[SolarCross]

:roll: Which has nothing to do with what I said, @SolarCross.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles ... hat-cried/

[Rancid]

I agree, but demanding that is how men should act all the time eliminates them being able to lead when needed. It isn’t even necessarily a masculine trait even though we stereotype it as so. There have always been women who presented themselves as someone who won’t succumb to emotion in crisis.
This requires not being known as an emotional person. No one wants to see the boss being emotional.
It seems preferable imo to continue to have public and private personas.

I agree, but demanding that is how men should act all the time eliminates them being able to lead when needed. It isn’t even necessarily a masculine trait even though we stereotype it as so. There have always been women who presented themselves as someone who won’t succumb to emotion in crisis.
This requires not being known as an emotional person. No one wants to see the boss being emotional.
It seems preferable imo to continue to have public and private personas.

I agree. Though I'm not sure anyone is advocating for raising spineless cry baby children (male or female). As for public and private personas, yes of course, we all have them, and they are probably generally a good thing. Presenting one face to everyone may not be advantageous. We do have to be chameleons to some degree.

Side note, my daughter wanted to play race cars with toy cars this morning. Should I have slapped that race car out of her hand and handed her a barbie doll?

[Rancid]

Showing emotions is not a sign of weakness. Only simpletons think so.

Agreed. I think what is more a sign of weakness is losing control of your emotions. Some people would call this reacting instead of responding to situations. This could mean you lash out in rage rather than stop and think. This could also mean you just freakout with nervousness (maybe some crying) instead of composing yourself and trying to sort out your issues.

[One Degree]

I agree. Though I'm not sure anyone is advocating for raising spineless cry baby children (male or female). As for public and private personas, yes of course, we all have them, and they are probably generally a good thing. Presenting one face to everyone may not be advantageous. We do have to be chameleons to some degree.

Side note, my daughter wanted to play race cars with toy cars this morning. Should I have slapped that race car out of her hand and handed her a barbie doll?

For their first birthday, I give all my grandkids regardless of sex a big Tonka truck.

[Wellsy]

Most men I know are able to express feelings other than aggression.

@Wellsy,

That's fucking dense. Can't say I really understand what it's all trying to say.

I posted from my phone so I didn't really add much more but the first quotation is a summary of different offshoots and reactions to the women's liberation movement/feminism.
I quote alongside the quote that follows it to emphasize the MMM as having a view of masculinity as something essential to some inner being of men. But such an essentialized inner world is metaphysical in that they merely posit its existence as many do, it is an error of thought to assume the origins of a thing comes from it in isolation.

Spoiler: show

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jackson/future.of.gender/Readings/DownSoLong--WhyIsItSoHard.pdf

onsider another example showing how beliefs about sex differences cloud people's analytical vision. How often have we heard question like: will women who enter high-status jobs or political positions end up looking like men or will the result of their entry be a change in the way business and politics is conducted? Implicit in this question are a set of strong assumptions: men have essential personality characteristics and cultural orientations that have shaped the terrain of high status jobs and women have different essential personality characteristics and cultural orientations. The conclusion is that and women's entry into these positions unleashes a conflict between their feminine essence and the dominant masculine essence that has shaped the positions. Either the positions must change to adapt to women's distinctive characteristics or the women must become masculine. (It is perhaps telling that those who raise this issue usually seem concerned only with women entering high-status positions; it is unclear if women becoming factory workers are believed immune or unimportant.) The analytical flaw here i assuming that masculinity has shaped the character of jobs rather than that jobs have shaped masculinity. In her well-known book Men and Women of the Corporation, Rosabeth Kanter argued persuasively that the personality characteristics associated with male and female corporate employees really reflected the contours of their positions. The implication is simple and straightforward. Women who enter high-status positions will look about the same as men in those positions not because they are becoming masculine, but because they're adapting to the demands and opportunities of the position, just like men.

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jackson/future.of.gender/Readings/DownSoLong--Persistence&Origins.pdf

Many authors have suggested that feminine personality characteristics (including a lack of drive) explain women's lack of success in climbing corporate ladders. Kantor has persuasively argued that these characteristics are really a direct result of structural conditions. Men placed in positions with no opportunities for advancement and with no effective power show the same personality and behavior characteristics as women in such positions. In the past, however, all women were condemned to occupy the positions without futures. Only men could realistically aspire to rise. Therefore we have good evidence that inequality produces differential motives to dominate weighed against no evidence of any inherent sexual difference in such motives.

