Small study has interesting result, suggesting teen boys want an intimate relationship.
Best part:
"I think we need to look at how we socialize boys to become men," Bell said. "We need to change the norm so they don't shut down emotionally."
Then in the comments:
Flawed survey and conclusion! Young boys hormones are always raging. Most are very curious and anxious to have their first conquest of the opposite sex.....then many more after.....I know....I was a young boy once. They are all the same and pretty much want to nail the nearest girl around!
Comment section provides proof of the toxic mindset that turns young boys looking for love into young men who choose to tap that and move on.
And what a day for talking-fedora's blog to have its birthday. Happy birthday, you wonderful talking hat with a blog. On today of all days, you have really shown your worth. You are an absolute champion.
Survey says... X. Ooh, sorry, but I have. Woo, I tell you, sometimes there just aren't enough facepalms. But wait, you're surely going to tell me "Not all MRAs are like that."
John Stoltenberg, and "Why talking about 'healthy masculinity' is like talking about 'healthy cancer'"
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am not entirely ignorant of the fact that my first ever analysis/rant, on Phaedra Starling and her Schrödinger's Rapist article, recently received a metric busload of notes, almost all of them painting me in a negative light. Apparently I come across as a rape apologist and misogynist simply for pointing out that 1 in 4 women cannot be raped at the same time as only 1 in 6 are (having the effect of making both numbers look unreliable), and for not citing my sources.
Please forgive me the terrible sin of not citing sources I didn't need, to discuss an article that didn't have any of its own.
But there is a good point in there somewhere; these are not analyses in the strictest sense. Mainly because the things I am ana- taking a look at, are not themselves set-in-stone scientific documents.
No, by and large, these posts are rants. I call them analyses because "rant" is a word that implies a certain lack of coherence. But by the same token, it also implies a certain degree of anger, which I can understand fits with what I do on this Tumblr account.
One of my least favourite things about the feminist movement was always the way that it collectively portrayed men and masculinity. I accept the fact that my gender contains individuals who have done in the past, and continue to do in the present day, really bad things to women. And I say, of course there are. There always will be bad people in this world, and I cannot change that no matter how hard I try. To think otherwise is to literally think of myself as a god, one who can change the way people think and act.
But to ascribe this behaviour to one gender as though it is exclusive to that gender is ridiculous. Yes, there are violent and hateful men in society, but there are also violent and hateful women in society, and I never ever hate the feminist movement more than when it attacks the concept of masculinity and masculine behaviour as some kind of underlying cause for all the evils that men (and apparently only men) do.
So with that in mind, here's an article on Feminist Current by John Stoltenberg, charmingly titled "Why talking about 'healthy masculinity' is like talking about 'healthy cancer'". You can read it here.
We haven't even started the article yet, and already this is comparing masculinity to CANCER.
I understand—I really do—
PLEASE STOP OPENING YOUR ARTICLES LIKE THIS AFTER IT IS ALREADY ABUNDANTLY CLEAR THAT YOU NEITHER UNDERSTAND, NOR WANT TO UNDERSTAND.
West, Starling and now Stoltenberg. We're building up quite a repertoire of passive aggression and high horses here.
why a lot of people raised to be a man are seeking a gendered sense of self that is separate and distinct from all that has been called out lately as toxic masculinity.
Wait a moment. You understand why men want to be seen in a positive light by other people?
Well STOP THOSE PRESSES! Surely it is ludicrous, nay inconceivable, that men have heard of this notion of toxic masculinity, and instead of wishing to be associated with it, they actually wish to distance themselves from it!
It's like saying "I understand, REALLY I do, why people who enjoy wearing balaclavas as a fashion item wish to distance themselves from armed robbers." The statement should be self-evident unless you believe that all balaclava-wearing people already act this way.
These days a penised person*
The levels of stupid in this article are actually nested; we have to go into the footnotes.
Is this footnote about trans* inclusiveness?
Oh, I wish.
*I began using the term “penised person” in The End of Manhood in order to keep clear that so-called anatomical sex is merely a trait (like eye or hair color), not a ground of being.
Of course this is utter garbage. If you have a trait, whatever it may be, then you are free to use it as grounds for your being (or to put it in simpler terms, as a part of your identity) as much as you like. Saying that the particulars of your genitals, eyes and hair are "merely a trait" is actually super-offensive to anyone who likes to think of themselves in those terms.
"Only a ginger can call another ginger ginger" says Tim Minchin.
"Ginger hair is merely a trait, not a ground of being" says John Stoltenberg.
