Masculinity

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

3 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

MSJ, I see. Well, maybe they are differences - I cannot prove there are not any, though in my daily life, I operate under the assumption there are not. I do not agree with your last sentence that if you describe a man and a woman the same, there will still be a difference - because for me, I will not see it. If a man or a woman is described as somebody who likes being in control, that means the same characteristic, I think.

I guess what I mean is a difference in how those traits are exhibited. I guess it's just a feeling, maybe? I am definitely comfortable in my own skin and am not at odds with any feminine characteristics I have. I am very open with my feelings and have been teased for that before, doesn't bother me Its how I was raised. I am a loving, caring, hard-working and loyal father and husband. I guess as usual you guys have opened up my eyes to how these things are perceived. I just know that I feel a man, and feel that I have characteristics that are masculine. Its not that I need these characteristics to be strictly masculine, I've just felt they always were. I can see where they can be considered feminine also. 

 

26 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

You're missing the point of #MasculinitySoFragile.  The hashtag is a critique of toxic masculinity, the sort that defines masculinity as something you do rather than something you are, and that it's something that can be lost and so must be fought to keep. That above linked article about Rubio's masculinity is a perfect case example for this of what #MasculinitySoFragile is addressing.   Dude wore a pair of boots and was mocked and his masculinity challenged.  He's now doubling down on efforts to be as stereotypically masculine as possible as though he's saying "I'm a man, totally a man, I'll prove I'm a man, I'll torture and shoot and do manly man things don't make fun of me please."

This has nothing at all to do with attempting to make everyone the same.  It's pretty much the exact opposite.  It's a challenge to the sort of toxic, destructive masculinity that requires men to behave only in certain 'acceptable' ways.  So instead of men being pressured to be muscles and Alpha and weights, they can be stylish boots and manicures.  Or a mix.  Basically, you be you and if you being you means loud music and sports, that's cool.  But if you being you means a pink iphone and cooking, that's cool too, and really shouldn't be used as a challenge to your masculinity.  

Ahh, yes, I get it. This thread is full of revelation, lol. Seriously this is a very enlighten discussion that I've never really pondered till now. Thanks for the clarification.

[Magnar of Skagos]

I must say, I am impressed with the level of civility displayed in this thread. Too often do things spiral out of control too quickly, but this has been quite mature the whole way 'round.

[MercenaryChef]

Masculinity is an interesting subject for me.  It is something that was a sense of measurement and worth for me a good bit of my life. 

First my dad,  a stoic war hardened laborer who balanced caring and providing for a family and his home with hunting, fishing and shooting.

As an undersized lad interested more in the history of guns than the shooting of them who spent a lot of time reading or drawing I had little in common with this man I admired.

To make matters worse the males who were my peers were entrenched in a 1950s idea of gender. I was well known as 'the fag.' I fought this and them. Between 10 and 18 I fought (and often lost) to anyone who challenged me. It didn't make me more masculine.  I didn't become accepted,  just more alienated.

Only through the combat sport of wrestling  (which I was good at) did I gain a semblance of acceptance.  But I knew it was only associated with my sporting persona. It did not translate into a girlfriend or romantic involvement. 

I realized in my 20's that the females had a far more difficult time trying to find a place in this toxic land of high school and painful backwoods ideas on everything from race to gender to education. No wonder they didn't want to date me. 

Strangely or appropriately I end up in the career path of a chef. Built on a military hierarchy kitchens traditionally are some of the most unwelcoming sexist and masculine environments one can work in outside the actual military, fire department,  police. Etc.

For years I was the standard ambitious  cook. It was all about avoiding your chefs scrutiny while making sure all around you knew you had a big dick. Kitchens can be a sick brotherhood based on a mutual goal but still with a desire to be the best and make sure the rest of them know it.

Nearing 40 now I am more secure as a man. Helps to see more of the world and to not let my career guide me as solidly as it once did. 

But no matter what I know my travels are easier than a gay man, the trans or a woman who has to traverse the highway of masculinity.


 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

As an undersized lad interested more in the history of guns than the shooting of them who spent a lot of time reading or drawing I had little in common with this man I admired.

To make matters worse the males who were my peers were entrenched in a 1950s idea of gender. I was well known as 'the fag.' I fought this and them. Between 10 and 18 I fought (and often lost) to anyone who challenged me. It didn't make me more masculine.  I didn't become accepted,  just more alienated.