From this they assert that men's deep masculinity has been harmed by modern society and men need to get together to get back in touch with their manliness.
As a crude opinion, they're middle class wankers who have lost a sense of meaning in their lives for a lack of ritual and sanctity destroyed by commodification.

The latter two quotes have to do with Raewyn Connell's position on toxic masculinity where they dismiss the primacy given to it and don't treat it as that significant a concept than saying that some things associated with masculinity are bad in their effect to both men and women.
And with the framework of hegemony as appropriated from Gramsci, they're trying to explain a multitude of 'masculnities' in terms of expectations and reproduced behaviours in men in different positions in society.
There is no monolithic sense of masculinity and part of that is because to include all men together is to have a rather abstract conception. Such an issue has been present even in the feminist movement which got broken down into particulars with third wave feminist intersectionality which despite the emphasis given to transgender stuff, was originally about white middle to upper class women being considered as feminists to the neglect of black women.
The issue being simply categorizing a group of people together based on some shared characteristic is typical of abstract generalities that don't reflect the contours of reality but simply select some shared trait.
This isn't a way to think meaningfully of any group and is why one has to look at actually organized groups of people with shared aims, ie being a man or a woman doesn't mean you essentially share much in common with all other men and women.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/flourishing.pdf

We also take ‘projects’ rather than ‘groups’ as a unit of analysis. That is, rather than seeing a community as a mosaic of groups of various kinds – ethnic groups, age groups, occupational groups, voters, consumers, etc. – we see the social fabric as woven of projects.

This has a number of implications. Firstly, it means we do not take subjects as nonentities with contingent attributes attached (gender, occupation, ethnicity, ...) by means of which they can be pigeon holed into various groups. We see social life as made up of people pursuing common ends, i.e., projects, and the community as we find it is the product of these projects. This society, with its laws, customs, land, human beings, etc., is all created and shaped by past projects and kept alive by the projects we pursue today. Every individual human life is itself a project.

So toxic masculinity/femininity presupposes as positive/authentic masculinity/femininity and thus tends to assume some metaphysical essence of one's sex (see this with biological determinist views of humans that take biological processes and leap to social explanations rather than they being explained in their own terms).
There have been those that associate the term toxic masculinity with feminism/women's lib, such as in the honeybadger link I first posted and many who simply pick up the term. But it doesn't seem to be a signiicant conceptual tool other than saying certain behaviours associated with men are detrimental to others and themselves in some way.
As such, it's not really that meaningful a concept as it's not really that concrete in terms of being a combination of essential abstractions to base it within real world relations and thus give it explanatory power, as it merely amounts to saying something is bad which is but an early stage of thought and probably why it doesn't amount to much except in academia.
[url][url]https://www.marxists.org/admin/books/hegels-logic/foreword.htm[/url][/url]

(a) In the Qualitative Judgment, the subject is ascribed a single quality, the relevant social practice is said to be good or bad, or novel or whatever. Hegel presents a logical critique of any such judgment, hinging around the point that equating an individual with a particular is always faulty.

And it's possible inclusion in Connell's hegemonic masculinity is minor, and the concept of hegemonic masculinity is trying to solve a problem long identified about the deficiency of identifying shared aims based on one's sex and is trying to solve it by giving explanation to particular positions of people and their behavior.

[Rancid]

Ok, I think I understand you.

Are you saying that it's such a vague and nebulous concept, that it's useless from a practical standpoint? Is that what you're getting at here?

[SolarCross]

I agree. Though I'm not sure anyone is advocating for raising spineless cry baby children (male or female). As for public and private personas, yes of course, we all have them, and they are probably generally a good thing. Presenting one face to everyone may not be advantageous. We do have to be chameleons to some degree.

Side note, my daughter wanted to play race cars with toy cars this morning. Should I have slapped that race car out of her hand and handed her a barbie doll?

I think the SJWs want you to slap the barbies out of her hands and slap the race cars out of your son's hands. You know for equality?

