Masculinity and Its Discontents
Father-types
In one of the lost posts from our Masculine Dreams days, I proposed that a recurring feature of the blog could be the identification of various male archetypes, or sterotypes. I gave as an example a short preview of a Jason Mraz concert I once wrote, which I titled...Wimpy White Guys With Guitars
In response to Dan’s male archetype debut, I offer lyrics from Larry Gallagher’s "Wimpy White Guys With Guitars” (click on track 9) the ultimate tribute to “fags” like Jason Mraz who, via serenade, have always wooed sensitive girls...Charles Barkely, Enlightened Male
In our earlier incarnation of this here blog, last spring, I offered the following post: In the car today, on ESPN radio, I heard Charles Barkley, the retired NBA superstar and outspoken (in itself a wonderful thing, as athletes, and – as the esteemed Daniel...Saint Charles the Manly
Might I add this snippet from the Charles, talking about one of his potential deficiencies as a governor, and how he might compensate for it:"I don’t know anything about a lot of things, but I would ask somebody and try to make a fair, honest decision for...Johnny Mac
I wanted to throw in this iconic image of John McEnroe and propose him, for your manly consideration, as another masculine model to whom we might give ongoing consideration.An Anti-Barkley Intervention
So I was just surfing around the various magazine and newspaper databases, trying to find a way to link Barkley and McEnroe, and I came across this cognitive dissonance-inducing passage from The New Republic:The people who hand out endorsement money are not just...Our Title Has Legs
Just for the hizz-ell of it, I typed "masculinity and its discontents" into Google to see what comes up. The first few hits refer to an essay from The New York Times on Brokeback Mountain by high mediocre film critic Manohla Dargis. She writes:That...Fugging at its finest
A lovely post from one of the ladies over at Go Fug Yourself, the site which has spawned the greatest number of intra-left internet arguments about the propriety, from a feminist perspective, of criticizing women for dressing badly. In this particular post, we get a...Don't you wish your Scion was man like me? Fug, yeah, you do.
On and off for too many years I’ve puzzled over why Volvo’s logo is the universal male symbol and Dan’s “Mraz”-culinity prototype made me think of it once again, in that Jason Mraz, I’d be willing to bet you dollars to donuts (which...The Effectuality Effect
I struggle sometimes, as all of us masculinists do, to distinguish between anxieties that are heavily inflected by issues of masculinity and those that are just general, human anxieties that I artificially masculinize because that lends them some kind of gravitas...Menemies and the Mantheon
With the ongoing canonization of Saint Charles the Barkley, we’ve already begun the project of establishing a kind of Mantheon of hero-men–dudes who we admire for their 21st century, enlightened-but-still-manly brand of masculinity.I’d like to...Workin' For the Clampdown (aka Say No Go)
I can count on one penis the number of times I’ve walked into a public restroom, spied a fellow fellow at the urinals, stepped up and whipped out my Magic Johnson and let ‘er rip. It was a nice big bathroom, as I recall, in a spiffy hotel. The urinals were...Wimpy White Guys With Microsoft Word
I noticed a nice MAID-ish resonance today that I wanted to pass on. Michael Berube, a lit professor I once profiled in the Advocate, refers to Jamie’s singer/songwriter friend Larry Gallagher in a post on his blog today. Berube writes:One year ago today I was...Self, M.A.I.D. Man
As I iterated in my recent urinary tract, I have a certain psycho-physical condition that may or may not be related to my man-ness, but is certainly related to public-ness with other human beings. In general, I am a pretty hypersocial animal and look to surround...The Woes of Jobfulness
So today my month of joblessness ended. I’ve endured the Time of my Non-Earning with stoicism, strength and courage (the names I gave, hurricane–style, to the three major panic attacks I had) but as the user’s manual for MegaMan 8 says, there is a...But I like it too!
I was raised on Irish Spring TV commercials (among other things). The woman who snuck a deep long whiff of the green bar when her man wasn’t looking was really sexy, Irish but with long dark hair, if I remember right. Black Irish, as I came to learn later. But I...Men Behaving Sadly
The website of Aaron Rochlen, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, is chock fulla man-related-program-activities. Rochlen writes about men, about why they don’t seek mental health treatment as much as they should, and what all of that has to do...ManPain
I just finished Self-Made Man, the new book by Norah Vincent which Jamie wrote about a few days ago:Self Made Man, which came out earlier this year, recounts journalist Vincent’s 18-months as a man. To clarify, it recounts her year and a half posing as a man....T.O. Gets Redacted
So it appears I was inadvertently timely in my recent post that touched on men’s aversion to seeking help with their psyche and on the NFL’s attempts to “tackle mental health.” If you haven’t heard the news, Dallas Cowboys wide receiver...Men Suffer More Attractively
I liked this paragraph from James Wolcott’s recent review essay, of books about "The Mommy Wars," in The New Republic: Whatever choice a woman makes, or has foisted upon her by necessity and circumstance, ambivalence digs in its spikes. Women–to...OT on TO
Okay, we are NOT not not going to spend a great deal of time talking about sports and jocks and issues relating to sports that only tangentially touch our touchstone, but I’ve been thinking about this whole Terrell Owens thing and I smell many day-old fishies:...Therapy and ME!
