Tony Porter: A Call to Men

[Gustave5436]

There is no such thing as "real masculinity;" since gender is a social construction (like ethnic, religious, and class distinctions), any possible conception of what it means to be a member of a particular gender is just as "real" as any other.

In order to understand specific left-wing ideas, whether they be socialist, anti-racist, or postgender, one must understand that these are all consequences of a generally egalitarian, libertarian spirit. Rules like "wives are property of their husbands," or "men can't show emotion" are considered bad things from this perspective because they are arbitrary restrictions on individual liberty and undermine the foundations of a free and equal society by creating strict social hierarchies.

 

[civ_king]

There is no such thing as "real masculinity;" since gender is a social construction (like ethnic, religious, and class distinctions), any possible conception of what it means to be a member of a particular gender is just as "real" as any other.

In order to understand specific left-wing ideas, whether they be socialist, anti-racist, or postgender, one must understand that these are all consequences of a generally egalitarian, libertarian spirit. Rules like "wives are property of their husbands," or "men can't show emotion" are considered bad things from this perspective because they are arbitrary restrictions on individual liberty and undermine the foundations of a free and equal society by creating strict social hierarchies.

You mean like Protestant Complementarianism?

 

[Tacitusitis]

There is no such thing as "real masculinity;" since gender is a social construction (like ethnic, religious, and class distinctions), any possible conception of what it means to be a member of a particular gender is just as "real" as any other.

This is utter crap. Sexual and sex-related behavior is not socially constructed, nor does it rely on some amorphous concept of gender. It is mediated by genetic, biological, and chemical differences between the sexes. Just as in every other animal.

Who cares about gender? Masculinity means maleness, not man-ness.

Masculinity evolved as a series of attributes, attitudes and behaviors that make males appear more reproductively fit to females. Any definition of masculinity that doesn't reflect that evolutionary basis is just an ass-pull.

To disown masculinity is to doom the species. But Tony Porter's willing to do that to get pitying applause from women, I guess because he had an incredibly dysfunctional childhood.

 

[galdre]

This is utter crap. Sexual and sex-related behavior is not socially constructed, nor does it rely on some amorphous concept of gender. It is mediated by genetic, biological, and chemical differences between the sexes. Just as in every other animal.

Who cares about gender? Masculinity means maleness, not man-ness.

Masculinity evolved as a series of attributes, attitudes and behaviors that make males appear more reproductively fit to females. Any definition of masculinity that doesn't reflect that evolutionary basis is just an ass-pull.

To disown masculinity is to doom the species. But Tony Porter's willing to do that to get pitying applause from women, I guess because he had an incredibly dysfunctional childhood.

while there are definitely some things that are biological (hormones effect mood to a certain extent), much of what is defined as being a man (or a woman) is socially constructed - women are taught to see certain attributes in men as attractive while men are taught to see certain attributes in women attractive, so the socially constructed attributes are reinforced

take for example foot binding in China - apparently Chinese men found bound feet sexually appealing (which I can't even imagine, since I find the practice disgusting)

humans can be conditioned, just like every other animal, and society conditions us to think in certain ways

 

[GamezRule]

Foot Binding was done for women to attract men, because they found it appealing. If I recall correctly, men did not force women to do it, it usually was their own mothers. I'm not really sure though.

 

[galdre]

Foot Binding was done for women to attract men, because they found it appealing. If I recall correctly, men did not force women to do it, it usually was their own mothers. I'm not really sure though.

yes, mothers did it to their daughters - just like in parts of the world that practice "female circumcision"

but my point is, why did men find bound feet attractive? There's nothing natural about it; seems a perfect example of a conditioned behaviour

 

[GamezRule]

Really, it's just part of their culture, cruel as it may be.

 

[galdre]

Really, it's just part of their culture, cruel as it may be.

yes, it is a product of their beliefs; and people raised with those beliefs are conditioned to think they are "natural"

 

[Traitorfish]

I am going to go ahead and not give him the benefit of the doubt and say that the porn bit is of a piece with the rest of his presentation. "Pictures of nude women = rape" is kind of a thread in Dworkin-MacKinnon feminism.

