Toxic masculinity and red pilling boys and young men

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There was a discussion of this on the Mark Robinson thread but that's obviously not the right place for it. It's an interesting topic unto itself, and people shouldn't have to wade through pages of MRob filth to see it. Let's locate it here.

Here are my thoughts about toxic masculinity. I'm not too much in touch with young men, but my college freshman son does tell me about the attitudes of some of his friends. He was in a weird social group. Most of his friends were the foreign kids -- Indian, East Asian, Turkish, etc. -- and that became his friend group. There were some real dickheads in that group (one founded a neo-Nazi student group as a freshman in college last year), but my son had trouble extricating himself from them because he didn't want to leave his friend group. So he engaged with them as little as possible, but we still get a flavor of some of the stuff out there. That said, my son is not representative of young men everywhere, so this is pretty fucking far from any scientific account. Anyway:

I think sex is really at the heart of a lot of it, and specifically the lack of instruction. The toxic dudes try to minimize actual sex in their talks. It's all about getting women and the assumption is, I guess, that the sex part will take care of itself. But of course, it doesn't. Nobody knows how to be a sex god out of the womb. So then these young men finally get their sex, they are bad at it, and then they blame the women and off we go.

1. So my first idea would be to teach sexual performance in sex ed classes. I know, this would be, shall we say, controversial, but it's important. When I had sex ed, I recall lots of diagrams of female anatomy and exercises like "name all these organs." That shit had no staying power in my mind, in part because it was sterile and in part because it had no use to me. I didn't care, and still don't, whether I'm touching the labia or the vulva or one of the other individually named parts of the pussy (note: there has been a feminist movement to make pussy an acceptable word, on the grounds that we need a word like that. Now that women talk freely about getting dick, we should also be able to talk about pussy. It doesn't have to be a toxic word. This is part of my point). What I wanted to know was how to touch the pussy to make my partner happy and thus desirous of sleeping with me again.

Young men are hungry for that instruction. That's one reason they turn to porn. And porn, of course, is really not a very good source for this sort of information.

2. Sex performance instruction doesn't need to be granular. We don't need the Seinfeld episode about various "moves." But it is probably helpful to go through basics. Like: Most women orgasm from their clitoris; they can also have deeper, super-powerful orgasms but that's not likely to happen outside a committed relationship, at least not at your age; so generally speaking, here's how to stimulate a clitoris so a woman orgasms.

There also needs to be instruction about male sex troubles. Again, in sex ed class, I remember being told about premature ejaculation. Alas, they never said what to do if you're suffering from it. Kids need to know, if you're coming in 10 seconds, it's not because you're a lousy man. Here are some things that might help. And by all means, talk to a doctor. It's not shameful. It's a medical condition that you will probably outgrow, but anyway, here's what to do.

Our culture is full of shaming dudes who blow their wads too soon. Women, in particular, mock guys who don't last (see, e.g., Stormy Daniels). Fine. That's humor. Just tell the young men that it's OK if they have that problem when they are young. The jokes are funny precisely because everyone's been there.

3. I think this one is important. The way we teach about "consent" is fucked up. The entire premise of "consent" is basically the old masculinity model: dudes are interested in getting laid; women are reluctant; dudes are supposed to keep trying until they get what they want. There's no way to make anything anti-toxic out of that. The toxicity is baked into the model. Yes, we can use this structure to treat the symptoms of toxicity, but to get at the root cause, we need a different model.

A few years ago, I told my son not to pay attention to workshops and lessons about "consent." It's so much simpler and so much better to have a standard of "enthusiastic participation." If the women is into it, really into it, you never have to worry about running afoul of any laws or policies. The technicalities are just not relevant if you remove them from the equation. Of course, I also had to talk about the special problem of alcohol; I said that a woman who is really drunk isn't really capable of enthusiastic participation because the enthusiasm is phony. It's actually just drunkenness. Anyway, he took to it. As far as I know, he's good in bed and his gf is frequently enthusiastic.

