Masculinity and Its Discontents
Love is a battlefield
Every so often I stop by the blog of Glenn Sacks, the Men’s Rights Advocate I wrote about a few weeks ago. I find his politics terribly wrong and misguided, but he seems genuine, and his blog (and its comments) provide interesting raw material. I was...true
If you don’t know the ad that Eugene is parodying here, well, you spend less time wifiing on the internets than do I – good for you! (and see below for an example – it’s one of a series of ads that are car-crash-esque in their ability to...Occupying my territory at the mall
My daughter and I have been going shopping a lot lately. Or, rather, I’ve been going shopping a lot lately, and Jolie’s come along for the ride, because being a parent of an infant entails finding lots of ways to kill time while keeping your kid happy. And...Eye of the Tiger/Don't Put Your Stereotypes on My Daughter/the Price Pfister Pfeminist
I found this air guitar cover of Eye of the Tiger wicked wicked awesome. Particularly the guy on the tambourine. I also think it has something important to say about masculinity, though I’m not sure what.Also, on an unrelated note (note — get it? because I...Oh, the women, they torture me, they do
This past Tuesday, for me, was one of those hyper-libidinally charged days when, for whatever reason — the barometric pressure, an imbalance of the humours, a naughty dream — I just found myself leering at a good percentage of the girls around me on...OT: MLK,jr and the media
While I was busy most of Monday, Martin Luther King day, eloping – that’s right, y’all, Anja and I ran off and got hitched! – I did listen to the radio a bit and turned on the TV too, and everywhere I looked and listened, all I saw and heard...On being like my mother and other thoughts
For anyone interested, I just posted a bunch of photos of Jolie over at the blog we maintain for her. I also captioned all of them, saying things like this:These following two pictures are of Jolie in her cute new (hand-me-down) Hannah Anderson outfit. And while...OT: MLK,jr and the media
While I was busy most of Monday, Martin Luther King day, eloping – that’s right, y’all, Anja and I ran off and got hitched! – I did listen to the radio a bit and turned on the TV too, and everywhere I looked and listened, all I saw and heard...Jamie and Anja Got Married! Yay!
Jamie sort of buried this fact in his most recent post (because he’s neurotically weird about self-promotion), but he and Anja got married on Monday, and I think that’s worth a bit of pictorial celebration. Thus: p.s. Jamie, your wife is a total...I really dislike Roger Kimball
I am, I fear, too small a fry in the publishing world to lure Roger Kimball, the co-editor and co-publisher of the highbrow conservative journal The New Criterion, into a catfight, but just in case he’s listening, I want him to know that I find his writing voice...I like (commercials about men with) big butts and I cannot lie
Okay, so I’ve been forced to watch this ad about a zillion times during sports events lately. Thing is, while it’s not funny to me any more, it still doesn’t bother me almost as much as the guys-being-crushed-by-giant-beercans-for-not-being-macho ads...Everybody doesn't love Raymond's wife
In Jamie’s very tendentious post about commercials that make fun of men, he accuses me, more or less, of sharing a critique, with the Men’s Rights Advocates, of a certain type of man-as-doofus commercial. He writes: I guess when it comes right down to it,...she's effing Matt Damon
This is only MAID-related insofar as Matt Damon is, I’m pretty sure, worth of the Mantheon, though Jamie and I need to talk it over at our annual Masculinity and its Discontents borscht belt retreat up in the Catskills before we install him formally. Anyway,...Be a sucker for hope. Obama wins the coveted Oppenheimer endorsement!
MAID doesn’t detour often into electoral politics, but I thought I’d detour, on this Friday preceding Super Tuesday, to offer my personal endorsement of Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. I could offer up a bushel of reasons to prefer Obama over...Robert Jensen, Ugh
So Anja says to me, this morning, as we walked the dogs on a sunny, crisp winter’s morn in our New England woods, she says, “So when Robert Jensen masturbates, he doesn’t think of any pornographic images?” “Nope,” I reply,...Goodbye To All That (#2) by Robin Morgan
Aside from her not seeming to have watched much "South Park," and thus not realizing that that show absolutely does treat blacks, jews, Persians, the disabled, everyone the way it does Hillary, Morgan’s update of her "(in)famous 1970...Jackson Katz, Robert Jensen, and Flycatching. And Eugene Mirman too!
As I ponder my resistance to Robert Jensen, and now anti-macho spokesperson Jackson Katz (whom I’ll discuss at greater length next week), I come to yet another conclusion. Crusaders, be they political, moral, or religious, nearly always have zero charm or senses...Have I mentioned that I like being a father?
I feel bad for displacing Jamie’s excellent (funny/insightful/etc.) post on the wearying humorlessness of the pro-feminist male crusaders, but I haven’t been much present on MAID in the last week or two (I’m writing a long article on some very cool...I actually do like Grey's Anatomy quite a bit
This was passed on to my wife with the note: "reminds me of Dan." Not very flattering, but the video’s funny.p.s . the book cover in the upper left of the screen (the Sexy one) was designed by Jamie’s wifey Anja. Very cool, no? (Jamie, I...I still think it's okay for men to objectify women (who exist only in their imagination) when they're pleasuring themselves
An interesting article, over a ZNet, by our old friend Robert Jensen and his fellow left-wing anti-porn crusader Gail Dines. It’s about AbbyWinters.com, which is an all-female, semi-amateur porn site that’s promoting itself as a kind of au naturel,...Few men are aroused by these stylishly accessorized carcasses
Over at the Southwest Review, there’s a fascinating essay by Daniel Harris, "Celebrity Bodies," that delves into some of the psychosexualcultural reasons why so many famous women want to be so thin. It’s the kind of essay where, when you think...Possibly even worse than Wilmington
I feel violated this morning. Or rather, I still violated from last night. It was about 10:30 p.m., and I was standing outside the restaurant where the Hillary faithful had gathered to watch the debate between their woman (experienced, ready to lead on day one,...the best swedish rap I've ever heard
not really masculinity related, but very cool. His name is Adam Tensta, and apparently he’s swedishMatt Damon and Sarah Silverman are better in every conceivable way, but . . .
. . . in the interest of fair play, here’s Jimmy Kimmel’s response to Sarah Silverman’s video anniversary card to her man that Dan posted recently (and yes, Dan, I say let’s put the World’s Sexiest Man in the Mantheon, by all means.)....The Clothes Men Wear
I’m totally fascinated with the clothes men wear, with what we say with our clothes, consciously and (mostly) unconsciously, about how we’d like to be seen in the world. Today, for instance, I’m wearing the following, from the feet up: Bright blue...It's raining Toms
In response to my last post, Tom Devine, the Valley’s premiere gay ex-crack addicted libertarian yippie blogger, said this, about fashion: I have a hippie sensibility towards fashion, meaning I don’t get it and never did. There’s no right or wrong to...The Clothes Men Wear, once more, this time with rappers
Speaking of men and clothes (as we’ve been doing the last few days), I’ve been enjoying some of the work done by "Izzy" at Manolo for the Men, a blog about men and fashion that’s a spin-off from the granddaddy of all fashion blogs,...Golf is the new macho? / BarOXERS HussANES Obama
Sadly, this was the only Slazenger Raw ad I could find. The one I wanted to show you I’ve only seen once: it features a leather-clad babe at the country-club snack bar, some biker dudes, and an unassuming, kind of preppy and/but hot young man who goes out and...Bitch is the new black
I have a long Clinton/Obama post in the works, musing on the complicated gender dynamics of the campaign, which will culminate in a recent photo of Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, with his arm around the waist of Jessica Grogan, wife of me,...Radical chic and the apotheosis of Tom Vannah
By way of Tom Devine’s blog, I saw this wonderful infographic from the Springfield Republican’s Masslive website, comparing Valley Advocate editor (and local radio personality) Tom Vannah to recently retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (click on the link...the biphobic within
This post, "There’s Something in Me I Don’t Like, So I’m Getting Rid of It; I Just Need to Work Out How," has been mooted (bruited?) around blogosphere lately. The topic is biphobia — the fear or loathing of bisexuals — in the...I'm Just Sayin' Is All
Between watching Robert Jensen and Jackson Katz videos (do I need to insert "while beating myself into a frenzy again and again" or is that a given?) I happened upon a refreshing voice. I have a feeling I’m going to get some greif on this one....the inveterate inclination in men to associate virility with the exertion involved in killing and risking death
I’m not sure that I quite want to recommend this essay on patriotism by political philosopher George Kateb. It’s a bit too theoretical for my tastes, and I’m actually moderately familiar with the theory. But if you’re a theory geek, go for it....Jensen, one more time / how to find our archival bits / Sptizer
Okay okay, this will be my last post on this subject, I hope. In a book review of Robert Jensen’s "Getting Off" from Sex in the Public Square, a community of blogs which describes itself as "working to expand the space available for discussions of...Superman's unitard
I don’t think this New Yorker essay, by Michael Chabon, gets to the heart of what makes comic books so captivating to boys in quite the way it so obviously aspires to do, but it does have some wonderfully precise observation, particularly this little...Man on Man action
Jamie and I have just commenced a collaboration with Men’s Rights Advocate Glenn Sacks over at his blog, where he just posted our introductory post as "The Feminist Dissident." I’ll post it here tomorrow, but for now, go over there and join in...Macy Gray and Christina Aguilera save the world
I’m tired of the heavy shit. Enjoy:they wouldn't know oppression if it bit them on the bum
Daran, who I believe is one of our visitors from Glenn Sacks’s blog, wrote this in our comments section, and I thought it was worth further hearing: Take me for example. I’m white, forty-three years old upper-working-to-lower-middle-class background. (My...Perhaps Obama's most brilliant speech
I really don’t know whether this would make him a better president than Hillary, but my God, Obama is brilliant. You should just watch this, whether you’re for him or not, for the chance to see political oratory on an extraordinary level. I don’t...it's not that men are liars, it's that women can't handle the truth
I think this one is definitely going on the forthcoming MAID soundtrackGlenn Sacks and Us, Week Two: Common Ground?
Hey M.A.I.D.-ers, So this is our second week posting on Men’s Rights Advocate Glenn Sacks’ blog. Our intro last week, in which Dan wrote a longer post and I wrote short addenda, got, get this, over 500 responses!!! Many of them from some pretty angry guys....Barack Obama saves the world
I was flitting around Pandagon, home blog of soon-to-be-MAID-contributor Amanda Marcotte, and found my way to this video from Jay Smooth, who writes a hip-hop vlog called Ill Doctrine.He’s talking about Barack Obama’s recent speech on race (which I...Making war with the playstation generation
I fear I’ve been diluting our brand lately with my detours into the world of global and domestic politics but, alas, we live in interesting times. Anyway, I found this essay by Michael Massing, on what kinds of people are joining the military these days, pretty...Hey, everyone else is linking to it…
This award-winning video of a little baby boy laughing is just awesome. The best part for me, in my dual capacity as a father and an impresario of all masculinity-related subject matter, is when the dad, in the background, says something like, ‘this is the...how Feministing talks to men, etc.
For those of you who’ve been following Jamie and me as we engage with(or, depending on your perspective, condescend to, or waste our time with, or go to war with) the Men’s Rights Advocates at GlennSacks.com, you may remember such reactions, from us, as...What We All Want?, etc
At our most base, isn’t this what we all want (men, women, gay straight, MRA-ers, NRA-ers, NOWers & Laters) in one form or another? I’ve thought about this comic a ridiculous amount since it ran. (I’ll wait to write more in response to any...I write yet again about clothes
My latest "Feminist Dissident" post is up over at GlennSacks.com. Please to check it out at your leh-zhure. Here’s a taste: Where I’m moderately unusual, for a straight white guy, is that I enjoy talking about clothes. I like watching Project...Nothing more fun than men dancing
In Media Res did a week of videos+commentary recently on the topic of "men and masculinity." My favorite of the posts was this one, which does a short analysis of a video clip, of two men joyously dancing, from the 26-hour (is that right?) miniseries...The soft power of emotional sophistication
Victoria over at Here Be Dragons has an interesting post in which she addresses, in what I think is a pretty balanced way, two issues that are of interest to me. One is the way that one partner in a relationship — typically the woman — tends to do more of...That Persian diplomat is the shiznizzle
Back in my nom-de-plume-tastic days as Dexter, I was once asked the following question:Dear Dexter:Is there any kind of hat that goes with a formal-type coat that doesn’t look either silly or get you odd looks? The knitted-wool affair keeps my ears warm but...More men, more Hillary, more fun
Hey y’all (that’s my Britney Spears impression). Here’s the post that I sent over to GlennSacks.com yesterday. I gave it the nice neutral title "On Katha & Hillary." Glenn, in his infinitely provocative wisdom, titled it "Sexism...Searching for Hillary
In January ’07, after hearing and reading a bunch of really nasty misogynistic Hillary bashing, I created a Hillary Google Index of terms I searched next to "HIllary Clinton," below. For some wacky reason, our recent conversation with the folks over at...Giving Up Sacks
So I had a chance to sit down and talk with Robert Jensen last weekend, which was surprising and refreshing, and which I’ll go into in depth this weekend. Among the things we talked about though, was whether he was, in his recent anti-porn, anti-masculinity...Sundry thoughts after quitting trying to reach the haters, and after meeting Bob Jensen too
(Dear Readers, In the name of posting more, I’m trying to edit less. This is my first effort in doing so. -jb) If I were still writing middling magazine features and this were one of them, I’d probably start with something like, “When Robert Jensen...Nick Lowe, Mantheon Candidate
[Guest post from Martha, Friend of Masculinity and its Discontents (FO-MAID)]I know the Mantheon isn’t meant to celebrate the everyman. That’s the whole point: these are better than average men, exemplary men. Not regular Joes, variously misogynist,...The audacity of Bill Cosby's black conservatism, and the weird cultural amnesia that's already forgotten that Cosby's probably a rapist
Fascinating article over at The Atlantic, "The audacity of Bill Cosby’s black conservatism," on Bill Cosby’s controversial crusade to deliver to the black masses some old-fashioned, Booker T. Washington-esque gospel of self-reliance. The author...On the DL with Cuba and MJ
I see this ad about three times a night now that the NBA playoffs are on (I’m an NBA junkie). The first hundred or so times it just annoyed me, and then last night I got fascinated. Earlier, while annoyed, I thought it was homophobic and just dumb. Mincing...Chivalry and femininity in butch-femme relationships
Our old pro-feminist comrade Hugo Schwyzer linked recently to this post by Sugarbutch, in which she talks about how gender role playacting, and the performance of chivalry, are an important part of her particular butch-femme lesbian relationship. She writes:Chivalry...Kanye West, Nick Lowe and the transcendence of the war of the sexes in the higher synthesis of art
In her post from the other day, Martha made the case for singer Nick Lowe’s inclusion in the Mantheon, argung that "there’s something to be said for a man who can speak in so many registers of masculine reaction. A man who’s neither paragon nor...E-Edition
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