Masculinity

[peterbound]

Let me rephrase that, shall I?  

War, physical destruction and the inevitable warring another individual, leading to their death, and absorption into your society, is better handled by men.  

Crisis leadership was the wrong phrase. Because of the reasons I state above, crisis leadership during a time of peace leading up to war is better handled by the fairer sex, when its actually occurring though?  Hand over the reigns... when it's done?  Hand them back. 

[peterbound]

3 minutes ago, Weeping Sore said:

This sounds more like the Kirk/Spock dichotomy.

I'm sure this is somewhat shaped by your profession, women firefighters surely being outliers with regard to their risk appetite. I'm inclined to agree with you that men on average have higher risk appetites (or possibly more powerful death wishes).

And even the ones that are attracted to the career field tend to gravitate towards the medical side of it.  Everyone wants to discount physicality differences between the genders, but it's there.  Plain and simple.  And even if they can do the job like me, it's only good for a few years.  One of the sad side effects of the female biology is that there comes a point where their bodies just betray them, and they aren't built for damage any more.  Men, men can get the shit beat out of them well into their 60s if they train for it. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

13 minutes ago, peterbound said:

Let me rephrase that, shall I?  

War, physical destruction and the inevitable warring another individual, leading to their death, and absorption into your society, is better handled by men.  

Crisis leadership was the wrong phrase. Because of the reasons I state above, crisis leadership during a time of peace leading up to war is better handled by the fairer sex, when its actually occurring though?  Hand over the reigns... when it's done?  Hand them back. 

Interesting.  That is .... essentialist.  I would completely disagree historically with your read of culture absorption, btw.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

59 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Query, what qualities would you emphasize for girls?  Because those seem like good things for both genders (and consistent, if you want to be historical about it, with both gender roles).  Also, would you encourage girls to play sports?  Why or why not?

I'm not really talking about girls. But yes those qualities are good for everyone, my point is they are traditional male qualities, an honour system that was quite beneficial. I think some of that is being lost when raising men, we are now in a position where we don't understand our roles or see where we fit in, we have so few positive role models. Those qualities are ones that would be very positive to aim for. 

 

In response to the below, as others have mentioned I think this is now becoming less and less prevalent in our generation. Toxic Masculinity is far less a problem now for males, the greater problem is in fact the lack of direction, the lack of expectation or role models. Men are instead left in a void, forced to work it out on their own, with hugely conflicting messages being thrown at them constantly as to what a man is. 

1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

 

For me, and I think others already said this more eloquently than me, the problem with masculinity, or femininity, is that attempts to define these concepts are restrictive and might do more harm than good. There is nothing inherently wrong with the traits people have traditionally called masculine, and I think it's a misconception that people who talk about toxic masculinity are saying they are wrong. If a man displays these traits, good on him, but they shouldn't be definitive of what makes someone masculine/a man. The problem is rather that saying "to be a man you MUST be/demonstrate xyz. If instead you are abc then you are womanly." That is the problem to me. We should be able to embrace who we are without thinking "oh, I'm a man but I'm not aggressive, something is wrong with me."

[peterbound]

1 minute ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Interesting.  That is .... essentialist.  I would completely disagree historically with your read of culture absorption, btw.

Really? The romans and greeks did it pretty well, as did every other warring/male dominant society.  You might be right, and I now you're smarter than I am (although I did just take an official IQ test for some military shit, and was wildly surprised at my results) so I'll acquiesce and concede that point. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 minutes ago, peterbound said:

Really? The romans and greeks did it pretty well, as did every other warring/male dominant society.  You might be right, and I now you're smarter than I am (although I did just take an official IQ test for some military shit, and was wildly surprised at my results) so I'll acquiesce and concede that point. 

Well, on the "women leaders in military crises", we have a sample set of like 10, most, if not all of whom, were born or married into  into power (Eleanor (England/France), Isabella (Castille), Elizabeth (England), Catherine (Russia), Maria Theresa (Russia), Elizabeth (Russia), Wu Zeitan (China), I know I'm missing a few other where there were active major military-type things going on....  So you can read that a bunch of different ways given your own personal biases.

On cultural stuff.  Firstly, though we need Kat or someone, I believe the Greek societies that we know and revere had as much to do with the melding of Mycenean and Minoan societies that preceded them that arose from....intermarriage, which means, though not celebrated, someone was bringing one culture into the other.  Think about the Christianization of Europe - in large part facilitated by women (mind you, with plenty of crusades and pyres thrown in for giggles).  The Romans had a unique and very strong culture, but in some part that was because of their willingness not to impose their culture.  What "Roman" meant changed substantially over the centuries.  Think also of the "Vikings" - they were basically absorbed into other cultures.  Similarly the Mongols.  China may be another similar to Rome example, but I know less about Chinese history than I should, and I'm sure someone is going to remind me in no uncertain terms that what it meant to be "Chinese" was really a construct of the ruling elites in a particular dynasty and didn't much affect the day to day life of your basic farmer.  Anyhow,  

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

17 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Theres a whole world out there on the nexus of incomes, gender and prestige, or, possibly, 'how much of a dude job is this' out there.

I was struck by the list of jobs someone defined as appropriately masculine someplace, and that they were all blue collar and to a large extenst, seemed kind of dull and certainly in the middle/bottom of the income curve, bar the firefighter/cop/soldiers (the 'hero' jobs, lets say), maybe. Does anyone actually aspire for that ideal factory job, or construction work, or any other primarily physical job (without the hero part) for their son?

