6 ms·

When I think of masculinity, I see positive and negative aspects of it. I also see that tribes tend to zero in on only the positive or negative. I see the same

by PakG1 3y ago

When I think of masculinity, I see positive and negative aspects of it. I also see that tribes tend to zero in on only the positive or negative. I see the same thing happening with femininity. For whatever reason, the people who zero in on the positivity of one tend to zero in on the negativity of the other, at least on social media. I'm not sure why this is.

paulddraper 3y ago
Tribalism. Black and white. Lack of nuance. Masculinity can be wholesome or toxic. Femininity can be wholesome or toxic. Which one is discussed more, by a literal order of magnitude? [1] [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Toxic%20masculinity,Toxic%20femininity&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Toxic%20ma...
- yarg 3y ago
  I think part of the issue is that through our success we erased a lot of the need for the most fundamental male roles. When it came to handling the things that go bump in the night, a social species with thumbs, a bit of fire and a few sharpened sticks went a hell of a long way. And after bumping back for long enough, we were the only monsters left standing. I think that one of the problems with toxic feminity is that it's a quieter and less explosive form of destructive behaviour - but it's very much a real thing. As a weird little note regarding society's tolerance of the hatred of men, "misandristic" isn't even worth inclusion in the spell checker's dictionary.
  - BlargMcLarg 3y ago
    We haven't removed the need. You take away a majority of men from the workforce, society would collapse overnight. Same can't be said for women, even if it would be disastrous both short and long term. What happened was the government has successfully co-opted the social contract between men and women so women now can reap most of its benefits while men carry most of the risks. That doesn't make things all hunky-dory for women, but it certainly doesn't do men a whole lot of good when some of their biggest assets in a relationship are stripped away and redistributed, without accommodating that in some form. Meanwhile, society has done very little to put men in a positive light or encourage women to accept the 'new man'. If anything, it has done the opposite: women seem to respect men less than before, and men are expected to be more competitive than ever before, even on aspects which are practically immutable. Now society is slowly showing signs of how dysfunctional things become when men aren't incentivized to be men, while women aren't taught to respect the 'new man'. The men quit trying, the boys get stressed out, and the women run around asking the government to fix it somehow. Virtually no one is happy, and Socrates is rolling in his grave.
    - yarg 3y ago
      > We haven't removed the need. Not what I said; men are still needed - but it's been a damned long time since we spent our nights waiting around the fire in case of tiger.
      - ernst_klim 3y ago
        > we spent our nights waiting around the fire in case of tiger I think it's the opposite. During the prehistoric times most food was actually gathered by women IIRC, and both sexes could use fire to scare away predators, so men were relevant for breeding nearly exclusively. Today we have far more risky activities where men dominate, such as high-rise towers construction, firefighting, law enforcement, security, sailing etc etc.
        yarg 3y ago
        You think that we took equal roles in dealing with threats!? The simple truth is that men handled the vast majority of situations where combat was required - we're bigger, stronger, faster, more aggressive. Our aim is better, and (best of all) if half of us die it doesn't severely impact intergenerational population levels. Women may have gone gathering, but men went hunting. Fire fighting is some scary shit - but our ancestors took on short faced bears with sticks.
        ernst_klim 3y ago
        > The simple truth is that men handled the vast majority of situations where combat was required I think you greatly overestimate how much combat people faced during prehistoric times. Population was distributed sparsely, most food was gathered, not hunted, and was abundant, and you don't fight predators to scare them off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare#Paleolithic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare#Paleolithi...
        yarg 3y ago
        And I think that you're severely underestimating the impact of infrequent existential threats, and how that interplays with slight improvements to fitness compounded over hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, I'm damned near certain of it.
  - xiphias2 3y ago
    It was really interesting to see Season 2 of the Island (men vs women). The most interesting part was not how much women failed to survive, and how successful men were (which makes sense, as men are designed for survival), but the feeling of how much easier in that world is to show the need for masculanity (which is mostly not needed anymore).
    - anotherman554 3y ago
      >>> which makes sense, as men are designed for survival Evolution doesn't only "design" a single sex for survival. (With the possible, arguable exception of some insect species.)
      - yarg 3y ago
        No, but it designed men with very few compromises (as far as auto-adversarial hill-climbing algorithms go). Women are structured as a compromise between their own needs and the needs of their children.
        anotherman554 3y ago
        Women live longer than men on average so this line of thinking that men are optimized for survival, as opposed to women, is pretty darn silly. (Neither is more or less optimized.)
        yarg 3y ago
        Expected lifespan and the ability to survive dangerous situations are two very different things. If you think for an instant that men and women aren't optimised for very different scenarios, then think harder. Seriously, you can tell just by looking at us. Or do you think that child bearing hips and big vulnerable mammaries are useful things to have in situations that call for physical action (other than birthing and feeding infants)?
        anotherman554 3y ago

by PakG1 3y ago

paulddraper 3y ago

Tribalism. Black and white. Lack of nuance. Masculinity can be wholesome or toxic. Femininity can be wholesome or toxic. Which one is discussed more, by a literal order of magnitude? [1] [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Toxic%20masculinity,Toxic%20femininity&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=Toxic%20ma...

