Toxic masculinity and red pilling boys and young men

[UNCatTech]

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.

Sex as the primary goal without understanding and boundaries leads to conquest over relationships and possibly date rape. It becomes all about them and their desires instead of mutual enjoyment and fulfillment. In my opinion.

 

[UNCatTech]

If it is the primary or only goal, then just pay for it. It's much easier and cost less in the long run.

 

[Ddseddse]

I blame Nick Adams....

Does that nozzle think we won't notice the faint loin watermark in the background and that he'll subconsciously manipulate us all into associating him with the king of beasts?

That is some Beta shit right there.

 

[Paine]

I think the GQ article that Snoop posted in the other thread laid out my views of the situation pretty reasonably as a 25 y/o man.

A lot of young men want to know what it means to be a man and to be masculine. Almost all the resources for this are red pill type content. As others have pointed out, the manosphere is a gateway into the right wing ecosystem. The jump from Rogan to Tate to Peterson to Pool is very easy for a lot of young men to make.

I think we need positive role models and people in the public sphere actively talking about this to young men. One person in the aforementioned article said that she would get hate sometimes for even trying to talk to young men about these issues. People saying things like: “why are you talking to the perpetrators?”

As men, we just have to be frank and honest with young men and boys. Demonstrate the positive masculinity and be role models that they are yearning for. And just hope that it breaks through into the wider cultural ecosystem over time.

 

[gregh1]

Thanks for starting this thread. Someone mentioned a fam member falling into "Bro culture" in another thread... I'm curious just cuz i have a young son AND cuz i'm unplugged from young people culturally (partly due to being late 40's) and not really aware of Rogan or youtube/online influencers in this realm.

I understand there are problems with boys related to some of these things at a fairly early age. What's the GQ link?

​

 

[hedge]

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

This is painting with a pretty broad brush. There's plenty of porn out there that's not like that at all, although obviously there's plenty that is...

 

[gregh1]

The bro culture stuff extends across all races?

 

[Paine]

Thanks for starting this thread. Someone mentioned a fam member falling into "Bro culture" in another thread... I'm curious just cuz i have a young son AND cuz i'm unplugged from young people culturally (partly due to being late 40's) and not really aware of Rogan or youtube/online influencers in this realm.

I understand there are problems with boys related to some of these things at a fairly early age. What's the GQ link?

​

Meet the anti-Andrew Tates

A handful of influencers are trying to turn the tide on toxic masculinity. But can they get anyone to listen?

www.gq-magazine.co.uk

This is the article. It talks about a few of the main characters. I’d also so beware of a certain type of streamer (Adin Ross, for example).

 

[Ddseddse]

I very much recommend the conspirituality podcast. Conspirituality

Thought technically their stated remit is the intersection of health, wellness and new age with conspiracy, pseudo-science, and the alt right, most any of their episodes are going to delve in to the topics relevant to this thread. They have done numerous episodes on these types of influencers.

I will explicitly recommend two episodes in particular, not because they are super relevant to this thread (they are only peripherally) but more because I found them thought provoking:

The first is the episode on Bannon, because if you can't trace the thread between Bannon and Evola, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle in terms of what's going on right now.

82: Steve Bannon, Mystic (w/Benjamin Teitelbaum) — Conspirituality

Benjamin Teitelbaum, an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the book, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right, joins to talk about gaining access to leading right-wing figures

www.conspirituality.net

And the other is a short episode about the video game The Cult of The Lamb:

Brief: Cult of the Lamb Anti-Cult School? (w/Riley MacLeod) — Conspirituality

Gaming journalist and Master of Divinity Riley MacLeod joins Matthew to talk about whether the hit indie game Cult of the Lamb might be all the inoculation against cultic dynamics that generation Alpha ever needs.

www.conspirituality.net

 

[mpaer]

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"?

