masculinity on the left

SeaAdmiral · 2024-01-15T05:17:43+00:00

A lot of supposedly "progressive" takes for masculinity boil down to "different ways men should provide but at the same time putting on a new performative act while doing so". They often look more like an incoherent shopping list of wants from us more than anything else and differ from traditional masculinity only in removing perceived privileges while still imposing strict gender roles for men.

At the end of the day, if we want to reclaim masculinity, it should be ideals, roles, and identities for us. What I mean by that is that masculinity should not be defined by what others want of us, but what we want of ourselves. Do note this does not mean "completely reject being a protector/kindness/insert other traditionally masculine prosocial trait". It simply means if you're emulating those values it should be from an internal motivation - what you want of yourself instead of what others expect of you.

Personally, I find solace in the image of curators or builders as positive male role models for masculinity - including naturalists and conservationists like David Attenborough as an example of the former. A common thread between the two that I think is important is prosocial values, solidarity if you will - we are all leftists here after all. A lot of my personal role models are scientists in this regard - many are some combination of curious, gentle, kind, and most importantly many wish to understand and analyze the world around them to best know how to protect the world they love. I also have great respect for builders and creators. To shape the world and environment around them is a great responsibility.

The goal in redefining masculinity in a leftist manner should not be "how do we best subvert the social contract and find ways to extract rewards while doing our best not to contribute to society" like how many alt-right personalities advocate for, but "how do we engage in prosocial behavior on our terms, with a focus on enacting, engaging in, and abiding by a social framework more equitable to all". As leftists, we absolutely should be prosocial. As men, we should find ways in which we can contribute to this effort - but in ways in which we are not objectified and taken advantage of.

BKEnjoyerV2 · 2024-01-15T02:50:48+00:00

The radlib/feminist demands of men do not often match up with what women desire socially/romantically. They just want men who are generally stoic, take care of their own problems, and are in touch with their emotions but only by themselves, and that “women aren’t therapists for unstable men.”

A lot of modern feminism is just “let’s do what a lot of men supposedly did to women/how men treated women in the past and use those same arguments/strategies toward men and their issues”

ugly_5ft_4incher · 2024-01-15T10:08:14+00:00

I feel the masculinity talk is overblown, unnecessary, and isn't really the problem. I'm fairly biased since I'm not really masculine. But I feel like men just aren't wanted unless they have proven themselves useful. In fact, I feel people just don't like men that much.

Blauwpetje · 2024-01-15T16:19:24+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with a lot of masculine features which are not just traditional but imho (on average) the result of evolution. The problem begins when all men are forced to be that way. But it’s a feminist strawman to suggest that force is omnipresent. In ‘Self made man’ Norah Vincent tells how quite masculine men were actually very nice to her, disguised as a not so masculine man. It were actually more the women who were rude to her.

hendrixski · 2024-01-15T13:16:52+00:00

Everyone needs to stop telling men how they have to be.

White_Buffalos · 2024-01-15T11:01:29+00:00

Feminism is a con and a scam. It's not worth examining and falls apart with the slightest serious inquiry, especially the Third and Fourth Waves. It's not a serious intellectual enterprise at this point, just a lot of oppressor/oppressed poor-me victim-fetishization.

2024-01-15T12:29:43+00:00

I hate how the left often doesn’t even want to deal with masculinity at all. They think the vision of the self should not be gendered. Maybe that’s their experience but I am covered in chest hair and have huge grapefruits down there. I kind of can’t ignore what I am.

Fuzzy_Department2799 · 2024-01-15T14:14:35+00:00

Feminist believe masculinity should only exist in the context of serving them. They don't want men they cant control.

White_Immigrant · 2024-01-15T08:56:12+00:00

I'm far (far) left. I get to decide what masculine is to me. I embrace the effects of testosterone. I like my size, my beard, my strength, my sex drive. I enjoy working out and martial arts. I think it's ok to be angry, aggressive, furious, wrathful, stoic, calm, loving, caring, kind, all where appropriate, they have their place.