Tony has bought into their agenda of collective guilt for men (men are "collectively responsible" for all abuse, men must "acknowledge their privilege"). Contrition and repentance are what the feminists require from us, for crimes we haven't committed.

I would suggest that there is, in the Land of the Grown Ups, a distinction made between responsibility and guilt. Tim Wise discusses this in the context of American race relations, and the same logic very much applies:


Link to video.

Alternatively, I hate my gender as much as Wise hates his race. That would, after all, be so much more convenient for you.

Yes because there are no man-hating feminists, except for those man-hating feminists I mentioned.

Catharine MacKinnon
Andrea Dworkin
Mary Daly
bell hooks (who I actually saw at a lecture - she was insufferable, she tried to argue that Western medicine was a "point of view")

kind of the leaders of modern feminism

And that's where you prove that you are ever so slightly more close to being in touch with the inhabitants of distant worlds than with anything resembling contemporary Feminism- as if such a thing could ever be characterised as anything approaching monolithic!

As such, the somewhat... Over-simplistic references to MacKinnon et al. can be left aside for the moment.

This is utter crap. Sexual and sex-related behavior is not socially constructed, nor does it rely on some amorphous concept of gender. It is mediated by genetic, biological, and chemical differences between the sexes. Just as in every other animal.

Who cares about gender? Masculinity means maleness, not man-ness.

Masculinity evolved as a series of attributes, attitudes and behaviors that make males appear more reproductively fit to females. Any definition of masculinity that doesn't reflect that evolutionary basis is just an ass-pull.

To disown masculinity is to doom the species. But Tony Porter's willing to do that to get pitying applause from women, I guess because he had an incredibly dysfunctional childhood.

Nobody is suggesting for a second that biology has no influence individuals. What we are suggesting, however, that the narrow, exaggerated social identities and roles offered by a traditional, binary and monolithic model of gender represses individuals by forcing all individuals through what amounts to a bottleneck of permissible behaviour and identity as defined by their genitals. You cannot begin to claim with anything resembling a firm grounding that the particulars of 1950s Western masculinity or femininity represent anything approaching objective human norms, let alone that they are thus worth retaining. Human beings are, despite reactionary proclamations, rather more than their genitals, and that is something that any movement towards liberation must acknowledge and embrace.

Let us be who we are, whatever that may be, and not just who you think we should be.

So OP says that beheavior is "traditional masculinity".

What is modern masculinity?

Something we have to make up our minds about.

The man, he gets it!

The idiot referred to in the OP doesn't get it.

What he experiences was not traditional masculinity. It was femininized masculinity as someone here called it, or as it is more often named: hypermasculinity. Black parents are of course no worse (or better) parents than others, but in the US they were/are generally of the lower socioeconomic status. Those are the families that are hit first when we as a society allows or adopts insane policies, and "white trash" families are just as badly hit. The "black family" - or more correctly: the poor family - broke up, and boys grew up without fathers who could give them a real masculine role model. In fact many had only adult women to learn from or look up to. Thus, they compensate for their lack of knowledge about traditional masculinity and instead evolved a perverted hyper-masculine behaviour. Thus you get the thugs and the little gangstas and all the other problems that all behave in ways that Porter experienced. Hyper-masculinity is destructive in every way imaginable. It is not even self-sustainable, and will collapse when it is not supported by the rest of society.

Women are as women are of course. They choose the masculine men, even if that masculinity is the destructive, hyper-masculine type, and so compounds the problem, as other men, desiring sex, will seek to emulate or adopt the hyper-masculinity as it it s the only masculinity they perceive.

Traditional masculinity is great. It upholds laws, distribute justice, and concerns itself with fairness among all members of the society. It may be very possible that the standards of a masculine society may be unfair in some way, and even cruel, but it will be a society that must necessarily be perceived by the majority of people as working. And while traditional masculinity is fully able to destroy, to kill, to inflict pain, to enslave and to subjugate, it is also great at creating, nurturing, healing, building and liberating. Traditional masculinity made civilization!