I grew up Catholic in the 60s-early 70s My parents were pretty good parents-hell I will give them better than that. I never once has as a sex ed discussion with them or at school At some point I went to some church thing for young "men " and it was like a half hour of abstinence discussion
Several friends had Playboys or worse and of course we would oohh and aww One evening I did have some discussion with 3-4 folks , including 2-I don't know 13 yr old young ladys . But I was totally lost and kind of uncomfortable. I do remember having a male friend or two I remember talking about "nailing " such and such girl It made me uncomfortable the way they said it
So as time went on I smooched with a lot of girls and went into their shirts etc-but was not gonna do anything other than that....And it was fun for both of us
Then later when I had the opportunity to "go to bed" I had no clue...........

 

[lawtig02]

I grew up Catholic in the 60s-early 70s My parents were pretty good parents-hell I will give them better than that. I never once has as a sex ed discussion with them or at school At some point I went to some church thing for young "men " and it was like a half hour of abstinence discussion
Several friends had Playboys or worse and of course we would oohh and aww One evening I did have some discussion with 3-4 folks , including 2-I don't know 13 yr old young ladys . But I was totally lost and kind of uncomfortable. I do remember having a male friend or two I remember talking about "nailing " such and such girl It made me uncomfortable the way they said it
So as time went on I smooched with a lot of girls and went into their shirts etc-but was not gonna do anything other than that....And it was fun for both of us
Then later when I had the opportunity to "go to bed" I had no clue...........

One of the things I love about super is he’s totally transparent with things we should all be talking about but don’t. Very few young people know how to have enjoyable sex before they start trying. To fill that void, an extremely high percentage of young men turn to internet porn, which is certainly good for depicting sex, but is generally HORRIBLE at showing how to have enjoyable, connective sex. So as weird as it is to think about, I actually agree completely we’d be better served by having more education on the mechanics of consensual, connective sex. That would ideally happen in the home, but in the (almost ubiquitous) absence of that, we really should be intentional about alternatives to internet porn, which is almost always counterproductive.

 

[UNCatTech]

This is painting with a pretty broad brush. There's plenty of porn out there that's not like that at all, although obviously there's plenty that is...

Sorry, I'm not up to date on available porn.

 

[UNCatTech]

I very much recommend the conspirituality podcast. Conspirituality

Thought technically their stated remit is the intersection of health, wellness and new age with conspiracy, pseudo-science, and the alt right, most any of their episodes are going to delve in to the topics relevant to this thread. They have done numerous episodes on these types of influencers.

I will explicitly recommend two episodes in particular, not because they are super relevant to this thread (they are only peripherally) but more because I found them thought provoking:

The first is the episode on Bannon, because if you can't trace the thread between Bannon and Evola, you're missing a big piece of the puzzle in terms of what's going on right now.

82: Steve Bannon, Mystic (w/Benjamin Teitelbaum) — Conspirituality

Benjamin Teitelbaum, an Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and author of the book, War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right, joins to talk about gaining access to leading right-wing figures

www.conspirituality.net

And the other is a short episode about the video game The Cult of The Lamb:

Brief: Cult of the Lamb Anti-Cult School? (w/Riley MacLeod) — Conspirituality

Gaming journalist and Master of Divinity Riley MacLeod joins Matthew to talk about whether the hit indie game Cult of the Lamb might be all the inoculation against cultic dynamics that generation Alpha ever needs.

www.conspirituality.net

Great podcast.

Not sure if I've listened to these specifically, but I've listened to many of theirs.

Actually, I did listen to the one on Bannon, that's the first one that someone sent me a link to.

 

[UNCatTech]

I grew up Catholic in the 60s-early 70s My parents were pretty good parents-hell I will give them better than that. I never once has as a sex ed discussion with them or at school At some point I went to some church thing for young "men " and it was like a half hour of abstinence discussion
Several friends had Playboys or worse and of course we would oohh and aww One evening I did have some discussion with 3-4 folks , including 2-I don't know 13 yr old young ladys . But I was totally lost and kind of uncomfortable. I do remember having a male friend or two I remember talking about "nailing " such and such girl It made me uncomfortable the way they said it
So as time went on I smooched with a lot of girls and went into their shirts etc-but was not gonna do anything other than that....And it was fun for both of us
Then later when I had the opportunity to "go to bed" I had no clue...........

I recall a single 1 hour "Sex Ed" class in 4th grade.

The only thing I recall is one kid asked what "busting cherries" meant.

