I suggested the other day that our inclinations and behaviors around here were more truly genderbendy than all these bandwagon-jumpers who change their pronouns as often as their underwear, I failed to recognize that those ostensibly non-conforming practices were still taking place within the confines of a hetero-patriarchal relationship, rendering them null and void with regard to their revolutionary potential. Plus, the Lady of the House still harbors a reactionary fondness for fashionable clothes and makeup, while I, with my “gym bod” and “nostalgia bearding,” am clearly reacting out of subconscious fear of the, uh, “rise of the visibility of women and queers in the public realm,” desperately trying to reassert my threatened masculinity. Let’s not even mention my t-shirt and cargo-shorts wardrobe. Point is, “true” revolutionary socialism will only arrive when we’re all dressing like Ziggy Stardust. If the history of actually-existing revolutionary socialism is any indication, it’s more likely we’d all be wearing drab unisex Mao Suits, but okay, whatever.

Funny enough, I don’t actually have any problem with the idea that fashion is a largely-arbitrary social construction that could be changed with no lasting consequences to the social order. Whether we call them kilts, skirts, sarongs, kimonos, dresses or robes, I’m all in favor of dressing comfortably. If it became socially acceptable for guys to wear eyeliner, I’d probably do it. I fully admit that the only reason I don’t is because it’s not a hill I’m willing to answer ten thousand questions upon. Life is all about tradeoffs, and I simply don’t feel strongly enough about men’s indubitable right to wear makeup to do it myself. I mean, having a beard, even if only because I like the way it looks, apparently opens me to charges of being subconsciously homophobic and misogynist, so I really just don’t have the time to face interrogation over the subtext of my lip gloss as well. Is this proof of the stifling conformity of capitalist patriarchy, or is it just the adult recognition of the fact that not all battles are equally worth fighting?

No, the article would be unremarkable were it not for the fact of Crispin’s determination to squeeze in her typically half-baked ideas about socialist utopia. Well, since we’re all pretending to be able to read each other’s minds here, allow me to go ahead and speculate that her generic bowl of buzzword soup here is just the latest product of her admittedly-incomplete education and its attending inferiority complex. An intellectual orphan, left to fend for herself in the inhospitable, culturally sterile Midwest, trying to cobble together a sophisticated worldview through voracious, indiscriminate reading, she apparently impressed upon the first jargon-spouting critical theorist she encountered and never outgrew it. And so, sadly, here she is, close to middle age, proud of having attained fluency in academese, and evidently unaware that it does nothing to disguise the adolescent puerility of her ideas. “When we remove forms of control, we are left to act freely on our desires.” Yes, and only a superficially-intelligent naïf who confuses bookishness with wisdom assumes that this is likely to turn out well.

Footnotes to Nietzsche

By in conspicuous crusading, gender, macho macho men, nietzsche, political philosophy, the geist of the zeit, unintended consequences 3 Comments

Douglas Murray:

In the same way that massive intrusion into our online lives came not from ‘big brother’ but from our own desire to share the minutiae of our lives with the world, so the great intrusion into what we do with our bodies came not just through some top-down diktat but from a rising and generalised agreement about the most efficacious use of the public coffers. An opt-in health insurance system allows you to take whatever risks you are willing to pay for with your own body, whereas the NHS gives everybody an interest in everybody else’s body. And without strong ethical or moral guidance from any other source this rampant utilitarianism becomes the dominant ethic in the land. It does seem to have some idea of a life well lived: a non-smoking, non-drinking fitness fanatic who starts a family in their most productive years and has the decency to die at just the moment when they risk taking out more money than they have put in.

Brendan O’Neill:

The new feminism, this global franchise, this pop and political phenomenon, is not really a movement. Nor is it, as men’s rights complainers argue, a feministic conspiracy to do down men. Rather, it is but the keenest expression of the mainstream misanthropy and turn against Enlightenment thought of the modern West itself. The ‘male’ values being attacked are really the universal values of reason, autonomy, progress and truth — values that both men and women need, and deserve.

