[ POLL ] Traditional Masculinity.
Different brain wiring implies different needs.
There is nothing "special" about that... quite the contrary!
Why would there be anything wrong with that?
Most men and women have been living along the lines of the traditional gender roles of their cultures for thousands of years, and few people ever seemed to have an issue with that until the 1960s.
And now that mainstream society is putting traditional gender roles are put into question, what do we see? An increase of failed marriages, kids raised without fathers, high suicide & depression rates for both genders, ...
I fail to see how abandoning traditional gender roles has lead to an improvement of the living standard of either sex, really...
This is what actual science suggests.
Are you anti-science?
Let me quote an earlier post of mine on that :
The warrior archetype tends to be aggressive, because aggression is a positive trait for warriors.
Artists tend to be artistic, because artistic talent is a positive trait for artists.
Scientists tend to be intellectual, because intellectualism is a positive trait for scientists.
Try to educate a scientist archetype as a warrior, and he will feel out of place.
Try to educate a warrior archetype as a scientist, and he will feel out of place as well.
Both, however, are equally representative of traditional masculinity.
In fact, the traditional male ideal is a man who combines elements of all three archetypes : the "warrior-priest-poet". The "warrior-priest-poet" is a man who has the traits or a warrior, an artist and a scientist all bundled in one person, and who manages to balance them out perfectly.
The very notion that one cannot be a traditional male if one is not aggressive is nothing but a misandric distortion of what true masculinity is really about... and teaching this notion of masculinity can be harmful to men for all sorts of reasons.
Your typical male geek is just as masculine as your typical male football player. They just exhibit a different form of traditional masculinity.
The only thing toxic I've seen in this thread, is the anti-male sexism that you seem to be pushing.
The above analysis is spot on. I'm not a fan of masculinity expressed in the terms mentioned in the original post, for the most part, but to suggest that we should do away with masculinity altogether, or that there is ABSOLUTELY NO difference (presumably not even a biological one) between men and women, is absurd. In fact, typical feminists assent to the value of traits like ambition, competitiveness and Machiavellianism when they advocate these things for women.
I was tempted by the most extreme response to the survey, just to annoy PC types. The idea that masculinity is toxic is of course, bunkum. The usual feminist technique here is of course to label violence and misogyny as traditional male culture, which it most certainly is not. Far from it. Traditional male culture stressed what would be called 'chivalry', though of course this is now viewed as patronizing to women. Males traditionally were required to be kind, considerate, good providers for the family and morally strong. They would also be expected to have nothing to do with the behaviours the left would like to label as male. There's little wrong with that.
Finally, Aspies are often, just as Asperger suggested, very, very male. Female Aspies often identify with a more 'male' thought pattern, so I think we should be careful of people who don't like masculinity.
Here's an excerpt from my article The decline of Western Civilisation… and why Marxists did not lose but win the Cold War :
In its early stages, a caste system typically has only three castes. The first caste is a priest caste. They are believed to have exclusive access to sacred knowledge and define the social norms and rules for all members of a community. The second caste is a warrior caste. They are trained from an early age onward in various military skills and have the exclusive duty to protect the community from any threat. The third caste is a caste of commoners, which consists of pretty much everyone else.
At later stages, specialization leads to the develop of sub-castes that sometimes become a caste of their own. Bureaucrats, artisans, merchants and pariahs typically don’t fit well into one of the three main castes and in some cultures become a caste of its own.
Violence is an intrinsic aspect of the traditions of the warrior caste, as this caste was meant to defend the nation from enemies. They were trained as soldiers from a very young age onward, and this is not possible without teaching them the art of war. Violence has never been part of the upbringing of priests (intellectuals), bureaucrats, artisans, merchants & other non-warrior castes, though.
And while Abrahamic tradition did introduce a rather misogynistic attitude towards women into Europe, this misogyny is completely alien to pre-Christian European tradition and never really got much of a hold of the European mind. Especially compared with the way Muslim or Haredi men treat their women, Europeans have already kept their women in very high regard and treated them with the utmost respect... even in more savage times.
As a sidenote, it's very ironic that the very Feminists who complain the loudest about non-existent misogyny in traditional Western culture are also shouting the loudest to let Muslims into our countries, with many of them coming from countries where women are not allowed to drive or are otherwise treated like children. And the increase of men coming from actually misogynistic cultures has directly resulted in the rise of rapes in various European cities.
I guess Feminists don't actually care about women?
"Chivalry" actually required men to treat women with a lot of respect. Treating a women without respect was considered dishonorable. And nothing was worse for a nobleman than to be considered without honor by his peers.
