Readit NewsBecause replying with the precise tropes of toxic masculinity as a solution to… the problems caused by toxic masculinity, whew.
What's toxic is when the masculine is out of balance with the feminine. When structure, force, and closure crowd things out because there is not enough flow, softness, and openness. Simply making a decision and acting on it is not in and of itself toxic. It's the inability to adjust later that is toxic.
At the same time, it's important to recognize the social forces that constrain different groups and limit the power that personal agency can exert over outcomes. The masculine gender role is extremely narrow, and if you deviate much from it, society will punish you: so-called "personal responsibility" plays the role of telling men to shut up and fit their role. As a man seeking a female partner, if I want to be a homemaker who teaches belly dance part time, I'm going to be in for a really hard time, no matter how much personal agency I embrace.
That also ignores the shittiness that even people who do manage to fit neatly into the masculine gender role still have to experience.
It's worth calling out these things in the hopes of driving social change, and it's something both men and women must participate in if we want to see a change.
> As a man seeking a female partner, if I want to be a homemaker who teaches belly dance part time, I'm going to be in for a really hard time, no matter how much personal agency I embrace.
If you say so, it will be so. If you write this code, you should not be surprised when running it achieves the programmed result. Whether you believe me or not, your statements are false. I spent time thinking this way, I suffered immensely, I put in deep effort to explore a larger perspective, and I am now greatly enjoying how incomplete was the field I saw before.
Women don't all want a provider. The trust of many has been damaged beyond that. They provide for themselves now (lots of men actually say we want that). What else can a man offer? Emotional support. The ability to make her feel like a fucking goddess. Being a homemaking belly dancer more aligns with that than doesn't.
You are right that women must participate too. They already are. It's men's attitudes that need to catch up.
Given the current cultural and moral fashions, I can't think of many things that would be harder to empathize with than the laments of straight working-age men. There are so many more groups that are higher on the oppression totem pole that there's no way anybody will ever make it far enough down to care about boys.
People have been sounding those alarms for years to perfectly deaf ears, and there's nothing in the current culture that would indicate that we are ready to start listening anytime soon. Nobody cares, and help is not coming.
We're here as a society because of mishandled social responsibility. Women have only started to take up their own personal care because they can't rely on established conventions any more.
We as individuals likely have not done much, if anything, to contribute to this social circumstance. Just like women as individuals have not done much, if anything, to contribute to it. It is none of our faults. Yet they are taking personal responsibility for their wellbeing in this situation anyways. They are "manning up".
Men on the other hand... are we just sitting around crying with our thumbs up our asses? Yes. Yes we are. That shit is weak. That perspective on the situation is what's hard to empathize with, not the situation itself. Change your attitude, take personal responsibility, and bask as love and empathy showers onto you.
We can do better than looking to others to solve our problems for us. It just takes seeing an example of how. They are in short order, but they exist if you dig hard enough. I encourage any men who resonate with this to dig deeper. There is sweet sweet fruit to be had if you do. And tons of pussy.
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Find what motivates you in life and build your life around that. Capitalistic industry is fundamentally about profit. If not monetary then power and prestige.
The general mood matches yours. Lots of people are feeling apathy. Prioritizing of profit over people creates dehumanizing social institutions and drives mental health issues. It's really simple and obvious.
People who are too caught up in the glitter of shiny coins can't see the writing on the wall. Either we as a whole are headed for a big change or those who feel that way are headed for a big change in how they relate to the overall whole. Likely both.
However, there is ONE important side effect that I have not noticed until now.
Most technologists crave speed. Faster processors, faster disk drives, faster networks, faster everything. Bottlenecks are our common enemy. YES. They are evil. I can relate to it because I spent a good amount of time in my career fixing performance problems for financial systems.
No one likes to wait for the computer to respond.
Unfortunately, this craving for speed (in technology) has quietly bled into other aspects of our living. People learn to speed read to gain more knowledge faster. People speed walk regularly (yes, I can also feel it in Hong Kong’s subway stations.) And the most crazy thing is: we don’t realize it until our body cannot cope with the demands of our speedoholic minds.
I watched this Carl Honore’s talk from 2005 (http://www.ted.com/talks/carl_honore_praises_slowness). 10 years later, it’s hard to believe that many of us (including myself) still get caught up in thinking “Slow is bad.” But no, there is such thing as “Good slow.”
You need to be patient in building a relationship; you need to have a clear mind in thinking strategically; and you need to be willing to spend time making mistakes in order to invent something useful.
So, please don’t let us, technologists, news or media slloowwlllyyy turn you into a speedoholic.
There is something to be said for allowing "flamebait". What's flame to one may be a welcome splash of water for another. Matter of fact, it might be that people who espouse so much "flame" may have legitimate issues fueling that flame.
There is absolutely also something to be said for wrangling conversation so as to keep it constructive. It's the balance of the two that achieves a community that remains healthy over time and not just healthy according to the popular values of any given time.