The glory days of American manufacturing as being tied to some kind of effective model of masculinity seems to have everything to do with pay, benefits, stabililty and unionization, and a lot less on the job itself - ie, you could have reasonable quality of life for a family on a single (male) paycheck. Maybe to a lesser extent that it was a relatively contained job that doesn't 'follow you home' or demanded extremely long hours, hence time to throw the old baseball around with the kid or whatever it is people did, rather than spending the evening answering client emails from China or whatever. I don't actually hear anyone daydreaming about the good old days of working the production line itself...or are they? I'm really not sure here.

That reminds me of this scene from Good Will Hunting:

[MOD] Embedded video deleted [/MOD]

It's not about masuclinity, per se, but there's a lot of blue-collar pride stuff wrapped into it, which I imagine is very tangled up with concepts of masculinity.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, peterbound said:

Really? The romans and greeks did it pretty well, as did every other warring/male dominant society.  You might be right, and I now you're smarter than I am (although I did just take an official IQ test for some military shit, and was wildly surprised at my results) so I'll acquiesce and concede that point. 

Kind of apples and oranges when you try to apply that to modern times though. We've moved on from spears and shields.

[DunderMifflin]

Most definitions of masculinity are some variation of traits typically seen in what we call men. So men themselves  and broad stereotypes are always going to dictate what masculinity is. By that line of thought masculinity is going to be based own your own awareness and surroundings.

All I've ever noticed are physical things such as facial hair, and superior upper boDy strength due to a different center of gravity. Etc

I've never noticed any difference in aggressiveness or emotions.

Reactions to things is where I've seen the biggest difference. Eg, male screaming and yelling tends to be more effective at intimidation. Male crying seems to garner less sympathy.

But then you have people that physically have all the things associated with men but mentally they reject the gender that society assigns to them, so by that clearly there must be something going on there that I'm unaware of as far what male stereotypes are.

 

 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

26 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Most definitions of masculinity are some variation of traits typically seen in what we call men. So men themselves  and broad stereotypes are always going to dictate what masculinity is. By that line of thought masculinity is going to be based own your own awareness and surroundings.

All I've ever noticed are physical things such as facial hair, and superior upper boDy strength due to a different center of gravity. Etc

I've never noticed any difference in aggressiveness or emotions.

Reactions to things is where I've seen the biggest difference. Eg, male screaming and yelling tends to be more effective at intimidation. Male crying seems to garner less sympathy.

But then you have people that physically have all the things associated with men but mentally they reject the gender that society assigns to them, so by that clearly there must be something going on there that I'm unaware of as far what male stereotypes are.

 

 

That's a pretty unpleasant view of men.

[DunderMifflin]

1 minute ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

That's a pretty unpleasant view of men.

Why u say that?

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

General tone of it was pretty dismissive of men, I found it a little insulting to be honest. 

 

[DunderMifflin]

2 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

General tone of it was pretty dismissive of men, I found it a little insulting to be honest. 

 

Well I can't really make up things to identify as stereotypically male if I'm completely unaware of them. Well I could make something up but it wouldn't be sincere. 

 

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Maybe I'm just misreading your intentions.  Carry on

[DunderMifflin]

Just now, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Maybe I'm just misreading your intentions.  Carry on

Its cool, rather refreshing to be charged with man hating. Usually I'm getting branded with mysogyny and sexism when I say anything about gender. Nice change of pace to be charged with the opposite.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

2 minutes ago, DunderMifflin said:

Its cool, rather refreshing to be charged with man hating. Usually I'm getting branded with mysogyny and sexism when I say anything about gender. Nice change of pace to be charged with the opposite.

Haha, fair enough. You to be very careful how you word things these days. Everyone is ready to jump on anything.

[DunderMifflin]

3 minutes ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Haha, fair enough. You to be very careful how you word things these days. Everyone is ready to jump on anything.

Indeed, it's like tap dancing through lasers while wearing rollerskates sometimes. Only the slickest of talkers survives.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, DunderMifflin said:

Indeed, it's like tap dancing through lasers while wearing rollerskates sometimes. Only the slickest of talkers survives.

So I have to ask, is tap dancing through lasers in roller skates masculine? 

[Buckwheat]

8 hours ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Now that I'm on the gray side of 45, I'm going to say that it's partly a function of age. Back when we're in our teens and 20's, we're attracted to the loudmouth fools because they're aggressive and will most likely pass on good genes to our children--that cockiness and flamboyance is a human male's version of peacock feathers. And it works.

Maybe I am just wired wrongly, but as a twentysomething I tend to find loudmouth cockyness offputting in anybody, as I did as a teenager. My point is, the "women find such men more attractive" is a generalisation that plenty of women do not fit into. So no, it really does not work for everybody.

8 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Why is honesty a feminine quality?  That's not something that I code as female (and actually somewhat the opposite, I think).

I meant in the sense of being open with one's feelings, talking about them without pretending to be stronger etc. Maybe honesty was a wrong word for it.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

7 minutes ago, Buckwheat said:

Maybe I am just wired wrongly, but as a twentysomething I tend to find loudmouth cockyness offputting in anybody, as I did as a teenager. My point is, the "women find such men more attractive" is a generalisation that plenty of women do not fit into. So no, it really does not work for everybody.

 

Of course there are exceptions with every generalisation, but that doesn't mean there isn't truth in it. I think most people will testify that its the more cocky confident/arrogant/overtly masculine guys who generally do better in the getting laid stakes. I can tell you as someone who has been the quiet shy type and the more cocky guy that there are definitely certain sets of behaviours that are more successful in the dating arena than others for men.