 

Yeah, my biggest problem with traditional masculinity is the enforcement of violence. You don't have to be known as 'the fag' to run into this. In fact most young males likely run into it at some point in middle or high school. All it takes is some random dick who for some random reason dislikes you.

And as far as backing down from the violence, there's two things going on and working on you. Society has drilled into that you don't back down. (might be different for millenials, but I'm GenX)  Meanwhile, you are at a very awkward age, drugs pumping into your system, and afraid what your peers might think. This is very difficult to resist, and in my experience thoughts of injury don't even come into the equation. The social repercussions, or more accurately, the FEAR of possible social repercussions compels you to take part in violence, even if your nature is to not seek such things.

From my experience, the results of the fights didn't matter. It was more about if you backed down or not, and social survival. Not that you are going to die if you refuse, but it feels that way. I didn't feel any sense of victory at any point, but I was glad that I felt I was surviving.

[Nas!]

Hmmm. Not sure if I buy Chef's story.  The man I met had the swagger of a young Christian Slater and the innate danger of Bob from Twin Peaks.  

And the karate skills of an extremely drunk Bruce Lee. 

[Lyanna Stark]

18 hours ago, Wise Fool said:

Ah. Academia. And see here we come across my great weakness, for I'm an uneducated meat worker, so how could I know anything about anything. How dare I talk about gender, and so forth.

Bleh.

Well, it was worth a shot. I guess I don't have to share my ideas with any of you and I don't feel a need to justify anything as if I am being placed on trial. People around here treat ideas like threats and challenges and do so enjoy trying to put others down, put them in their place, dismiss them, categorize them, and so on. There's a correct venue for all efforts and this is not mine for mine. Go with God, adios, and peace.

Talking about it is great and useful, but if you categorically want to accuse someone of being de facto wrong, then it helps to not end up completely at odds with the bodies of research that actually exist. Also: I may have a higher education, but have never taken gender studies, or anything related to the humanities. My background is science and tech only. The reading I have done on gender studies has been of my own volition, completely.

You can go to the library and pick up really good books on this subject. bell hooks' "Feminism is for everybody" is straight forward, plain spoken (I like that), written from the perspective of a woman of colour. You can google Fausto-Sterling and directly start reading the stuff sologdin referred to as well. I feel the distance one needs to cover in order to access this information is really short. If you have any interest at all in this sort of discussion, then getting that information will provide you will a framework to hang it on, and I find it really helps. A lot. I don't mean that in a snarky way. I'm a technician at heart, I guess, and having access to proper documentation is what I live by.

Also: if you want to fix something that is broken, it's nearly always impossible to do so without knowing how it works.

17 hours ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Well, I for one feel that there is something to being male. I feel there is a difference between male and female besides our biological differences. I don't quite understand why others want to dismiss this and try and say what we perceive as masculine has been ingrained into us through culture. I think the differences are there from birth.

Why do you feel this is wrong? Do you feel there is something "universally" masculine that is always true, across the globe, across populations and across time? If there is, do you feel this is spiritual or somehow connected to our physical bodies?
 

 

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

3 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Why do you feel this is wrong? Do you feel there is something "universally" masculine that is always true, across the globe, across populations and across time? If there is, do you feel this is spiritual or somehow connected to our physical bodies?
 

 

I just feel there is a fundamental difference in the two. Nothing spiritual, nothing universal, just that if a male and female was presented with the same situation that it would be handled differently. From the way we would process the situation, from the way the situation would make us feel, even the way we would perceive the situation, even the solution. I think after this post, I went on to explain how I view the differences in the two, even if I don't understand it. Actually, I have exhausted any thoughts I have on what makes us masculine or feminine. And, anyway the next sentence after the bolded tells you some of what I think. 

 

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

7 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Why do you feel this is wrong? Do you feel there is something "universally" masculine that is always true, across the globe, across populations and across time? If there is, do you feel this is spiritual or somehow connected to our physical bodies?
 

 

I don't believe that it's binary, or a fundamental difference, but just lots of small, often subtle statistical tendencies that have been exaggerated and ossified by thousands of years of cultural development. This typically manifests itself as men being quicker to anger or violence.

[Kalbear]

Like I said, there are only a couple universal traits: more prone to using violence, more prone to being the leaders, more likely to be the older one in a marriage. That's it. 

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Just because the differences manifest in different ways in different cultures doesn't mean they don't exist.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

Just because the differences manifest in different ways in different cultures doesn't mean they don't exist.

Sure. We can say the same thing about the almighty Zeus and how lightning is formed.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Sure. We can say the same thing about the almighty Zeus and how lightning is formed.