Anyway,
These days a penised person* would have to be really clueless not to notice all the manhood-proving behaviors that have been critiqued as hazardous to well-being (one’s own and others’). However much that penised person accepts the mounting critique of standard-issue masculinity, he might reasonably be wondering what manhood-authenticating behaviors are exempt from it: What are the ways to “act like a man” that definitively keep one from being confused with “men behaving badly”? Or, put more personally: What exactly does one do nowadays to inhabit a male-positive gendered identity that feels—and is—worthy of respect (by oneself and others)?
Another question I, a man, would also reasonably ask in this situation, is "Why should I let John Stoltenberg decide that for me? I am in fact my own person and I can choose to be masculine in any way I see fit."
Here's a short list I'm thinking up off the top of my head of only the gender-stereotypical ways that men could act like men without behaving badly:
Keeping in shape by going to the gym, but without overdoing it.
Being competitive in situations that call for it.
Providing for their family.
Protecting their loved ones.
That sure is a short list, but it took me all of three minutes to think up. And a couple of them are fairly broad.
Incidentally, one of the citations Stoltenberg does NOT seem to have is one where behaviours that constitute 'toxic masculinity' are outlined or described. I can only assume that it's mostly about violence against women, otherwise it wouldn't have much good reason to be on Feminist Current.
At the same time—as if in an alternate universe—there are legions of people raised to be a man who have been exposed to the criticism of masculinity but are rejecting and resisting the critique with all their might, almost at a cellular level, the way a body’s immune system generates antibodies to fend off an invading infection. For these penised people, criticism of any masculinity is experienced as an attack on all masculinity. Simmering resentment, eruptive anger, and backlash are but a few symptoms of their abreaction. What’s going on inside—where they feel their authentic “This is who I am”—is a life-and-death struggle against what they perceive portends personal annihilation.
"as if in an alternate universe"
Oh screw you Stoltenberg. Men are not a monolith. They are allowed to have different reactions to the same thing. Everyone has a different way of looking at things. But no! If these men had a different reaction, it must be because they came from an alternate universe! Cause men are all the same, am I right?
Also, it might be just me, but the way that Stoltenberg chooses to refer to men smacks of reducing said men to their genitals. Because that's exactly what it is.
Don't feminists get super-enraged when men refer to women only as parts of their body?
And while I'm at it, isn't it also really really offensive towards trans* people of all kinds? I'd love to know, say, talking-fedora's thoughts on it.
For the sake of clarity, I’ll name these two characterizations Reformers and Conservers.
Why? The reformers aren't even reforming anything, they are, by Stoltenberg's own admission, in the middle of an identity crisis.
In fact, why even artificially distinguish these groups at all? Why don't they overlap? Perhaps there are men out there clinging to their own masculinity like a lifeline, while at the same time wondering if there is any hope for the future of masculinity as a perceived non-violent concept.
Thanks to this particular brand of feminism for causing masculinity to be viewed this way.
Of course these are not the only segments of the penised population.
See also: aforementioned trans* people. I mean, Anita Sarkeesian was laughably heavy-handed about it, but at least she was acknowledging the existence of trans* people in her work.
But I’m going to assume they are both prominent enough that most readers will recognize them in broad outline. And I’m going to assume, further, that most readers place some sort of valuation on these two personas. One is better than the other, most readers are probably thinking. One is Good Guy and one is Bad Guy. And no matter whether you believe that Reformers are the real good guys or Conservers are the real good guys, what will likely be on your mind is that one does a superior job of “doing masculinity” while the other does an inferior job.
That's an awful lot of words to be putting in your entire audience's collective mouth, Mr. Stoltenberg.
No, now that you mention it, I don't think that there's any shame in clinging stubbornly to old standards (so long as they don't harm anyone) any more than there is shame in trying to find new ways to be masculine. Whatever works for the individual.
But of course, it doesn't work that way, because Men Are Monolith. Individuals? What are they?
Notice how the better-than/worse-than categorization scheme comes mentally into play?
No, I don't. Thank you for asking.
It kicks in like a habit whenever one’s acculturated higher cortex is presented with any question having to do with manhood. The brain has been conditioned since childhood to perceive the social gender identity manhood through a lens of better than/worse than. It’s how we all learned to experience the identity, and it’s how we all know to recognize “who’s the man there.” It’s also how some of us embody credible manhood if and when we can, and it’s what all of us try to keep safe from if and when we can’t.
If there's one thing I can never ever stand, it's a person who thinks they know, without having ever met me, exactly how my brain works.
Is any of this true? I guess that's up to the men who read this. Do you think of masculinity as a bizarrely black-and-white case of "better/worse at being masculine"? If so, WHY? If not, well that's what I thought, and screw you Stoltenberg.