Hyper-masculinity is destructive and can only be upheld as long as it is supported by the fruits of traditional masculinity. Denying real masculinity in the stride for greater absolute equality between the sexes is only going to further weaken civilisation, and hyper-masculinity will continue to flourish.

But "hyper-masculinity" is, in itself, a product of traditional masculinity; a distorted one, granted, but not some freakish and unexplainable occurrence. Every aspect of it is found within traditional masculinity, and robbed of the social contexts and learned self-regulation that keep traditional masculinity from obtaining quite so destructive an edge. It is not traditional masculinity robbed of status, but of restraints. "Nurturing and healing" are both traditionally feminine traits, after all, and liberation, in my mind, knows no gender at all.

What's more, as I have said, the rape which Porter describes is not the totality of his message- his father, for example, is of a generation in which traditional working class masculinity was still relevant, and so not suffering from the deformities you claim, yet still left him emotionally and personally stunted. Furthermore, what of the young men whom Tony described as having observed, directly and indirectly, the limiting and oppressive nature of traditional masculinity, and the pressure it puts on men to conform to very rigid norms? Is that "hyper-masculinity" in action? Was the chivalrous knight of yore more than happy to be told that he jousted like a girl? Someone, I do not believe so, nor, it seems, did Ms. de Pisan.

(You are, of course, dead right about Porter's experience being a product of class, not of ethnicity, and I thank you for supporting me in that; some earlier comments gave the whole thing an element of racial caricature that I found somewhat disturbing.)

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

Reactions?

Superficially, the argument makes a lot of sense, but breaks down when faced with real world conditions. In a world in which women have the latitude to choose their men, and even the discretion to choose none at all, it is not reasonable to believe that women consistently choose the masculine ones most consistently. The reason that men have been able to get away with some of the reprehensible behavior mentioned by Mr. Porter is because women, though they complain about them, like those sorts of behaviors. There is something about the brash and demanding man that women must find alluring, on a visceral and instinctive level. It's not conceivable that women worldwide have accepted this behavior as something they should want, even when it is against their interests, and even when it is within their power to refuse. It's as good as asking me to believe in crackpot conspiracy theories that require the cooperation of scores of people. From what I have observed of women worldwide, they do not differ in this regard, and it crosses all manner of cultural barriers.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Personally, I've always been afraid to cry in front of my peers; not because I thought crying or showing emotion was something that was unbecoming of men, but because I've always thought that loss of control of oneself was an immature attribute.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Alternatively, I hate my gender as much as Wise hates his race. That would, after all, be so much more convenient for you.

It's true though. I can't speak for you, but saying Tony Porter is the gender equivalent of Tim Wise-on-race? Yeah that sounds accurate. Tim Wise is pro-reparations and the people who make common cause with him seem to think people of color are epistemologically privileged on the issue of race relations - in much the same way that Tony Porter says men need to "acknowledge collective responsibility" for all male violence against females and that masculinity is contingent on feminist approval ("my liberation as a man, blah blah").

Both preach a gospel of "collective responsibility" that no matter how they try to nuance it, amounts to being whipped.

Nobody is suggesting for a second that biology has no influence individuals

That is EXACTLY what some people are suggesting on this thread: "There is no such thing as "real masculinity" since gender is a social construction." Explain for me the difference between these two statements?

What we are suggesting, however, that the narrow, exaggerated social identities and roles offered by a traditional, binary and monolithic model of gender represses individuals by forcing all individuals through what amounts to a bottleneck of permissible behaviour and identity as defined by their genitals.

Once again you retreat to the argument from gender instead of debating where the actual issue lies, which is sex. Sex IS binary and monolithic. The masculinity of heterosexual males IS dictated by sexual genetics and biochemistry.

Any number of cultural fetishes can be laid on top of human sexuality, everything from foot binding to changing fads about whether it's sexier to be tan or pale, or thin or fat.

This does not change underlying sexual behavior though. Like "attractive face" studies which show, who would have guessed, a MONOLITHIC and BINARY model of what human beings across cultures see as attractive and definitively masculine/feminine faces.

