Rant: On the "Masculinity Crisis"

And it is a rant, and overweening at that. CAUTION; This might not be "your thang"!

Theme and Variations on Culturally Existential Sorrow and Stupidity

This is more me unburdening myself, trying to fire off a plaintive rant. Of course it’s subjective. But so is “masculinity” itself. Put simply: you’re born with a penis: we call that human being male. And he is supposed to “be” something called “masculine” when he reaches the age of who knows when…

It’s right around here that I part ways with a heaping pile of my Murrrkin culture as it glares blaring, stacked and stupid, in the incredibly insipid 2020s.

Before Internet got going there were always men - commonly called “assholes” and marginalized and appropriately ignored - who sought to show us all what “real manhood” was. Mostly it had to do with being a loud, muscular, shallow, menacing, potentially violent anti-intellectual. Now these twerps are everywhere. Why?

I ask why but I don’t know. I do think that boys and young men who fall prey to these loudmouths are confused. And when you have someone confused - ask any conman - you have ‘em in your back pocket. But why are boys and young men so confused? I suspect: bad self-esteem. Which may be linked to countries with accelerating inequalities, or a basic economics that encourages depression and anxiety, anomie. But now I’m heading toward the ionosphere with this. I don’t know. Not learning about yourself and instead looking around desperately to see who to copy as a masculine model would certainly bring us back down out of the clouds. And that model - bet yer ass - is supremely dumb. And phony. Because it’s so transactional. These jerks are telling you how to act like an obnoxious buffoon because it’s your “true nature.” And they’re making money doing it.

Commercial Break: At this point I’d like to plug an old book in case there’s some young male out there who might be reading this and feels an anxiety about whether their masculinity is good enough: The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts, published 60 years ago. It’s not about masculinity, but something deeper that encompasses it. It’s right in the title.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

In the 1980s, I had a kick-ass Social Psychology class in college. The professor was a large, friendly, inspiring black man named Manly Johnson, who grew up in the American South. I loved how he’d explain concepts and then break into something like, “In this situation, why…you’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea!” Anyway, my story has nothing to do with him or his first name.

There was some study done: three male volunteers were asked to sit in a room and figure out a solution to a problem, talking out loud. They were paid for their attempt, and they thought the problem was what the Situation was about. There were two doors on opposite sides of the room. A microphone picked up what the three young men said. When an attractive female walked into the room, made a photocopy, then walked out the other door, their voices dropped about an octave lower than before while she was in the room. Later they were told this and said they weren’t aware they’d lowered the pitch of their voices. That was what the study was about: their voices and the presence of a female, not the solution to some mundane problem. This study was replicated, but what with the revealed replication crisis in social sciences starting the 21st century, who knows. But I remember being impressed with two interpretations of this: 1.) we know from Evolutionary Psychology that lowered voice means sexual chances, attractiveness, reproduction. But at this point, Ev-Psych hadn’t infiltrated this Social Psych class. Ev Psych was still called Sociobiology at that point: belonged in another building entirely. For this class, the social influence was emphasized, not the evolutionary biology aspect. 2.) I thought society and the “tacit dimension” - what Robert Anton Wilson called “the semantic unconscious” - also influenced this, and what that implied was that society had conditioned my body, and I wasn’t aware of it, just as the young men in the study said they weren’t aware their voices had lowered in the presence of a female. I took this as a constant reminder that I can be more aware of things. Not everything. But more aware. And I was not impressed enough with Society - especially its leaders - to be happy to let it tacitly influence (or “armor”, as Wilhelm Reich called it) my body. Hell, I never had a deep voice anyway, even when I was trying to imitate some lower voiced-dude. I’m a tall, thin guy with a relatively high voice. Running in rock music social circles - which allows for a looser expression of masculinity - helped me also. The very idea that the dominant culture had developed ways to alter my muscularity, my body: repulsed me. Anyway...

The very idea there’s a “real” masculinity and any other performances of “it” that aren’t the “real” ones and are “weak”, or “beta”, too “woke,” etc: this is the Loudmouth’s Game. You’re either a real man or a beta. Simpleminded black-white. Stupid. Resist it. The world is not black/white. It’s a vast continuum of colors. Whatever shade you are is good. Be good at your unique masculinity. I think different masculinities are good for a society, overall. In what way is my opinion here threatening to certain people? And why? No, seriously, I implore you: tell me why.

If you’re born with a penis and grow up to have some feelings about yourself, your body, and your body in this world, you’ll have some ideas about masculinity. Boys do this; girls do that. Some adults are telling you you ought not do this or be like that: that’s for girls. At some point you have to put your foot down and say, fuck it: I like wearing my pink sweater. I like my hair long. I dig Taylor Swift. (Or in my case: Joni Mitchell, Jacqueline du Pré, Diane Keaton.) Whatever.

