Masculinity and Its Discontents
Hairless wonders — a guest post from Tom Devine
Recently on my website I wrote about the new female pubic styles. Actually until recently I knew virtually nothing about this exotic world, and became aware of it only through a sign that appeared in downtownAmherst, Massachusetts, which is where I live. As a gay...I write elsewhere as well, but basically about the same kinds of things
Hey y’all (I’ve now lived in Texas for just over a year, so I’ve been granted my license to say "y’all"). I have a post over at one of our Valley Advocate sister blogs, The Public Humanist. It’s titled "When a bedskirt is...judgeMENt daze
Okay, so the bar is going to open on Saturday. It really is. I’ve never been so deeply immersed in anything for so long in my life. But that’s not what I’m here to write about, at 1:30am after being in the bar since 8am, and before returning to it at...Bad father-blogging, or, How not to sterilize a bottle
Perhaps my lowest point to date, as a father, came this past Tuesday afternoon, when I put a baby bottle into a pot of boiling water to sterilize it, went into the guest room to work for a while, and just forgot about it—remembering it only when, about an hour...My wife dreams in heavy-handed symbolism
True story. After I filled the house with the toxic smoke of the burning bottle and then lapsed for about 36 hours into a post-traumatic depressive self-loathing funk of ineffectuality, my wife had a dream in which the two of us were trying to have sex but...Damien Rice and Ray LaMontagne walked into a bar…
This is, along with being a lovely duet by Damien Rice and Ray LaMontagne, obviously a pissing match (or, if you prefer, a sword fight) between two pretty sizable male egos. Hard to say who wins. Rice has the more subtle voice (and is a superior songwriter, though...The Australian Invasion
A virtual thanks to Peter Suderman, part of the collective over at The American Scene (an interesting blog with an unusually heterogeneous mix of ideological impulses), for bringing my (and now your) attention to this passage from a review of the latest Russell Crowe...Rendezvous with my Manly (adult) Destiny
Okay, friends, I am now a bar owner. I’m that guy. I’m pouring drinks, kissing hands and shaking babies. I’m signing paychecks, fer crissake. I’m the motherfucking man. So far, I think I’m being a good man at it, a good boss, a good...Rudy Giuliani, still a nerd — and a lying one too
Not too long ago, I wrote a short post about Rudy Giuliani, making the case that his toughguy machisimo act was really a rather transparent cover for the truth about him, which is that he’s a big honking nerd. I wrote: This fact about him—that he’s a...A few notes on DMX
I find myself oddly compelled by DMX, a strange, very dark, extraordinarily charismatic, probably mentally ill, frequently arrested rapper originally from Baltimore. Some of it, I’m guessing, is the typical white liberal Jewish psychosexual fascination with...On Wrestling: Part 1
[I was going back through some of my unpublished work today and came across this essay, written a few years ago, about my time as a high school wrestler. In the spirit of letting no halfway decent writing go to waste, I’d thought I’d share it with you....On Wrestling: Part 2
[This is the second installment of an essay I wrote about my time as a high school wrestler. Part 1 is here.]Sophomore and junior years were practice years. They were years of more wins and fewer losses but more than that they were years of drills. They were...Geek War
I’ll return to my essay about wrestling in a day or two, but I was alerted to this trailer, for the movie "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," by my old college roommate, and I thought I’d take a breather from my manly memories of wrestling and...Steve, Steve and Jon — Our faves
For sheer, postmodern manly exuberance, not much beats this little Daily Show lovefest, from the Emmys. Is anyone right now doing more than these three guys to redefine what it means to be a man in the 21st century? I hope not.On Wrestling, Part 3 — On Sucking Weight
Wrestling was, more than anything, about control. We were trying to wrest control of ourselves from the world, from school, from our parents, even from each other. And we were doing this by learning to control other people, to gain mastery of them, to make their limbs...I write elsewhere, but pretty much about the same things
For those of you who are interested, I have a post up over at The Public Humanist. It’s titled, "On Beating Bill Bennett, the Academic Study of Pop Culture, and the Soul of Man Under Late-stage Capitalism." It begins like this: Of the many arguments...On Wrestling, Part 4, or, I am the champion, my friends
The final pay-off, my senior year, the only possible pay-off, was in who I had become. I was, even as a senior, a small man: 5’8” and 145 pounds. My frame was dense, short and thick, but the body that had always frustrated my attempts to adopt the prep...On Arm Wrestling, or, Winning is for Losers (part one of one)
I could talk about a zillion mannish issues since the bar opened. The way other men treat me, say hi, shake my hand, even call me “sir,” is just so weird. I have all this new RESPECT now, and RESENTMENT and JEALOUSY, all because I own a building with a...In Defense of Bill 'O'Reilly
I rarely pass up on opportunity, in life, to say nasty things about FOX News talk show host Bill O’Reilly and the putrescence for which he stands. In the pages of this very paper (if it makes sense to talk about "this paper" in a paperless medium), for...Camille Paglia likes men, doesn't really think very hard anymore
Camille Paglia has a typically irritating review, of three recent academic books on masculinity, in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Not irritating because I think she’s wrong, but because she’s gotten so lazy. If you want to be...It's NYTimes Fall Fashion Supplement Week at MAID!
