I was fortunate enough to be in this position until writers I like started writing JP takedowns.
I have tried to avoid discussing these articles with my friends and spouse, real living loving phenomenal successful driven humans who have no idea this brand exists.
I am excited for some of the real (intersectional, trans-inclusive) discussions of masculinities I have started to see happening, because until we do this work seriously, I see masculinity just becoming more of a grift target.
It’s a pretty straightforward grift: find someone who thinks they deserve to be doing better than they think they are. Then convince them the way out of that hole is through listening to you.
(Sorry for brief delay, got home, had to put some groceries in the fridge.)
USA flavored kyriarchy makes cis men, especially white cis men, especially straight white cis men, ideal targets for this grift. Easy to see why, right?
Sexism devalues women and women-connected things, but as it over-values men and men-connected things, it creates this masculine ideal that actual lives-in-being men can never achieve.
And that's the finger trap. Men know they're not the masculine ideal, because the masculine ideal is just that, an ideal—it can't be real, it's like the vanishing point, infinitely removed. But *not* being that is being feminine, which is Dangerous.
Add that to the fact that late capitalism generally produces anxiety, that anxiety (that you'll not be cool, not be healthy, not be sexually attractive, not be IN CONTROL) is its greatest product, and you have a population of ideal marks.
The thing I find interesting about this is how easy it is to stop being an ideal mark if you stop buying into any one of the pieces of this incredibly bad system of ideas. Like, if gender's not a binary but an immanent negotiated experience? You're out of the trap.
If women and women-aligned stuff are great, valuable, cool? You're out of the trap. If your vision of masculinity is bigger, weirder, more interesting than that strange transcendental construct 14 year olds pretend to be in forum arguments? You're out.
I think of it like an impinged joint: pain, and limited range of motion, comes when one set of muscles grows too strong, and the balancing muscles are forced to stretch too much to compensate & end up weaker. Have to strengthen the second set, and stretch out the first set.
Stretching out a tense muscle is painful; pain is hard. The masculinity grift lies in persuading folks the pain isn't necessary. It's a dangerous grift. You get torn muscles that way.
And that's why I think good real (meaning: intersectional, feminist, trans-inclusive, you know, "real" as in "including masculinities that actually exist") conversations about masculinities are so important—they're part of the vital anti-kyriarchcial work.
Anyway. Sorry, that got a bit long. It's work I think is vital. I'm eager to support the conversation as it takes shape.
Thanks for listening! Happy to discuss further, but not late on a Wednesday when I need to get ready for tomorrow. Take care of yourselves. Work for the liberation of all sentient beings.
