Men's Liberation
This community is first and foremost a feminist community for men and masc people, but it is also a place to talk about men’s issues with a particular focus on intersectionality.
Rules
Everybody is welcome, but this is primarily a space for men and masc people
Non-masculine perspectives are incredibly important in making sure that the lived experiences of others are present in discussions on masculinity, but please remember that this is a space to discuss issues pertaining to men and masc individuals. Be kind, open-minded, and take care that you aren't talking over men expressing their own lived experiences.
Be productive
Be proactive in forming a productive discussion. Constructive criticism of our community is fine, but if you mainly criticize feminism or other people's efforts to solve gender issues, your post/comment will be removed.
Keep the following guidelines in mind when posting:
- Build upon the OP
- Discuss concepts rather than semantics
- No low effort comments
- No personal attacks
Assume good faith
Do not call other submitters' personal experiences into question.
No bigotry
Slurs, hate speech, and negative stereotyping towards marginalized groups will not be tolerated.
No brigading
Do not participate if you have been linked to this discussion from elsewhere. Similarly, links to elsewhere on the threadiverse must promote constructive discussion of men’s issues.
Recommended Reading
- The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks
- Politics of Masculinities: Men in Movements by Michael Messner
Related Communities
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I think you've seriously misunderstood the author's intentions. She's calling for sympathy for men. Specifically she's trying to explain the violent nature of patriarchal masculinity as a result of the gendered expectations we place on men and boys. Think about expectations to protect a female partner in a mugging or similarly confrontational situation. Those are the sort of experiences that she's referencing. The argument then is that because we place these situational requirements on even the most violence-averse men, we should have greater empathy for the fact that men as a whole have internalized this notion of violence as necessity in a lot of situations. My reason for posting it here was primarily so that folks could discuss their own experiences with these sorts of harmful gendered expectations.
I see your point and I agree with it, but that is not at all what I read in the quote where the author dismisses the assertion that most men aren't violent by asserting that they are "programmed from birth" to be violent, and as such the fact that they haven't been is no reason to not treat them as if they had been.
As for the expectation of violence in media, I'd say that the expectation is, today, far more gender neutral as we have violent and non violent protagonists of both genders in media. In some respects, the expectation is for men to show more restraint since inter-gender violence is not seen the same way depending on the gender of the aggressor (the fact that men are topically stronger obviously plays a role here).
That said I agree with you that better role models are needed (we need more loving male protagonists and we need to see them triumph over situations where muscle fails). We also, as you shared in another post, need to do everything we can to get more men into services and care, as those men will be on the front lines to help give boys a more nuanced view on what it means to be a man.
I think it is fairly clear that bell hooks is talking about external gendered expectations not any sort of biological essentialism.
I really don't think it's about media. Nor do I think the current state of on-screen violence is nearly as impactful to the adults of today. This sort of thing get's ingrained during childhood and while of course individuals are always changing, childhood exposure while you are still building your model of the world is unique. The current state of affairs will tell us far more about tomorrow's men than today's.
All that said I don't think you need to look to media to see this phenomena. If you've ever walked a female friend or partner home, you've probably experienced these pressures. You may have taken them in stride as many are happy to fit those gendered expectations (most folks are very much willing to dish out the good violence) but there is a real sense in which those expectations are both unfair and contributing to a larger sense of violence as a necessity. For so long as we are discussing the right kinds of violence for masculine individuals to enact we are making assumptions about the intrinsic violence of masculinity.
@spaduf @Phoenixbouncing
Alan was expected to fight the Kens while the women stayed in the car. That's the part.