Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

Aside:

Geeze, are we putting a lot of potholes into the road of life for men.

Alcohol, legal weed, illegal drug wars that went no where, prescription drugs that were vastly over-prescribed, schools that were underfunded for decades, the near death of the male teacher, nearly no 'good' male role models, the death of the African-American father, the now near death of any American father, hyper-pornography in your pocket, tinder and the end of dating, and now hyper-gambling, video games infinitely more rewarding than real achievement, the total collapse of male third places, the end of labor jobs that gave men identity and structure without a degree, the school to prison pipeline and the poliece that have to turn routine discipline into criminality, gutting of vocational education, social media optimized for women's social dynamics that leaves most men villainized, the crisis in friendship, the death of male initiation or rites of passage, antidepressant over-prescription, the collapse of religious and fraternal institutions, etc.

The throughline is that nearly every structure that gave boys meaning, community, accountability, and identity has either collapsed or is being actively dismantled by buildings full of PhDs.

I hear the the young women say 'Men Suck' and are just doing away with them.

They should, it makes total sense.

And we're at fault.

“The throughline is that nearly every structure that gave boys meaning, community, accountability, and identity has either collapsed or is being actively dismantled by buildings full of PhDs.”

I think this is under appreciated, in part because it’s incredibly hard to fix. There’s a void where the US cultural image of masculinity used to be. As an adult man, I couldn’t really describe what a prototypically masculine person looks like or does or thinks anymore.

There’s a loss of identity there that we haven’t really rebuilt.

I wouldn’t point entirely at the PhDs, though. There were some real issues that were called out (inability to communicate, over reliance on anger as an emotional outlet, etc), but the identity could have stayed largely intact.

The killing blows were from segments of men who doubled down on the most negative aspects of masculinity, and made the rest of the men flee from that image of masculinity to avoid any association. I would rather drop masculinity from my self-perception than be associated with Andrew Tate or Logan Paul or whoever else.

I don’t think I know any men that have “modern masculinity” (whatever that would mean) as part of their core identity. They’re either clinging onto a Chuck Norris kind of masculinity, or just don’t have a strong gender component of their self-identity. They’re not feminine, they just don’t do anything to be “manly”. Being “manly” matters to them about as much as whether they’re a Coke or Pepsi person.

> I wouldn’t point entirely at the PhDs, though. There were some real issues that were called out (inability to communicate, over reliance on anger as an emotional outlet, etc), but the identity could have stayed largely intact.

To be clear, I referencing the PhDs that are more concerned with getting you addicted to things, the STEMy ones I guess, not the ones talking about gender and the like, the humanities ones in that dichotomy. But still, great point here.

> The killing blows were from segments of men who doubled down on the most negative aspects of masculinity, and made the rest of the men flee from that image of masculinity to avoid any association. I would rather drop masculinity from my self-perception than be associated with Andrew Tate or Logan Paul or whoever else.

Not knowing those guys personally and looking from the outside in, I'd say that those two are really just broken people with traumatic childhoods and father figures. I won't get too in the weeds there, but their success comes from pain. And to be very clear, they are shitheads that actively choose to make the world worse - they deserve no excuses, the condemn themselves - but they do deserve explanation.

To me, their fame and fortune is a 'right place, right time' phenomenon. Without the systems of addiction and anger that social media creates, we would never had heard of them. The place to set blame is not on the 'influencer' but on the system that created him. Tate is responsible for himself and is damned by his own hand, but Zuck is man (and his ilk) who intentionally created the conditions for Tate to grow.

> I don’t think I know any men that have “modern masculinity” (whatever that would mean) as part of their core identity. They’re either clinging onto a Chuck Norris kind of masculinity, or just don’t have a strong gender component of their self-identity. They’re not feminine, they just don’t do anything to be “manly”. Being “manly” matters to them about as much as whether they’re a Coke or Pepsi person.

Yeah, I don't know what 'modern masculinity' would mean either. It is quite fractured these days. Perhaps that is intentional or a side effect of the 'algorithm'. I'm very much still a novice at 'men's studies', but what I have learned is that being 'a man' is something that males must pursue actively. Unlike with women and menarche, males must continuously prove their manhood (there are very few cultures that do not do this). Man is an active verb, so the saying goes.

