And Dr. Pepper commercials taught me to stop drinking Dr. Pepper.
5 Likes
Never took basic biology in school?
There are sex-linked genes (e.g., SNPs on the X and Y chromosomes) that code for all sorts of things which affect humans in their everyday life, whether or not they happen to be gestating a future human at the moment.
14 Likes
Wow, something worse than Annoying Orange.
6 Likes
It sounds like you’re putting “other guys” into stereotyped roles. Most of the guys I’m friends with are emotionally intelligent and love to cook.
5 Likes
This read less like a “female gaze” and more like a normal male gaze with the pronouns switched…
3 Likes
I love to cook, but am lacking in emotional intelligence and theory of mind. I would probably fail the Sally-Anne test if it were presented in a format other than a neat, clean laboratory setup. I still make do with what I can.
2 Likes
Yaoi. I don’t read it, but my wife does.
2 Likes
I was referencing the general stereotypes prescribed by toxic masculinity and my own lack of conformity with those stereotypes, not whether or “notallmen” apply to it. 
There are stereotypes and then there are people. I was addressing the former, not the people that are your friends.
4 Likes
Again, I’m not entirely sure what theory of mind and emotional intelligence have to do with toxic masculinity. It sounds like you’re describing autistic people, not some stereotype prescribed by toxic masculinity. I assure you, the two are totally different and incompatible things.
In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man.
It’s mostly about violence, egotism, and tribalism.
I don’t have the ability to create new humans from my body, so I am an expendable part of the community as long as other males survive. Becoming a valuable, respected male means gaining the attention and respect of females, by excelling beyond other men to the limits of my abilities and openly acknowledging when other men or women are superior to me in any particular capacity.
If another male challenges me physically it is acceptable to crush him brutally. If the challenge is not physical, or the challenger is not male, what is an acceptable response is situational and wildly variable, but it is almost never acceptable to extend violence towards a woman - she has to be a willing combatant - and it is always acceptable to refuse to do so, even if that means dying horribly.
It is not permissible for a man to physically challenge a woman, child, handicapped person, or smaller male. It is acceptable to intervene if such a person is being harmed, even if the malfeasant is someone a man should never challenge.
A man should understand and appreciate beauty, but should not require it, if that is possible. Requiring beauty is a weakness. Being able to create utility is a great strength and should be diligently practiced, being able to create beauty is also a strength, combining both is the very highest art.
If a man has the right and ability to destroy someone or something else, and does not do so, that is an admirable act - unless not doing so leads to greater harm. Similarly, generosity is admirable - unless one’s children go hungry for it. Greed is unacceptable and impermissible.
If performing a necessary action will result in the death of the actor, it is incumbent upon men capable of the task to volunteer. If a man knows he is both capable and more expendable than other men, he should perform the action without bothering with the formalities of volunteering. Reward for this should not be required or even expected.
You can probably see how all this can go horribly wrong in many situations; sort of like the 3 laws of robotics, only worse. And lots of women find it insulting to be considered a superior gender simply because of their wombs; they’d prefer a more nuanced appreciation. But that’s the rules of manhood I was taught… and generally, behaving as if I believe these rules to be sacrosanct is beneficial to my tribe. Certainly the formal restrictions and obligations surrounding the application of violence are helpful to everyone!
11 Likes
To the contrary, men who ascribe to toxic masculinity as a personal framework tend to not have highly developed emotional intelligence or a theory of mind. By this I mean that they have a hard time understanding why someone else does what they do and what the other person’s motivations, needs, and desires are, instead working off of a deeply egocentric viewpoint that is deliberately restricted by the demands of the toxic masculinity viewpoint.
To bring an example from this discussion, I’ve been told by other men, who do ascribe to the toxic masculinity outlook, that my ability to cook threatens their own identity as men. Because, according to the stereotypes demanded by that viewpoint, I am engaging in what is defined as a feminine activity and yet identify as a man. Ergo, they must police my non-conforming behavior, without care or consideration for my own motivations in why I am engaging in that behavior, as, to them, those motivations are irrelevant and not worthwhile of consideration, simply deemed as being “unmasculine”.