Perhaps you feel like you were born in a male’s body and some mistake was made. You feel like a girl. Perhaps you transition. If so, we wish you the best of luck in your new body and marvel at the sociology of scientific knowledge that allowed us to get so good at doing that series of procedures.

Everyone else with a penis is masculine. And guess what? It’s good enough. End of story. You’re good enough the way you are. Maybe you’re gay and have a lisp and most of your friends are female: you’re as masculine as George Clooney, only your embodiment, your expression of masculinity expresses itself differently than Clooney’s. You’re on the continuum of masculinity. Effeminacy is just a way to nuance the description of your masculinity. Not every man is meant to be Tom Brady; that’s asinine. And it should be your description of yourself that matters. Take or leave others. You’re as masculine as that sorrowful POS Andrew Tate, who’s working OT to give masculinity a Very Bad Name.

I really think it’s correct that your default masculinity (aside from the inevitable influence of culture) is good enough. But if you want to be a better man, draw from any inspiration, not some jackass who’s touting he has the One True Way To Be A Man. But you already knew that. Hey: maybe it’s better not to even think about improving with your masculinity and try to just be a better person, whatever that means to you.

What gets me about Charlie Kirk, Joe Rogan, Pete Hegseth, much of the incel army and what’s now identified as the Manosphere: it’s overly performative. When I was growing up we’d call it “gay” because it always looked so forced - like such an act - that we thought these assholes were desperately anxious someone would find out they were gay. (As if there’s anything wrong with that. There is not.) “Look at me, everyone! I’m a straight Christian man!” (So what you’re saying is…you’re gay? I wish you were as okay with that as we are. Now get the fuck outta here, you boring drama queen.)

Okay: these jagoffs, loud and imbecilic and seemingly proud of all that, have rope-a-doped and Big-Conned much - lemme say too many - of the male cohort of Millennials/Gen Y, much of Gen X, Gen Z, and they’re coming for the Gen Alphas.¹ And sorry, but Internet allowed these performative assholes too much mind-space-colonization. Apparently having them on your laptop or iPhone overrode something that previously allowed us to easily ignore these dummies, these side-show bums.

I have the nagging suspicion - and it’s only a suspicion - that the knee-jerk “contrarian” public positions taken by Tech Bro fascists like Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, et al - are contrarian simply because they can’t stand democracy and the social creation, over time, of norms, protective laws, ideas about equality, feminism, a general fear that MLK was right: the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. They don’t like those ideas. Because they’re lucky business criminals who have billions and they only want MORE. Best to get at the deep source code of Justice and reverse the values: being a greedy fascist and racist, or a thoughtless jagoff is the correct way. The contrarian way. You’ll be more “productive” - kinda like some soul-less and very slow AI. Of course they think that’s what’s good for you.

There are far better ways to be a contrarian, and you know it.

There were always “red-pilled” morons who tried to convince you it’s all super simple, man: you were deceived…by women! Or “the liberals.” Or gawd help us the level of moronicity in this one is off the charts: “the deep state.” (Or jews, blacks, gays, the Illuminati, or any other faceless group fascists see as threatening because those groups are smarter, more creative, and more sexually free than they are.) Yea, just in the past 15 years Steve Bannon read in some book that we dudes all got rooked by the Scam: go ahead and act like an obnoxious prick and fight the brainwashing. (Hint: whenever someone is “smarter” than you by telling you they figured out how to not be “brainwashed” and here’s what to do: you’re being manipulated.) The feminist takeover has you acting like a wuss!² They really wanna be raped, man. Go do it. Be dominant and unreflective about it. Chicks dig it. They like it when you slap ‘em around…it’s their nature. Take my word for it, eat a steak, drive a truck with big tires, act like an asshole: that’s your birthright as a Man!³

No. That makes women shun if not hate you, rightfully so.⁴ They will never dig you if you act like that, dude. Listen to women. It’s a really good way to learn about your own variety of masculinity. That’s a great way to be a man. You lose nothing with this, and only gain. The manosphere jagoffs give the implicit message: Not everyone is worthy of basic respect. That’s an ugly way to be. Don’t. If anything, do the opposite: Protect women and children and the needy. I think of that as very manly, but that’s merely my opinion, however well it’s cashed out over the years. Notice I say “a” way. Because there is no right way to express your own masculinity. Don’t overthink it. The manosphere bums have presented a duality about masculinity: Real or Woke. That’s an idiot’s game. Don’t buy it. It’s way more complex than that, like being a human is. Acting like a fucking asshole is not the way to be happy. And you do want to be happy. And these performative manosphere d-bags are trying to argue it’s so easy. It’s not. You have to make your own way, somehow. You have to make decisions and be wrong a lot of the time. The realization of your own masculinity is a constant project, maybe lifelong. I don’t think I had a really good, adequate map of my own masculine land until I was 40. Just be yourself. You’re masculine enough. All this is a lifelong learning experience, not some $99 cheeseball course you take at Alpha School Inc., taught by a bunch of obnoxious chuds out to capitalize on your insecurity, an insecurity they themselves helped to create. (“Find a need and fill it,” goes the old American con, fer crissakes and from here to eternity. These manosphere walking testosterone supplement ads create a need and fill it.)