I’ve been watching the women’s World Cup this month. I hadn’t ever paid attention to women’s football before, not because of my virulent misogyny, but because of prosaic time constraints. Good stuff. I’m enjoying it. Reporting my initial impressions to my inamorata, I said that it was nice to see the absence of dirty fouls as well as the general lack of belligerence and aggression. The men, by contrast, are constantly scrapping, shoving, mouthing off, squaring up, and generally acting the way you’d expect athletic young men to act toward each other in a highly competitive environment. “Testosterone poisoning, I’m telling you,” she said. “Yeah, well, good luck selling that one politically,” I replied.

From there, we went on to talk semi-seriously about how Huxley’s dystopian vision of chemical coercion seems to be much more relevant today than Orwell’s more conventional story of political totalitarianism, Nietzsche’s idea of aristocratic vs. slave morality, psychological vs. physical cruelty, and the possibility that behavior modification rooted in utilitarian ethics might prove to be a defining issue of our century. What I mean is, take the idea of testosterone being the root of most of the serious problems in the world. I can envision this becoming more than just a fringe notion worthy of ridicule. I’m not predicting that a feminist vanguard is going to seize political power and forcibly neuter “problematic” males; I’m just saying that if anything is going to challenge the axioms of liberalism, it could likely be some form of utilitarian public safety issue, married to trendy fixations on biochemistry and neuroscience.

I’ve been lately thinking a lot about liberalism and its past and future alternatives, wondering how long this relatively stable, peaceful state of affairs (in this country, if not the wider world) will last before people get impatient and start fantasizing about a system without gridlock and diluted compromise, a system where we can finally achieve everything we can imagine, a system which will be little more than a narcissistic fantasy of unrestrained power, where everyone who matters shares your beliefs and goals, and anyone who doesn’t has been marginalized or eliminated.

As evidenced by the post title, I find myself, while reading the above pieces, thinking about the death of God. With that famous phrase, Nietzsche of course was referring to a cultural center of gravity, what Yuval Harari calls an imagined order. As more people lost faith in Christianity, in a shared moral yardstick, what would become of their morals and values? What would come to fill the void? He feared the worst and was subsequently proved correct. But even now, with those paroxysms of violence passed, we still struggle to find values in common to anchor society.

I also find myself recalling Matthew Crawford’s quoting of Tocqueville, where he observed that, barring a recognized source of moral authority, people will measure themselves against each other. “Normal” will be judged according to statistical aggregates. As Murray says, utilitarian consequentialism fills the void when a culture loses its sense of identity and purpose, and that itself is another form of uninspiring compromise.

But has there ever been a “shared moral yardstick” that was anything other than a cultural/political aristocracy capable of imposing its values on society? We shudder to think of doing that sort of thing anymore. Nietzsche would likely say that we still have a cultural/political aristocracy, just one that’s been poisoned by its own self-loathing, wallowing in post-modern, post-colonial guilt. The big, transformative ideas that fired the imaginations of the intelligentsia in the past have turned to dust. But what new idea might come along to persuade them to dream again?

As Michael Lind said, the next great religion to seize hold of the cognoscenti won’t present itself as a religion at all, in the same way that Marxism, Nazism and Freudianism all claimed to represent the cutting edge of science in their day. We look back scornfully, wondering how anyone could have seriously believed in any of those ideas. But how likely is it that we have finally outgrown all such delusions? What notions might our culture take for granted that will likewise appear ludicrous a century from now?

My provisional answer is, as I said, the promise of biochemical and genetic modification. Throughout the last few centuries since the Enlightenment, the dominant project has been to shape the system to best serve human needs. In the recent cases of Marxism and Nazism, this has obviously led to even greater suffering and destruction. Now, I think, the logic will turn toward shaping people to fit better within the system. A kinder, gentler form of eugenics, perhaps, one which isn’t so much about an intrusive state forcing sterilization upon “unfit” members of society, but one which allows consumers more choice in selecting the behavioral traits they would like to emphasize or suppress through medication, or in genetically designing their offspring for maximum advantage. Perhaps, like Freudianism, this might be the kind of idea that appeals more to artists and thinkers than policymakers, but I could imagine it becoming a dominant theme of the cultural cognoscenti in the near future. And being a pessimistic sort, I could likewise imagine people a century hence looking back in bewilderment at our hubris, wondering how we could have ever believed that we had the wisdom and ability to reshape human nature to our specifications without incurring unintended consequences.