Now, maybe "enthusiastic participation" isn't the best standard for everyone. Maybe there are better ways of framing it for a general audience. I don't have an opinion about that. But I really think we need to communicate something analogous in content to:

A. If you try to cajole a woman who's not really into it at that moment, she's not likely to enjoy it even if she consents.
B. If she doesn't enjoy it, she won't want to do it again, or at least not as often as you want.'
C. If she does enjoy it, she is likely to want more.
D. Thus, the best way to get sex is to be really good at it. And to be really good, you have to recognize that sometimes women just don't want to. Accept it; do something else; and the next time she's horny, she'll find you. And then you can do it well, and she will probably want more. You'll end up getting loads of sex if it's an amazing experience for her.
E. You probably won't be good at first. That's not your fault. Nobody is good at anything without practice. Also, your partner might not really enjoy it initially. That's not her fault either. Keep working at it.

Well, something like that. Maybe add in some stuff about lube, which is one of the most under-appreciated inventions in the history of mankind.

Don't get me wrong: the legal concept of consent needs to be taught. But it shouldn't be the first thing presented, in my opinion. Start with enthusiastic participation. Then later on, "what if the enthusiasm isn't there but you want to go anyway"?
 
Oh, I created a long post introducing the thread and offering some thoughts. Maybe we can merge?
 
superrific said:
There was a discussion of this on the Mark Robinson thread but that's obviously not the right place for it. It's an interesting topic unto itself, and people shouldn't have to wade through pages of MRob filth to see it. Let's locate it here.
Click to expand...
Damn man, do you type 120 words a minute? Impressive...
 
My wife was picking up my daughter form school yesterday and texted me that several high school aged boys came out of the school shouting "Free Diddy!" and my wife had to have a talk with my daughter to explain what that's all about and why it's disgusting. Seems pertinent on this thread.
 
Thanks for starting this, I thought it was an interesting discussion on the other thread but needed to be spun off.

It's certainly an alarming trend and I'm not sure that a lot of people realize just how much momentum it seems to have.

There seems to be a pipeline from more comedy-oriented influencers (with some occasional non-PC but not super offensive jokes), into more politically focused influencers. I've seen it play out first-hand several times in the past few years even.

I will say that progressives are, by and large, awful at messaging to young males. Having studied/worked on college campuses for the last decade, it can often feel like straight, cis, white, Christian, Southern, etc males are the boogeyman to be blamed for everything. Throw in increased conversations around "toxic masculinity" and things like that and it's pretty easy to see how that could leave one feeling attacked. I'm pretty liberal overall, and I even find it tiresome at times. Not enough to push me into supporting the clownshow of the political right, but I can see how a group of influencers repeating that you're not actually the problem would be appealing.

Don't get me wrong, that's not the way these young men should be reacting, but it's at least somewhat understandable.
 
hedge said:
Damn man, do you type 120 words a minute? Impressive...
Click to expand...
Something like that. It's more like 80 words a minute, but as importantly, I think at 80 words a minute. That's why my long posts can be long. I'm not actually spending all day posts. I just write quickly so maybe it seems that way.
 
HesNaughtHere said:
There seems to be a pipeline from more comedy-oriented influencers (with some occasional non-PC but not super offensive jokes), into more politically focused influencers. I've seen it play out first-hand several times in the past few years even.
Click to expand...

The process of Red/Black Pilling someone by introducing taboo subjects via (at first) ironic references ("I'm just kidding, can't you guys take a joke? What we're not even allowed to kid around anymore?") is called Irony Poising: Irony poisoning - Wikipedia

The KKK style guide (yes, the KKK actually does have a style guide) has a section devoted to how to do this properly.
 
HesNaughtHere said:
I will say that progressives are, by and large, awful at messaging to young males. Having studied/worked on college campuses for the last decade, it can often feel like straight, cis, white, Christian, Southern, etc males are the boogeyman to be blamed for everything. Throw in increased conversations around "toxic masculinity" and things like that and it's pretty easy to see how that could leave one feeling attacked. I'm pretty liberal overall, and I even find it tiresome at times. Not enough to push me into supporting the clownshow of the political right, but I can see how a group of influencers repeating that you're not actually the problem would be appealing.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. You will never make inroads with a group if you are always telling them that they are horrible. About this, the MAGAs have a point. That's more complex, because the discussion -- at least logically -- is more like, "you're better than this; MAGA is terrible" repeated a dozen times, followed by an exasperated "well, I guess you're not better than this." But generally speaking, insulting people without giving them any way to agree with you other than capitulation is not a great way to make friends or allies.