I have been a believer-in- and goer-to- therapy on and off for, oh, fifteen years or so. I think of it as one of my most girly and metro- aspects of my man-self (along with yoga and my utter inability to carpent.) I have also been privileged to have had health...Therapy and the OPP
Ah, therapy. It was inevitable that enlightened, sensitive souls such as we would arrive at the couch, and probably sooner rather than later. I’ve been in the Big T for about nine months now. My doctor’s name is Dr. Dickey— I don’t think...Sorry, Doc, I gotta reschedule, I've got a playoff game tomorrow.
Last bits on jocks and shrinks, for now. Alex Rodriquez is a New York Yankees baseball star (and man) who’s constantly bashed by the New York press, sports talk radio bozos and their bozo callers, especially during his current “off” year (a year...Men on Women on Men
I’ve been feeling too andro-centric recently, so I thought I would devote today’s post to highlighting some of the work our feminist peers are doing on the masculine condition. At Feministing, which seems to be the place to go for young, hip...Welcome M.A.I.D. Virgins!
Masculinity and Its Discontents (M.A.I.D.) is a collaborative effort between two writer men named Daniel Oppenheimer and Jamie Berger. We’ll be commenting on, well, masculinity (in our lives, in celebrities’ lives, in the wide world), but, we hope, without...Peep Show (part two of five)
I discovered Times Square in its LIVE! NUDE! GIRLS! heyday late one night in my freshman year of college after a punk-rock show at Roseland Ballroom. I was walking through midtown with my jaded New Yorker friends (I was a recent arrival from upstate, still wide-eyed,...What, me biased?
I was recently told by a German friend of mine that a good German is one who feels guilty much of the time. I thought that seemed a little extreme but, if I had to choose, certainly preferable to a German who feels no guilt at all. I feel the same way with men –...White Men Rule
Jamie’s post, in which he writes of his recent encounter with a Hard-Nosed Liberal White Guy Who Won’t Be Mau Mau’ed By The PC Police Anymore (H-NLWGWWBMM’edBTPCPA – asshole, for short), reminds me of perhaps my seminal experience as that...Peep Show (part one)
In the Chapter of Norah Vincent’s Self Made Man about her visits, in male disguise, to strip clubs, she writes, in partial explanation of men’s frequenting said clubs:When pure fucking and animal release is what you’re thinking about – and that...Peep Show (part three of five)
I’ve never liked fancy strip clubs. I go to peep shows not to relax or to talk to women because I can’t comfortably talk to them elsewhere. I go first and foremost to get off, and that just doesn’t happen at expensive “gentlemen’s”...Peep Show (part four of five)
The day before the dreaded Saturday benefit reading, I had my little passel of sensitive-male poems ready to go, but an unwelcome thought was edging its way into my brain: that I should read “Close,” my museum-guard story, instead. I fought the impulse...The Feminist Family and its Discontents
Before Jamie concludes his serialization of "Peep Show," I just wanted to interject with a brief psychosexual autobiography because a.) it doesn’t seem fair to drop the autobiographical burden entirely on Jamie, and b.) we’re both the products of...Peep Show (part five of five)
It’s the Saturday of the show, and I feel awful, my stomach tied in a knot. In the afternoon I stop by the Lusty Lady, hoping to relieve my anxiety over reading a story about jerking off to strippers by jerking off to strippers. Sass isn’t here, and...The Shame and the Fear
I’m going to try, perhaps ill-advisedly, to link together a few of the themes we’ve been discussing under the general rubric of shame and fear.I don’t have a good quotation handy, but one of the reasons I enjoyed Norah Vincent so much is that she was...Male Archetype #48, or, Rocking the Walrus
I recently asked a fellow blogger, Paul the Irrelephant, to justify his stylistic existence. In particular, I wanted him to explain his beret and his walrus-ian facial hair after he wrote a post comparing his look to the beret-sporting, walrus-moustache-having look of...Whadya Got?