"Chivalry" didn't just apply to male attitudes towards women, however, but also towards other men or to society as a whole. "Chivalry", as we know it in the west is a traditional code of conduct that can be traced back to the European warrior caste of the high middle ages. And the point of this code of conduct was to serve as a guideline for what behavior, among knights, was to consider "honorable", "moral", "just", etc.
Note that "chivalry", as a concept, transcends Western civilization and similar codes of conduct can be found throughout all cultures. Taking for example Japan's Bushidō (literaly : "the way of warrior"). It's codes of conduct are strikingly similar to that of medieval knights.
While "chivalry" was originally conceived by warriors, for warrior, many of its codes of conduct can be applied and have been applied throughout history by other castes as well, however usually to a lesser degree, as each caste tended to develop its own social norms, its own conventions, etc. based on their own standards as a caste.
As Molyneux pointed out in his rebuttal of the "article" mention in the OP, much of the actually toxic behaviour the left would like to label as "traditional" male behavior is actually pathological behavior that stems from a troubled youth, often exhibited by men who grew up without a father, a male teacher or other healthy male role model. Basically, it's behavior caused by a LACK of healthy masculinity in one's life, rather than an abundance of so-called "toxic masculinity.
And when I speak of "healthy masculinity", I'm not refering to what Feminists refer to as "healthy masculinity"... which is really just female behavior they want to impose on men. When I speak of "health masculinity", I'm refering to traditional codes of conduct, like "chivalry" / Bushidō.
Because people =/= genetically engineered rodents. There are no controls in psych.
_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos
I've been wondering if what is currently known as the Autism spectrum is not just people with extreme personalities jumbled together with people who have actual learning disabilities, anxiety issues, etc.
When I read about the INTP personality, I feel like I'm reading about me as an individual... far more than when I'm reading about ASD. And there sure is an overlap between INTP behavior, ADD behavior and ASD behavior. So maybe I should stop calling myself Autistic and start calling myself an INTP instead?
FYI, I do have an official ASD diagnosis.
I've been wondering if what is currently known as the Autism spectrum is not just people with extreme personalities jumbled together with people who have actual learning disabilities, anxiety issues, etc.
When I read about the INTP personality, I feel like I'm reading about me as an individual... far more than when I'm reading about ASD. And there sure is an overlap between INTP behavior, ADD behavior and ASD behavior. So maybe I should stop calling myself Autistic and start calling myself an INTP instead?
FYI, I do have an official ASD diagnosis.
You may well be correct. I am also INTP. I have no learning disabilities and, after all, that is Aspergers' Syndrome is it not? Autism without intellectual disability. So, perhaps, as you say, it isn't autism at all?
Autism used to be defined pretty narrowly. It's only in recent decades that the definition for what qualities as "Autistic" has been expanded, to include for example what was until recently known as Asperger Syndrome.
By expanding the definition of "Autism", "Autism" became a "spectrum, encompasses such a wide range of behavior & cognitive styles, including many people of average to genius level intelligence, with fairly normal jobs and normal family lives.
IMO it sure it's time to question what exactly it is that we gained by expanding the definition of "Autism"... and what it is that lost. Is there really a benefit to our personality / neurotype being considered a "disorder" by the mainstream? Or does that only result in further disenfranchising an segment of society that's already weak, due to its limited social skills?
The anti-Semitism definitely isn't unintentional. All his sources are from the alt-right media, anti-Semitism (sometimes of the internalized variety--because surprise!, Jews can hate themselves just like some women embrace misogyny) is their favourite passtime.
The anti-Semitism definitely isn't unintentional. All his sources are from the alt-right media, anti-Semitism (sometimes of the internalized variety--because surprise!, Jews can hate themselves just like some women embrace misogyny) is their favourite passtime.
It used to be. Unfortunately, the human sciences (which includes but is not exclusive to psychology) have been taken over be demagogues, who (ab)use these sciences to push their political agenda.
Toxic masculinity is killing us
Men Are Responsible for Mass Shootings
Toxic Masculinity Is Killing the Planet
Each of these "articles" is nothing but pure, unadulterated, sexist demagoguery...
So sad to see how mainstream anti-male propaganda & hatred have become ...
And then people wonder why the suicide of men is skyrocketing...
What does that mean in the real world, though?
What does that mean in a world where the average man and the average woman are biologically different, in a way that translates to not just physical differences but also different emotional experiences & cognitive behavior?
What's wrong about the traditional notion of the sexes being complementary and having different needs according to their different attributes?
I've found myself sexually attracted to both "feminine" women and "androgynous" women. And I think it's kind of stupid to force women to behave "feminine" if it doesn't fit their character.
Having said that, I've found that "androgynous" women often do tend to be on the spectrum... which shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with Baron-Cohen's ideas on ASD.