I will also add that the "believe women" stuff needs to be contextualized. It is absolutely true that women sometimes weaponize allegations of assault or abuse. For instance: in divorces. My ex- has been doing that shit to me, and our kids see it. They know it's BS. So then if my son is taught, "women always tell the truth about being assaulted" he would just tune out.

It's much more accurate to say, "women tend not to lie about this stuff unless it benefits them." I mean, that's the point, right? What incentive does a woman have to report being raped by a stranger when it didn't happen? There can be bad motivations there, but surely that's quite rare. But when women DO have incentives to lie -- for instance, because it will get them custody and more child support -- then maybe a bit of skepticism is in order. That's not to say that it's always made up or anything like that. It's just that recognizing when allegations can be self-serving is important in any truth-finding endeavor.

The other thing that people need to remember is that young men are . . . well, young. And here I think there's an experience gap. Progressives tend to be kids of liberals, and liberals are likely to teach them about concepts like toxic masculinity. By the time these progressives get to college, these ideas are old hat for them. But for guys from different backgrounds, it's new. It needs to be taught, and not in a "let me remind you of this thing" way. It will take some time for a young man to change his worldview. If you castigate him for not changing it immediately after the consent seminar, again, you will lose the audience.
 
Ddseddse said:
My wife was picking up my daughter form school yesterday and texted me that several high school aged boys came out of the school shouting "Free Diddy!" and my wife had to have a talk with my daughter to explain what that's all about and why it's disgusting. Seems pertinent on this thread.
Click to expand...
Yep, I think that's an example of the irony poisoning you referred to in a later post. And then it quickly loses its irony. In the link you provided, it's probably the hard form.
 
superrific said:
There was a discussion of this on the Mark Robinson thread but that's obviously not the right place for it. It's an interesting topic unto itself, and people shouldn't have to wade through pages of MRob filth to see it. Let's locate it here.

Here are my thoughts about toxic masculinity. I'm not too much in touch with young men, but my college freshman son does tell me about the attitudes of some of his friends. He was in a weird social group. Most of his friends were the foreign kids -- Indian, East Asian, Turkish, etc. -- and that became his friend group. There were some real dickheads in that group (one founded a neo-Nazi student group as a freshman in college last year), but my son had trouble extricating himself from them because he didn't want to leave his friend group. So he engaged with them as little as possible, but we still get a flavor of some of the stuff out there. That said, my son is not representative of young men everywhere, so this is pretty fucking far from any scientific account. Anyway:

I think sex is really at the heart of a lot of it, and specifically the lack of instruction. The toxic dudes try to minimize actual sex in their talks. It's all about getting women and the assumption is, I guess, that the sex part will take care of itself. But of course, it doesn't. Nobody knows how to be a sex god out of the womb. So then these young men finally get their sex, they are bad at it, and then they blame the women and off we go.

1. So my first idea would be to teach sexual performance in sex ed classes. I know, this would be, shall we say, controversial, but it's important. When I had sex ed, I recall lots of diagrams of female anatomy and exercises like "name all these organs." That shit had no staying power in my mind, in part because it was sterile and in part because it had no use to me. I didn't care, and still don't, whether I'm touching the labia or the vulva or one of the other individually named parts of the pussy (note: there has been a feminist movement to make pussy an acceptable word, on the grounds that we need a word like that. Now that women talk freely about getting dick, we should also be able to talk about pussy. It doesn't have to be a toxic word. This is part of my point). What I wanted to know was how to touch the pussy to make my partner happy and thus desirous of sleeping with me again.

Young men are hungry for that instruction. That's one reason they turn to porn. And porn, of course, is really not a very good source for this sort of information.