Recently, a dude friend and I were comparing gyms (I’ve returned to the YMCA fold, having come to the conclusion that all gyms suck but the Y sucks less.) and he told me this story: He was in the locker room of the Y in Nothampton, MA a couple of years ago and...The Humming Is Real
I’ve been thinking about Jamie’s essay Peep Show, and for some reason I keep coming back to the question of whether there could have been a real, if not necessarily deep, connection between Jamie and "Sassafras," his favorite dancer at the Lusty...Woman Up, You Little Count
As I’ve confessed previously, I have this masochistic habit of listening to sports talk radio. In part, I just like to hear voices besides the ones in my head while I drive alone, and I sometimes tire of the Cory Flintoff and the rest of the NPR crowd and their...Men Are Bad
I like this cartoon-y thing (the rest of the which you can read by clicking here) for a few reasons. 1. It’s created by the writer of I Blame the Patriarchy, which is an angry, angry, extremely well-written blog I’ve been perusing lately. Twisty, who...Dubya, Un-Masc-ed
I have never been able to stomach, let alone enjoy, watching or listening to our great leader . . . until Wednesday. Until then, whenever he came on the radio, I almost frantically jumped to change the station (I do the same with Garrison Keillor, but that’s for...Demetri and Me
Jamie, I’ve been told (by Jamie), is at work on a magnum opus on the topic of success and envy. The success in question, I believe, belongs to some friends and acquaintances of his. The envy belongs to Jamie. I bring this up because I spent a few hours,...Fame and Us
As Dan noted (save above photo and print so you can say you knew him when!) in his "Demetri and Me" post, I am indeed struggling with writing about fame and its malcontents (F.A.I.M! – a.k.a. Dan and me and most people in America) so far without much...Carrie-Anne, FDR, Annie Duke, Robotron, and Me
Here’s another section from the Fame tome I mentioned in my previous post, in which our hero, Subject #263, tells interviewer Carrie-Anne Moss a story, only very slightly embellished, straight from my real life, about fame and its allure in one particular...Un-Manned in Wilmington
I was punched in the face last Friday, for the first time since 1988. It wasn’t as emasculating as the 1988 incident (which, since I was only 12 at the time, might more properly be called e-boyulating), but, well, it wasn’t so much fun either.Let me back...Bloodied but Unbowed
When we last spoke, dear reader, I’d just been punched in the face, for no good reason, by a black guy on the streets of downtown Wilmington. I mention his race because it was obviously a factor in what happened, though it’s impossible to know exactly how...Barkley Redux
Early on, Dan and I were proud to make Charles Barkley our first entry in the Mantheon because of his comfort with his man-self, at least compared to other athletes, his unheard of outspokenness, also compared to other athletes, and his shocking-for-a-jock,...Mad Ave's Man Ads (first in a series?)
Milwaukee’s Best Light, makers of the (as Jessica from Feministing.com put it) "Accept masculinity standards or be killed by beer" ads, have, after a manly hiatus, returned with – how should I put this? – a new piece of shit. Three guys...Beersculinity
I was browsing around the internets the other day, and I came across this article from last year. It’s titled “How To Sell Humvees To Men,” and allow me to ruin the suspense and summarize the answer: you sell Hummers to men by calling them homos. Or,...Torture By Panties
Over at I Blame the Patriarchy, the authoress has some interesting things to say about the strange way that the media, the government, and the public has dealt with the “panties on the face” aspect of the torturing of detainees in places like Guantanamo...Stephen Colbert, M-A-N
First thing they tell you in blog school is that it’s wicked tough to follow an Abu Ghraib undergarment torture post, so I’m just not even going to try. I’m just going to go in an entirely other few directions. The other day, while teaching my...Stephen Colbert, HERO
Reader Hayley duly scolded me for neglecting to mention in yestderday’s post Colbert’s incredibly brave speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in April. If you haven’t already, watch it! It’s really something, I found myself scared for...I Kid Because I Love You
It’s always seemed pretty obvious to me that men are funnier than women. Not genetically funnier, just funnier, on average, for what I assume are historically and culturally contingent reasons: In America, boys are rewarded and indulged for being funny, for...After (part 1 of 6)
(Please note: This is a follow-up to, and meant to be read after reading “Peep Show,” which was also posted serially here back in September and which can be read all in one piece by clicking on "Peep" or "Show," above.) (Barely relevant...Man vs. Man
[Editor’s note: If you’re interested in some sweet, sweet writing, which also happens to be about strippers, read part 1 of Jamie’s essay "After" here. It’s a sequel to "Peep Show," which you can read here.] Hugo Schwyzer,...?I Contradict Myself?: Rash Notes on The Thoughts and Deeds of Men as Discussed by Hugo Schwyzer as Discussed by Daniel Oppenheimer
Reading Dan’s Hugo Schwyzer post today, I found myself bothered, even more so now that I just saw that Mr. S. has just posted on his site that “Dan Oppenheimer has a regular blog on men and masculinity . . . .” I’m kidding, of course, but well,...After (part 2 of 6)
(Please Note: This is a serialized follow-up essay to, and meant to be read after reading “Peep Show.” If you missed it, here’s part one) The week somehow passes and it’s Tuesday night again. I perform the same ritual, shot and a beer at Mr....The Hitch Disappoints Me Yet Again
Christopher Hitchens, who’s both a hero and a fallen hero to me, has an awful new essay in this month’s Vanity Fair. It’s titled “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” and as you might have deduced from the title, it’s about why he...After (part 3 of 6)
(Please Note: This is a serialized follow-up essay to, and meant to be read after reading “Peep Show.” If you missed ’em, here’s part one and here’s part two) The next week, before her Tuesday shift, we meet at Mr. Bing’s. At first...E-Edition
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