Because this interior superior/inferior typology is intractably linked to interactional cognition of the gender identity manhood, it’s no wonder that neither Resisters nor Conservers get round to thinking about the template very critically.
But we must do that. We actually must. Our lives depend upon it.
*musical sting*
DUN-DUN-DUUUUUNN!
(Seriously, our lives?)
For reasons implicit in my opening paragraph about Reformers, the notion of “healthy masculinity” has caught on in many circles the past few years. People convene about it, organize and workshop about it, tweet and blog about it, and in general work conscientiously at making the concept mean something viable and valuable that will fill an emptiness in Reformers’ lives—the yawning void left when, beginning a few decades ago, “He acts just like a man” began to shift from laudatory to derogatory.
This article honestly reads like an in-joke which makes up a bizarre feminist victory lap around the shambles that feminism has made of masculinity. Because surely John Stoltenberg knows exactly the part that feminism has played in the demonizing of men. And if he doesn't, then he is not remotely qualified to be writing this article.
It's also worth noting that outside of feminist/social justice circles, "he acts like a man" could very easily be a compliment, though maybe not in so many words. But there are plenty of women and men out there in the world who happen to be attracted to men, so, you know...
Conservers, of course, don’t think there’s anything unwell about masculinity at all. And they definitely believe that masculinity ought not be impugned—as, in truth, it is—by the expression “healthy masculinity.”
This paragraph is utterly perplexing because it starts off with some statements that are true, like those ones up there, and then uses them to argue a point that misses the mark so hard it's like it was aiming for a different archery range in a different hemisphere.
Imagine how a patient in a cancer ward would feel if a newly enlightened roommate began rejoicing about having healthy cancer. Probably offended. Maybe pissed off. Similarly a Conserver will never be persuaded that the masculinity he aspires to and embodies is unhealthy, or an affliction of some sort. Instead, the Conserver will regard the innuendo of “healthy masculinity” as itself a form of life-threatening attack.
This is the single worst comparison I have ever read in my entire life, and it doesn't even hold up under its own internal logic.
Either it implies that these men know that masculinity is cancerous and they embrace it anyway, or it implies that a cancer patient doesn't think that cancer is unhealthy.
(Also, we haven't addressed why masculinity is like cancer)
Now, call me crazy, but I don’t see much long-term promise in talking only to Reformers or only to Conservers.
STOP SPLITTING THEM INTO MONOLITHS, I SWEAR TO GOD STOLTENBERG.
And I certainly see no advantage in sending a message—“healthy masculinity”—that is sure to exacerbate the gender anxiety of anyone who doesn’t believe that subscribing to analog masculinity somehow makes a person sick.
IMAGINE THAT.
IMAGINE THAT PEOPLE DON'T LIKE THE IDEA THAT MASCULINITY MAKES PEOPLE SICK.
Would anyone like it if I did this to femininity? What if I had statistics saying that there were women who beat up men? What if I had books full of essays on gender backed, presumably, by a few statistics and tons and tons of anecdotal evidence? What if I started an alarmist culture by which all males feared for their lives in the presence of women because men were uncomfortably aware of the statistical likelihood of a woman beating him up? Would it be okay then to say that femininity was inherently sick?
No, I don't believe it would.
But besides being a triggering turnoff to Conservers, there’s an even bigger problem with talking of “healthy masculinity”: It’s based on a well-meaning but ultimately faulty premise. It’s not the right fix for the problem. It’s actually a “cure” that reinvigorates a “disease.”
Something tells me that this article is only going to get worse, so I'll come back to it in the morning. You won't notice of course, cause you'll just be reading the next sentence after having finished this one, but my brain is going to need a rest for now.
By the way, masculinity is still a disease.
It is now the next morning, and I've just discovered why John Stoltenberg's name sounded so familiar to me when I read it at the top of the article:
He was married to Andrea Dworkin.
Yes, that's right folks. If you ever wondered what kind of man one of history's worst feminists would ever deign to be in the company of, now you know. It's pretty much exactly what you'd expect.
Feminist Current is henceforth to be classified as a "radical feminist" website.
Many folks of goodwill want whatever’s wrong with the social gender identity manhood to be fixed comprehensively. Their hope is that the fix will avert all those male-gender-identity flare-ups that are well known to cause collateral damage. They want to live in a world where there is no need to be afraid of someone simply because they were born penised and socialized to be a man. In short, they want more harmony among human beings than we are presently accustomed to on the planet.
This is good practice. Whenever you read any kind of argument, an essay, a treatise, or *shudder* a manifesto, you need a certain skill. You have to determine which points are points which the author makes because they support the author's argument, and which points the author is trying to lure differently-minded people into agreeing with so that they can then hit their audience with a "but".