2. Sex performance instruction doesn't need to be granular. We don't need the Seinfeld episode about various "moves." But it is probably helpful to go through basics. Like: Most women orgasm from their clitoris; they can also have deeper, super-powerful orgasms but that's not likely to happen outside a committed relationship, at least not at your age; so generally speaking, here's how to stimulate a clitoris so a woman orgasms.

There also needs to be instruction about male sex troubles. Again, in sex ed class, I remember being told about premature ejaculation. Alas, they never said what to do if you're suffering from it. Kids need to know, if you're coming in 10 seconds, it's not because you're a lousy man. Here are some things that might help. And by all means, talk to a doctor. It's not shameful. It's a medical condition that you will probably outgrow, but anyway, here's what to do.

Our culture is full of shaming dudes who blow their wads too soon. Women, in particular, mock guys who don't last (see, e.g., Stormy Daniels). Fine. That's humor. Just tell the young men that it's OK if they have that problem when they are young. The jokes are funny precisely because everyone's been there.

3. I think this one is important. The way we teach about "consent" is fucked up. The entire premise of "consent" is basically the old masculinity model: dudes are interested in getting laid; women are reluctant; dudes are supposed to keep trying until they get what they want. There's no way to make anything anti-toxic out of that. The toxicity is baked into the model. Yes, we can use this structure to treat the symptoms of toxicity, but to get at the root cause, we need a different model.

A few years ago, I told my son not to pay attention to workshops and lessons about "consent." It's so much simpler and so much better to have a standard of "enthusiastic participation." If the women is into it, really into it, you never have to worry about running afoul of any laws or policies. The technicalities are just not relevant if you remove them from the equation. Of course, I also had to talk about the special problem of alcohol; I said that a woman who is really drunk isn't really capable of enthusiastic participation because the enthusiasm is phony. It's actually just drunkenness. Anyway, he took to it. As far as I know, he's good in bed and his gf is frequently enthusiastic.

Now, maybe "enthusiastic participation" isn't the best standard for everyone. Maybe there are better ways of framing it for a general audience. I don't have an opinion about that. But I really think we need to communicate something analogous in content to:

A. If you try to cajole a woman who's not really into it at that moment, she's not likely to enjoy it even if she consents.
B. If she doesn't enjoy it, she won't want to do it again, or at least not as often as you want.'
C. If she does enjoy it, she is likely to want more.
D. Thus, the best way to get sex is to be really good at it. And to be really good, you have to recognize that sometimes women just don't want to. Accept it; do something else; and the next time she's horny, she'll find you. And then you can do it well, and she will probably want more. You'll end up getting loads of sex if it's an amazing experience for her.
E. You probably won't be good at first. That's not your fault. Nobody is good at anything without practice. Also, your partner might not really enjoy it initially. That's not her fault either. Keep working at it.

Well, something like that. Maybe add in some stuff about lube, which is one of the most under-appreciated inventions in the history of mankind.

Don't get me wrong: the legal concept of consent needs to be taught. But it shouldn't be the first thing presented, in my opinion. Start with enthusiastic participation. Then later on, "what if the enthusiasm isn't there but you want to go anyway"?
Click to expand...
I'll read the rest later, but I would say that before we teach technique, we teach how to talk and communicate with a woman and that sex isn't the primary goal of a relationship.
 
A related problem is the way we think about victimization -- namely, that being a victim confers a special moral status on a person. Everyone is trying to be a victim, because they see it as a way to be taken seriously.

This is an old complaint, and I'm not trying to articulate a strong view. I just think there ought to be a middle ground between the conservative disparagement of "victim culture" and denial that victimization can be a pernicious rhetorical strategy.

I say this because I think it's the basis of a lot of incel stuff. Incels feel like victims, and it's not necessarily inaccurate in some cases. I mean, girls can be mean, especially in high school and college. There are two ways to deal with something like that: try harder, learn from mistakes and brush off failures; or cry about how you've been mistreated. Well, look around our society. The latter option seems to be really popular. Why not for incels?

Except that they aren't allowed to be "victims." After all, they benefit from white privilege and male privilege. These terms are not at all helpful for these guys to understand their experience. It just sounds like nobody gives a shit about them. So they go online, find other people who feel the same way, and presto! incels.