Cut That Timber, Show Him How, Beat That City Slicker Now

By in gender, jests japes jokes jollies, macho macho men, silent moving pictures 24 Comments

D’Lane Compton & Tristan Bridges:

Many aspects of masculinity are “comfortable.” And, men don’t need outdoor gear and lumberjack attire to be comfortable. Lumbersexual has less to do with comfort and more to do with masculinity. It is a practice of masculinization. It’s part of a collection of practices associated with “hybrid masculinities”—categories and identity work practices made available to young, white, heterosexual men that allow them to collect masculine status they might otherwise see themselves (or be seen by others) as lacking. Hybridization offers young, straight, class-privileged white men an avenue to negotiate, compensate, and attempt to control meanings attached to their identities as men. Hybrid configurations of masculinity, like the lumbersexual, accomplish two things at once. They enable young, straight, class-privileged, white men to discursively distance themselves from what they might perceive as something akin to the stigma of privilege. They simultaneously offer a way out of the “emptiness” a great deal of scholarship has discussed as associated with racially, sexually, class-privileged identities.

The lumbersexual highlights a series of rival binaries associated with masculinities: rural vs. urban, rugged vs. refined, tidy vs. unkempt. But the lumbersexual is so compelling precisely because, rather than “choosing sides,” this identity attempts to delicately walk the line between these binaries. It’s “delicate” precisely because this is a heteromasculine configuration—falling too far toward one side or the other could call him into question. But, a lumbersexual isn’t a lumberjack just like a metrosexual isn’t gay. Their identity work attempts to establish a connection with identities to which they have no authentic claim by flirting with stereotypes surrounding sets of interests and aesthetics associated with various marginalized and subordinated groups of men.

Lumbersexual masculinity is certainly an illustration that certain groups of young, straight, class-privileged, white men are playing with gender. In the process, however, systems of power and inequality are probably better understood as obscured than challenged. Like the phrase “no homo,” hybrid configurations of masculinity afford young straight men new kinds of flexibility in identities and practice, but don’t challenge relations of power and inequality in any meaningful way.

U Got That Look

By in beards, fresh hell, gender, macho macho men, samesecks 2 Comments

Andrew Sullivan:

I can’t help but wonder also if this public display of raw masculinity isn’t also a reaction to the relative decline in male power in American life and culture. As girls beat boys in school, and as women increasingly beat men in college, and as women out-pace men in vast swathes of the economy, and as old patterns of allegedly sexist male culture are policed and patrolled with ever-greater assiduity, the beard and the old-school manliness of the lumbersexual become new ways to express masculinity which cannot be denigrated or dismissed as sexist. It’s a way to reclaim manliness without running afoul of the new prophets of gender justice.

It’s s strange feeling to be ambling along for however many years, just doing my unremarkable, un-self-conscious thing, only to wake up one day and discover that certain tastemakers and media outlets have suddenly pronounced it to be a thing. Complete with an ideological stance, even! I knew there was a reason I kept those flannel shirts from twenty years ago; I just thought it was because they were so soft and comfortable and made to last.

Me, I was devastated years ago by the loss of my youngest dog to lymphoma, and in my grief, I happened to let a few weeks go by without shaving. As I returned to equilibrium, I decided that I greatly preferred the way I looked with a beard and decided to keep it, and so I have done. I wish I could pretend it had a more exciting genesis than that, but at least I’ll still like the way I look with it long after the politically-bearded have moved on to different fashions.

And what about that suddenly-fashionable appearance of mine? Well, according to the correspondent who recently sent me this picture from a beard site, I bear a “striking resemblance” to this guy:

Hmm. Well, the build and hairstyle are pretty much the same. My eyes are normally a little wider than that. I’m not as visibly tattooed, though, and my hair is a blend of ash-blond and light brown rather than red. And he’s probably a month or two ahead of me in the beard-length department. But yeah, I could probably strike a very similar pose, so I’ll accept it and be flattered by the comparison! I mean, that’s one handsome dude. Why, I could possibly even go a little gay for a fine-looking fellow like that. What? I could. Just a little bit, you know.

Howard: If I don’t get some action soon, I’m going gay.
Vince: What? You?
Howard: What’s so funny about that?
Vince: You are the LEAST gay person I’ve ever met.
Howard: I COULD go gay. You’ve got me all wrong. I could go gay like THAT, sir!
Vince: You can’t just go gay! It’s not like buying a ladder!