> being 'a man' is something that males must pursue actively.

I don’t know about this, but guys like this exhaust me. I figure skate, which is a stereotypically feminine hobby by association with its predominant participants (women). Of the few men who I do see figure skating, I rarely question their masculinity. If anything, I often notice it because I see how their unique strengths manifest in the sport through power and agility. It’s reflected in the height in their jumps or the speed in their spins. They do a thing I also happen to find interesting, the best way they can do it their way, and they don’t make a big deal about it. That’s attractive! It seems pretty masculine to me.

I can only hope that when men are alone with each other, they’re occupying each other’s space because they feel comfortable with each other, not because they’re proving anything. That’s how I choose friends, anyway!

Also, rinks are a third space. Now that I think about it, they’re arguably for men more than women. Maybe that’s a coincidence? It’s hard to say.

> Unlike with women and menarche, males must continuously prove their manhood

I don’t personally find this to be true from the womanhood side of things without further clarification. Simone de Beauvoir famously said “Women are not born. They’re made” and I still find this to be true today even though many things no longer default to being for men. I think I probably “perform” womanhood for other women more than I do for men, and as I said above, that doesn’t necessarily make them like me more or vice/versa. It’s more of a common ground thing.

From the little that I have read, being 'a man' seems to be a human universal. In that, all males are in the status game competition wether they like it or not. Exiting the status game is of course optional, but seems to come with some pretty negative side effects (health, life outcomes, self-worth, etc). Not every culture is like this, but the exceptions prove the rule. I can't find the source or the citation, but I remember that one of the few modern examples of this is some tribe in New Guinea (natch) that suffered some pretty extreme effects from colonialism and that lead to their quite unique culture, much to their continued detriment. Essentially, nearly, but not every, every male human for the last ~3000 years has lived in a culture of status games.

To add to that, the 'gang' also seems to be a human male universal. In that, a gang is the unit of status male humans interact with. The laws and 'honor' of the gang is what matters. These 'gangs/honor bands' can be quite different too, with typical results when they come into conflict with other groups like this (usually violence).

I'm not saying that we need to continue with 3000 years of this. Look at modern medicine, for example. But I am saying that if we are going to tear down this patriarchy system of 'gangs/honor bands' then we have to replace it with something viable for those participants. Right now, it seems to me that most males are desperate for a return to a more tightly held and conforming system than one that we have been making.

On the figure skating angle: My SO is a figure skater too! It's a very interesting place to observe masculinity and status. I'd venture to say it's one of the few places left in western culture that celebrates beauty and grace in the heterosexual male form. Ever since industrialization and Napoleon, the male fashion has outright rejected beauty. Mostly, I think, this is because male fashion follows that of military fashion, and as war industrialized and systematized in set uniforms and the invention of clothes sizes, male fashion then became, well, drab. You might find a bit of color and pattern in homosexual male fashion, but the heteros are just bland by and large. Grace is just wholly left on the road as well.

Figure skating seems to be the one place where grace and beauty are still alive for hetero 'men'. The Raspberry's recent Olympics outfits were decidedly a return to beauty from Chen's mall-ninja shirts and black pants. In fact, I would propose that the media's reaction to Ilia's nerves further cements my point that he must 'prove himself' to regain his 'honor'. Most of the reaction being that he 'has time' still, and not to worry. As if he is now on a quest that he must fulfill like some 5 act plot or movie.

Not to mention men in their early 20s now hit puberty during the height of the #MeToo movement. Then they aged into their late teens watching Epstein and all the other creepy men taking the spotlight.

Super necessary and important movements but it had to be confusing going from a 13 year old to a young man while being barraged with how evil men can be.

In 2018 I was in my mid 20s living in San Francisco and "white men are evil and are the problem" was the accepted stance. Like disagree with that statement at your peril. In my mid 20s I could contextualize it as a passing a phenomenon, but could a 16 year old?

Men having to hear about how women dont like being abused are the real victims of sexual abuse.

When the issue was gangs dealing drugs and engaging in street violence, overwhelming majority of perpetrators were men. And they were talked about specifically as a young men issue. It was not confusing to young men.

You don't think inundating the media with footage of young (specifically black) men dealing drugs and being in gangs in the 80s/90s had any impact on those young men?

Cool take.

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