The inheritance of the Everly Brothers: male vulnerability

BloomingBrains · 2021-08-23T08:56:48+00:00

I asked this same question a while back when I thought about singers like Frank Sinatra and Chet Baker, which are even older. Even going back before that, the "rockstars" of past centuries were the poets like Byron or musicians like Debussy.

Clearly for most of human history, women have idolized what today we would call "sensitive" men but used to just be thought of as sophisticated/romantic. Those were good things, not something that made a guy unmanly and weak. I've always argued that showing emotion and vulnerability isn't a sign of weakness but strength, and it may actually be that women used to notice that. Perhaps it also had something to do with the relative rarity of guys like that. If you look at crime statistics, its clear that over time things like rape have gone steadily down, indicating that the numbers of the illusive "good man" who is romantic and loves women has been growing, not decreasing. They're less of a rarity, and so they have lesser relative value.

But it has to be more than that because the kind of cold, mercenary thinking which focuses so intently on "value" as if people are mere economics didn't come about until recently. The more and more I see the world of dating resembling the wealth inequality gap, the more and more I think that it must have something to do with rampant capitalism. Specifically, the intersection of capitalism and technology.

Take Tinder for example. Female selectiveness used to be checked by the very real threat that one could run out of eligible men in their dating pool (a town, etc.) Dating also used to be more personalized. But now the dating pool is essentially infinite, meaning there is no reason for women to not be as selective as possible. And since its depersonalized (all you are seeing is a quick bio and some pictures) there is no reason not to judge based entirely on superficial status like wealth, social dominance signifiers, etc.

And what do people say? "If one guy can get hundreds of woman and they're ok with that, then what's the problem? They can just say no." Notice how this is the same logic as "So what if companies don't pay living wages? If the employees weren't ok with that, they could just quit! No one is forcing them!"

Except it's not as simple as just making that choice. The system is rigged against women thinking there is any other option. Especially when there is a self-reinforcing culture that says all guys who don't get dates are ugly creeps. Sex is being sold as a product and we're conditioned to view it in the same terms as economics, and since this coincides with a natural gynocentric instinct in the human race, it exacerbates that instinct and creates a more gender essentialist culture.

reverbiscrap · 2021-08-24T05:18:47+00:00

You find a lot of lyrics in early hip hop, especially gangster rap, about the pain of losing friends, going to funerals for children sucked in to the vortex of violence, even worse situations.

Those songs never hit top 10, but it was real and visceral, and what gave the genre a lot of credit when it first came about. Songs about the fear of being busted by the cops and taken away from your children, the daily threat of death and maiming, the pain of burying your closest friends.

And no one I know got killed in South Central LA, today was a good day...

MoroseAlsoLugubrious · 2021-08-25T18:24:11+00:00

The album Songs Our Daddy Taught Us has always struck me as radically corny and sentimental, like at the height of the rock n roll boom these two young men just want to play the folk music that was important to them.

Title	The inheritance of the Everly Brothers: male vulnerability
Author	Blauwpetje
Upvotes	21
Comments	6
Date	August 22, 2021 6:17 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/p9hq6e/the_inheritance_of_the_everly_brothers_male/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/the-inheritance-of-the-everly-brothers-male.1060536 https://theredarchive.com/post/1060536