So I found this article thanks to Sargon of Akkad’s TWIS for the 1st of Nov. He only really read from the first paragraph, which frankly is fine because that’s all that really needs to be read to undestand just how terrible this article is. But I wanted to have a go at it, give us all a change of pace, and talk about something important.

It’s time to do away with the concept of ‘manhood’ altogether by Zach Stafford

And we know the quality of this gem because of the tag line:

Centuries of war, pillaging and violence show that manhood is never in crisis, as alarmists like to claim, but it is often at the heart of these phenomena

Which tells me he has never in fact studied the actual topics of history, economics, or anthropology. But hey, ignorance is no reason to deny a man his right to speak. It is merely the permission I need to show that he is ignorant.

Men are pretty terrible people. They commit significantly more violent crimes, robberies and assaults each year than women do, according to the Department of Justice. They are more likely to show anger in the workplace and be rewarded for it while women are affected negatively for the same behaviors. They even take up too much space on public transportation when “manspreading”. I could keep going.

Let us just take a moment to look at this opening line. Really, this is why Sargon didn’t go past this first paragraph. You really, really don’t have to. Imagine if we had substituted with any other group.

“Jews are pretty terrible people.”

“Blacks are pretty terrible people.”

“Women are pretty terrible people.”

Really, the Nazi propaganda rights itself.

Now, this is not to deny that men do in fact commit more violent crimes than women. Of course, men are also less likely to say, receive government assistance than women, necessitating more criminal actives in a desperate attempt to not starve or freeze to death.

While the commission of a crime is always a matter of choice, we should not forget that often it is done because it is seen as the “best” choice” at the time, at least in many instances. We also have to remember that some, if not many, men are driven to these violent crimes due to the need to either belong to part of a local group or to support their families in an economy which is still I think officially somewhere around 8% unemployment and unofficially at 16% at least.

Also, I still can’t believe manspreading is a thing. Has no one else seen a woman take up multiple seats on public transit with any number of items or body positions? Am I really the only one?

Men probably dominate all these “terrible” statistics because, now and throughout history, they’ve dominated the world. But that doesn’t give them a pass. They are still to blame even if they don’t know better, and it’s high time their dominant position – their entitled ignorance – was questioned and dismantled.

Terrible is in quotation marks. Does that meant they’re not terrible? I’m confused here.

But have men truly dominated the world? Certainly, history is filled with the recorded deeds of many mighty men. Truthfully, we have carved our glories and tragedies on the face of this planet.

On the other hand, when one group stays safely inside a home and the other group risks and receives death in the fields, the hunts, and the wars, I have to ask who really is dominant. When it was whites in the houses and blacks in the fields we called it slavery and exploitation. When it was women in the houses and men in the fields we called it patriarchy and dominance.

Huh.

Now sure, that is a bit simplified way of looking at it, but typically I would hardly rate the group dying in exponentially higher numbers as the “privileged, dominant” group. But that’s me. And I’m crazy, or something like that.

And men are still to blame for what, exactly? Being terrible? Entitled Ignorance (of what, you have to say what people are ignorant of if you want to insist they’re ignorant)?

There is a “manhood in crisis” trend story to match each one pondering whether women can have it all. But manhood isn’t in crisis; it is the crisis. Still, last week author and activist Kevin Powell published an essay at CNN where he announced, yet again, that manhood is in society’s crosshairs, and recommended a way to fix it.

Manhood is the crisis. Okay. Let’s see what manhood is.

Noun

manhood ‎(countable and uncountable, plural manhoods)

1. The state of being man as a human being.
2. State of being a man as distinguished from a child or a woman.
3. The qualities ascribed to manliness; courage; bravery; resolve.
4. (euphemistic) The male genitalia.
5. Men, considered as a group.

Okay, so we have five definitions of what manhood is. I’m going to “Crisis” all of them.

1. The state of men being human beings is a crisis!

Huh, well…that sounds really bad. I mean like, Hitler bad. Seriously, are we sure that Stafford didn’t just grab some historical Nazi propaganda and switch Jews with Men?

2. So it’s bad to not be a child or a woman.

I mean, sure, getting to do nothing but play with toys all day would be pretty sweet. And women are starting to earn more than men, they’re graduation from all levels of school more than men, and with more higher degrees than men. Huh, maybe manhood is the crisis here.

