Toxic Masculinity

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Doug1943, Aug 15, 2019.

  1. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The United States is heading quickly, historically speaking, for that famous rubbish heap of history. No one can set any dates, or adumbrate what will arise from the wreckage. California might give us a preview of America's future. We're a strong nation, and as Adam Smith said, there is a deal of ruin in a nation. We're like an irresponsible spoiled rich kid just out of adolescence, who suddenly inherits his parents' fortune. A big bank account, so spend, spend, spend. Then the day of reckoning arrives.

    Phase transitions are marked by a steady change of temperature ... heat the object up, and it duly gets hotter. Then ... you keep heating, but the temperature does not rise. What's happening is the extra energy is now going into tearing bonds apart, not making the molecules vibrate faster.

    We're still vibrating, faster and faster. The temperature is not going to be turned down.

    We've got to get out.

    The last incident -- the hoax -- suggests a competition, with prizes. I'm sure it could be crowd-funded.

    The idea is, the best hoax-petition, petition to be circulated on an American campus. You win by getting the most signatures, relative to your school's enrollment.

    Some starter ideas:

    Banning "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas".
    Rewriting the history books so that all portrayals of the Founding Fathers have an equal number of Black and female and gay and lesbian and transgender people.
    Strongly de-emphasizing the role of the colonial militia in defeating Britain. No pictures of white men holding guns, for example.

    I'm sure others can come up with better ideas.

    But this is just something to counter the grim progression of social insanity in our country. Laughing to keep from crying, a 'jest, in a time when jests are few'.

    Serious people have got to start thinking about the future now, including thinking the unthinkable.

    We've got to get out.
     
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  2. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Crying? What are you, a girl?!
     
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  3. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Now c'mon, guy! Keep up with the times! Don't you know gender is a social construct?
     
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  4. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Why are you complaining, I was just doing what you are defending?
     
  5. doombug

    doombug Well-Known Member

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    Blah, blah ,blah......same crap, different thread.
     
  6. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Not sure I understand your point here. Are we on the same side or not? I'm a horrible old conservative, making fun of the current liberal crazyness.

    But to be serious for a moment ... I do get tears in my eyes, sometimes, but the kind of event I might get all teary-eyed about is not likely to have the
    same effect on a Lefty.
     
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  7. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    No. I'm a rational moderate who objects to all forms of extremist hyperbole and rhetoric (meaning everyone hates me :) ). The objections to "toxic masculinity" can get taken to just as ridiculous extremes but I don't your response (or the article you linked) as especially helpful or constructive.

    My point was that an example of the proposed issues with "toxic masculinity" would be the idea that "real men" should never be seen to cry and that doing so for any reason should open them to mocking and abuse. My thought was that in this you might realise that what you actually think is somewhat more balanced and moderate (though unfortunately making it too boring to justify a thread). :cool:
     
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  8. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Okay, got it.

    I actually read the American Psychological Association statement and of course it's got some defensible things in it. But it's not accidental that we're seeing it now, when there is a strong trend among certain people to try to turn biology into ideology and erase the very real psychological differences between your average male and your average female.

    My own approach to 'toxic masculinity', when I have a chance to possibly influence a male teenager, is to contrast the masculinity of the boys crawling through the surf at Omaha Beach under German machine gun fire, with the masculinity of a rape gang chasing a helpless woman.

    The first group, most of them, would happily run their bayonets through all of the second, and that's the right way to express your masculinity. Not sure the APA would agree, though.
     
  9. Collateral Damage

    Collateral Damage Well-Known Member

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    Using simple terminology, 'real men' can cry, quietly, privately and without fanfare, but they don't 'have to'. They have feelings, they just express them differently.

    This modern day notion that men who express their emotions differently then women are 'toxic' is an attempt at weakening the social structure, so that people do not have protective instincts and the weakest become prey. There will always be extremes, just as with anything.
     
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  10. yardmeat

    yardmeat Well-Known Member

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    It gets labelled as toxic when it is unhealthy, and rightfully so.
     