It seems abundantly clear to me that we express our masculinity is so many different ways because, while we’re all men, we’re all different, genetically. Being a Man was not much theorized for 99.999% of our time as hominids. It’s completely absurd that we just found out the Answer, just as mass electronic communciations became a thing, and suddenly it was Teddy Roosevelt, Lindbergh, Mickey Mantle, John Wayne, and Vin Diesel?⁵

I had a young guitar student who was into Metallica, Slayer, etc. He was a nice kid. I teach in a room towering with stuffed bookshelves, piles upon piles everywhere. At one point he asked me if I’d read all these. I said no; no one who has books like this has read them all, we just are addicted to books and some of them function as part of a private research library. Then he asked me what’s the most important idea of the past 200 years, and I told him that’s an easy one: feminism. He looked aghast, because all he’d heard about it was negative. I said for 3000 years women have been treated like second class citizens. For no good reason. None at all. Furthermore, we are now faced with existential threats. We need to solve our problems if we want to be a success in the universe: me quietly quoting Buckminster Fuller. We need the best minds, women are 51% of the minds, there are women who are brilliant, and none of them should face extra hurdles just because they were born female. Are there females who have given feminism a bad name in some circles? I said I think so, yea, but they’re the exception, not the rule. Nothing about our sense of ego or masculinity should feel threatened by ability, or creativity, or genius, no matter where it comes from. I said I was a feminist for these reasons, and I think my opinion here should be so boring and common as to bring on yawns. The fact it’s now provocative for a man to give this opinion seemed like a symptom of the grave challenges we face as a species, the heating of the planet being at the top of the list in my estimation. I half thought this kid would quit guitar lessons with this old male weirdo-feminist, but he didn’t.

The only masculinity crisis is that we believe or think we have one. It’s unnecessary. It’s more like some devious ad campaign. They got boys and men to overthink it. (Or, paradoxically, for reasons I point our above, under-think it.) And yet: we gotta dig our way out of this morass of shit-for-brains masculinity, and my only advice here is: turn away from the manosphere. Fer crissakes! There’s an infinitude of other places to go, within. And they’re richer and more fulfilling and lead to true individualism and growth, and possibly, contentment and more felicity. Read poetry and novels, a very safe bet.

To longtime readers: I apologize for this rant, and it was one. But writing this was something I had to do at some point. Like a pebble in my shoe. Whether it will influence one person, in the slightest way, I have grave doubts. Sometimes you just have to state your case and then move on. Like a purgative. “Sound your barbaric yawp!,” was what Allen Ginsberg advised. I did. Thanx for indulging me?

To the Hardcore RAWphiles: this I consider to be a piece of writing (ahem!) from the 5th circuit, and writing and its logos so on the 3rd circuit, about the 4th circuit (socio-sexual), and how some extreme 2nd circuit types have been trying to influence the 4th circuit.

1. I’m using these terms with heavy mixed emotions. They’re good because they point to age brackets of the population; those who identify with cohorts who grew up under certain conditions and share memories of certain events. The reification of these terms seem wrong and lamentable for just about every other reason, in my opinion. For demographers and sociology, they’re fine. For solidarity, they seem another Divide and Conquer by the ruling classes.

2. I wrote a blog in the 2010s and one commenter brought up a term that I thought was surreal, absurd and dubious: “rape culture.” At that point - around 2013? - I might have slipped, for good, to this day, into a sort of New Monasticism. I did not have my pulse on the carotid of the culture then and I didn’t care much, being happily mired in books and idiotic things like the life of the mind and the examined life. I learned later that “rape culture” was indeed a thing. This was one of about 900 reasons I dropped out of American life at large. I admit it. What I was seeing was just Too Stupid. And, when I peek, it only seems to have gotten worse…. The “feminist takeover” is so rampant that, why…a rapist POTUS was able to appoint Supreme Court Justices who voted to repeal a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body, on a state-by-state basis. Yea: like “feminism” is the secret sauce that has you a lonely, miserable, uncreative incel. Hint: it just may be the people who told you that that are the ones to look at a second time.

3. Well, it is just another consumerist con, so there’s that.

4. No time in this breathless rant to address the “Tradwife” kink. Maybe some other day.

5. As I grew up I had ideas about masculinity: sports stars, guys like Paul Newman. And inevitably, you grow up and follow their stories and find they had varieties of difficulties of all sorts. And then you develop improved versions of what’s a good way to be. There were a panoply of models for me and I learned to see that very often they had public and private sides. It’s really difficult. Hence my strong take of Be Yourself. Models of masculinity have become more fraught. It’s gotten ever more so since ‘07, has it not?