was discussing this with a friend of mine (she's an anarchist but she actually organizes and shit). she was saying there can be no such thing as revolutionary masculinity because the two things are contradictory. but i'm a marxist so contradictions really butter my bread.
i think in a utopian, communist world gender identity would be completely different, to the point where it might not even be legible to us today, but my question is more about how we get from here to there. basically, can we men find a way to not be shitheads in such a way as to bring about communism, or does that not even make sense
feel free to dunk on me if this is a dumb question
Death to America
Having no left answer to masculinity means handing over teen boys to the far right, and effectively kneecapping your primary demographic for what becomes the fighting age of revolutionaries.
It's utopian behaviour.
The left absolutely needs to present something that is attractive to young males interested in the topics that usually end up filling the "masculinity" niche: Fighters, how to get girls, how to be brainier than other people. Andrew Tate is attractive to them for being a top fighter, he crosses over with mra and pua shit that segues boys into the right through the getting girls segment, and Jordan Peterson type stuff fills the last one.
The left has absolutely no answer to this because it's being utopian over the topic. It wants perfection but you simply can't do that with this topic. There needs to be a transition. We need healthy role models that fill the role of masculinity to compete with the far right and then we can eliminate it once they're defeated, otherwise it's just handing hordes of these boys over to them with no effective opposition.
Do you know anyone better at picking up ethereal communist bisexuals?
Ignoring the, uh, "Obama" comment, the problem with these people is that most of them are dead. That means that people are going to have a much harder time identifying with them.
Regardless if they have good masculine traits, they’re old and dead. Boys have historical role models but they also want and need living ones who are living and succeeding in today’s society and standards. What message would you give if all the people you look up to are dead and lived in a society that no longer exists (either physically or culturally)? It seems rather depressing and makes people nostalgic over TRVDITION instead of focusing on the present.
It's a sort of belief of exclusively and upholding the partiarchy as if there is something inherently "special" or "unique" about their biological gender having do to with their talents. That being born with a penis grants a certain authority and natural skill that being born without a penis has. Like Marx wouldn't have been Marx if he was born Female. Which we all know now simply isn't true.
There are plenty of strong women type, organizers, philosophers.
One could argue that BECAUSE of the partiarchy and BECAUSE Marx was born with a penis, people raised in patriarchal doctrine saw Marx as more of a natural leader as their PREJUDICE told them a women could never lead.
This is the stuff we need to root out and say it's ok to put partiarchy down and not just because it's
HER TURN, but because it is now recognized as an archaic discrimatory belief system that hurts both men and women alike railroading percieved or actual gender down a socially constructed path.If you want to reach "chuds" you can make an argument patriarchy negates meritocracy and they so deeply value meritocracy as it is a central lie anglo society is built on. It might short circuit their lobsters and rats
.
Ynow I think this way of thinking is incredibly flawed but I'm not clever enough to say why. Having been exposed to the alt right pipeline and weirdo redpill mgtow mra nonsense as a young lonely excluded teen it just never really grabbed me. Because its entire concept was predicated on hating women.
When I would speak to men suckered into this way of thinking it was like I was speaking to an alien i simply didn't understand it. And i think the core of it was purely just mysogyny. These men aren't looking for a role model they're looking for reasons to continue hating women. They don't need a better role model they need to stop dehumanising women and realise they are people and the rest will follow.
Also i don't think its accurate to say we have no good "masculine" role models. Hasan exists in all his himbo glory and is very popular. Also you think the right has anyone equivalent? Ignoring Tate what's left? Sneako? Aiden? Og MRA types like the amazing atheist? Thunderfoot? Cmon now, they don't even abide by their own criteria of masculinity
But what I want to say is the core of this issue isn't just some collection of young men who exist in a vacuum with no existing ideology simply fall into the far right for no other reason than cos there's no left opposition they fall into that hole BECAUSE they're already misogynistic and hateful lol.