In this case, you can see the "but" coming a mile off. Otherwise the article would just end right here. Unfortunately for me, it doesn't.
But here’s the rub: Any movement or campaign to remedy manhood cannot itself replicate the better-than/lesser-than oneupsmanship upon which—inside everyone’s head—manhood is definitionally predicated.
There are two things fundamentally wrong with this:
No, masculinity is not about oneupsmanship. Competitiveness, maybe, but really that's only a part of it. Stoltenberg only has an idea of how HE views masculinity, and then projects it onto everyone else's thoughts. This view is completely different from how I view masculinity, and probably very different from how a lot of other people view masculinity too.
Of course, Stoltenberg needs no citations. We just know that everybody feels the same way about masculinity, because Men Are Monolith.
Why couldn't masculinity be based around better-than/lesser-than if it wanted to be? Surely there are different ways of being better than or worse than somebody, ways that don't involve violence at every turn.
Every time our acculturated brains want to identify certain penised people who are “doing masculinity” superiorly, we are reactivating the same mental scripts that were imprinted in us when we watched, or participated in, our earliest mano-a-mano fights. Someone was the victor. Someone was the loser. That was the way we learned the meaning of “manhood.”
So what?
The solution to this not-problem is to find ways of being masculine ("doing masculinity" is a really weird choice of words) which might involve a competitive hierarchy (better than/ worse than) which doesn't involve violence. And as if I need to say it, there are MANY circles of life where that could apply.
Instead we have to figure out a way to retrain brains, and reframe what the problem is precisely. To explain what I mean, I’m going to digress a bit and talk about what’s known as bystander-intervention training.
John Stoltenberg, of course, knows all about retraining brains, as a result of living with Andrea Dworkin for thirty-something years.
Basically bystander-intervention training is a program to equip penised people with communication skills, empathy, emotional intelligence, relational tactics, and a sense of personal agency to intervene when they see another penised person about to commit a sexual assault. Bystander-intervention training is widely regarded as one of the most effective means of primary sexual-assault prevention in social situations such as bars and parties where there are likely to be observers.
A big part of the program is teaching trainees (who tend to be Reformers) how to address one or several other penised people (often but not always Conservers) in a way that will effectively interrupt a probable assault-in-progress, create an exit option for a probable victim, and—here’s the tricky part—not precipitate a cockfight with the probable perp.
Of course, in the event that the person doing the assaulting is a woman, their one-track-mind brains will shut down completely, because only men assault people.
I'm loving the stereotype of All Men Are Violent, as you can tell. It says a lot about you as a teacher when you tell your students that you don't trust them to not deliberately incite a fight with someone.
And if the perpetrator decides to attack YOU, which he (or she!) may well decide to do if they're drunk, then I wonder. Does Stoltenberg expect you to defend yourself?
There are many worthy aspects of bystander-intervention training but the one I want to focus on is this: It is practice acting out of one’s moral agency without trying to prove one’s manhood.
WAIT.
GO BACK.
YOU MISSED IT.
Here's an idea: Make men feel that they are being masculine by acting out of their own moral agency. That is to say, make this act a "manly" thing to do. You can see it right? The chivalrous, masculine man is standing up for the about-to-be sexual assault victim, and the lesser man (or woman! It's been known to happen!) who is committing the atrocity will back down, because they feel like less of a man.
Why is this not even a consideration?
One reason a trainee knows the discipline is important is that he knows darn well what will happen if he does try to prove his manhood in such a situation: The contretemps will turn to combat of one sort or another, because the very act of trying to demonstrate one’s own manhood vis-à-vis another penised person will fuel the other person’s manhood-demonstrating responses (which are fired up already, as evidenced by the sexual-assault-in-progress).
WHY is that the inevitable outcome? Because all men are inherently violent and there is not a single masculine quality that is not violent?
And when a trainee overcomes his own anticipatory dread of what might happen to him if he intervenes—when in real life he actually does step up and say or do something that interrupts what might have ended harmfully—he learns another powerful lesson: “I did that. I said that. I stopped that.” Put another way: “I acted out of my own moral agency and I can take personal responsibility for the consequence of that action.” Of course, those words are not literally what runs through the ex-bystander’s mind. But there’s a distinct experience captured in that moment. It’s the experience of acting out of one’s conscience and being who one is.
And why can this not be tied in with the pride of one's masculinity and being masculine? No, seriously, why not?
John Stoltenberg seems to be willingly avoiding the answer to this problem he has constructed.