Idpol pretend lefties don't get to dictate shit to me about how I express my true nature. I advocate for human rights, male equality, free healthcare, education, improved worker rights and solidarity. If someone has a problem with me being masculine then that's their problem, and they're lacking the capacity for appropriate levels of solidarity required to push the movement forward.

SpicyMarshmellow · 2024-01-15T16:26:32+00:00

Going to echo the sentiment that most posters have already covered. The left has nothing healthy for us.

As for my ideas about masculinity - I don't have any. I really don't care, or understand why anybody cares. I have a male body, but that's... it. It doesn't mean anything beyond being what it is. Any aspects of my personality or actions should be a matter of their own merit and whatever feels right to me, entirely independent of what parts my body has.

Here's a thought experiment. Think of a good masculine quality. Does the goodness of that quality change when a woman has it? No? Then why's it a good masculine quality? Why's it not just a good quality?

I think good qualities are universally good. Bad qualities are universally bad. I think everyone, regardless of gender, should just learn to be good human beings in all respects and not focus on being good in specific ways according to their gender. I don't need an alternative to traditional masculinity. I'm just a human being, and need to be recognized as such without people on the left and the right attaching all this extra baggage that has nothing to do with me.

e_maikai · 2024-01-15T23:40:35+00:00

In the Big 5 Personality Traits, men often score higher in Disagreeableness. Love it or hate it, it's data. Seemingly, one of the most masculine things a man can do is define their own masculinity.

Max-Paul2022 · 2024-01-16T03:48:22+00:00

A quick note. I am, sincerely, an old school lefty. We are living in a post-modern era-in one particlar sense-that is relevant to your question about masculinity, and many more fundamental questions. We are post-modern in that we have just recently dispensed with many traditionally conservative values, most of all religion. A lot of other traditional values, including traditional formulations of masculinity, were bound up in religion and, more so, religious practice. By religious practice, I mean the ritual of actually going to a church, meeting other people and the communitarian aspects of that. All these facets gave voice and power to different aspects of traditional views, including those on masculinity.

This is not to say we need a return to church per se, rather that, simply put, something was lost in terms of the integrity of masculinity as we became less religious as a society. Maybe this is another reason Feminists did not like a religious society.

Although I believe myself to be a lefty to my core, my beliefs are based on the dignity of the individual, very much including the individual in the context of family, too (not just some abstract and atomised conception of the individual). In fact, I believe we lost something when extended families were dissolved by the industrial revolution. You can think of the extended family as providing many of the same things we might ask of society as leftists: Child Care, Social Safety Net via family members acting as extra sources of income (as potential workers, in emergency, or on an ad-hoc basis), Free Source of Education and limited Health Care (i.e. nursing, in the home), and so on.

Long story short, the real problem with conservatives was not, so much, their general views. Interpreting everything so literally and insisting on forcing everyone else to fall into line according to their frequently brain dead, and sometimes dangerous, interpretations-was the main problem. A zombie apocalypse, but with very stiff starchy shirts, and suspenders for their britches! (Yes. The aesthetic matters to these people too).

So, my contention is that what are regarded as traditional views, should not be unthinkingly discarded. When Feminists won out over tradcons, we did, indeed, throw out the baby with the bathwater. And traditional conceptions of masculinity were, appparently, in that same bathwater!

I put it to you that conservatives have no proprietary hold of the collective wisdoms of ages past, any more than Feminists have proprietary rights to all discourse on sex and gender. Both situations are undesirable and for the same reason. Why? Because being a lefty is an inherently intellectual pursuit. As we need to consider all the arguments in order to make any claim to justice or critique the status quo. As Left Wing MRAs, we straddle both camps, in terms of the subject matter we need to be conversant with. Or, at least, elements of them, as required.

Bottom line, the tradcons are not too far off when it comes to masculinity. But, earlier feminists sort of had a point about douchey or excessively macho behaviour (the pre-cursor to toxic masculinity), imho. Being a man means negotiating this concept for yourself, and making masculinity your own. In fact, defining manhood according to your own terms is, in itself, what mature manhood is all about. A precursor to that is knowing what your own values and standards are, in the first place. That is an approach faithful to my own drive towards individuality, and consistent with what Paul Elam says about being a man. Incidentally, he is what I would call, a Good Conservative. In contrast we have the cheap, sewer rats of the manosphere, freshandfit and the whatever podcast et al. who use the red pill as a springboard to shil for more toxic tradcon values. Undoing the good work of early red pill visionaries who understood, among other things, a man has inherent value, just like anyone else-and does not need to provide value to someone else to justify his existence.