yarg 3y ago
I think part of the issue is that through our success we erased a lot of the need for the most fundamental male roles. When it came to handling the things that go bump in the night, a social species with thumbs, a bit of fire and a few sharpened sticks went a hell of a long way. And after bumping back for long enough, we were the only monsters left standing. I think that one of the problems with toxic feminity is that it's a quieter and less explosive form of destructive behaviour - but it's very much a real thing. As a weird little note regarding society's tolerance of the hatred of men, "misandristic" isn't even worth inclusion in the spell checker's dictionary.
- BlargMcLarg 3y ago
  We haven't removed the need. You take away a majority of men from the workforce, society would collapse overnight. Same can't be said for women, even if it would be disastrous both short and long term. What happened was the government has successfully co-opted the social contract between men and women so women now can reap most of its benefits while men carry most of the risks. That doesn't make things all hunky-dory for women, but it certainly doesn't do men a whole lot of good when some of their biggest assets in a relationship are stripped away and redistributed, without accommodating that in some form. Meanwhile, society has done very little to put men in a positive light or encourage women to accept the 'new man'. If anything, it has done the opposite: women seem to respect men less than before, and men are expected to be more competitive than ever before, even on aspects which are practically immutable. Now society is slowly showing signs of how dysfunctional things become when men aren't incentivized to be men, while women aren't taught to respect the 'new man'. The men quit trying, the boys get stressed out, and the women run around asking the government to fix it somehow. Virtually no one is happy, and Socrates is rolling in his grave.
  - yarg 3y ago
    > We haven't removed the need. Not what I said; men are still needed - but it's been a damned long time since we spent our nights waiting around the fire in case of tiger.
    - ernst_klim 3y ago
      > we spent our nights waiting around the fire in case of tiger I think it's the opposite. During the prehistoric times most food was actually gathered by women IIRC, and both sexes could use fire to scare away predators, so men were relevant for breeding nearly exclusively. Today we have far more risky activities where men dominate, such as high-rise towers construction, firefighting, law enforcement, security, sailing etc etc.
      - yarg 3y ago
        You think that we took equal roles in dealing with threats!? The simple truth is that men handled the vast majority of situations where combat was required - we're bigger, stronger, faster, more aggressive. Our aim is better, and (best of all) if half of us die it doesn't severely impact intergenerational population levels. Women may have gone gathering, but men went hunting. Fire fighting is some scary shit - but our ancestors took on short faced bears with sticks.
        ernst_klim 3y ago
        > The simple truth is that men handled the vast majority of situations where combat was required I think you greatly overestimate how much combat people faced during prehistoric times. Population was distributed sparsely, most food was gathered, not hunted, and was abundant, and you don't fight predators to scare them off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare#Paleolithic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_warfare#Paleolithi...
        yarg 3y ago
        And I think that you're severely underestimating the impact of infrequent existential threats, and how that interplays with slight improvements to fitness compounded over hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, I'm damned near certain of it.
- xiphias2 3y ago
  It was really interesting to see Season 2 of the Island (men vs women). The most interesting part was not how much women failed to survive, and how successful men were (which makes sense, as men are designed for survival), but the feeling of how much easier in that world is to show the need for masculanity (which is mostly not needed anymore).
  - anotherman554 3y ago
    >>> which makes sense, as men are designed for survival Evolution doesn't only "design" a single sex for survival. (With the possible, arguable exception of some insect species.)
    - yarg 3y ago
      No, but it designed men with very few compromises (as far as auto-adversarial hill-climbing algorithms go). Women are structured as a compromise between their own needs and the needs of their children.
      - anotherman554 3y ago
        Women live longer than men on average so this line of thinking that men are optimized for survival, as opposed to women, is pretty darn silly. (Neither is more or less optimized.)
        yarg 3y ago
        Expected lifespan and the ability to survive dangerous situations are two very different things. If you think for an instant that men and women aren't optimised for very different scenarios, then think harder. Seriously, you can tell just by looking at us. Or do you think that child bearing hips and big vulnerable mammaries are useful things to have in situations that call for physical action (other than birthing and feeding infants)?
        anotherman554 3y ago