posted
Masculinity in crisis, as usual. <== that links to a thought-provoking article on Graun.co.uk about routine steroid abuse among the upcoming generation of young men.
I suppose one could put it down to the wholesale take-off of gay by straight male culture that, commercially at least, minces along under the heading 'male grooming' but I think there's more to than that. That fact is, since Kurt Cobain shot his block off, male role models have become either hopelessly niche or - more often - marketed primarily at women rather than men.
No-one has wanted to be 'like their dad' for at least thirty-odd years, so who do men want to be like?
1. Who are the men you want to be? 2. What are the three essential qualities of straight maleness?
I will pf a little later, once I've shot, stabbed or shagged something for me dinner.
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The first thing about men is that they are beautiful. The next thing about men is that they are badly flawed. You'd take them back if they weren't all made like that. It's probably true that they're incomplete women, walking abortions, female cripples etc, but that neither means they're ugly nor that they should be eradicated, Valerie. In the same way that the strongest, best-functioning of us are duty-bound to take care of the less fortunate among us - the disabled, the mentally ill - we ought to look after men in the same way. Just as homos have defective brains, i.e. are defective heteros, men are defective women. High, toxic levels of testosterone compel them to violent behaviour. We mustn't, however, blame them for violence, abuse, rape - they usually can't help themselves. They're weak-willed, puppets to their emotional compulsions. Instead of eradicating men, we should tame them.
To do this, we must vaccinate them with doses of their own illnesses, these being uncontrollable propensities for violence and sex. If we expose them to low levels of aggression and controlled sexual activity, we can tame their wild behaviour. We must also attempt to alert them to their own beauty, and their own potential for affection. We must hold mirrors up to them in the form of other men, that is, we must encourage them to engage in homosexual behaviour. Naturally, they will resist, but we must devise strategies effective in coaxing them. We might, for instance, try to lure men to homosexuality via heterosexuality. Dangle pussy in front of their faces but insist they suck a waiting cock before they are permitted to sample the prize. We must not succumb to the temptation to convince men they ought to be ashamed: self-hatred serves only to breed more violence. Instead, we must help men to come to terms with and accept their inferiority, their crippled states, to love themselves as defective women. There are, it is true, men who are in fact devoid of all aesthetic beauty. These men pose a moral dilemma. Being physically ugly, they have little to offer the world, and are of little worth. These men, at least, we may legitimately scumm.
The specious contradiction of glorifying the objectification of men while denouncing the objectification of women is not hypocrisy. It is a process of restoring balance, and therefore order, to the world. For centuries women have been the sexual playthings of men, the sensual vistas of the male's testosterone-glazed gaze. This imbalance of power has contributed more to the downfall of human civilization than plague, famine, natural disaster and climate change combined. The suppression of women has meant the suppression of intelligence, tenderness, compassion, self-fulfilment, joy. It has meant the devastating rise of hatred, jealousy, bigotry, blind stupidity, arrogance, self-deception, corruption, worldwide discontent. It is the true pollution of the planet, the real cause of global instability. Balance must be restored. Equality, much touted, is not the means of restoring balance. Instead, women must subject men to a similar period of subjugation, objectification, humiliation, degradation.
We shouldn't necessarily imitate men's subjugation women women blow by blow. Different punishments carry same weights. For example, we mustn't encourage men to shave their body hair, to primp and preen, to moisturise and exfoliate, as men have encouraged women. Men's body hair, their masculinity and (tamed) animalism, is beautiful, stimulating. We mustn't mutilate them just to spite them. It is the act of objectification which is important. The reduction of men to beautiful, exciting, animalistic, hairy objects of our lustful gazes. The process by which we achieve this objectification is not important. We must tame them how we like them best, and not obsess about inflicting on them exactly mirrored punishments.
Men crave affection more than women do, but in order to propagate the fallacy that men are stronger, more independent and wilful than women, they are brought up in an environment that discourages male affection, male emotion, male love. They therefore have to disguise their desire for affection in ostensibly masculine behaviours - namely aggression, abuse, mockery, humour, violence. If women encourage men to be openly affectionate with each other, their need to resort to emotional disguises will dissipate. We have to ensure every man experiences such encouragement. If any men are left out, their jealousy will compel them to ridicule other men whose destructive behaviour is on the verge of changing. Men are intensely jealous creatures. They destroy whatever it is they envy in their friends by mocking, humiliating, misleading ... anything that will inspire insecurity in their envied victim and cause said victim to resort to his old ways. That is, men drag each other down to infernal levels.
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posted
The trouble with talking about what defines a man as being a man, is that you imply that these traits or characteristics are exclusive to men. You can say, for instance, that you think that a Man should be strong, both physically and emotionally, and that he should be self confident. But many women correctly identify these characteristics in themselves, without losing any of their femininity. It suggests that these things are not, in themselves, masculine, but the way in which these traits manifest themselves in men are distinctive from the same characteristics in women.
But an ideal man should be strong. He should have confidence in his opinions and his decisions, but without being arrogant because arrogance leads to close-mindedness and the ideal Man is definitely not close-minded. But the ideal Man shouldn’t be confused with the New Man, who is all black and white, baby-holding and floppy haired. New Man has too much femininity about him, too obsessed with being emotionally sensitive and beautifully androgynous. He may spend more time working on his body image than the ideal Man, but his worryingly low BMI, sloping shoulders and prominent iliac crests are little more than glitzy wrapping for an inferior product, whose values are all outwardly facing and femini-centric.
An ideal Man should be like a Doc Marten boot. Tough, rugged, practical, timeless, borne of simple principles with easily understandable motives. Instantly identifiable, and content simply to be what it is.
There should be nothing artificial about him. His physical strength is not something which is created by hours in the gym, but by hard work. The ideal Man pushes himself physically and mentally. He relishes competition, especially against himself. He doesn’t care if he has perfectly sculpted pecs; they’ll be as big or small as they need to be to do the things he needs them to do. But he understands how his body works and knows how to get the best out of it. He takes care of himself, but not by constantly preening, or applying countless toning creams and moisturizers.
But in all things, he absolutely exudes masculinity. He’s absolutely 100% Man, and completely unashamed of the fact.
The ideal Man is probably a cross between King Leonidas, and Brian Blessed.
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posted
I don't know, Fionnula - although I've never actually been inside a maximum security prison, from what I understand, the forcible introduction to one's feminine side doesn't always result in balanced, resentment-free individuals.
I'm not to sure about your fetish for 'taming', either; homo domesticus - you know, hands in anorak pockets, trails two steps behind his wife or gf down the shopping centre - seems more the rule round here than the purple-todgered Norman Mailer type you conjure up. It sounds like a bit of the old wish fulfilment to me: you know - get some rufty-tufty type in a headlock... wrastle him to the floor... bend back his little finger until he submits. Once he's submitted, of course, you get up and walk away, having lost interest.
Rather than the medicine, I think men being humiliated probably constitutes the disease in much of the world - especially the Middle East, where humiliation stokes up the kind of fury that mere repression or poverty could never generate.
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posted
Omg Ben. This is like when a typical boy reads the first page of Solanas and is all like But but but that's scientifically inaccurate the Y gene isn't an "incomplete X gene" it doesn't have "an incomplete set of chromosomes" at all this girl's an idiot she doesn't understand Science. Fuck the facts, love the vision.
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