Male bashing in the media

The issue shouldn’t even be up for discussion (yes, I know, isn’t it ironic) in any university.

I don’t think that’s the PC nomenclature…

Weren’t you the one who was talking about land whales? Oh, no…sorry. That was @Andrew0409. :sunglasses:

Ugly characters (men and women both) sounding off about who they hate the most on YouTube remind me of this:

Except those people have their lives written on their faces instead of hidden in a picture.

Wilde’s fiction and plays are dismissed these days as mawkish and flippant (and some of it is) but I still recommend reading him.

Apropos of nothing, some of you might be interested in some commentary from the other side of the fence. This is Karen Straughan with her (sympathetic) take on what’s up with men and the conflict with Feminism2.0 - in this particular video on the subject of marriage. She appears to have created a whole bunch of intelligent commentary on these issues and I’m surprised she’s not more well-known.

Although she apparently shares some of JPs views, her opinions are more of a counterpoint than a transposition of them. Well worth watching, although her videos are often much longer than most people will have time for - she would double her watchability by halving her speaking time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlvMAS_20K4

This one is great stuff, although she takes a few minutes to get into her subject - which, broadly speaking, is ‘why do men get bashed for no reason?’ :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faeT4fIFAcg

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You’re still telling us the meaning of “toxic masculinity” is “masculinity = innately toxic”, which I’m not seeing anywhere except your posts (and perhaps Ibby’s).

Again, the actual meaning of the TM theory is that undesirable behavior like murder is not a manifestation of true masculinity (“deep masculinity”) but, in some cases, a symptom of the kind of mental illness that men are more susceptible to. Efforts to prevent and treat mental illness (says the theory) should take gender differences into consideration. You’re ignoring that because you want to conflate it with your understanding of third wave feminism i.e. “men are innately bad ergo masculinity is innately toxic”.

If you insist on that angle, you miss the fact that the theory agrees with you on certain issues, and you miss everything else the theory has to offer.

Sure, but who is to decide the remedy to the problem? And who has the right to remedy the problem?

Who has the right to decide what all these terms mean?

It seems like there’s no discussion unless you agree with the feminist agenda. I don’t want the state or schools to dictate say how I raise my sons in the future.

You sound just like @bojack about 100 posts ago. That’s the same guy you disagree with so strongly about what constitutes respectable behavior for a mentally ill person – a disagreement, btw, that TM theorists would tell you is exactly the kind of thing they’re talking about. “If I were a real man I wouldn’t have these thoughts/feelings, ergo I’m not a real man, ergo I’m worthless, ergo I don’t deserve to live.” Not necessarily what happened to Anthony, but a logical theory nonetheless.


You can’t remove the basic capacity for violence from any human brains, male or female, without causing damage. Otherwise we would have enslaved your species long ago. :flying_saucer:

And who’s suggesting that anyway?

In fact I read a lot of psychologists that are worried about some of the concept of feminist movements like ignoring basic biological and psychological difference between men and women. I think most would say repressing some of these things are actually really harmful and can have dire consequences like say chopping up people and becoming a serial rapist.

Biological differences strike back! :popcorn: These differences are not strong enough to justify gender discrimination in conscription, according to Andy, but they are strong enough to explain why feminists are responsible for men committing rape and murder, apparently. :ponder:

For example, martial artist have known for a long time that gaining the ability to channel our capacity for violence through martial arts helps actually avoid violence and confrontation.

Great. :+1:

And you handle confrontations differently vs say a person who has no capacity for violence.

Except that such people basically don’t exist. (I’ll concede quadruplegics are close enough.)


Feminism is also fractioned. I tend to speak about the modern, more radical and 3rd wave feminists vs the older generations.

Yes, which is why you should stop generalizing. You wouldn’t want all masculinists to be painted with the same brush, would you?

Imagine the outrage if I coin “toxic femininity” as a thing.

Too late – I already did! :stuck_out_tongue:

But if you use it as a convenient way to diss “feminists” (whatever that means), you’re not really accomplishing anything. A proper parallel would be “femininity becomes toxic when X”, so explain how that happens. There’s nothing inherently feminine about triggered landwhale memes, as far as I can see.


Not mutually exclusive! :yin_yang: Some people enjoy being bitter, unhappy and weighed down by their beliefs. Take out “men” and fill in the blank with whatever eats you. For example, another group that starts with M… :roll:

If you spout enough vitriol and get enough positive feedback for it, you’ll start to genuinely believe your own blather, even if it’s illogical, internally-inconsistent, or has valid intellectual objections against it.

:+1:

I don’t think there are many people who could build a career out of repeating stuff they don’t believe. Apart from anything else, it would be quite hard to convincingly deliver it to an audience.

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Now you’re being naïve, Finsky. :2cents:

It’s only a matter of time.

I recall Greer arguing that masculinity in itself was the problem. I think she used the example of male chimps eating their young.

To be honest, I really have no desire to hang out with a bunch of guys who talk about feelings and cry. I guess that makes me toxic.

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Of course there are people who think that way. You can also find people who believe femininity is the problem, or atheism, or superstition, or whiteness, or blackness, or…

We shouldn’t let a handful of radicals hijack useful psychological theories.

To be honest, I really have no desire to hang out with a bunch of guys who talk about feelings and cry.

Isn’t that what we’re doing right now? :slight_smile: :rage: :cry: :confused: :thinking:

I’m not sure how it is a useful theory. I think even if we raised boys like girls they would still show aspects of toxic masculinity as men. I don’t buy this trend that everything’s a social construct and down to nurture. Nature’s much more powerful. I agree to an extent with Greer in that regard.

