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silveradeptliv was talking earnestly about how while the idea of International Men's Day may have started as a joke, there are very real and systematic problems that come along with growing up as (or assigned as, or perceived as) a man. That if you re-orient the way you think about the bullying and problems that men suffer as boys, you realize there's a huge sex and sexuality component to it. liv was reminded about a post about men and being the survivors of sexual assault, which points out that while men may not suffer what is commonly thought of as sexual assault, i.e. penetration by someone else, all that often, much of the schoolyard taunts and the way that boys and men are supposed to relate to each other would entirely qualify as sexual assault if it was a man doing those things to a woman. liv takes that idea and follows it where it will go, and notes the difficulty for anyone to have to navigate a space that is fundamentally uninterested in the things that do genuinely happen to men in favor of much the same sort of posturing and macho that would not be out of place on the same schoolyard. How do you make space for victims and push back against the toxicity in relationships involving men without giving voice or legitimacy to the kinds of people who would appear to be inviting and then turn out to be more of the same, doing it for the lulz? There probably isn't a single answer, but there might be some general strategies that could be applied. There's a big ball of feels tangled up in definitions of masculinity, the toxic corrosiveness of what's portrayed as masculine, especially in conservative and religiously conservative circles, being adjacent and friends to people who were finding their way through life as gay men, having friends where we might take the piss on toxic masculinity by role-playing it to absurdism in each other's company, meaning nothing serious about it at all, the ways that privilege accumulates to the masculine and how feeling that's unfair, and so being a conscientious objector to privileged masculinity, the ways in which the singular they fits better for me than the masculine he ever did, whether or not I'm really a role model for children in the work that I do, just by being a person of my presentation doing the things that I do, feeling more than a bit flame-spitty at basically being cut off from getting to talk about things I enjoy with others because the outsized toxic group have sucked all the oxygen out of the discussion space, looking at spaces that say and back up the idea that everyone is welcome, regardless of how they approach the subject, and yet feeling out of place because the role I identify most with in that space isn't the most common role taken on be people who present the same way I do, complicated feelings with regard to financial security and being a provider, and a certain amount of "if I'm not on the front lines fighting all the time, am I really doing anything that's important?", which is a worldview that's very bound up in specific ideas about what masculine activism looks like, and how one measures value and worth and progress. They're not disentangling very well, as this is the fourth attempt at finding my way through the whole thing, and this one at least feels like it's gone somewhere that I can be satisfied with. By not being specific about the details, of course.
Which is to say, I suppose, that wherever I heard the idea that toxic masculinity, The Game, "family values" and other "traditional" beliefs, and other things of its like are popular because they define the space enough with rules and outcomes and expected results such that a person doesn't feel unmoored in the wide world of possibility, I think they have at least a grain of truth about the whole thing. It's easier to adopt another person's system and try to play by those rules than to go out with your compass, some sketching pencils, and a blank sheet of parchment and try to draw your own map well enough that if someone else decides to come along, they know the way to get to you. And to loop that back to the original posts that started this train of thought, one of the hallmarks of the toxic end of the spectrum of masculinity is that it has a vested interest in controlling the sexuality of both women and men by whatever means it thinks is best and necessary.
If men and boys aren't conforming to the definition of men set before them, then they might demonstrate to others that there are multiple ways of doing masculinity successfully. Valid options breaks the control that the toxic mindset desires, and so escalating amounts of pressure get applied to someone who looks like they might be exploring their options. There's also a part where men are socialized not to have friends they can lean on for and provide emotional support to, because one of those things that happens when you really talk to each other is that you realize everyone is doing things differently, and existing outside the rules in their own ways. Having caring adult role models is a thing that makes it easier to be stable in who you are, rather than chasing a ruleset that deliberately stacks the deck against you and demands a public performativity and conformity that, well, gets along a little too well in compulsory education in the States, shall we say.
Because the entirety of that toolbox is predicated on the idea that they have the definition of masculinity and that anything that doesn't match that definition can't possibly be strong or appropriate. It's exclusionary space rather than inclusionary space - a definition of what is by knowing what isn't. Which allows it to be an ever-shifting definition suitable for making sure nobody canb stand on it, or strive against it, because it asserts nothing about itself that can be pinned down. "Men are strong," it says, but how does it define that strength? By what it isn't. "That's for girls," or. more usually, "that's gay." Except for the part where there's a strong strain of gay subculture that's about emphasising the macho attributes.
A friend of mine from early on in life used to take the piss on that particular phrase by pointing out that if a person who watches male-gaze films (up to and including pornographic ones) is exceedingly concerned with the appearance and attractiveness of the person who's supposed to be the audience surrogate as a proper (toxically) manly man, then they're at least a little bit interested in the sex appeal and sexual attractiveness of that man. And if thinking about the sexual appeal of man makes you gay, then all of those people who want to make sure their power fantasies are represented properly are at least a little bit gay. Although nowadays, I'd rephrase that to be "at least a little bit bi," because we have a perfectly cromulent word for people who are attracted to more than one gender of person, and because saying it as "a little bit gay" reinforces the false idea that one can only be either straight or gay, and more toxically, that there's one set of attraction that's acceptable and one that's taboo. Because deploying that particular take, while it might be useful in getting someone who's bought into toxicity to think about the ideas they're espousing, what it's much more likely to do is make them defensive, because they're doing all they can at that moment to be properly exclusionary based on what their chosen style of toxicity demands, and doing it performatively enough that anyone else who notices what's going on will not target them for perceived weakness.
I suspect it's a given for most of my reading audience, and they have seen more than enough examples of how the toxic parts have fundamental insecurities behind them, and how they take blame for how things are and shift it, either to the individual for not living up to the impossible standards, or to a different space entirely for not participating and conforming to their demands. It's difficult for someone to say "This is impossible, and it qualifies for the definition of neither sane nor rational to boot," when there are enough people around who appear to have succeeded by following this ruleset, at least on the outside. And there's more than enough media and advertising available for someone to see that reinforces this idea that you can be successful at masculinity by following this ruleset.
It's like multi-level marketing, though - the people who appear to be succeeding at the top have done so essentially by recruiting others into their particular approach and then skimming off of their successes and encouraging others to do the same. When you're not having their successes, there's a strong temptation to adopt their methods and see if that makes things go better, even if those methods in question are spawned in settings where television and movie writers have already scripted out what happens and know that if they're going to get people to sit and watch, they have to have their everyman get what he's pursuing. Or the status quo has to reassert itself for the next episode. We could use a lot more media that is about people who grow and change toward the idea of becoming the person they are. They can have false starts and changes and experiences that happen to them that very strongly change their opinions of themselves and that require a long amount of searching to find themselves again, or accept what's changed, or to abandon the thing that they've been using all of this time and make themselves into something new, and to show what kind of pushback that gets and the difficulties of adjustment, and sometimes finding a group that accepts the new person that they wouldn't have otherwise thought about. Especially in the pressure cooker that is secondary school, where people coming into themselves and trying to figure out who they are before they graduate is one of the tropes in the toolbox.
Because that might start people taking seriously all of the damaging, gendered, toxic commentary that's often seen as the background of what growing up presenting as a man is about, instead of only paying attention to it when it is well past the break point for a person on the receiving end of it and they do something irreversible. Or when someone is brave enough to say or try on something that might fit better for them than cis-straight-man. These ideas and their focuses are almost always on the person who is on the receiving end of the treatment - they focus on the difference point, which is what makes it easy for the toxic crowd to say "they're part of what we aren't, and because they're failing to live up to our definition of them, what we're doing is entirely justified." Not enough people are asking whether the lens we're looking at them through is flawed, or is paying attention enough to the systems that have been built that privilege conformity to toxic mindsets over authenticity. There isn't enough space for people to publicly be something that is different and for that difference to just be.
I'm not sure I have solutions, either, but I think one of the places where a lot of work can be done is in the space where masculinity gets to take on all the forms that it possibly can, and the ones that aren't actively harmful to others get to stay and coexist with each other. Ideally, perhaps, in the human maturation parts of health classes, or just regularly throughout secondary schooling, there's a panel discussion about masc, femme, and all the other ways to present. In small groups, with no exemptions or parental abilities to pull a student because they might be exposed to an idea that the parent doesn't like. I may still be a lot miffed about the fact that those exemptions exist and are sending children unprepared into the world.
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Date: 2018-12-10 05:17 am (UTC)I love this concept.
And I have a lot of other positive thoughts and feels about your post, but they aren't coming out as words yet.
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Date: 2018-12-10 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-10 06:06 pm (UTC)Take your time in finding the words, and comment when they decide to come out. No rush.
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Date: 2018-12-10 12:58 pm (UTC)The AMAB-person cowering in the corner of my personality saw himself in much of what you said.
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Date: 2018-12-10 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-11 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 06:32 am (UTC)Seems like that world is trying to be born (again) and some people are working very hard to shove it back up the birth canal.
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Date: 2018-12-12 03:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-12 03:36 pm (UTC)