Becoming gender subversive is another issue that has a whole lot of complexities. Especially when it comes to the interplay of gender and race.

Personally, I relish any time I can de-escalate the expectation of machismo when interacting with others. I find that as a young large black male that often travels between the ‘white’ and ‘black’ cultural centers of Durham, Chapel Hill and sometimes Carrboro it is of great comfort and satisfaction to myself when I can quiet the [unfortunate] initial fear response folks might have when coming into proximity with me. Or Hell, just to completely surprise them once I open my mouth to speak.

But then again, some issues often come of this… Like how hard it is to socialize with some younger and older white and black males without falling into the ‘Machismo Wars’.

Or how many sometimes perceive these strategies as being timid or assimilative and seek to take advantage of what they see as ‘naivety’ or ‘extreme willingness to please’.

Or how any display of intelligence to some folks is met with the perception that they can finally vocalize their [not-so-]subtle racist opinions without fear of reprisals ["Aren't THEY so [insert dagger into my back here]? I’m glad you’re not like THEM!”].

But, egh, I’m not going to lie — As much as I hate ‘this side’ of everyday compromises I must admit that those I’ve had to see women of color make daily — From my mother, to my aunts, to my cousins to my friends — Are of a depressingly more severe variety.

In a recent conversation a female co-worker of color and I were talking about the strange juxtaposition of slums and middle class areas in Durham. We both admitted that we thought it was cool if not completely insane some times. We also talked about how our race and genders played a role in interacting with people when we went to some of these ‘hipster’ areas of Durham.The subject of Duke’s East Campus came up and how we both often visit those areas surrounding it… Especially the Whole Foods off of 9th and Broad St. We are both bus riders.

At the end of the conversation she half-jokingly/half-seriously made the point that being who I was and how I looked I “would never have to worry about being assaulted or raped walking from Whole Foods to the Bus Station at night time.” I countered with some of my own disturbing experiences while walking in this area… Many probably obvious to any other men of color…

Anyway, we both chuckled nervously and went back to work… But it was only later that night that after REALLY thinking about our conversation that I realized she was absolutely right — As much as I hated my experiences due to being who and what I am, I had almost never felt extreme fear for my safety as a daily way of life because of it…

And sadly, I’ve only now come to realize it.

Just my $0.02.

You have nothing to lose but a killing disease.

It’s a delicate operation. But the good news is, you can do it yourself.

Resources are All Over the Place. Any number of men on the web (including SG right here), any number of books in the local library (Bob Connell’s, Masculinities, is one of the best), any number of good men who can tell you how they did it.

The tools to perform your own macho-ectomy are everywhere.

Switch on the lights. See how your gender identity was formed. Feel the freedom when you get it.

Wonderful.

Quarantine your false macho self. Work on it every day. It’ll take a while.

But it’s worth it. Like standing on a mountain top for the first time.

A whole new life to gain.

One good man at a time.

Lado Shay

Feminism, like Marxism, provides us with an analytical framework to understand and deconstruct power and domination. This is a concept that has consistently eluded you.

Feral Scholar » Blog Archive » McChrystal & Pelosi

Meanwhile, I’d still like to know how we can stop our sons and uncles and husbands and brothers and fathers from identifying — as males — with the employment of “redemptive” violence, with compartmentalizing our emotions, and with the fantasies (as well as practices) of controlling and humilating women, or men who have been “feminized.”

i think there’s a small window of opportunity when male children are very young.

i ‘raised’ a son who is now 30 and a peace-loving man.

you have to model a version of manhood that eschews violence, accentuates fun and male bonding (surfing was ours), and emphasises honesty and affection.

of course i failed to live up to this noble creed many, many times, but i believe the times i succeeded outweighed them and so i was able to pass on a more peaceful style of parenting than the one i grew up with, which included all manner of sadism and cruelty.

many fathers are doing this, and some very balanced, pleasant men are around to help ‘prove’ my point, but to look at the general scene planet wide, the view is blood-curdlingly regressive.