I stole the "Men’s Fashion Fall 2007" issue of "T", the Times Magazine’s fashion supplement, from my therapist’s office on Friday, and I’ve decided to treat it, over the next five days, as an important cultural text. For...Man of the House: Fall Fashion Supplement Week cont'd
There’s an interesting dialectic, in men’s fashion magazines like "T," between pushing the butch button and the femme button. Not only are they, in certain respects, inescapably femme — all about decoration and performativity, evanescence...Jon Stewart shocks, chagrins and de-balls Chris Matthews
I want to take a brief detour from New York Times Fall Fashion Supplement Week (which, let’s be honest, was running out of steam anyway) to highlight this video of Jon Stewart making a total fool of Chris Matthews. It’s pretty amazing to see...More on being the Man and a man and a businessman and on business, and men, with a digression on testosterone
Let’s talk about my feelings for a while, shall we? I write this last self-consciously because I’ve got a book based on “Peep Show” making the rounds of publishers and so far we’ve gotten a lot of “Berger’s story is...Blacks and Jews, cont'd
Over at the Public Humanist I have a post, "A Black guy and a Jewish guy walk into a bar … or, Reflections on masculinity in a multicultural society," about my usual preoccupations– Jews, blacks, men, etc. It includes the following,...Larry Craig, Jon Stewart, and R. Kelly
Courtesy of this wonderful, gaylarious survey of Jon Stewart’s greatest gay moments, I came across this clip of Stewart dealing with the whole Larry Craig in the bathroom incident by interspersing his commentary with audio clips of Craig explaining how he...The latest and lamest in fast-food male archetypes
I’m not as concerned with the logic of it all as he (I think it’s a "he"), but I think that whoever writes Witz Pickz laid it out pretty well:This commercial recently got shortened from its original length because the producers realized it...“Well, this is bully!”
I recently finished Theodore Rex, which is the second volume of Edmund Morris’s major man-crush of a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. Morris is an odd bird of a writer; he’s exceptionally good at storytelling, and at conjuring up the details that allow you to...Abercrombie & Fitch sends some rather confusing messages about male sexuality
I’m not usually one for the whole flashmob thing, where a bunch of people who don’t really know each other get together and engage in some random act of humorousness, but this flashmob/prank/stunt thing that a NYC improv group pulled off is rather funny,...Yes, Another Beer Ad
Another Beer Commercial I have a very clear memory of writing about the beer commercial that started it all off for me (and by “it” I mean my obsession with and rage at images of masculinity in beer ads), but I can’t seem to find said post in our...Jean-Claude is back, baby, and this time he's postmodern
This teaser for what’s apparently a forthcoming Jean-Claude Van Damme experimental meta-movie, in which Jean-Claude plays himself in a biopic about his own descent into washed-up, mildly delusional post-actorhood, has me rather excited. The article at Slate.com...Give it up for the Gays!
Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, my favorite gay catholic anti-torture pro-Obama (probama?) conservative blogger, I came across this video of Barney Frank on the floor of the House of Representatives. Frank, who I briefly interviewed once, is pointing out what a bunch of...How Now, Iron Johns?
I’ve never read as much by Ellen Willis, who died last year at the age of 64, as I’ve wanted to, probably because she’s never really caught the zeitgeist in the last 10 years (i.e. my time as a semi-serious reader of criticism) to the point where I...RIP, Mailer
I just learned that Norman Mailer died, which is sad, sort of, although there’s something about Mailer that militates against too much sadness. He’s more of an Irish wake kind of guy, too much of a lovable asshole, for too long, for me to feel as though he...The perils of class ascenscion, Brit-style
My Columbia U. chum Nancy Rawlinson sent me this video from the British sketch comedy show Man Stroke Woman, in which dude at a bar tries, and ultimately fails, to navigate the conversational waters between the educated, middle class friend sitting next to him and his...the heineken draft keg robot ad – eh, it's really no worse than the rest of 'em
Okay, so I’ve been googling about regarding this ad, and came across this person who claims to "deconstruct" it but doesn’t even begin to address male fantasy, etc. I think s/he thinks "deconstruct" means "describe." I also...Follow-up on Wing Man Singing Guilt
I was talking today to a young student of mine, a politically, socially conscious young woman. She had read the post about the "Wing Man" ad and, jokingly, said she’s now terribly guilty for having gone around belting out the tune. Heck, I go around...Mailer, cont'd, and why we need more people like him willing to occasionally err on the side of sexism so that feminists can refine their thinking in an atmosphere of good intentions and respect
I’ve been thinking some more about why I came away from watching Norman Mailer act the macho man in "Town Bloody Hall" more, rather than less, impressed with him. Part of it was simply his charisma as an entertainer; I was grateful for the pleasure he...My Mom is Not 150 Years Old
It has been brought to my attention that I have been calling my mother a "first wave feminist," which would make her the contemporary of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I’m wondering how many times I’ve made this gaffe, and what on earth I was thinking...Looking at the Men's Rights movement
I’ve been mucking around a bit in the online world of the Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs), who are, depending on who you believe, either (from the Wikipedia entry, which seems to have been written by the MRAs):a loose coalition of groups dedicated to...Dumbledore's not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that
I was tickled when I read that J.K. Rowling had outed Albus Dumbledore. Gay may not be perverse anymore, but it hasn’t quite graduated from the funny, not-quite-normative phase of its social evolution to complete, prosaic normativity. Gay + most things is still,...Happy Thanksgiving, you sorry bastards
I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving, one of our few widely and seriously celebrated Holidays that hasn’t been successfully commercialized (unless you count the whole Black Friday thing, which I consider more under the Christmas than the Thanksgiving penumbra)....Who told the frat boys to wear different shades of blue jeans?