6 Likes
Sounds fun!
I think I fail a lot of your tests. But I wouldn’t be interested in passing them.
12 Likes
But it’s a weird example, not especially convincing, because I know a lot of men (of numerous races and classes) who cook well, and often. And I know no men who police their gender performance for it. Anecdotes versus anecdotes, I guess, but still.
6 Likes
My personal favorite (in terms of hyperbole) was one fellow a year or so ago that had managed to somehow extend the gender binary to fossil fuels being masculine and renewables being feminine. That was surreal.
But, yeah, it’s definitely regional and subcultural; I’ve noticed that young American White men are particularly guilty of viewing cooking in any form beyond the very basic as being somehow emasculating (with a bonus degree of emasculation if it involves vegetables), but this is definitely a fringe thing, a signifier among those of my generation who will wear the label of “deplorable” with personal pride.
5 Likes
Ah, okay. Thanks, that clears it for me.
3 Likes
That’s actually very manly!
Hmmmm… something something “Real men don’t eat quiche. Real men that do eat quiche don’t care who knows that they do.”*
Caring what other people think is OK, but caring what other people think about you is not manly. And acknowledging one’s failings (both real weaknesses and failure to live up to other people’s ridiculous or unrealistic expectations) is extremely manly. **
* Personally I’m all over a classic Gateau Au Fromage Fribourgeoise.
** according to the code I attempted to illustrate earlier.
5 Likes
Is having zero interest in being manly very manly?
I’m hoping that not being interested in living up to other people’s expectations of manliness is!
4 Likes
I honestly can say that my emotional intelligence and theory of mind are extremely low, but none of this is a result of deliberate restrictions on my part. It’s more of a limitation that I have to work through. There’s no way for me to improve this beyond learning tips and tricks and little rules that work roughly half the time. I basically wing it and hope what I’m doing is only a little wrong. I can avoid being extremely wrong, but being perfectly right is a little too much for me to hope for, because social interaction makes no intuitive sense to me whatsoever. Also, it is incredibly hard for me to know what someone else’s feeling when I can’t even tell what I’m feeling, even if it’s an extreme in one direction or the other.
If you’re suggesting that guys with low emotional intelligence and theory of mind tend to gravitate toward toxic masculinity, I can’t really dispute that. Toxic masculinity preys on people like that, because it offers no opportunity for introspection or insight, just “girls don’t like nice guys, so you have to be a jerk” and other crap like that. Easy solutions that aren’t even solutions at all, but rather transform a problem into a completely different and worse problem while letting the guy feel like he fixed something. However, it would be wrong to suggest that anyone who lacks emotional intelligence and theory of mind is doomed to that mindset.
This right here is why toxic masculinity is incompatible with the autism spectrum. Toxic masculinity is all about tribalism, and social order, and one-upmanship, and constant jockeying for status. I don’t give a good goddamn what tribe I belong to, don’t know or care about my place in the tribe, and even if I knew what I would have to do to move up the ranks, I probably wouldn’t do it because it’s not worth the effort.
6 Likes
Well, very manly men have a mild preference for manliness, simply because it is the outcome of the other stuff previously listed, but they should not be overly concerned about labels and most definitely not interested in conforming to the expectations of other males.
Wanting females to consider you manly is OK, as long as you’re not self-caricaturing… which I kind of am, in this conversation, so I’m breaking the rules. It’s all supposed to be an unspoken code sort of thing, even though that is absurd.
Note this is all increasingly useless the further you get from a cis-gendered heterosexual self-image and role.
Which argues that stereotypical American manliness is also increasingly useless the further you get from neurotypical… but as noted before it’s actually extremely masculine not to care what other people think.
I often think masculinity goes toxic right about when people start thinking they are lions, entitled to kill the cubs of their fallen predecessors. Of course it’s much more complex than that - there are more ways to evil than to good.
3 Likes
Wearing a frilly pink tutu is extremely masculine. Got it
8 Likes