Learning how to act out of one’s moral agency with consistency—how to tap into one’s capacity for ethical choice-making in a way that other people can come to expect one to do—is not a gendered behavior (it doesn’t come with any particular plumbing), nor is it a gendering behavior (it doesn’t make someone more anything except more human).
Violence, however, is a totally gendered behaviour because Stoltenberg says so.
Also, who is he to say that this behaviour CAN'T make someone feel masculine (or feminine)?
Another digression.
Ever notice how frequently the words “Real men don’t…” appear in male-pattern-violence** prevention campaigns?
And the relevant footnote.
** And I use the term “male-pattern violence” instead of the more common (but less precise) “gender-based violence.”
Because Stoltenberg wouldn't want to imply that violence is ever perpetrated by anyone other than a male. Notice how he offers no explanation or excuse for his usage of this term. Just, all men are violent.
Good lord, this next bit is so awful that I am almost attempted to put a trigger warning on it just for how disgusting it is.
But there are three problems with “Real men don’t…” The first is that the trope conceals and obscures the actual dynamic between manhood-proving and male-pattern violence. Men rape in order to experience themselves as real men. Men hit women in order to show they are the man there. Men buy prostituted women and children in order to get off like a real man—the payoff promised and promoted by pornography. (And that’s the functional purpose of the so-called money shot: to show a penised person ejaculating in circumstances that authenticate him as a real man.)
Men are Monolith, Men are Violent, Men Are Rapists, Pornography is Male, and apparently the problem can not be solved by convincing people that this is not manly behaviour, rather it makes the problem worse.
If I had to pick one paragraph in the entire article which summarized my hatred of John Stoltenberg right now, it would be this one, without question. Good lord this is disgusting.
The second problem with “Real men don’t…” follows from the first: It is a meaningless message to the audience it is intended to reach. Announcing that “real men” don’t commit male-pattern violence is utterly unpersuasive to anyone for whom doing male-pattern violence makes him feel like a “real man.”
Uh, I'm pretty sure that would be a lot more effective than Stoltenberg thinks. Maybe not entirely effective, but it could make a difference. He doesn't seem to consider that men might enjoy being seen as men by society as well as by themselves.
And the third problem with “Real men don’t…” is that while it preaches to the Reformer choir, it sends an unhelpful message. It keeps moral choice-making locked into gender identity rather than allowing it to express moral identity. It keeps “who I am here and now” inside the straightjacket of “I am nobody if not a man.” Moreover, by evoking the construct real manhood, “Real men don’t…” retriggers and reifies the anxiety that pervaded every penised person’s upbringing: “Am I a real-enough boy?” “Am I real-enough man?” “How can I convince myself and others?”
UNLESS you can convince them that they will be "real men" by helping to prevent this awful behaviour, an option which Stoltenberg STILL doesn't seem to have even considered.
That last problem with “Real men don’t…” points to the fundamental problem with the idea of “healthy masculinity.”
Why? Because masculinity is nothing but violence?
Talk about “healthy masculinity” sounds good—at least to the ears of Reformers and people who wish to love them. It offers individual respite from the incessant headlines about men’s crimes against women and other men; it functions as a feel-good exemption from being implicated.
"implicated"?
Because THESE men are responsible for the crimes of THOSE men, because Men are Monolith, am I right?
And yet the idea of “healthy masculinity” does not liberate conscience from gender. “Healthy masculinity” keeps conscience gendered. And it’s not.
Well that's what happens when you have people declaring that men's masculinity is at the root of society's problems. If you write those sorts of articles, then you are the ones gendering the conscience.
Conscience is human. Human only. And only human.
Except that only men do these particular bad things.
Article ends.
Whew, that was quite a ride. I learned a lot about radical feminism from that. I learned that there are over 100 comments on this article largely agreeing with its premises, and I learned that being trans* exclusionary is something to be celebrated, even at the same time as it reduces someone to their genitals (which you would NEVER tolerate if someone did that to a woman, obviously). And in the comments, I learned that courage, hard work and self-sacrifice are not and presumably never will be masculine traits.
I learned that there is no meaningful difference between the feminist views of John Stoltenberg, and that which I have heard belong to Andrea Dworkin. I learned that John Stoltenberg has had a successful career of publishing garbage, presumably exactly like this article, about how he projects his myopic views onto the entire male sex/gender.
I also learned that he wrote a novel about a radical feminist vision of a post-apocalyptic future, which would be a hilarious and laughable idea coming from someone who wasn't, you know, the husband of Andrea Dworkin.
And I have finally, finally, found a place on the internet to discuss feminism that is worse than Jezebel.
Ah well, at least they don't even pretend to be moderate or reasonable.