You cannot begin to claim with anything resembling a firm grounding that the particulars of 1950s Western masculinity or femininity represent anything approaching objective human norms, let alone that they are thus worth retaining.

Who is defending 1950s cultural norms? First you attack the strawman of ghetto machoism and now you assert I perhaps want women barefoot in the kitchen with a bun in both ovens?

What I am defending is the biologically mandated attributes of masculinity and make no mistake, Tony is attacking them. The whole point of his "Man Box" is to try to create a link between masculine decisiveness, initiative, assertiveness, and self-control on the one hand, and violence against women, emotional distancing and sociopathy on the other.

What it really amounts to is a slur against men collectively.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's true though. I can't speak for you, but saying Tony Porter is the gender equivalent of Tim Wise-on-race? Yeah that sounds accurate. Tim Wise is pro-reparations and the people who make common cause with him seem to think people of color are epistemologically privileged on the issue of race relations - in much the same way that Tony Porter says men need to "acknowledge collective responsibility" for all male violence against females and that masculinity is contingent on feminist approval ("my liberation as a man, blah blah").

Both preach a gospel of "collective responsibility" that no matter how they try to nuance it, amounts to being whipped.

Alternatively- and this is just a suggestion- we're simply acknowledging that privilege, like, exists? Maybe? Which would, as it happens, suggest that marginalised people are a little more directly acquainted with issues of privilege than privileged people, because privilege, by its nature, normalises a privileged experience. This means that not only are the privileged given very little insight into a marginalised experience beyond that which they are consciously exposed to (by themselves or others), but that marginalised people are given a significant insight into the privileged experience, because, after all, it is not the norm, and people tend to notice when they differ from the accepted norm. So, while that doesn't necessarily mean that marginalised people are always right, or that privileged people are always wrong, it does suggest that maybe, yeah, you should listen to them now and then.

[Edit: Also: Red herring. Porter primarily discusses the problematic nature of traditional masculinity from the perspective of a man, using examples of men and interactions between men. This isn't some easily demonised straw-feminist harpy, this is a man trying to tell you that traditional expectations of masculinity- specifically working class masculinity, hurt him, and that they hurt other men. He is attempting to open a discussion on this, so that we may, collectively, resolve the issues which cause us this hurt, so that we may construct a new, non-harmful masculinity. And you, my sceptical friend, are refusing to engage in this discussion, for reasons that, as best I can tell, appear to amount to so much third-rate Pop EvoPysch. Bad show.]

That is EXACTLY what some people are suggesting on this thread: "There is no such thing as "real masculinity" since gender is a social construction." Explain for me the difference between these two statements?

Biology is ultimately a unique quality which informs the individual in ways far beyond sex alone, traditional gender is a constructed social norm which dictates acceptable behaviour based solely on biological sex. Fairly basic, I should've thought.

Once again you retreat to the argument from gender instead of debating where the actual issue lies, which is sex. Sex IS binary and monolithic. The masculinity of heterosexual males IS dictated by sexual genetics and biochemistry.

Any number of cultural fetishes can be laid on top of human sexuality, everything from foot binding to changing fads about whether it's sexier to be tan or pale, or thin or fat.

This does not change underlying sexual behavior though. Like "attractive face" studies which show, who would have guessed, a MONOLITHIC and BINARY model of what human beings across cultures see as attractive and definitively masculine/feminine faces.

See, now, you're back at this "feminists hate masculinity" thing, which I'm fairly sure you just made up. Nobody says that masculinity is an absurd fiction, or that it has no association with biology, because that is so obvious as to go without saying. What we are saying is that traditional masculinity, like traditional femininity, represents a limiting and ultimately repressive norm. Some men are masculine, and some people find that attractive. Some women are masculine, and some people find that attractive. Some genderqueer people are masculine, and some people find that attractive. You can describes tendencies in each of those groups, sure, but neither absolute norms nor strictly limited avenues of attraction. Some women like feminine men, some men like masculine women, and so on and so forth. Just let people work this stuff out for their themselves, and stop trying to rationalise the contemporary as the absolute.

Who is defending 1950s cultural norms? First you attack the strawman of ghetto machoism and now you assert I want women barefoot in the kitchen with a bun in both ovens.