feminism tries to balance out masculinism, and sometimes goes overboard, but i think we can look at the duality of gender to study it, but at root our problems are human even before we ‘agree’ on gender roles, and violence takes many forms. for example it is much better to be unfairly and physically punished by a parent, then quickly forgiven and moved on into something joyful, than to be punished mentally by a parent who holds grudges for years and has a much harder time moving on.

funnily enough, i think war toys are where it starts most these days. a century ago i would have been quicker to blame old testament tales of smiting and annihilations blessed by the Author of the universe, (gwb was a museum piece of this kind of ham-brained mentality).

people draw a tremendous amount of their peace of mind and identity from being in harmony with their peers. this of course leads directly to ‘good german’ behaviour at its most extreme, however i think it’s better to see it as a form of ‘rhythm entrainment’, exemplified by the sound of marching jackboots and pounding deathmetal.

and it starts with the toys, you come home to your two year-old pretending to ‘kill’ you with his plastic toy gun, (or wooden stick, if you managed to ‘disappear’ the gun).

walk the backstreets of jerusalem and see the 5 year old boys playing with their toy ak47s.

sports try to channel the natural violence in male blood, but though they bring joy to millions, i look at the brutality and cheating, and wonder if it was worth it.

violence CAN be channeled, expressed, and followed by a gloriously mellow, post-coital type of pleasure.

my point being, that if we don’t find ways to enjoy our violence and grapple with it harmlessly, beating the shit out of huge drums, like that amazing japanese troupe, surfing big waves, yelling for joy at a good orgasm, we as men will feel atavistic attractions to crowds where we can get in touch with it, yelling for your home team along with 20,000 others is a hell of a hormone rush, as was charging a bunch of the enemy waving your spear, or facing a cornered predator.

the fiercest copulate more, because their passion has a place, for better or worse.

so we have a million-plus year-old hangover from when these skills were absolutely fundamental, and the feminine side was suppressed for most, for much of that time.

feminism i see as a baby half out of the womb. we’re never going to stuff it back in there, even though it was comfortable living there till it got to be too big.

but women merely aping the worst in men is a nightmare too.

women can run businesses, run for president even, but they have to do still far too much ‘double duty’ when it comes to child and home care, why?

because men don’t get educated to cook and sew and cuddle babies? because if the little boy doesn’t want to pretend he’s killing daddy, or ‘waste the bad guys’ as if life was a bad western, or wanted to dress up in his sister’s clothes?

sooooo many often invisible lines of cultural force running through each stratum of conditioning, as we munch our wheaties to grow big and strong and watch transformers with magic powers become our little alter ids…

women are doing their best to come to meet us men halfway, but i don’t see nearly enough reciprocal behaviour from men.

until women finish claiming whole person recognition, we men need to honour Jung’s ‘feminine principle’ much more until we have finished balancing out the millennia of testosterone-dominated, fuck’n'fight behaviour, with more tenderness, caring, emotional vulnerability, heart-centred actions, that are so easy to lampoon with jokes about quiche etc, that really betray how out of touch most men are with their own _anima_.

i talked with an italian man in his 60′s yesterday, he shared with me that in his father’s time it was considered shameful for a man to be seen cleaning a baby, or seeping a floor, or helping the women with their work, which continued while the men rested after their meals. as if cleaning the crap off their own baby was threatening to their pitifully petty vision of what manhood is!

the mediterranean men have a lot to learn from our more liberated, less sexist northern cousins in this respect.

thanks to all for an extremely interesting discussion.