  11. jay runner

    jay runner Banned

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    There's nowhere to go, ya can't get out. Gotta dig in. And you already know the rest.
     
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  12. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    Gross mischaracterization.
     
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  13. HonestJoe

    HonestJoe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I’ve not seen the primary source but it feels like there are some valid points but that are being presented very poorly.

    True, though there is a continuing trend among some other people to maintain and build on the distinctions and barriers too. Lots of people talk rubbish on the topic, consciously or not. I’m not convinced any are worth given much attention, let alone responding to. The article you quoted feels like the opposite side of the same bad penny to me.

    And some would be in both groups. The masculinity is the same, what the men choose to do with it is the difference (not that there would always be an entirely free choice in either case).

    I don’t see the need to celebrate the “masculinity” of warfare, not least because of the long history of female fighters despite the common resistance to their existence. It’s not a bad thing either, just a thing. That’s where I think the whole phrase “toxic masculinity” is a bad choice, since the knee-jerk reactions to defend “masculinity” drowns out any consideration of the “toxicity”. You’d still have people defending it of course, be that out of ignorance or for their own perceived benefits, but it’s make it much harder for them to spin their arguments and much easier to see through them.
     
  14. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    SIMPLE POINT.

    The world is what we the people make it. If the world must change- people must change. NOT CHANGE OTHER PEOPLE, but see to it that the role they play is compatible with a healthy society.
    That is never something you see from those who blame others for everything and demand somebody else fix their problems and make them happy. Never will be. Anyone can help society improve. The problem is the balance of those who want to improve it and those who want to feed on it.
     
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  15. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Depends on what you mean by 'unhealthy'. Certainly there is toxic masculinity, as well as toxic femininity. (I tutor kids, and some of the things the girls have to put up with from other girls are unbelievable. Really cruel, wounding stuff.)

    There's an old cliche line -- a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. You probably remember the 1952 classic movie, High Noon, with Gary Cooper?

    You'll remember the story -- the brave sheriff who ends up facing a gang of killers all alone, because the townspeople are afraid to help him?

    His Quaker wife, whose pacifist scruples are finally overcome, saves his life by shooting a killer in the back [!]

    If you haven't seen this film, or even if you have, click on that Wiki link. There is a very interesting history to it. It was quite
    controversial. But not in the way you might think, with liberals deploring 'toxic masculinity' and conservatives praising it. No,
    its main critic was ... John Wayne!

    Definitely a celebration of a certain kind of masculinity ... and a certain kind of femininity too, of the mother-tiger sort. Men and women are different but not opposites.

    The problem is, 'toxicity' is not a biological response, it's a socially-conditioned one. You can be a hard man, but a good one. Deep psychological impulses, the result of millions of years of ruthless Darwinian selection, get refracted into behavior by the social environment.

    We want a social environment that makes masculinity non-toxic -- except we want it to be toxic to our enemies, domestic and foreign.

    The fear of conservatives is that it's masculinity itself, despite any weasel-words to the contrary, that is under attack.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  16. Collateral Damage

    Collateral Damage Well-Known Member

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    They paste that label far and wide, not just for the extreme.
     
  17. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You bet some would be in both groups. That's why I qualified my statement with "most of them". (See a long discussion of My Lai on this forum a few weeks ago. I could contribute more sad examples of the Good Guys behaving badly, and not just one or two isolated cases either.)

    Celebrating the 'masculinity of warfare' is a tricky one. I'm a big believer in "Dulce bellum, inexpertis", and I absolutely hate those movies and video games where the 'good guys' effortlessly and without casualties slaughter the bad guys ... but in the world as it is now, we've got to be able to wage warfare, and I don't want to de-masculinize the boys who may have to fight it.

    And yes, female fighters. I don't think I would go as far as Mr Kipling here, but this is one of the poems the kids in my Ideal School would have to learn by heart, although I'm sure it wouldn't be allowed in today's schools.