Folk Devils

By in conspicuous crusading, gender, macho macho men, media/propaganda, ohferfucksake 15 Comments

The normally-discerning 3QD links to the latest from the ever-ridiculous Amanda Marcotte on the topic that even a hotline psychic could have accurately predicted she’d be writing about:

Well, I think I have a theory, and yes, it’s sexism.

Now, attentive readers — and you all are attentive, aren’t you? You’re not like the stupid readers that NPR pranked on April Fool’s Day who comment on articles they haven’t read, are you? — will have noticed that the above quotation is nowhere to be found in the linked article. Yes, I confess, I pulled the ol’ switcheroo on you. That’s actually from a post she wrote last winter where, once again, astonishing, I know, in the neverending Rorschach test that we call life, Amanda saw sexism where others only saw meaningless ink. Anyway, the point is, that blurb is pretty much the Platonic Ideal of her writing, the sine qua non, a journeyman free agent that could sign a contract to appear in just about any one of her posts and articles. She is to blogging what Clayton Homes is to housing construction — a supplier of easily-transported, quickly-assembled, prefabricated building templates whose slipshod construction doesn’t take long to reveal itself. I mean, she’s barely had time to cash the check for this job, but look at the drywall already cracking in this section:

But the internet and the PUA community have created a self-haven for young men engaged in this self-pitying discourse, encouraging them to cultivate that chip on their shoulders, wallowing in misogynist accusations that women en masse are failing them by not giving up the sex these ostensibly unappreciated men believe they deserve. With so many men spending so much time egging each other on, and trying to top each other when it comes to blaming women for their own pitiful lives—to the point of advocating for the denial of basic rights to women—it’s little surprise that one of them would finally work up the nerve to get his “revenge” for all these imagined slights.

When Dimebag Darrell was murdered on stage by a gunman a decade ago, an opportunistic hack could have similarly described it as an inevitable result of the nebulous “culture” of angst, aggression and macho violence that heavy metal is popularly associated with, or even singled out the unfortunate comments made by Philip Anselmo in particular shortly before the shooting. It’s “little surprise” that one of those moshing meatheads would finally decide to bring a gun into the pit, isn’t it? Likewise, we’re all familiar with earlier attempts to blame the suicides of depressed and/or drug-addled adolescents on particular songs by Ozzy Osbourne or Judas Priest. It’s “little surprise” that impressionable, disturbed youths would be pushed over the edge by an emotionally manipulative power ballad glorifying death or suicide, isn’t it? But the, uh, surprising fact remains that such extreme occurrences are exceedingly rare. Millions of fans manage to find healthy catharsis within the scene without taking things to their supposed logical conclusions, which should lead one to wonder if the logic isn’t missing something, perhaps.

No, of course that analogy is not to say that misogyny doesn’t exist, or that you can’t find valid examples of men saying awful, offensive things about women (especially if you seek them out). It’s simply a reminder that an unsympathetic outsider’s perspective can easily morph into a good old-fashioned moral panic, which is increasingly what all this hysterical focus on online misogyny is coming to resemble.

Marcotte would like to have it both ways — the rare example of an Elliot Rodger is proof of how inevitably dangerous her ideological opponents are and how we live in a culture that at least passively endorses misogynist ideals, but the fact that most maladjusted sexless adolescents will never be guilty of anything worse than stupidity or boorishness, or the fact that many men somehow manage to altogether resist the omnipresent siren song urging them to treat women as inferior objects will, of course, not count as disproof; the definition of misogyny will simply become more elastic in order to remain relevant. She’s a seasoned veteran at this sort of thing, though. Several years ago, if you remember, the progressive blogosphere was going apeshit over how the murder of Bill Sparkman, the Kentucky census worker found hanged with the word “Fed” written on his chest, was so obviously the inevitable result of violent, anti-government Teabagger rhetoric. When it turned out a couple months later that he had committed suicide while trying to make it look like a homicide, lesser mortals would have slunk away in shame to contemplate the perils of instapunditry, to think twice about publicly jumping to preordained conclusions based on incomplete breaking news reports. Not our heroine, though. No, in fact, it was still the Teabaggers’ fault for making us believe that they were even capable of such an act in the first place. If it should somehow turn out that there’s more to Elliot Rodger’s rampage than first met the eye, you can safely bet the house that misogyny will be to blame for that, too.