Now we know that economics is flawed and ruinous as it has been applied to the behaviors of humans and nations. (Guilt by association)

Ditto Zionism, which is another unique worldview held as “truth” by its own proponents and demonstrably harmful to millions. I know that western “feminists” (scare quotes, designed to reduce the credibility of the enemy-view)

have gone on the record as opposing Zionism as a a manifestation of domination, violence, racism, and colonialism, but I am unaware that feminists within the Israeli society have opposed the Zionist project on that basis. I suspect that Zionist feminists continue to support the violent subjugation of Palestinians on the basis of their own people’s historic victimhood. (Reinforcement of guilt by association from anecdotal accounts)

In short, it is probably a waste of time to argue with a Zionist, an economist, or a feminist (MORE guilt by association, even though no definition for feminism has been offered, nor any response to the descriptions that HAVE been proferred)

because these are worldviews with some relevance to truth but with gaping blindspots as well. (reduction of several bodies of thought to “worldview,” thereby trivializing it and giving it the same status as “everyone has an opinion,” followed by a truism presented without examples or evidence)

That is what filters are all about. (Yes, filters. Stan, everyone gets your filters thesis; and that hasn’t been the subject under discusssion except for your constant reiterations.)

And people, including university-based “academics” and “scholars” can spend their entire lives accumulating data, but just as economics is not a science and free of biases, neither is feminism. (False analogy — economics claims to be scientific, while the various currents of feminist thought are not… and science is not free of biases either) (Attribution of a false claim to the enemy-idea)

It is all about bias (WHAT is all about bias? Feminism? Defiine it, give us the current to which you refer, state their premises, and challenge conclusion and premises bsed on some kind of evidence next time you take this public. This just sounds like a pissed-off male, which is something with which many women and male allies are already tediously familiar.)

and so the academic study of feminism is only valid as a point of reference, not as any repository of purely “actionable intelligence”. (Attribution of a false claim — putting words in the enemy’;s mouth)

But it obviously impresses its own possessors! (Followed by sarcasm and an implicit ad hominem attack on us fools)

Stan Moore (with parentheticals by Goff)

STAN GOFF: The following post was related to Zionism and Andrea Dworkin, whose name was spelled Dorkin as a peurile slap. (So I zapped it.) Again, all heat and no light, and the continued reification of “feminism” into something like a recipe. We do not post that kind of screed here, especially when it devolves to this adolescent style of discourse. This is just a small blog with a small following; and all we want to do is think together with a bit of intellectual rigor (precisely what is missing from a post like this). Now you can accuse us of censorship… that’s what people usually do when we interrupt the infiltration of standard blog-blather laced with clueless male privilege. There are many, many sites out there that like food-fight debates. I suggest you search them for kindred souls.

I think that that, at least, is a blind-spot worthy of consideration. It’s a tendency in I’m Right/You’re Wrong arguments; and, as a mediator for Wikipedia (Israel/Palestine, The Troubles, Armenian Genocide, etc, all very large and exhausting debates), I can say that more than half of the time someone is right and someone is wrong. But getting them to that realization almost never works by brute force; more than half of the time, that’s the method editors try.

I’m not saying that one party is really using brute force, either, but it often appears to the other party that they are. This usually sucks everyone in until everyone is whacking each other over the heads with rhetorical hammers, getting no-where fast.

It’s hard to find the point between too much and too little; it’s even harder when the scale you’re using is aggression and passivity.

@Stan Moore-The above statement and your previous comment regarding the supposed bias of feminists seems to miss, in my opinion, a crucial aspect of how filters actually work in any class structured society. On this point I would recommend reading Nancy Hartsock’s work on feminist standpoint theory. By this I don’t mean the kind of pure standpoint that automatically confers legitimacy on the views of someone who has experienced oppression, but rather, as Hartsock argues, the kind of standpoint that seeks to tear away the layers of ideology that shape and condition how the vast majority of people perceive reality, and which therefore makes it more than just a biased position.

Hartsock builds her standpoint argument on the two class model of accumulation that Marx constructs in Volume I, which he used to dig below the surface reality of bourgeois ideology in order to reveal the exploitation of workers within the production process. Feminists have long sought to dig below the surface reality of gender ideology in order to reveal the structures of male domination that appear natural to the vast majority of the population, due to the filters they have internalized as “common sense,” as Gramsci would put it. In other words, to state that when scholars and activists attempt to tear away these filters in order to lay bare the dynamics of class and gender power they are themselves blinded by their own filters is to miss the point entirely. In reality they have actually shaken the filters away.