S'what it comes down to, in the end, when you suggest that traditional gender norms are the innate product of human biology. It'd be a pretty bloody strange coincidence if it turned out that gender liberation needed to come this far and no further, because we had- as of December 2010? Or some point early?- reached our limit.

What I am defending is the biologically mandated attributes of masculinity and make no mistake, Tony is attacking them. The whole point of his "Man Box" is to try to create a link between masculine decisiveness, initiative, assertiveness, and self-control on the one hand, and violence against women, emotional distancing and sociopathy on the other.

So you missed the bit at the start where he said "there are some wonderful, wonderful, absolutely wonderful things about being a man"? The twelfth sentence spoken? Sounds like you're rather deliberately misconstruing his talk, if I may say so.

Again, as Lone Wolf said, positive qualities know no gender.

 

[Tacitusitis]

Nobody says that masculinity is an absurd fiction, or that it has no association with biology, because that is so obvious as to go without saying.

Yet again I have to point out that is at variance with what Gustave and PHC have posted in this thread (in agreeing with you) namely that masculinity is entirely socially constructed or can become anything we want it to be.

This view is too false to be funny.

Biology is ultimately a unique quality which informs the individual in ways far beyond sex alone, traditional gender is a constructed social norm which dictates acceptable behaviour based solely on biological sex. Fairly basic, I should've thought.

Population behaviors aren't predicated on an individual's unique genome, they are predicated on population genetics.

I think you are coming close to accusing the biology side of this debate of standing for an essentialist or typological view of sexual behavior, which is just tantamount to admitting you have no knowledge of population genetics.

To defend biological masculinity is not to say that masculinity is evolutionarily immutable or "handed down from the heavens." It IS to say that masculinity represents certain properties for a certain population at a certain point in evolutionary time.

So you missed the bit at the start where he said "there are some wonderful, wonderful, absolutely wonderful things about being a man"? The twelfth sentence spoken? Sounds like you're rather deliberately misconstruing his talk, if I may say so.

No, I didn't miss the little excuse line, I just took it in the context of the ten minute talk that followed.

If someone says "I'm not a racist, and Blacks are wonderful people, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut" and then they go on with a fifteen minute rant about single mothers, welfare, and rap music, well, I receive and evaluate that line in its context, namely that the speaker has exposed themselves as a despicable bigot and the little excuse line does not deserve to be taken as an expression of good faith.

Again, as Lone Wolf said, positive qualities know no gender.

Sounds nice but it isn't true. There are attributes women value in a man (to have a potential relationship with) that they don't seek for themselves in that relationship. Ditto men vis-a-vis women.

Alternatively- and this is just a suggestion- we're simply acknowledging that privilege, like, exists? Maybe? Which would, as it happens, suggest that marginalised people are a little more directly acquainted with issues of privilege than privileged people, because privilege, by its nature, normalises a privileged experience. This means that not only are the privileged given very little insight into a marginalised experience beyond that which they are consciously exposed to (by themselves or others), but that marginalised people are given a significant insight into the privileged experience, because, after all, it is not the norm, and people tend to notice when they differ from the accepted norm. So, while that doesn't necessarily mean that marginalised people are always right, or that privileged people are always wrong, it does suggest that maybe, yeah, you should listen to them now and then.

Sorry the entirety of that is BS.

I "unpacked my knapsack" of white male privilege and I didn't find a darn thing in there other than that my parents taught me to read before I went to school so that I was able to succeed and earn everything I have so far.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yet again I have to point out that is at variance with what Gustave and PHC have posted in this thread (in agreeing with you) namely that masculinity is entirely socially constructed or can become anything we want it to be.

This view is too false to be funny.

What I see is observations that there is no absolute, essential masculinity, and that your grand biological prescriptions do not reflect the actual experience of either men, women or genderqueer people (who, as it happens, exist). "Masculinity is imaginary", less so.

Population behaviors aren't predicated on an individual's unique genome, they are predicated on population genetics.