    The Female of the Species

    WHEN the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
    He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
    But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
    He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
    But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
    They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
    'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
    For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
    But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other's tale—
    The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
    Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
    Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
    To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

    Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
    To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
    Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
    Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

    But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
    Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
    And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
    The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

    She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
    May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
    These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
    She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

    She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
    As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
    And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
    Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

    She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
    Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
    He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
    Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

    Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
    Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
    Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
    And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

    So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
    With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
    Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
    To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

    And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
    Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
    And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
    That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

    And I'll bet that there are a lot of men on this forum, liberal and conservative, who know
    just what Kipling was talking about.
     
  18. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Of course this is true ... but ... the social environment one grows up in will make a HUGE difference in a person's character.

    You're strongly influenced by the surrounding 'culture': the customs, habits, things people take for granted, what you see the people around you doing.

    Gradually change the schools so that they de-masculinze the boys and masculinize the girls ... teach the kids that they live in a basically evil, racist country, that must be changed through social activism.

    Put Christian bakers in prison for refusing to violate their conscience.

    This will, over a generation or two, produce 'new socialist man' -- I mean 'new socialist person'.

    We've got to have a society where this isn't done. That society will not be, cannot be, the traditional United States as we have known it. We have to face reality.

    We've got to get out.
     
  19. Moonglow

    Moonglow Well-Known Member

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    The common people do not run the US the elites, wealthy, corporations, Congress and the President does if it fails it is their fault not the common folks that work real jobs for lower pay than those than run the nation.. California has a good GDP no matter what your masters running the nation tell yous..
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  20. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    My masters running the nation haven't sent their instructions to me yet, so I have to rely on The Economist. (You might not know of this magazine -- well worth reading if you don't.) I think everyone knows that California would be the 20th largest nation by GDP if it were a country. But, as I tell the kids I teach statistics to, don't just look at the totals, look at the means, the medians, the standard deviations -- the distribution, in other words, of the data.
    Anyway, a recent report from that publication, which I've posted elsewhere and which you probably missed. (I've emboldened key points, and italicized interjections are mine.)
    [ SOURCE]
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  21. Medieval Man

    Medieval Man Well-Known Member

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    True story, involving a relative and his son. A bit long, but entertaining:

    My relative and his wife are raising a wonderful little boy who had a difficult teacher in the second grade. He's honest, playful and full of energy. No learning disabilities but like many boys, he'll bounce in his seat when he asked to sit for long periods of times up to an hour. I'd describe him as rambunctious, curious and somewhat fearless when it comes to challenging himself physically.

    No issues in kindergarten and first grade, but his second grade teacher asks for a meeting with the parents not long into the school year. She tells the parents she believes the boy is ADD and said he is beginning to disrupt the class by 'acting out.' She wasn't able to provide concrete examples but said he always wants to take charge when in groups and holds in his feelings. The parents asked for examples of this and the teacher said many of classmates cried when watching a sad documentary about wildlife yet he remained tearless.

    The teacher said the parents needed to meet with the school nurse to explore medication to make their boy 'normal.'

    The mom begins sleuthing, finds the teacher's fully public Facebook profile and learns:

    The teacher is childless and appears to have never been in a relationship with a man.

    She apparently hates her farther, who divorced her mother when she was little girl; she was subsequently raised by a single mother and does not appear to have any men among friends she regularly interacts with, and appears to have had little influential dealings with men as she grew up.

    The teacher is an avowed feminist active in various leftwing groups in their community.

    She has also had numerous issues with boys in her prior classes. The mom spoke to a couple of these moms, found out that just about every year she will decide one or two boys are uncontrollable and will try to remove them from her class.

    The parents did remove their boy from this teacher's classroom and he did not have any issues with his new female teacher. He's now in fourth grade and his behavior continues to be exemplary.

    Anecdotal? Sure. To add to the picture, she's in her early 30s, overweight and often dyes parts of her hair in neon colors. And she owns cats.

    The questions we need to ask: how many man-hating feminist teachers with little male influence their entire lives are now classroom teachers who have a distaste for active boys? How many will see signs of what they consider 'toxic masculinity' in the little boys in their charge and attempt to change the behavior of these boys?

