Comment on How to move a sofa

• HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Some people just hate men and can barely contain that. They may not even know it themselves.

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  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I don’t hate men, but masculinity is a millstone.

    There’s a difference.

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    • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Elaborate, because your eagle-eye view just seems like a rewording of misandry.

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      • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Men are fine. Masculinity in 2026 as an ideology or a cultural institution is a problem.

        Men exist in concerning numbers who submit to the manosphere logic, who follow the far-right influencers I’ve mentioned, who vote R because letting the libs win is effeminate. And curiously, conservative, tradwife-minded women don’t like them much either.

        Manhood as expressed in media isn’t much better, with scriptwriters diegetically presuming the alpha male model is a valid theory. (It’s been debunked even for wolves.)

        There are plenty of men who do not submit to these notions, and generally they tend to not be concerned about expressing their manhood or being seen as inadequately masculine. They are more concerned about being adult or being functional than being manly.

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• uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  All the virtues associated with manhood in the 1970s and 1980s turned into general adulting in the 1990s and aughts.

  In 2026, what it is to be a man is asserted by social media personalities like Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Joe Rogan, the Tate brothers. The conversation on masculinity is dominated by the manosphere on social media and far-right television.

  Expressions of manhood are on full display when Josh Hokit disparages Michelle Obama, when Trump intervenes in the world cup to cancel a red card and lift the one game penalty on Folarin Balogun. Or when US Representative Max Miller doubles down on his innocence in a video making common DV gaslighting arguments in the face of credible abuse allegations, on the presumption that his MAGA base won’t care and will still vote for him.

  Masculinity in 2026 is demonstrated when you discharge your strength in malice or cruelty or bad taste to show the world you are beyond the reach of consequences, or do not care what consequences occurr.

  But sure. I’m AMAB and have been criticized for half a century for being inadequately masculine. I’ve been repeatedly bullied and disregarded because I’m a wuss or a wimp. But I’m still game. I’m still open to an argument:

  Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to men that is not also expected of women by our society?

  I’m not saying good men don’t exist. To the contrary, there are plenty. But I am saying what makes them good is not a feature of their masculinity, rather it’s a feature of being a functional adult in a (rapidly deteriorating) liberal society.

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  • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to men that is not also expected of women by our society?

    Tell me of a positive human trait that is particular to women that is not also expected of men by our society.

    Ultimately there are things that men tend to do that are positive and there are things that men tend to do that are negative. This post is an example of the former.

    In other words, you’re over-complicating things because a handful of jackasses want to redefine what being a man is, and you declare that because they exist there cannot be anything (left) that is masculine. That makes no sense and is caving to their whims.

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    • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That handful of jackasses dominate social media in contrast to their opposition counterparts, and it’s creating a public divide between the sexes, hence the 4B movement and the choose the bear thought experiment.

      I don’t know to what degree this factors into the observable trend that zoomers are having less sex and less romance than prior generations at their age. (I’m sure the affordability crisis is a major factor.) But in the US in 2026, our exemplars of masculinity are demonstrating they are entirely transactional and only understand the power of brute force.

      And it’s going to be a long, long time before stereotypes of masculinity change for the better.

      Feel free to set a counterexample. Plenty of men do. And we need more of them. But when they do, they’re not demonstrating what it is to be a man. They’re demonstrating what it is to be a functional adult in a cooperative society.

      I also think society gender roles should be abolished, and that every gender identity (including non-binary ones) should be respected.

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      • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        You’ll have no disagreement from me that there’s far more profit - and a resulting niche of people capitalizing on that - in teaching kids how to be masculine in a toxic way.

        My point is it simply doesn’t follow that all forms of masculinity are toxic any more than all art is AI because AI art is on the massive rise.

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