I think you are coming close to accusing the biology side of this debate of standing for an essentialist or typological view of sexual behavior, which is just tantamount to admitting you have no knowledge of population genetics.

To defend biological masculinity is not to say that masculinity is evolutionarily immutable or "handed down from the heavens." It IS to say that masculinity represents certain properties for a certain population at a certain point in evolutionary time.

Hell, I'm not going to argue the biology with you, as I've said. All I'm saying is that human beings are more than their genitals, and that, it seems to me, their is more variety within each biological sex in emotional, behavioural and intellectual tendencies than there is between them. Sure, each one tends each way, but only by so much, and not enough to construct absolutist norms on.

It seems to me that you may be confusing "masculinity" with "has a penis and puts it in vaginas", which, really, is not what is being discussed here.

No, I didn't miss the little excuse line, I just took it in the context of the ten minute talk that followed.

If someone says "I'm not a racist, and Blacks are wonderful people, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut" and then they go on with a fifteen minute rant about single mothers, welfare, and rap music, well, I receive and evaluate that line in its context, namely that the speaker has exposed themselves as a despicable bigot and the little excuse line does not deserve to be taken as an expression of good faith.

Which would possibly be a valid analogy if you Porter's talk was about how awful men and masculinity both are, and not about, say, the ways in which traditional masculinity is damaging to both women and men? Because that, give or take, is what I heard.

Sounds nice but it isn't true. There are attributes women value in a man (to have a potential relationship with) that they don't seek for themselves in that relationship. Ditto men vis-a-vis women.

Because everyone, everywhere, is entirely and exactly straight, and attracted exclusively to traditional and normalised gender performances? That "good qualities" are defined solely as those which are evolutionary advantageous? And this is all entirely and wholly natural and, it would seem, therefore morally correct?

Huh.

Sorry the entirety of that is BS.

I "unpacked my knapsack" of white male privilege and I didn't find a darn thing in there other than that my parents taught me to read before I went to school so that I was able to succeed and earn everything I have so far.

"Privilege" may not, in this context, mean quite what you think it means. It doesn't simply mean simple material advantages, but the privileging of a particular experience; the acceptance of your experience- in this case, your experience as a white American(?) as the default, the norm, with only limited baggage. Doubtlessly, yes, you've gotten as far as you have on at least largely your own effort, but you were given the opportunity to do just that. Other people, maybe less so.

 

[civ_king]

*snip*
I "unpacked my knapsack" of white male privilege and I didn't find a darn thing in there other than that my parents taught me to read before I went to school so that I was able to succeed and earn everything I have so far.

Have you ever considered you supposedly have it better because other people have it worse?
As an Indian people either think I'm an Arab ergo a Muslim ergo evil or they think I'm Indian ergo I'm a genius. It is an endless source of frustration when people either expect you to be evil or a genius

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You you rather everyone consider you to be an evil genius?

 

[Cheetah]

I would suggest that there is, in the Land of the Grown Ups, a distinction made between responsibility and guilt.

I didn't bother with the video, but I just had to comment on this:

One of the things I tried to discuss on feminist blogs before, was exactly that there is a distinction between responsibility and guilt: A woman who is raped has none of the guilt, but - in the applicable cases - may have acted irresponsibly. Rape victims have none of the guilt from a rape, but they should try to act responsibly to avoid it (I.e. don't get wasted among strangers with no friends nearby (and especially don't follow them home), don't walk through certain areas at night, etc.).

The only thing civilised about their replies was that they had to actually write their replies in text...

So I'm very surprised to see someone who labels himself (and argues for) a feminist, to try and make a distinction between responsibility and guilt.

Sorry that this might have been a bit off-topic.

Nobody is suggesting for a second that biology has no influence individuals. What we are suggesting, however, that the narrow, exaggerated social identities and roles offered by a traditional, binary and monolithic model of gender represses individuals by forcing all individuals through what amounts to a bottleneck of permissible behaviour and identity as defined by their genitals. You cannot begin to claim with anything resembling a firm grounding that the particulars of 1950s Western masculinity or femininity represent anything approaching objective human norms, let alone that they are thus worth retaining. Human beings are, despite reactionary proclamations, rather more than their genitals, and that is something that any movement towards liberation must acknowledge and embrace.