I so wish I had some actual education is both sex and relationships when I was younger.

 

[finesse]

Didn't Aristophanes cover this? Has something changed?

 

[Geisterfahrer]

I think the GQ article that Snoop posted in the other thread laid out my views of the situation pretty reasonably as a 25 y/o man.

A lot of young men want to know what it means to be a man and to be masculine. Almost all the resources for this are red pill type content. As others have pointed out, the manosphere is a gateway into the right wing ecosystem. The jump from Rogan to Tate to Peterson to Pool is very easy for a lot of young men to make.

I think we need positive role models and people in the public sphere actively talking about this to young men. One person in the aforementioned article said that she would get hate sometimes for even trying to talk to young men about these issues. People saying things like: “why are you talking to the perpetrators?”

As men, we just have to be frank and honest with young men and boys. Demonstrate the positive masculinity and be role models that they are yearning for. And just hope that it breaks through into the wider cultural ecosystem over time.

I have the solution, it’s a sport called rugby. It’s fun, diverse, violent and way cooler than American football. All body types welcome.

 

[superrific]

Sex as the primary goal without understanding and boundaries leads to conquest over relationships and possibly date rape. It becomes all about them and their desires instead of mutual enjoyment and fulfillment. In my opinion.

Well, that's why I want to meet them where they are with "enthusiastic participation." I guess you said you would read the whole post later, so maybe you didn't see that part. I am very keen to and aware of the way an outsized emphasis on sex can create unhealthiness (to put it mildly). It's also true, though, that a lot of the conquest stuff isn't about sex within relationships -- it's about sex outside of relationships. You know, f em, forget em.

I can see on this thread some vestiges, I think, of the conservative @Tech, the poster we all knew a decade ago. Before your falling out with your church and your disillusionment. And that's cool with me. Maybe some of our trolls can hop over here and see that actually we're not just an echo chamber, that we value different viewpoints and values. Just not ones thoroughly inflected with illogic, denial and hate.

 

[UNCatTech]

Well, that's why I want to meet them where they are with "enthusiastic participation." I guess you said you would read the whole post later, so maybe you didn't see that part. I am very keen to and aware of the way an outsized emphasis on sex can create unhealthiness (to put it mildly). It's also true, though, that a lot of the conquest stuff isn't about sex within relationships -- it's about sex outside of relationships. You know, f em, forget em.

I can see on this thread some vestiges, I think, of the conservative @Tech, the poster we all knew a decade ago. Before your falling out with your church and your disillusionment. And that's cool with me. Maybe some of our trolls can hop over here and see that actually we're not just an echo chamber, that we value different viewpoints and values. Just not ones thoroughly inflected with illogic, denial and hate.

Yea, I finished your post later.

A lot of my opinion comes from many failed relationships where I had not yet learned that there was more too it.

I'm sure some of that is because of me, but I do feel that had I had some guidance or someone to actually talk to, I would have probably been better at things.

I'm not against sex. I've never thought that abstinence was realistic.

 

[superrific]

I'm not against sex. I've never thought that abstinence was realistic.

Didn't think you were. I get where you're coming from. I think you see my point as well. I mean, neither of us are sex educators or relationship counselors so we're more or less spitballing here.

 

[05C40]

The spring of 1967, when I was in 7th grade, we had a sex education class taught by the health and PE teachers during "health class." The health and PE classes were segregated by sex. A male coach taught the boys and a female coach taught the girls. Had to have parental premission. Only one boy my year didn't participate. His father was a religion professor at the local college, sponsored by the Free Will Baptist Church. This non-participating boy later came out as gay in college.

Two things about this class stick with me.
1) First day of class we had to fill out a questionnaire so the teacher would have a baseline of what he was dealing with. A black guy was sitting next to me and when he got to the question of how many times he had sex, he started counting on his fingers saying different names under his breath.
2) At the end of the class we had two Q&A sessions in the Auditorium, the first one for girls and the second one for boys. The speakers at these sessions were two local MD's, both of whom had children in my year. I can still remember walking into our session and seeing that one of the doctors had sweated through his suit jacket during the previous session with the girls. Apparently the questions were a tad more incisive than he was expecting from 7th grade girls.