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Notes -
300 Ways It Can Hurt to Be a Man
Hey all, longtime SSC and TheMotte lurker here. Some of you might know me from TPOT.
Some years ago I wrote a blogpost series about masculinity and manhood, and the many struggles these entail that frequently go unnoticed in contemporary discussions. I've recently given it a full do-over, collating the whole series into a pdf and epub that I think look pretty great. It's now available to download for free. There remain few spaces on the internet where something like this might find a proper audience, but I figure anyone who appreciated Scott's writings on the topic — especially Untitled, Radicalizing the Romanceless, and the like — might find my writings on the topic valuable.
The pitch:
Contemporary gender discourse has left many men unseen. On one end of the debate, there are feminists: a largely virtuous group of people who have regrettably failed to understand men as more than defect women, and who have neglected to include men in their humanizing frameworks. On the other end, there are men whose visions of masculinity remain primarily rooted in outdated and often harmful ideas, and whose attitudes towards women frequently leave much to be desired. The modern man is stuck in a quagmire. Where does he turn, who has listened to women's pain but now desires to integrate his own? New voices on gender are needed. It is my hope that in this book, empathetic men may find their voice.
It is not needed to contest who suffers more, and suffering is not the whole of masculinity; nevertheless, it is a part of it, and it deserves an uninterrupted space in which it may be witnessed: known, and moreover allowed. It is my hope that in this book, unloved men may take off their heart's armour and find their sanctuary.
Even in these polarized times, many women still seek to know men truly, and through this have seen that being male marks men more deeply than society has cared to make known. It is my hope that in this book, compassionate women may find their love reflected.
You may find the book for free here: https://elodes.gumroad.com/l/300ways. Feedback is welcome. Thank you for your interest.
Okay, honestly I felt primed to dislike it, but ended up reading basically the whole thing (I skipped the second half of the disclaimers). And you know what? I thought it was valuable.
Certainly there were things that I disagreed with, contradicted other points to varying degrees from mild to significant, and I think I only spotted a small handful of typos and one or two spots where I think you meant to paste in something else (or were debating doing so), but didn't. BTW, if you want, typos I found: there's an "egrerious" instead of "egregious", "bannable offensives" instead of "offenses", extra "be" in "for women to be have", "(Greater Male Variability Hypothesis)" has parentheses for no reason, all should be findable with Ctrl-F. There's one other misspelling but I can't find it again.
I liked it more than I thought. For some of them, it was good to put a name on, and get some specificity for, a slippery concept. I'm not sure how much it might genuinely accomplish your goals. But I think it might be of use, maybe ironically, as a sort of softer intro to some men who aren't fully aware of the ways in which life can be unfair to them. Despite the inherent bias or risk of a gish gallop approach, of course, in a set of complaints like this. But even so, geez it is hard to avoid the temptation to make it into a comparison game. I know your whole deal is that it's fine to consider men's problems without dismissing those of women, however, on some level if things are unfair for both genders then it kind of implies that, well, that's just life and society, it's tough, rather than assess that there's something deeply wrong and eminently fixable.
A few that stood out: I think there truly isn't very much patience with teaching men to be better at their emotions and recognizing that they frankly just don't have enough experience with it, that's a good point. And worse get judged when they try to develop it clumsily. And yes, men really cannot demonstrate emotional extremes very easily, with no easy "default" setting, but some of that is so similar to women (e.g. you say confident but not arrogant, vulnerable but not burdensome: but see passive doormat vs, if too assertive, bitchy, and well dressed but not overly so vs being a slob or dressing for attention, women's style standards are universally higher) that it's hard not to say anything other than, well, there are a LOT of traits where moderation is desired, but the specifics can be very gender-specific. Can we really teach men to be better effectively though, without the input of women? The advice and criticism of women toward men especially in the emotional realm you seem to depict as flawed and harmful, so I'm not quite sure what you think the way forward is there.