Who said I was selling it?

I didn’t. I’m discussing toxic masculinity*.

*in a gender studies context, by the way

Wait, are we saying here that, even though there are no biological differences between men and women, men are inherently more susceptible to certain mental illnesses?

In any case, most murderers - indeed most violent criminals - are not mentally ill. At worst they have personality disorders, which isn’t the same thing. A lot of them are as rational and “normal” as you or me, apart from the fact that they’re more violent (ie., they have different axioms concerning the applicability of violence).

Sure, but the point here is that third-wave feminism suggests that girls are not inherently violent anyway, ergo there’s nothing to remove.

“Capacity for violence” doesn’t just boil down to having bones and muscles. Being violent is a multi-faceted skill, and someone with the capacity for violence must have those skills even if he chooses not to use them. Andrew is correct that people who have that capacity tend to handle confrontations differently to people who could not be effectively violent even if they had to.

It’s really only happening in the US, but it’s now common practice there to prevent kids engaging in “horseplay” and “rough and tumble”, which basically means any sort of physical activity. In the UK competitive sports are not encouraged. The outcome seems to be the exact opposite of the intended one. I recall reading somewhere that these constraints are linked to ADHD.

No doubt there are a few. Actors, for example. The girl in the Dave Rubin video might just be an obsessive attention-seeker. However if those lecturers are just putting on a show (as opposed to describing their actual beliefs) they could probably earn more in Hollywood.

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In my experience the most macho guys are often the most emotional. I think it has something to do with anger being the most acceptable way for a male to express themselves.

Another great video from the female perspective. And she’s very attractive, which of course I’m not allowed to mention, because that’s objectification. Unfortunately this is very long, so it’s something to consume in bits when you’ve got nothing better to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT9jeK30yH8

And who besides like the very few minority of violent criminal thinks it is masculinity. It sounds more and more like a useless theory used to point to the negatives to all things men more and more you say it because no normal man thinks it’s manly to chop up their girl…

You miss the point, the point of bringing toxic masculinity is to change the TM culture isn’t it for feminists? Who’s going to determine what changes need to be made. We already see things like schools getting rid of “violent” games for boys…

What? You don’t have to be a combat soilder in the military is my point. Conscripts, even males who are not physically fit enough don’t train as such. I’ve yet to hear a feminist who champions gender equality fight for their right to protect their county.

And you do realize that repressing sexuality and such fucks people up right? Don’t beat the straw man and change up my words because you damn well know what I mean but took it to an extreme Cathy Newman style.

Unfortunately the radicals have taken over in the crowd. Other feminists are even being shunned today for daring to even having a different opinion. That’s another issue I have with the whole thing. It’s not a discussion anymore.

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Of course it can be, for one, we know that most kids exhibit anti social behaviors. It’s not unnatural, however those that are on the extreme outliers of that and do not change by around the age of 15, they almost always develop anti social personality disorder into adulthood that leads to a high incarceration rate, high chances of drug and alcohol abuse. Feminist rarely use or often contradict what psychologist know. Instead of say giving kids and mostly boys who exhibit more of these behaviors, they chalk it up to it’s a social construct… or it’s TM. When evidence show some biological reasons for it.

But it still begs the question, who the hell is determining how to “reeducate” boys on not being “toxic” and what is “TM”

Besides things like the removal of any “aggressive” games in school. Here are a few ridiculous ones that require boys to attend workshops on indoctrinating boys how to grow up in a feminist society and they are the problem.

Again, the majority of feminist disregard evidence based data. We know from data that shows in general men are less agreeable compared to women. This slight deviation in behavior played out in the world can explain a lot of what feminist called the patriarchy.

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I kept thinking “What does any of this have to do with transcendental meditation?” And then it clicked…

I think violence in men is basically down to testosterone and them tending to be more impulsive. Environmental factors may contribute to male violence, but in essence it’s part of being a man. Evolution takes a long time to change.

Society is best off trying to manage and control the violence.

Your point has made me think a bit, though. A mate of mine regularly gets into fights and he sometimes cries when drunk.

My previous posts on the subject notwithstanding, I don’t have a problem with this. You’re right that the military is more than just the grunts, and it’s unfair that only boys have their lives disrupted by conscription when there are plenty of things that need doing in the military that could be easily done by either sex, particularly in a tiny country like Taiwan that has limited manpower.

Personally I think this gets to the root of the problem. Despite supposedly living in a post-Enlightenment age of Reason, I see superstition, old wives’ tales, and pure ideology having as much of a hold on modern Western society as they ever did in pre-literate ones. Scientific education over the past 20-30 years has slowly become watered down, politicized, or deleted entirely from the curriculum. Not one person in a hundred has a solid grasp on how science works, how it looks for truths, and how it discards falsehoods when it finds them.

Scientific “general knowledge” has likewise gone down the tubes. Try asking around your acquaintances and see how many can enumerate Newton’s laws (or apply them), describe chemical concepts like acidity, electropositivity, or covalent bonding, or explain how animals derive energy from food and oxygen. The net result is that rumour and made-up facts fill in the vacuum.

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Cool. I’m not suggesting anything else.

Researchers, educators, parents. Just like anything else.

Like sports?

Read the article, and that could be a good example, but the description is brief and unsubstantiated.

I don’t see at all how this is a response to my statement.