Walking around the UT campus this past few weeks, I’ve noticed what I suspect is a trend. Frat boy-types seem to be wearing their jeans in a much lighter shade of blue than what’s been fashionable in recent years. I don’t know if you’re still...Men named Kim probably shouldn't use the word
I wish that I could take credit for having dredged this beauty out of the right-wing swamp, but it’s recently been passed around the internet, like a bizarro Samidzat, as a contender for the title of nuttiest right wing blog post of our time. It’s called...Steve Santagati's Manual Stimulation
Researching the latest revisions to my book proposal (I could’ve just written the goddamn book in the time and energy I’ve spent on this thing), I bought a copy of “relationship expert” Steve Santagati’s The Manual: A True Bad Boy...I still don't know who told the frat boys to wear a lighter shade of blue
While in the mall this past weekend (not Black Friday, but Gray Saturday) I detoured into Abercrombie & Fitch to ask a salesgirl whether she could confirm my intuition that the shade du jour in frat boy jeans was light blue. "I don’t know," she...The Visible Man
Melinda Henneberger, one of the authors of Slate’s XX blog, offers this interesting anecdote:just yesterday, I needed to see my doctor urgently, couldn’t get an appointment, and so in desperation showed up in his office without one, but with my husband in...I find a reason to mention Road House
I have a post today, titled "Fightin’ Words," over at Public Humanist. It’s about figuring out how to deal with people whose opinions we find not just wrong but offensive and destructive. I write: But what about when we’re dealing,...My Mysandry / Robert Jensen's Discontent
After reading Dan’s recent post, I bought me a copy of Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I’m still in the first few pages, but I’m excited, hoping this book may challenge and inspire me. I was already getting...One Porn-ation, Under God, with liberty and gangbangs for all
I just finished reading Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, which Jamie wrote about earlier this week, and man, what a viscerally unpleasant thing to read. Not because it’s a bad book—it’s pretty good, in its...Don't think, just buy her more rocks!
While I am less than sympathetic with the men’s advocacy fellow whom Dan recently wrote of, and his complaint about the Pizza Hut ad (among others) that makes Dad look like a dope, I am recently finding myself taking umbrage at the way men are portrayed in every...Jerking the gherkin with the thought police in attendance
The bulk of Robert Jensen’s Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, which Jamie and I have been writing about for the last week or so, is devoted to describing the nature of contemporary pornography in such a descriptive, unsparing, unrelenting way...Women need men sometimes
The Onion had a nice piece in a recent issue on the real problem with the feminist movement — it’s lack of manly know-how and access to the old boys’ club: WASHINGTON—After decades spent battling gender discrimination and inequality in the...“Knocked Up” Reconsidered in light of feminist qualms
Over at Slate, Meghan O’Rourke (with whom, incidentally, I took about half a semester of intermediate photography in college before I dropped out of the class because I felt like I was out of my league) has an interesting essay on the movie Knocked Up, arguing...Jensen Looks Hard
Okay, so I finally have some time to begin thoroughly reading Jensen’s Getting off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, which Dan and I have been posting about here and here and here and here. In the introduction, Jensen, well, introduces, and credits two...a brief Britney digression (aka
Here’s an example of how, as I wrote in my last post, I’m usually so pro-women as to be considered anti-men when it concerns conflicts between the sexes. I’ve never been a Britney Spears fan, don’t really know her music, her videos, etc., but...Old Spice is for men with a sense of irony, a poetic sensibility, and a sophisticated appreciation of chicks in short shorts
I hesitate to bump Jamie’s musing on the Britney/K-Fed romance, but I caught this Old Spice commercial over the holidays and thought it was significant. Of what, I’m not entirely sure. Some big chunk of it is making fun of the traditional sports-is-life...The plight of the unloved (Asian) man
I just got my new issue of N+1, a New York-based journal that’s the closest thing there is in America, at the moment, to a hip intellectual journal, and the really killer essay in it is by Wesley Yang. It’s called “The Face of Seung-Hui Cho: Virginia...On being lucky
I’ve been thinking, since reading Wesley Yang’s excellent essay on the Virginia Tech shooter, about the fact that for as long as I can remember, even when I was at my most lonely and romantically/sexually desperate, I never felt anything like how Yang...E-Edition
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