I did not expect and was surprised to encounter an argument in favor of insults, bullying, and conflict among boys, but that's some food for thought I might come around to. The bigger picture about the importance and even necessity of probing boundaries though, that's true. More specifically in my life, I've been a substitute teacher a good number of times. Middle school is so interesting. Annoying quite often of course as well. I've heard anecdotally the male subs get more respect than the women do, though obviously I cannot test that. That's a bit of a sexist benefit, but it's definitely true that they are a bit starved for role models, and social media hasn't really helped in that regard. The flashy external stuff is popular and easily accessible, but the depth of character and deciding on your moral fiber, that usually requires some kind of extended proximity to someone you know and ideally can get advice from. Social media simply does not offer that. I should note here that despite the many ways in which school represses the natural inclinations of boys (as a sub, I do try to let things go a little bit more than most, but this can backfire pretty easily since boys are ALWAYS boundary testing at that age) it's statistically the case that far more girls find themselves lonely and socially isolated during school. Anyways, the upshot of this is that although in principle I agree that boys need a few more outlets or educational styles/opportunities catered to them, it's a really hard problem to solve. Because being loud IS annoying, if you let the kids throw things at each other they WILL and that's annoying to others too, tacitly allowing fights is a hard sell, etc.
I really liked the love vs respect paradigm, it is indeed true that while women can demand respect, and that's upheld as pretty great, men cannot demand love, and usually a lack is cast as a personal failure rather than a circumstance (or the fault of those around them being too cold). Although, it must be said, the lack of respect can also be pretty crushing to men. Still, the notion that women are inherently worth something, but a man must prove his worth, or affirmatively demonstrate they aren't evil, is pretty damaging when you get right down to it. I've seen that quite a lot, to be frank. Plus the bit about how men often feel rejected because of their personality, and this creates a major self-worth issue. And yes, the agentic expectations of men for men can frequently lead to self blame in virtually every area of life. Men need to learn to fail more gracefully. But they also need to know that failure does not actually affect inherent worth. Is that possible to consistently teach? Who knows! But loving family and religion tend to help at least a bit.
Along those lines I'd say that for some of these, I think you run a little counter to your goals in the sense that many are honestly a male-imposed standard on other males, and didn't really originate in feminism at all. Such as the teaching that men are to be judged primarily by their output, I'm sure some of it is rooted in various feminism-adjacent philosophies, but is bragging about a fast car really about the women it's supposed to attract? Not so much. Who is responsible for the weak market for strong male leads with emotional journeys? Uh, men. The primary audience and the directors and the writers, quite often enough. Etc.
I'm not quite sure where I was going with this, but those were my reactions. I was definitely moved by a few. More relevant to my life, I happen to not only be in the midst of some degree of personal struggle myself with purpose, lack of success, etc. but have a somewhat man-hating younger lesbian sister (of a more well-meaning yet nevertheless "women are better than men and that's not sexism" variety), and also a younger brother (though close in age) who decided a few months ago he wanted to be non-binary, they/them, and called by a different name too (a female one).
The latter is a culmination of a few things. He's (and I really can't think of him any other way than him, truth be told, although I'm more than willing to play the name and pronoun game) worn skirts to church just for reactions, experimented with painted nails and such, big into the indie music scene, and is now at school in Europe doing an avant garde music masters program. Over Christmas, when he made this known, it seemed to me that this was mostly rooted in masculinity having way too much baggage for him. That it was seen to be negative, the typically masculine traits were kind of bad, he felt a bit too effeminate for the label, etc. Declined to talk about what that meant sexually in any detail beyond a vague "pansexual" label (though I strongly suspect this does not in fact include men, gay or no). Feels a lot of animus towards his religious upbringing too, so that's a factor - but you know what? Sure, my mom's cried a fair amount over it. But our parents have been nothing but supportive or at least, understanding and respectful, trying to focus on the love being unconditional kind of thing. Frankly, I think this really frustrated him, as it's way easier to make villains.
I'm not sure when or if we'll ever broach the subject again soon (I do feel a bit lost about it overall) but it might be possible that some of these points could be a springboard for discussion with one or both of them. I'm pretty curious at least whether my brother would identify with some of the "feminine man" parts or not, at least.
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