This is somewhat separate from the other problem of MAGA never ending grievance. Some incel shit overlaps with that, but not all of it. Some of it is the result of genuine frustration of young men who don't understand their place in the world, and aren't being offered a lot of great models. Or given much patience to figure things out.
 
UNCatTech said:
I'll read the rest later, but I would say that before we teach technique, we teach how to talk and communicate with a woman and that sex isn't the primary goal of a relationship.
Click to expand...
Sure. I have no problem with that in theory. In practice, communication is very hard to teach to young people, especially in a school setting where people have very different experiences and communication styles.

As for sex being the primary goal of a relationship, I mean you're right. But I see this as meeting the audience where they are. If young guys are thirsty for sex, telling them sex isn't that important strikes me as a good way to get them to tune out. I could be wrong about that, of course.

Also, sex is actually important for young people in a way that it's maybe not as you get older. If you're an 18 year old guy, you probably have some experience communicating with women. Your mom. Your sisters if you have any. So on and so forth. You might also have female friends. What makes a romantic relationship special and different? It's the fucking (which isn't always different, see FWB but that's neither here nor there). A young man who is new to adulthood doesn't want to be told that sex isn't all that. He doesn't want a sister. He wants a woman, and that means sex for him. I don't think we can get around that.
 
superrific said:
A related problem is the way we think about victimization -- namely, that being a victim confers a special moral status on a person. Everyone is trying to be a victim, because they see it as a way to be taken seriously.

This is an old complaint, and I'm not trying to articulate a strong view. I just think there ought to be a middle ground between the conservative disparagement of "victim culture" and denial that victimization can be a pernicious rhetorical strategy.

I say this because I think it's the basis of a lot of incel stuff. Incels feel like victims, and it's not necessarily inaccurate in some cases. I mean, girls can be mean, especially in high school and college. There are two ways to deal with something like that: try harder, learn from mistakes and brush off failures; or cry about how you've been mistreated. Well, look around our society. The latter option seems to be really popular. Why not for incels?

Except that they aren't allowed to be "victims." After all, they benefit from white privilege and male privilege. These terms are not at all helpful for these guys to understand their experience. It just sounds like nobody gives a shit about them. So they go online, find other people who feel the same way, and presto! incels.

This is somewhat separate from the other problem of MAGA never ending grievance. Some incel shit overlaps with that, but not all of it. Some of it is the result of genuine frustration of young men who don't understand their place in the world, and aren't being offered a lot of great models. Or given much patience to figure things out.
Click to expand...

This is a good insight for sure. There's a bizarre victim hierarchy that seems to directly lead to social cachet with a lot of younger people.
And as a straight white male, you always find yourself at the very bottom of that pecking order.

This is also related to the surge of self diagnosed mental conditions. "Sure, I may be a straight white male, but I'm on the spectrum so I'm actually not one of the bad guys."
 
superrific said:
Sure. I have no problem with that in theory. In practice, communication is very hard to teach to young people, especially in a school setting where people have very different experiences and communication styles.

As for sex being the primary goal of a relationship, I mean you're right. But I see this as meeting the audience where they are. If young guys are thirsty for sex, telling them sex isn't that important strikes me as a good way to get them to tune out. I could be wrong about that, of course.

Also, sex is actually important for young people in a way that it's maybe not as you get older. If you're an 18 year old guy, you probably have some experience communicating with women. Your mom. Your sisters if you have any. So on and so forth. You might also have female friends. What makes a romantic relationship special and different? It's the fucking (which isn't always different, see FWB but that's neither here nor there). A young man who is new to adulthood doesn't want to be told that sex isn't all that. He doesn't want a sister. He wants a woman, and that means sex for him. I don't think we can get around that.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying it isn't important.

Like you said it's better if both participants are having fun. How does one know what the partner is interested in if they don't ask?

And porn is the worst teacher. Unrealistic expectations, male focused, woman is more of a toy than an equal participant.

They also need to understand that every relations with a woman isn't going to include sex. But all have a place and can be good.
 
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