You already said that men are more prone to violence. We also know that there are physical differences (not to say that there aren't some women who are stronger than most men).

Given that, I'd infer that there are other, smaller, differences in brain chemistry.

[Kalbear]

If there are they don't show up in a measurable way so far.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

If there are they don't show up in a measurable way so far.

Even if I'm wrong, and there are no differences other than men are more prone to violence, taking leadership positions and marrying younger women, along with the physical differences, those are still significant differences.

[TerraPrime]

On 1/21/2016 at 5:11 PM, karaddin said:

TP - I'm uncomfortable with describing what transgender people go through as a choice when we are talking in the broad term of gender, I didn't choose to be a woman. I did make something of a choice to quit hiding and show that to the world, but a choice of "do this OR suicide OR live the rest of your life miserable getting worse and worse into you eventually suicide" would not be viewed as a meaningful choice in other contexts. For trans people whose sense of their gender identity is weaker there may be a more meaningful choice.

To expand on what WS said there is some conflation of the different aspects of gender here, gender identity (man/woman/somewhere else on the spectrum), gender expression (masculinity/femininity etc) and gender roles which should be killed with fire. While eliminating gender roles will have some impact on expression, which is a set of stereotypical expressions associated generally with the gender identity, I doubt it would actually eliminate them. I had to do something in the middle of writing this post and forgot where I was going so leaving it there for now.

 

I apologize if my wording came across as implying that gender/sex identity for transgender people is a choice. Here's what I said:

There are some work done that suggest to us that some behavior patterns and thoughts are not enculturated. One famous example was where a child born with male genitals suffered an accident in post-natal circumcision and ended up being raised as a girl. In this case, the person never quite identified well as a woman and always felt something is wrong. Many gender essentialists point to this example to say that gender is innate and immutable. In cases where an individual voluntarily identify with a different sex/gender, such as the cases of transgender people, it would also suggest that enculturation alone is not sufficient, for everyone, to establish gender or gender identity. Of course, here I conflate male/female schism with masculine/feminine schism, so the concepts don't quite map 1-to1.

 

My main point is that for some people, socialization is not a sufficient factor in their formation of gender/sex identity. This is true for transgender people, who are raised and indoctrinated in a gender/sex that they will later discover to be wrong for them. So in that context, there is something fundamentally grounding a person's gender identity apart from cultural factors.

[karaddin]

15 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

 

I apologize if my wording came across as implying that gender/sex identity for transgender people is a choice. Here's what I said:

My main point is that for some people, socialization is not a sufficient factor in their formation of gender/sex identity. This is true for transgender people, who are raised and indoctrinated in a gender/sex that they will later discover to be wrong for them. So in that context, there is something fundamentally grounding a person's gender identity apart from cultural factors.

It was the "voluntarily identify" that implied choice to me, no concerns with what you've said here though.  On a tangent, the role of socialisation in formation of sexual orientation is something I find particularly interesting in people like me - with approximately even splits between homosexual, bisexual and heterosexual rather than anything close to the general population.  How much of this is due to other factors and how much is due to the different socialisation is something I'd love to delve further into.

[Altherion]

On 1/22/2016 at 8:47 PM, Kalbear said:

If there are they don't show up in a measurable way so far.

It's really hard to conduct experiments that by definition require access to a large number of distinct cultures. You would need both money to travel across the world and the expertise to understand what the things you are told mean in the context of a culture that's about as different from yours as such things get.

That said, if you believe that human beings are no more than a kind of animal, it would be absolutely astounding if there were no universal differences between males and females in many cognitive and social activities. They may be small, it may be possible to override them by cultural training and of course there will be some individuals who are exceptional, but given the physiological differences between human males and human females, it would take some remarkable fine tuning for them not to differ.

Of course, if you believe that human beings have souls or in some other variant of dualism, all bets are off.

[Kalbear]

I've stated several times that there do appear to be differences that are universal between men and women.

There just aren't that many.

[Stego]

On 1/22/2016 at 2:11 PM, Kalbear said:

Like I said, there are only a couple universal traits: more prone to using violence, more prone to being the leaders, more likely to be the older one in a marriage. That's it. 

More prone to physical strength. Also, more prone to consume more calories. 

[Kalbear]

Like I said, there are only a couple universal traits: more prone to using violence, more prone to being the leaders, more likely to be the older one in a marriage. That's it. 

More prone to physical strength. Also, more prone to consume more calories. 

Culturally neither are universal. Yes, even body morphology.