On a practical note, feminists did a great job wiping out men only spaces. Men need other men. Find one hobby or activity you can do with other males-IN REAL LIFE. I love women, but I learned years ago that spending time only with women is draining. Same for mixed situations owing to how feminized society is and always was (during my lifetime).

I hope this did not come off as a love letter to conservatives. I just resent how people can gloss over the collective wisdom of ages, just because it is alleged to belong to one group over another. Real lefties, and other intellectuals, take the truth where they find it-and-rebuke small minded people with their petty boundaries and gate-keeping. Stay true, Friends! Peace, prosperity, health and dignity...for all.

odeacon · 2024-01-15T11:53:12+00:00

I haven’t really seen much on what the left wants men to express there masculinity by

SchalaZeal01 · 2024-01-15T12:41:23+00:00

I don't imagine that masculinity on the left is much different from masculinity on the right. Politics have nothing to do with masculinity, IMO.

I'm not a big proponent of the concept of "toxic masculinity." Toxic is toxic. If a man treats women poorly, then he's toxic. If he spreads hatred, then he's toxic. etc etc. The same goes for a woman.

I agree with you that masculinity is likely individual, though. To me, the main issue with masculinity is the polarity pulling in opposite directions when it comes to men and emotions. On the one hand, men need a way to express their emotions and vent, but on the other hand, biology makes that difficult to do. I do believe that our tendency to not express emotions has a lot to do with the behavior that testosterone encourages: Predatory behavior. The more testosterone, the more aggression. This means that boys from an early age have to learn to defend against predation. The strategy that men adapt is the same one that cats naturally express: They hide their injuries, because showing weakness attracts predators.

I suppose the solution here is to teach men where it's safe and where it isn't safe to express. Tying it back to what you were saying about feminists: In a healthy romantic relationship, a man should be safe to express his feelings as much as a woman. Masculinity, to me, isn't about hiding feelings from everyone, and any woman that expects otherwise is in for a rude awakening (probably will end up with a psycho).

nerdboy1r · 2024-01-20T23:33:26+00:00

Old thread, but my .02 is that any discussion of 'new masculinity' is a subversive attempt to problematise masculinity rather than the dynamics of misandry that buffet our identity.

It's a natural emergence from patriarchy theory which centres men as responsible for the issues of status quo, and implies that it emerges from men's essential way of being. It disregards the circumstantial factors that scaffold societal development historically (resource scarcity, danger, disease, division of labour) as well as the less noble drives innate to humans - both men and women. It posits that, short of doing away with men altogether, we must change them to be a certain way, and inevitably finds itself tangled in the contradictions you listed once aforementioned reality rubs against their ideas.

I'm not arguing in favour of conservative masculinity here either. I'm just noting that both masculinity and femininity organically adapt to circumstance across history.

We do not need to teach men to be different, we need to treat them differently.

Hot-Capital · 2024-01-15T14:40:51+00:00

Socially liberal policies are directly against masculinity These policies inevitably causes the decline of the traditionally established stable order The likes of Andrew Tate are just a reaction to this.

The correct and practical approach to politics is a economically leftist and socially conservative stance

Anne_JustAnne · 2024-01-16T01:08:00+00:00

I think the point many are missing is that framing a discussion in terms of masculinity is a useful way of defusing what might otherwise be seen as hostility. We can have a sensible discussion about toxic masculinity whereas if we simply catalogued the problems with men directly there's be backlash.

Title	masculinity on the left
Author	trowaway123453199
Upvotes	66
Comments	48
Date	January 14, 2024 8:24 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/196p8j3/masculinity_on_the_left/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/masculinity-on-the-left.1243000 https://theredarchive.com/post/1243000

Comments

Everyone needs to stop telling men how they have to be.