All posts tagged "Masculinity"

I've been really happy with the reception I've gotten for a piece I did on masculinity and high-quality TV drama.  (It got reprinted on Jezebel, which I think may be my first byline for them, believe it or not.) Alyssa Rosenberg calls it "prestige TV", and I think that's exactly the right term.  It explains in part why I didn't talk about some shows people asked me about after I published this, such as "Lost".  "Lost" is actually a decent example of writers working similar themes about the crisis of masculinity---Jack's personal problems were overtly patriarchal in an often anvilicious way---but I was more interested in why this particular theme of men facing the demons of traditional masculinity was so compelling on highbrow television.  

Anne at Balloon Juice posted on what initially seems like the stupidest "protest" of all time---men parading around Starbucks showing off their guns to protest.....nothing, really. Starbucks lets them do it, it turns out, though now the gun wavers have provoked gun control advocates to respond in anger and fear, which is the wrong thing to do, which I'll return to in a moment. But first I want to talk about how Anne isn't being a very sympathetic person towards the gun-wavers.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/v/J3L2mxTmTe8&hl=en&fs=1& expand=1]Even at my most cynical, I would have not predicted that people would be brandishing weapons and threatening Obama 9 months out from the inauguration. I figured it was either at inauguration or years out, depending on how they mustered their courage. And frankly, the latter seemed more likely, because the second most potent trait of wingnuts (the first being a haunting fear that everyone can see your dark secret that makes you less than a man) is their boots-shaking cowardice. Remember---the only reason we have legions of moronic right wing blogs is that there's no end to cowardly wingnuts who wish for a war to prove their manhood very badly, but want someone else to fight it, because of their unfortunate tendency to piss themselves when confronted with actual danger. Working up the courage to be such morons as to haul guns to Obama events? I assumed they'd need years of obsessing to work up the courage. But these are strange times we live in.

[rebelmouse-image 24748746 original_size="394x400" expand=1]In terms of fake science, this article about how frivolous, stupid women can't be expected to rein in their spending during a recession may be hitting a new low. There is no sourcing that I can see for this claim:

Kathryn Joyce sent me this article from Alternet as an exercise in laughing at the Internet Tough Guys who tend to go apeshit whenever anyone questions the toxic masculinity that holds their allegiance, and believe me, the comments on it went from hilarious to just sickening. Because we're talking about the myth of "man as caveman" (which tends to pair of neatly with the illogical myth that women are somehow more civilized, as if one half of the species could evolve without the other half)---which is used to defend everything from rape to male cheating (as if female cheating doesn't exist) to, and I suspect this is most important to myth proponents, making your wife feel bad for daring to be older than 16---the internet hooligans went bananas. I think this Nice Guy® whining is my favorite: