Are We Feminizing Men?
Yes.
No.
Sort of?
I don't know.
To some extent?
When feminism was cool, the answer was: we're trying to knock off the irrationally rough edges that place artificial, arbitrary, unreflective limits on male autonomy.
But feminism hasn't been cool for a long, long time.
Now the answer is: you bet we are, because masculinity is T0000000000XXXXXIC and there's no such thing as men and women anyway and also there is such a thing but men are women and women are men and....all truth is falsehood.
I'm with the old-school, cool, egalitarian feminists...2.0...who don't think that everybody should be androgynous, but who do think that social pressure to conform to sex/gender roles should be loosened up a bit so that autonomous choice about modes of behavior is easier. It'd be good if people had more latitude.
OTOH, I now think that there are non-stupid reasons for men to err on the side of masculinity, and for women to err on the side of femininity (so long as that doesn't make them passive... I think femininity may be a more complicated thing, honestly. Damn Rebecca Reilly-Cooper for complicating my thinking on that score...)
Though, consider the hyperbolic gender shit of the '90s and aughts...and often still now...hyper-over-muscled dudes and hyper-super-sexualized women... I honestly see that stuff as just as weird as the other stuff. Dudes on steroids stomping around ostentatiously and self-consciously trying to be hyperbolically masculine and dudes in dresses look, well, basically the same to me. I do think dudes are better off being masculine-ish...they're certainly better off in the "sexual marketplace" (as the redpillers say)...but overdo it by even just a bit and you become a clown. There are some girls out there, undoubtedly, who are partial to more feminine men...but as a mating strategy, femininity is not a winning one for dudes.
Anyway, there's this.
Does anybody remember what my point was?
No.
Sort of?
I don't know.
To some extent?
When feminism was cool, the answer was: we're trying to knock off the irrationally rough edges that place artificial, arbitrary, unreflective limits on male autonomy.
But feminism hasn't been cool for a long, long time.
Now the answer is: you bet we are, because masculinity is T0000000000XXXXXIC and there's no such thing as men and women anyway and also there is such a thing but men are women and women are men and....all truth is falsehood.
I'm with the old-school, cool, egalitarian feminists...2.0...who don't think that everybody should be androgynous, but who do think that social pressure to conform to sex/gender roles should be loosened up a bit so that autonomous choice about modes of behavior is easier. It'd be good if people had more latitude.
OTOH, I now think that there are non-stupid reasons for men to err on the side of masculinity, and for women to err on the side of femininity (so long as that doesn't make them passive... I think femininity may be a more complicated thing, honestly. Damn Rebecca Reilly-Cooper for complicating my thinking on that score...)
Though, consider the hyperbolic gender shit of the '90s and aughts...and often still now...hyper-over-muscled dudes and hyper-super-sexualized women... I honestly see that stuff as just as weird as the other stuff. Dudes on steroids stomping around ostentatiously and self-consciously trying to be hyperbolically masculine and dudes in dresses look, well, basically the same to me. I do think dudes are better off being masculine-ish...they're certainly better off in the "sexual marketplace" (as the redpillers say)...but overdo it by even just a bit and you become a clown. There are some girls out there, undoubtedly, who are partial to more feminine men...but as a mating strategy, femininity is not a winning one for dudes.
Anyway, there's this.
Does anybody remember what my point was?
posted by Winston Smith at
2:17 PM
2 Comments:
You can link to your classic dutoit post here.
Ha ha I think you're the only surviving commenter from back then, PM.
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