3. So bravery, courage, and resolve are a crisis upon humanity.

I guess that makes Heathens and Cultors just about the worst human beings on the planet then. But then we were part of all that pillaging business.

4. Penis is a crisis upon humanity.

Been hanging out with the 3rd wave, Stafford has.

5. Men as a whole are a crisis.

Well, now we know where he got it from.

Powell, who recently released a memoir about his journey to manhood, wrote about spending time on a college campus, working with male college students to find a resolution to the “endless” rape allegations there.

He asked a group of men to name important women in history, which they did, but when pressed on what those women did, the men really couldn’t respond. This lack of actually knowing women’s lives led Powell to the conclusion that if these men couldn’t connect or care to intimately know about women’s lives, they weren’t able to respect them enough not to perpetrate violence against their bodies.

Okay, so Powell spent time with young men trying to find a resolution to th e”endless” rape allegations…when I’m pretty damn sure none of those men were making rape allegations. Accusations of rape, in overwhelming number, come from women. So wouldn’t it make more sense to work with women about rape and rape allegations?

It seems a bit like talking to lumberjacks about mining because wood is used hold up the walls in a mine. Yes, in the question of rape a man would most likely be the perpetrator, but said rapist is not likely to be the one reporting it, much less alleging a rape had happened.

Also, Powell’s conclusion that because the young men he talked to could name famous women, but couldn’t name what they were famous for, so therefore they cannot connect or care with women’s lives and not perpetrate violence against women is bullshit.

Quick, name me all of the presidents of the united states and what they were famous for.

You can’t, can you. I mean, there’s been 43 sworn into office, but 44 presidencies. Fun fact, Grover Cleveland (who most people have never heard of) was both the 22nd and 24th president of the USA. Now tell me what he’s famous for.

Oh you can’t? That must mean you cannot connect with men’s lives and are more likely to commit sexual violence against them.

There has been over 10,000 years of human civilization and history. There is history for humanity that extends past that limit. There have been quadrillion of historically important people, men and women, and the fact that people who have not studied this history cannot remember things they have never learned doesn’t mean they’re going to go be rapists.

But to give you an idea of how most people know things:

So yeah, pretty sure I just nailed Powell’s coffin shut.

This led him (Powell) to call for a re-education of men. He argues that men “actually [need to] learn about the contributions of women and girls to every aspect of American society” as a tactic to stop the violence. That is, they need to learn that there is more to women than a reproductive system.

That’s right kids, a knowledge of history will make sure you never rape a woman.

Also, is there any one out there who believes women are nothing more than reproductive systems on legs? Okay, yes, statistically I’m sure there’s at least one, but come on. I’m really sure that is not a problem with your average, or even sub average, human beings.

Then again, it’s been a long time since I was in public or university schooling. Things might have changed. I have heard this is how sex ed classes are going these days.

In which case: Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph’nglui mglw’nfah Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn! 

This is theoretically a good next step to stopping the violence that is polluting not just college campuses but the entire world, but it’s very “us and them” rather than “we’re all human together”. It just lets men be more educated about the women they are perpetrating violence against.

Well, Stafford, you’re making it “us vs them.” You can’t say “Manhood is the crisis,” and then turn around and say “we have to all be human beings together.”

Well, you can, because you just did, but you can’t make that work. That’s like saying “The Jews are a Crisis upon Germany,” and “Jews are terrible people,”  then turn around and saying “Jew and Aryan must work together as Germans!”

Until men en masse consider women to be part of the same ecosystem, masculinity will continue to be primarily a rejection of everything feminine, the tool men use to measure and gauge their own self-worth to other men – the foundation of bro culture. And until then, when they feel that their masculinity is in jeopardy, when they don’t feel man enough, manly violence will seem like a reasonable way to react to their feelings.

Juno’s cunt, are there really people this stupid?

I mean, I’ve called people idiots before, but Bloody Hela I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go this deep.

First off, I don’t know of any people out there who don’t consider women to be part of the same ecosystem. But on top of that, masculinity isn’t a rejection of femininity. Ideals like bravery, courage, and honesty are not the core opposites of feminine values like compassion, tenderness, or charity. At least, not in any of the Pagan texts throughout history that I have read.

And yes, men do sometimes resort to violence. We live in a violent world. When our ancestors faced something like a tiger trying to kill them, “here kitty kitty, oh you’re a pretty kitty” was not going to save anyone’s ass. The bravery to get within range of claw and fang and stab it with a pointy wooden stick was. And so it has always been.