[Rich]

Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Papism, Bolshevism, Saddam Hussein, Colonel Gaddafi, the Provisional IRA, these are all examples of toxic masculinity.

[Pants-of-dog]

As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with race cars or Barbies.

Instead, it is about stopping thise traditional male behaviours that hurt people: homophobia, violence, misogyny, dominance, etc.

Twenty five years ago, I used to live in a small city where the young men would cruise around in cars looking for homosexuals in order to beat them up. And by this mean that four guys would get out of the car and beat up any guy who looked small and weak. That is an example of toxic masculinity and its negative imoact on others.

[Beren]

Instead, it is about stopping thise traditional male behaviours that hurt people: homophobia, violence, misogyny, dominance, etc.

You talk like females don't mean to dominate and they always strive for an equal relationship. The truth, however, rather is that they always mean to dominate, they always mean to completely define their relationships with men, and they can be quite mean doing so. An equal relationship requiring reasonable debates, discussions, and consensual decision making is hardly a possibility for them, they rather choose someone they can look up to and let him dominate them.

[Rancid]

Twenty five years ago, I used to live in a small city where the young men would cruise around in cars looking for homosexuals in order to beat them up. And by this mean that four guys would get out of the car and beat up any guy who looked small and weak. That is an example of toxic masculinity and its negative imoact on others.

Fair enough, but how many men are engaging in that kind of behavior today? Can't say I know anyone that does shit like this. Can't say I know any man that would approve of this behavior. How wide spread of a problem is this today?

You talk like females don't mean to dominate and they always strive for an equal relationship. The truth, however, rather is that they always mean to dominate, they always mean to completely define their relationships with men, and they can be quite mean doing so. An equal relationship requiring reasonable debates, discussions, and consensual decision making is hardly a possibility for them, they rather choose someone they can look up to and let him dominate them.

I think this is where some of the backlash is coming from. That is, the problem statement is often framed as "men are the problem and nothing else". Even if it's unintentional to frame things this way, this is how it's getting interpreted by a lot of men. Most of whom are not woman hating monsters.

[Beren]

I think this is where some of the backlash is coming from. That is, the problem statement is often framed as "men are the problem and nothing else". Even if it's unintentional to frame things this way, this is how it's getting interpreted by a lot of men. Most of whom are not woman hating monsters.

It's a power struggle actually. The idea seems to be that masculinity is inherently flawed and contains toxic elements, and toxic is defined by feminists, LGBT people, and their allies, who also know how to fix it, of course. The ultimate way to fix it if men don't strive for dominance, whereas the ultimate way to become "real" men is if they let females, feminists, etc. dominate them.

[Rancid]

It's a power struggle actually. The idea seems to be that masculinity is flawed and contains toxic elements, and toxic is defined by feminists, LGBT people, and their allies, who also know how to fix it, of course. The ultimate way to fix it if men don't strive for dominance, whereas the ultimate way to become a "real" man is if they let females, feminists, etc. dominate them.

This got me thinking. I think the following is a more relevant example than POD's gay bashing example.

In a professional setting, often the behavior that men engage in with each other is competitive. For example, in a meeting, men will often talk over each other to get their ideas up front. When they do this same thing to a woman in the room (because they are treating her as an equal), it gets interpreted as misogynist or whatever. However, in a competitive environment, this is how men behave. Now, the feminist would say, that this behavior is also damaging for men, which is why men shouldn't do that to each other either.

I think this is a more relevant example, and one where many non-woman hating men would object. In a competitive environment, they want to compete, they don't want to be told they can't compete. Many men thrive and enjoy this environment (it's what makes them like their job), and people want to take that away basically. Now, I'd like to know how exactly is men competing in the workplace psychologically damaging to men? I think I know what the answer to this question is, but i don't want to assume.

[Pants-of-dog]

You talk like females don't mean to dominate and they always strive for an equal relationship. The truth, however, rather is that they always mean to dominate, they always mean to completely define their relationships with men, and they can be quite mean doing so. An equal relationship requiring reasonable debates, discussions, and consensual decision making is hardly a possibility for them, they rather choose someone they can look up to and let him dominate them.

I have not mentioned females at all, and that is because this thread is about masculinity.

Many females do try and dominate and control to an unhealthy level, and that is toxic for the men with which they are involved. But this is not all of them, or even a majority.

And because of the historical fact that men have had far more power in western societies, toxic femininity is not nearly as significant in terms of social impact.

It's a power struggle actually. The idea seems to be that masculinity is inherently flawed and contains toxic elements, and toxic is defined by feminists, LGBT people, and their allies, who also know how to fix it, of course. The ultimate way to fix it if men don't strive for dominance, whereas the ultimate way to become "real" men is if they let females, feminists, etc. dominate them.

I disagree with this.

Wanting men to stop identifying homophobia and bullying and misogyny as acceptable male behaviour does not mean that LGBT people, the bullied, and women want to control everything.

——————————-

Fair enough, but how many men are engaging in that kind of behavior today? Can't say I know anyone that does shit like this. Can't say I know any man that would approve of this behavior. How wide spread of a problem is this today?

I think it is less of a problem today, and a lot of that is due to the fact that we have recognised these behaviours as toxic and created a debate about them.

Now, in the same city, many of the schools have gay/straight alliance clubs.

I think this is where some of the backlash is coming from. That is, the problem statement is often framed as "men are the problem and nothing else". Even if it's unintentional to frame things this way, this is how it's getting interpreted by a lot of men. Most of whom are not woman hating monsters.

I think these men need to take a step back and look at it more objectively. The way I see it, men are not the problem at all. The problem is a set of certain behaviours that are (a) traditionally associated with masculinity, and (b) negative to others.

This got me thinking. I think the following is a more relevant example than POD's gay bashing example.

In a professional setting, often the behavior that men engage in with each other is competitive. For example, in a meeting, men will often talk over each other to get their ideas up front. When they do this same thing to a woman in the room (because they are treating her as an equal), it gets interpreted as misogynist or whatever. However, in a competitive environment, this is how men behave. Now, the feminist would say, that this behavior is also damaging for men, which is why men shouldn't do that to each other either.

I think this is a more relevant example, and one where many non-woman hating men would object. In a competitive environment, they want to compete, they don't want to be told they can't compete. Many men thrive and enjoy this environment, and people want to take that away basically. Now, I'd like to know how exactly is men competing in the workplace psychologically damaging to men?

I am not sure if this is an example of toxic masculinity.

It seems more like a presumption that professional settings are inherently competitive.

[Beren]

I have not mentioned females at all, and that is because this thread is about masculinity.

Of course it is, so females can't be mentioned.

toxic femininity is not nearly as significant in terms of social impact.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

does not mean that LGBT people, the bullied, and women want to control everything.

Maybe they don't want to control everything, they just want to control men.

[Pants-of-dog]

Of course it is, so females can't be mentioned.

Since we are discussing it now, the implied claim that it cannot be discussed is incorrect.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure about that.

If you want to present an argument that toxic femininity is just as socially significant as toxic masculinity, please do so.

Maybe they don't want to control everything, they just want to control men.

And if you wish to present an argument that people who have been targets of toxic masculinity want to control men, please do so.

[Beren]

If you want to present an argument that toxic femininity is just as socially significant as toxic masculinity, please do so.

You exactly said "toxic femininity is not nearly as significant in terms of social impact."

Well, I wouldn't believe that. Mothers', wives' and partners' toxic femininity can contribute to men's toxic masculinity much.

And if you wish to present an argument that people who have been targets of toxic masculinity want to control men, please do so.

They clearly want to control men when they try to define how masculinity should be.

[Pants-of-dog]

You exactly said "toxic femininity is not nearly as significant in terms of social impact."

Well, I wouldn't believe that. Mothers', wives' and partners' toxic femininity can contribute to men's toxic masculinity much.

How does toxic femininity contribute to toxic masculinity?

They clearly want to control men when they try to define how masculinity should be.

Are they trying to define how all of masculinity should be? Or are they simply trying to address the toxic aspects?

How does redefining masculinity end up controlling people?

[Beren]

Okay Pants, here we go again.

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

[Pants-of-dog]

I had no idea that asking questions and disagreeing with your premises was sealioning.