    Think of the results, especially if these little boys are being raised by single mothers themselves. Talk about having repressed feelings when they grow up hating themselves and others, especially women, while taking a multitude of personality-changing drugs in order to make them 'normal' in the eyes of leftist teachers who reject the idea of strong men. How many of these cowardly little weasels who commits mass murder fit this description?

    We know that many, many public school teachers possess stong leftist ideologies they often will try to instill in their students; where does it end?
     
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  22. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Whoa ... ....
    I subscribe to Columbia University's Teachers College Record. There you see the teacher trainers express their political views. Very depressing. And this is what they think 'officially' ... the actual practice of the teachers trained by these people is probably much worse. A kind of collective insanity, like the Salem Witch Hunts.
    Now add in a mix of Heavy Metal as the Left kick away all constraints and moral codes
    [ SOURCE ]

    We're going down.
    We've got to get out.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  23. spiritgide

    spiritgide Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The process is as you describe, highly controlled by the environment around you. But as for "getting out".... to where?
    Our species in people- and that environment can be as good or as poor as we are willing to make it, and unless you intend to be a hermit, there will always be other people affecting that environment. Move to another planet- and populate it with.... People. Imperfect humans.

    If we don't lean to behave ourselves, I think nature will simply take it's course and we will be the first species to be totally responsible for it's own extinction.
     
  24. Doug1943

    Doug1943 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    As a very long-term perspective, literally 'getting out' may be an option. Once we are economically rich enough and technologically advanced enough to colonize other planets, perhaps after 'terraforming' them. But that's many generations away.

    Right now, people who don't want to see America die must begin to work out a strategy for saving a geographically-smaller but healthy section of it. We started with 13 states .. there is no reason to think we always had to get more and more.

    We must begin thinking and talking about a peaceful separation -- which legally would require a Constitutional Amendment recognizing the right to it under certain circumstances.

    This sounds completely unrealistic right now, of course. If I proposed it at a meeting, people would laugh. Fifty years ago if I had said a Christian baker would be bankrupted for not bakng a wedding cake for the marriage of two men, or that a male athlete would be allowed to paticipate in a women's athletic contest because he decided he was a woman, or that there would be a stock exchange in Moscow -- the laugher would have been far, far louder.

    It's very interesting: every thoughtful conservative I have talked to about this agrees with my diagnosis -- the culture is mortally ill, it doesn't take any insight at all to see that -- and most of them with my prognosis -- very grave, almost certainly fatal in a way we cannot yet predict, although we can be pretty sure it will be horrific -- but they stop at my proposed cure. Not a cure really, sort of like an inverted amputation -- but this time to save a healthy limb while gangrene spreads throught the body.

    And yet they can offer none of their own solutions. They become Micawbers, hoping 'something will turn up'. Maybe there will be another Electoral College miracle....Maybe a booming economy and increased brain decay on the part of the Democrats -- I think they're now looking for an actual living cop-killer to speak at their convention -- will result in a swing to the Republicans.

    And they may be right. I hope they are. We might hold back the tide for another few years. But not forever, which is why we must start talking now about the possibility of a peaceful separation.

    And even if the Republicans won the next five Presidential elections, that would just be superficial. The decay would go on at the level of colleges and schools and city councils, on the streets. The bacterial infection is in all of our institutions. The normal electoral process of give-and-take and compromise doesn't apply down at that level.

    Just begin the talk, to normalize the idea. The way the idea of jailing a Christian baker started. One step at a time.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019
  25. Surfer Joe

    Surfer Joe Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Lol...The 'unthinkable' among the right seems to be the notion that it's your country and you all try to work together to make it better.
    All the right can do is demonize everyone and prattle on about breaking up the US. They have no imagination or love of country.

    Maybe they should get together with trump and pony up the dough to buy Greenland for all the disgruntled white nationalists in the US and Russia and then they can all move there and carve out a brave new white world for themselves.

    Of course, being climate change deniers as well, their white land won't stay white for long, as their conspicuous consumption causes all the ice and glaciers to melt.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2019

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