Let us be who we are, whatever that may be, and not just who you think we should be.

No. Just NO!

You, me, or anyone else, is not - and never has and must never be - allowed to be "what we are"!

From what I read, you complain about the norms for men and women, and would rather all of them be discarded. Do you think the same about any (all?) other norms in society? We have tens of thousands of norms, expectations, rules and laws about how we - as persons, adults, children, men, women, employees, employers, workers, owners, artists, researchers, etc. - should act. Those norms allow our societies to function. I can't really believe that you would argue that we remove all of them simply because they "are someone else than others think they should be".

Of course, bits and pieces might need to be changed or removed (or added), but simply claiming that social identities represses individuals and should therefore be abandoned is insane.

But "hyper-masculinity" is, in itself, a product of traditional masculinity; a distorted one, granted, but not some freakish and unexplainable occurrence. Every aspect of it is found within traditional masculinity, and robbed of the social contexts and learned self-regulation that keep traditional masculinity from obtaining quite so destructive an edge. It is not traditional masculinity robbed of status, but of restraints. "Nurturing and healing" are both traditionally feminine traits, after all, and liberation, in my mind, knows no gender at all.

What's more, as I have said, the rape which Porter describes is not the totality of his message- his father, for example, is of a generation in which traditional working class masculinity was still relevant, and so not suffering from the deformities you claim, yet still left him emotionally and personally stunted. Furthermore, what of the young men whom Tony described as having observed, directly and indirectly, the limiting and oppressive nature of traditional masculinity, and the pressure it puts on men to conform to very rigid norms? Is that "hyper-masculinity" in action? Was the chivalrous knight of yore more than happy to be told that he jousted like a girl? Someone, I do not believe so, nor, it seems, did Ms. de Pisan.

Hyper-masculinity is not a product of traditional masculinity in any other way than that they both grow out of our biology.

Hyper-masculinity is a creation of the prosperous, well-off, modern society in which traditional masculinity has been looked down upon for the last few decades. Which is quite ironic, since it was the hierarchical, lawful, orderly society created by traditional masculinity that allowed society to get this far. Now, much that is natural for men is being made illegal, and much that is natural for women is being promoted; families break apart; men seldom get much - or any - contact with their children; men are mistrusted and unwanted around children; working-class men find it harder to support a family; and many similar things. So we end up with boys growing up without proper men around that can teach them - both explicitly and implicitly - how to be men.

You're right that hyper-masculinity is robbed of restraints. Real men would keep each other in line to avoid this rampant destruction. And yes, while "nurturing and healing" are both feminine traits, that does not mean that men are deprived of them. It does mean that women usually do - and should - have more of those traits than men. But no man are without them. LoneWolf said that positive traits are good, and of course he is right, but that does not change the fact that some traits are more present in men than in women, and vise versa.

That "men don't cry" is not because we can't, or that we must not. It's as Cheezy said: Men do not cry because crying signals a lack of control, and lack of control is a very bad sign in a leader. And men must seek to be leaders, because of the sexual selection that women drive. And you can't go around calling 9 year-old boys "young men"! They're kids. And while what they said might sound alarming to you, I had a conversation with a 9-year old last week which, if I had taken him on his word, would have conveyed a very crazy message. No boy likes to be compared to a girl, and no girl likes to be compared to a boy. It's as simple as that.

Hyper-masculinity is a product of a feminised society where traditional masculinity is being shunned. Ironically enough, it is not the masculine ones that are being hurt the most by this.

It's almost like the more spiritual amongst us could start to think that this is natures way of getting back at people who choose to ignore it...

Biology is ultimately a unique quality which informs the individual in ways far beyond sex alone, traditional gender is a constructed social norm which dictates acceptable behaviour based solely on biological sex. Fairly basic, I should've thought.

Gender roles are based on our sexually dimorphic biology. It can - and often is - enhanced and intensified through culture, but it is not "constructed" any more than our physical sexual organs.