People Swear About What They Care About

By in books, language, macho macho men, sex-you-all No Comments

Melissa Mohr:

• In English, we don’t really have a swearword for the clitoris. There’s clit, but it’s just not that offensive, and it is rarely used. If you call someone a clit, you’ll probably get puzzled laughter, or even a pitying look. Perhaps English-speaking women should be insulted that clitface and clit for brains are more funny than shocking, that the clitoris doesn’t register high enough in the cultural consciousness to deserve its own swearword.

• The verb irrumare involves pretty much the only other orifice available — it means “to penetrate the mouth.” Irrumo is a bit different from the other verbs because, as we’ve seen, it usually carries a threat of violence. You might do it for pleasure, but part of that pleasure would be in humiliating the man you are forcing into fellatio.

…The poet Catullus assails some of his critics with irrumo too. Catullus was accused of effeminacy because he wrote about dalliances with women, the delights of long afternoons spent in bed, rather than about war or farming like the more manly Virgil. He asserts his impugned masculinity with a verbal attack, beginning one poem: Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo, “I will bugger you and make you suck me.” Threatening to stick his penis into the assholes and mouths of other men is supposed to prove that he is a real man. Displaying too much interest in sex with women, in contrast, is what got him accused of effeminacy in the first place.

Those are just a couple excerpts, but I could have picked any number of others. It’s a very entertaining and informative book. You should read it.

Zhuangzi Hermit

By in bonsai minimalism, foolosophy, identity, macho macho men, santutthi, Ω No Comments

Benjamin Cain:

After all, what doesn’t seem much appreciated in Western societies is that so-called omega men are secular counterparts of the mystical ascetics who’ve been revered especially in Eastern societies. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain ascetics, as well as Gnostics, ancient Jewish hermits and Christian monks renounced worldly pleasures as degrading or illusory, often with elaborate theological rationales… Ascetics have no place in secular postmodern societies, although the American beat generation and hippies, as well as the communists of the last century expressed similar anti-natural or transhuman sentiments. Still, introverts or men with few if any advantages in the social Game, who thus have little incentive to compete in it, seem to reach conclusions similar to the religious mystic’s, about the indignities of the popular social condition and the delusions needed to sustain the secular pursuit of happiness.

…As for the insinuation that the omega isn’t a real man, unlike the alpha or beta man, if “real man” means the one defined by scientific theories, then we’re assuming that a human is a naturally selected mammal; a vehicle for transmitting genes in the furtherance of a mindless, morally neutral biochemical process; a mortal cursed with the intelligence to understand all too well the likelihood of our species’ doom, the ultimate fruitlessness of our individual efforts, and the inevitability of our body’s decay. In that case, surely the omega man should take that emasculating insult as an unintentional compliment. Perhaps the omega is an inchoate transhuman, whose stubborn renunciation of natural reality is a precondition of a radical alteration of that reality which requires an inner transformation of hitherto “real” men and women. Only an alienated outsider could be motivated to combat all the evils of the natural dominance hierarchy, and thus to preclude the need for distinctions between alpha, beta, and omega men.

To clarify, I’m not so foolish as to recommend that all men be omegas. What I maintain is that the popular dismissal of omega men as weak-willed losers is complicated by the comparison of these losers with the perennial class of mystical ascetics. The problem with modern omega men is that the traditional defense of asceticism has few roots in Western societies, and so these drop-outs are doubly alienated–from natural forces and from non-omegas. More than anyone else, omega men (and women too!) need a version of mysticism that’s compatible with modern science and with philosophical naturalism. Certain forms of Buddhism are popular options, as are New Age bastardizations of Gnostic and Eastern religious traditions.

Thanks to Brian for the link. Reclaiming the omega male label as a positive ideal has been a topic in my wheelhouse before, and is closely related to my identification as a Bartlebesian and a Berliner, as well as my more general guiding principles of santutthi and bonsai minimalism. But if it’s a mystical sheen you want, well, I found something interesting the other day on Wikipedia while browsing:

Scholars such as Aat Vervoorn have postulated that Zhuāngzi advocated a hermit immersed in society. This view of eremitism holds that seclusion is hiding anonymously in society. To a Zhuāngzi hermit, being unknown and drifting freely is a state of mind. This reading is based on the “inner chapters” of the self-titled Zhuangzi.