“Violence is often the single most evident marker of manhood,” sociologist Michael Kimmel wrote in his 1994 essay Masculinity as Homophobia. “It is the willingness to fight, the desire to fight.”

He is correct. We see this violence from the bar fights over small issues to the violence that breaks out on streets when men are denied by women they catcall.

How is the desire and willingness to fight actually homophobic. Do Gay men never get into fights? This is basically an ad hominem against masculinity. “Well, manhood is just homophobic.” Despite that, arguably, Gay men would be among the most manly of men because they’re not attracted to the femininity of women.

And when was the last time violence broke out in the street because a guy was turned down for a catcall? Seriously? Do you have one shred of evidence for this claim?

Wait, what am I saying, I totally remember the New York riots of 2013, in which half the city was lost in fire because a woman denied the advances of a man who gave her a wolf whistle. How could I possibly forget such a momentous occasion in toxic masculinity!

We’ve seen this recently with the high rate of reported transgender murders in the US – the number sits at 22 so far this year according to the National Anti-Violence Project. Many times, my reporting has shown, these women are murdered not for being transgender, but because their male lovers fear being found out, fear their masculinity being called into question.

Wait, I thought were talking about how men were the problem, not the murder of transgender people. Also, it sounds like he’s talking about the murder of FtM transgenders…so it’s men killing men for becoming men filled with manhood.

I think.

Well if Men are the problem, and men are being killed, therefore removing problematic men from a society they terrorize…the fuck is your problem Stafford? Isn’t this what you want? No more masculinity? These transpeople violated the sacredness of the feminine, rejected it for toxic and violent masculinity! These are exactly the people you are railing against.

Also…only 22 transgender people have been murders in the US as of the end of October?

That’s uh, that’s impressive, actually. I think that’s the lowest murder rate I’ve heard of ever. I’m pretty sure more Jews have been murdered in the US than that, and it’s a comparative population size from what I understand. Hel, I’m pretty sure more PAGANS have been murdered in that time frame. But 22 people in 10 months, and I’m supposed to view this as a crisis brought about by masculinity? Also, that link doesn’t take me to the National Anti-Violence Project. It takes me to another Guardian article. If  you won’t even link to your supposed proof, the hell am I supposed to trust you on this?

Now I did manage to find the NAVP site and check their report…but it’s only on GLBT stuff. So it doesn’t even report the violence on other people. Which means it can’t be easily compared.*

All of this was humorously explored in the viral hashtag #MasculinitySoFragile, which through humor showed how men will respond so quickly, even violently, when they feel their manhood is being questioned. Which seems to happen a lot.

Yeah, not entirely sure how humorous that was, but let’s go check.

Okay, the second one was kinda funny, but most of them lacked any humor at all. In fact, most of them were pretty mean spirityed, to the point if you subbed in any group else you’d probably be called a racist or sexist. And there was some repeated article about men being terrified of smart women.

All in all though, not funny, would not laugh again. 2/10

Also, Stafford said manhood wasn’t under attack or in crisis, but reading through that hashtag it certainly seemed to be under attack a lot.

Instead of constantly putting manhood under perceived threat, we must rethink the concept entirely, and maybe – to be so daring – throw it out. Because we have centuries of war, of pillaging, of violence that show us that manhood was never in crisis, but always was central to this mayhem. So we may need to just rebuild everything with the whole concept of manhood excluded.

Okay, good, you try that.

Let’s see what a society without bravery, courage, honesty, self sacrifice, resolve, and integrity looks like. I mean, those are the traits of manhood, so they should be rejected and excluded. And let’s see how society works without violence, at all.

So let us see your great society, Stafford, with its cowardice, fear, lies, entitlement, laziness, and betrayal. Let us see the society you would have build without the blessed and divine nature of Mars and Thor, of the sacred masculine. Let us see your perfect world.

Somehow, I doubt you would see an end to the violence

Because everyone likes to talk about how bad masculinity is, how toxic and poisonous it is. But you want to know the truth? Civilization as we know it, with all it’s technology, science, and comforts, would not have existed without all that violence, that war, or those horrible male virtues.

 

Hela Bless

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This is not to harsh on the issues of the GLBT community. I work with many people of that group and my own sexuality probably falls somewhere near there if not in fact inside that classification.