See, now, you're back at this "feminists hate masculinity" thing, which I'm fairly sure you just made up. Nobody says that masculinity is an absurd fiction, or that it has no association with biology, because that is so obvious as to go without saying. What we are saying is that traditional masculinity, like traditional femininity, represents a limiting and ultimately repressive norm. Some men are masculine, and some people find that attractive. Some women are masculine, and some people find that attractive. Some genderqueer people are masculine, and some people find that attractive. You can describes tendencies in each of those groups, sure, but neither absolute norms nor strictly limited avenues of attraction. Some women like feminine men, some men like masculine women, and so on and so forth. Just let people work this stuff out for their themselves, and stop trying to rationalise the contemporary as the absolute.

People can like whoever they want, that's not the point. The point is:

Most men are masculine, because most women prefer masculine men. Most women are feminine, because most men prefer feminine women. Outliers and statistical abnormalities are not interesting in this discussion, precisely because they are not part of normality in this picture.

And again, all norms are limiting and ultimately repressive. That's the point of norms!

And, finally, Tacitusitis isn't the only one who get the feeling that many feminists really do hate masculinity - and even men.

So you missed the bit at the start where he said "there are some wonderful, wonderful, absolutely wonderful things about being a man"? The twelfth sentence spoken? Sounds like you're rather deliberately misconstruing his talk, if I may say so.

It's not that I believe the Jews are behind everything, but ...

That is what it sounds like to everyone who hasn't bought into his point of view from before the beginning.

What I see is observations that there is no absolute, essential masculinity, and that your grand biological prescriptions do not reflect the actual experience of either men, women or genderqueer people (who, as it happens, exist). "Masculinity is imaginary", less so.

Essentially masculinity is what women value in a man. Femininity is what men value in a woman.

And again, your genderqueer people, while existing, is of no interest in this discussion as they are, literally, abnormal in the greater picture of the interactions between men and women.

Hell, I'm not going to argue the biology with you, as I've said. All I'm saying is that human beings are more than their genitals, and that, it seems to me, their is more variety within each biological sex in emotional, behavioural and intellectual tendencies than there is between them. Sure, each one tends each way, but only by so much, and not enough to construct absolutist norms on.

I disagree. While you may find abnormal individuals among both men and women, if you exclude them from the statistics, you will find that the majority of men and women have more in common within their group than with individuals in the other group.

It seems to me that you may be confusing "masculinity" with "has a penis and puts it in vaginas", which, really, is not what is being discussed here.

That is precisely what we are discussing. Normal, functioning, heterosexual men and heterosexual women are the vast, vast majority of humans.

Which would possibly be a valid analogy if you Porter's talk was about how awful men and masculinity both are, and not about, say, the ways in which traditional masculinity is damaging to both women and men? Because that, give or take, is what I heard.

Funny. I guess the previous knowledge each actor has does influence what the information that is communicated to us actually is.

Because everyone, everywhere, is entirely and exactly straight, and attracted exclusively to traditional and normalised gender performances? That "good qualities" are defined solely as those which are evolutionary advantageous? And this is all entirely and wholly natural and, it would seem, therefore morally correct?

The statistical outliers do not matter in this discussion. Is this point really something we have to argue about?

And let me point out that there is one thing about what is natural. It's quite another thing what is moral. But not all acts taken to increase morality are effective, or even good, especially if they go against how nature works.

Personally, as examples, I think it is immoral that men have a harder time getting sexual satisfaction than women. And I think it is immoral that women have a harder time getting emotional satisfaction than men. But I don't even know if this problem can be solved.

Have you ever considered you supposedly have it better because other people have it worse?

We are poor, because you are rich.

I know I have it better while others have it worse, but I do not accept that they have it worse because I have it better.

 

[galdre]

you keep using women attracted to men with "masculine traits", and men attracted to women with "feminine traits" to justify your argument, but you forget that desiring those traits is part of the social construct

 

[Lone Wolf]

No boy likes to be compared to a girl, and no girl likes to be compared to a boy.

I'd challenge that assertion. While girly boys are a generally derided thing, the "tomboy" stereotype is far less derisive, in popular culture, at least.