I’m okay with that one, too. Beneath notice, beneath contempt, beneath status anxiety and cultural competition, beneath even the need to frame one’s insignificant irrelevance as inverted, disguised superiority. Silently through and out of the world.

My Bandwagon, Let Me Show You It

By in language, macho macho men No Comments

Ron Lindsay:

Language is powerful. Language not only expresses our thoughts, it shapes them. “Balls” is in common use, and that’s precisely part of the problem. It’s embedded so much in our language that we don’t notice it, but that simply means our sexism is burrowed in deep.

Am I exaggerating the effects of using “balls” and similar gender-specific slang? I don’t think so. Quick: what do you call someone who has no balls, who is a weak-willed individual? Why, a “pussy” of course.

It’s okay. As long as the ideas permeate the wider culture, that’s what’s important. I don’t need recognition. Sniff.

Author of the Testosterone Scriptures, Where Did You Go?

By in gender, identity, macho macho men, samesecks, santutthi, Ω No Comments

The Big Lebowski: What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski? Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost? Isn’t that what makes a man?
The Dude: Hmmm… Sure, that and a pair of testicles.

Jessa Crispin:

There’s no winning this argument. Because the only acceptable deviation from traditional masculinity is queerness; anyone deviating must be queer. Even if they don’t know it. Suddenly what was good in my life is pathologized. Suddenly there is something wrong with him (secretly gay), and there’s something wrong with me (only attracted to men who are secretly gay). This isn’t about style, about guyliner or wearing a boldly pink tie. It’s about something essential in who they grew up to be, something in their nature that my friends — smart, bright, ambitious, dare I say masculinized women all of them — are reading as less than.

I’ve been reading books about masculinity, the authors trying to challenge what we think of as normal. Boyhoods, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots?: Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, and Mark Simpson’s Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity. All three writers are queer. When I tried to find a book that challenged society’s ideas of masculinity that was written by a straight man, all I could find was a book defending men’s needs to cheat on their wives.

The stark choice between masculinity and queerness; that sounds familiar. But as intrigued as I am by the idea of a straight male challenge to masculinity, I’m also a little confused. Aren’t there quite a lot of guys who aren’t all about “aggression, muscularity, exhibitionism, dominance, and phallic preoccupation”? In fact, wouldn’t it be fair to say that such a stereotypical jock/frat/brute of a guy is often a cultural punchline? What qualifies as a challenge here?

A relative of mine who died years ago was an electrician. High school education, born and raised in a rural small town. He loved fishing, lifting weights, and listening to heavy metal. He also lived alone in his late thirties/early forties and spent a lot of time cultivating flowers in his garden. I don’t think he was closeted; he just preferred a solo lifestyle after having been through the end of a long-term relationship. And as far as I know, he never had any problem with acceptance from his peers. His basic affability trumped any misgivings guys might have had about the petunias and roses in front of his house.

I find it hard to believe that examples like his are a rarity. I suppose if, by challenges to masculinity, you mean boys who play with Barbies or guys who want to weep openly in public, yes, that might be rare. But emotional restraint is just much a middle-class value in general as much as an admonition that “boys don’t cry”, and it’s hardly a big deal for a guy to list cooking as a favorite activity, or for him to have long hair and sport jewelry that would have been unthinkable for his parents’ generation.

Perhaps we’re talking about challenges to manhood as defined by work, wealth, accomplishment. If so, well, as I said before, I’m all for reclaiming the “omega male” descriptor as a positive affirmation. I played the game long enough to prove I can; now I’m walking away from it, uninterested in proving myself to anybody anymore. But I hardly think the pressure to be a success in a professional career, or to be independent of your parents with a family of your own, is a strictly masculine issue either.

And though I know everyone would prefer to forget the phenomenon ever existed, for sheer gender subversion, what about glam rock and ’80s metal? Cool guys wearing makeup and women’s clothes who nonetheless were more sexually successful with women than all the guys who hated them; what more could you ask for?

1 2 3