Gender roles are based on the natural affinities of average men and average women.
This means that áre useful for eg. education. If you teach boys according to male gender roles and girls according to female gender roles, you would appeal to the natural affinity of the average boy and the average girl. And that's a good thing.
The problem isn't so much the existence of gender roles. The problem is forcing people into a certain role they don't fit into. "Androgynous" people, for example, may not fit into a the role associated with their gender. And they should be at least given the option to choose a different part.
This is something that transcends gender roles, however. We don't want geeks and jocks to be educated the same way ether.
Yet I wonder how many of them do enjoy watching sports for very different reasons than their male counterparts... like this being the main interest of their spouse... or like enjoying the sight of males in their prime running around in shorts...
The thing is, if androgyny is allowed, I'm not sure why you'd need strict gender roles. How strict are these "Masculine" and "Feminine" roles? Do you fall into "Androgyny" if you mostly have masculine characteristics but also have some feminine ones? Or if said masculine characteristics are not consistent (as in, depending on the situation, you might be more feminine instead)?
It seems more to me that most of us would be some degree of androgynous anyway, so why even bother with the categories? Characteristics traditionally associated with masculinity (courage, decisiveness) can be good, and should thus be encouraged. Anybody who displays these traits should be encouraged to continue doing so, regardless of their biological sex. Similarly, characteristics traditionally associated with femininity (gentleness, nurturing) can also be good, and should be encouraged when people show a natural aptitude for them, again regardless of their biological sex. Maybe you'd have more men in the former group and more women in the latter, but that's fine. By disregarding gender roles, there's no need to ostracize women who display masculine characteristics or men who display feminine ones.
The proposed categorization seems unnecessarily complicated.
I believe gender roles are very valuable and useful, but it they should be treated more like guidelines. Even in traditional societies and dictatorships, we see women who step outside the boundaries of the traditional female gender roles, without mainstream society questioning the validity of gender roles.
Just think of figures like Joan of Arc, Hildegard van Bingen, Marie Curie, Leni Riefenstahl or the Onna-bugeisha (female samurai). All of these played a role way beyond the role expected of women at their time, yet they did so with grace and were given the freedom to do so.
I strongly object to the American tendency to make every political issue a dichotomy, where there are only two options.
Legalizing all abortion or legalizing no abortions are not the only two options.
Legalizing all drugs or legalizing no drugs are not the only two options.
Legalizing all guns or legalizing no guns are not the only two options.
A lot of issues allow for nuanced responses, for shades of gray between the black & white. And the issue of gender roles is no different.
Ultra-strict gender roles without any exceptions or no gender roles at all are not the only two options.
Because for most people, you will get better results when you teach girls the skills associated with womanhood, in a way that is adapted to the a average female mind, and when you teach boys the skills associated with manhood in a way that is adapted to the a average male mind.
When members of both sexes are given equal opportunity, you'll find that men continue to be over-represented in professions like engineering or computer science and women continued to be over-represented in professions like nursing and teaching. That is because men are typically more interested in things and ideas, whereas women are typically more interested in people. Hence, they choose a different career path.
We also see that boys and girls (again, on average) have different ways of learning things. And with most teachers being women & classes being gender mixed, we see that boys are increasingly failing classes, because female teachers have a tendency to teach boys and girls alike in a way that is more suitable for girls.
Gender roles and some degree of gender segregation have existed for millennia in pretty much every culture, for reasons like the ones described above. But those same traditional cultures often allowed an "escape" for people who did not fit into the gender role assigned to their sex... with the aforementioned Onna-bugeisha being a notable example.
I believe it was a huge mistake to move away from gender roles and gender segregation, pushed by demagogues based on ideologically driven pseudoscience. And I believe it is very important to return to such traditional approaches if we want to restore the damage that has been done since.
The proposed categorization? You mean the simple binary distinction between the typically female and typically male, that is made in pretty much every culture throughout history?
It sure sounds a lot less complicated to me than modern notions that gender and sex are two distinct concepts and that gender is a social construct but that it is still a reasonable idea to change your (biological) sex if there is a mismatch your gender and your sex... and that there are really a few dozen genders. It hurts my head when I try to wrap my head around such strange, internally inconsistent notions.
The term "Toxic Masculinity" serves to outline aspects of traditional masculinity that are socially destructive, such as:
• Avarice / Greed
• Bullying / Intimidation
• Homophobia
• Misogyny
• Violent Domination
Other aspects of traditional masculinity are not part of the concept of toxic masculinity, such as:
• Ambition / Success
• Pride in personal achievement
• Providing for and protecting one's family
• Solidarity / Team Spirit
It's the toxic aspect of Traditional Masculinity that is being addressed.
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