I agree that misogyny is directly tied to this, but I also agree with @Awoo@hexbear.net that role models for teenagers is the answer. Whenever I'm doing anticapitalist propaganda while talking to men, I always touch on misogyny with it. Because both are related to empathy, someone who is truly empathic will fight both capitalism and misogyny. I refuse to believe teenagers are looking for reasons to hate women, they are angry and rebellious and looking for anything to validate their insecurities. When they find scum like Tate they think they found the bible, not because they understand the ideology, but just because he's contrarian and is talking about things relevant to teenage boys. @immuredanchorite@hexbear.net mentioned how easy it is to flip these ideas and that honestly works because these are kids, all we have to do is make them feel they're seen.
Edit: also this isn't just a social media scene with Tate or whatever, it's everywhere. If the kid looks to his dad, he's a misogynist. If he looks to older boys, they're misogynists. The only answer to validation teen boys get is rooted in hatred for women.
When they find scum like Tate they think they found the bible, not because they understand the ideology, but just because he's contrarian and is talking about things relevant to teenage boys.
It's important to understand that these boys are genuinely looking for an instruction manual too. They want to know how to be "alpha", they want to know how to get girls, and they want to know how to be the genius like some protag from their favourite anime. They're looking for instruction manuals and they find these people who promise to be them. It's exactly how pua took off in the first place and this entire sphere of online influence began with that.
Ignoring Tate what's left? Sneako? Aiden? Og MRA types like the amazing atheist? Thunderfoot?
Have you been to the "manosphere"? There are plenty of "normal" looking guys in that space that are basically saying similar things, but they are not as bombastic as Tate. I hate to say it but this feels like a "don't investigate, don't speak" thing for a lot of leftists, who either like to put their head in the sand or minimize the issue. Awoo is right, and has always been right, the left needs an answer for this. For my part, I've basically lost all faith that the left will be able to reach these men suffering from the "male loneliness epidemic" and in my mind they are pretty much on the fascist pipeline, but hopefully I'm wrong.
"the left needs an answer for this"
Ok you're the left aren't you. Whats your answer? I keep hearing someone has to come up with an answer, what is it? I'd like the hear it
I made a post about this a while back: https://hexbear.net/post/613122?scrollToComments=false. And of course, like most threads actually trying to deal with this topic it got pretty much crickets in responses compared to the usual "is doo doo or poop the proper socialist way to say feces?" type posts (which unironically get like 100+ comments). I've pretty much given up on the left being able to meaningfully tackle male loneliess and to me the fash are gonna win, at least in western countries because they're gonna end up recruiting most of these guys.
The answers are easy, any man from a educational show. Mr Roger's, Steve Irwin, Beekman, Bill Nye, Mr noodle.
Mostly agree. I think the primary problem on the material side is a lack of money, followed shortly by a lack of talent - by which I mean skilled people that can conduct public performances of one kind or another.
Ideologically, and mind you that this is generally outside of the fields of work I read through, you have to walk a tightrope between ultra-Left dogmatic purity fetishism and rightist opportunistic grifting.
I suppose the easiest allegory for this would be citing @yugopnik@hexbear.net's left-tube funnel video, and then saying the funnel needs to grow.
In this regard I'd be more in disagreement with this being where the Communist movement needs to focus its energy should anyone suggest it. Individuals or groups making it their passion project to become youtube Comarkiplier, sure whatever, do you. To me, the fundamental focus of the communist movement right now would be rebuilding its connection to the working class in light, heavy, and logistical industry. Having an online presence is good, but only being online limits your pool of people willing to join your movement to internet people.
This is the most correct answer and it especially rings true in more traditional communities such as those in the global south. We have guerrilla fighters, athletes, musicians, and politicians that are leftists who also happen to be role models for a lot of the young boys growing up. It's a battlefield where they either lean towards us or the fascists.
The American left (and I'm going to guess much of the European left) lacks this. The 20th Century has ended and so have all the great leftist heroes like Tupac and Muhammad Ali. Colin Kaepernick is the closest thing to a Muhammad Ali but he isn't quite the phenomenon that Ali was with his boxing achievements. A lot of this has to do with younger generations growing up with the Red Scare in their societies.
Hasan Piker is a step in the right direction and was probably most effective when he was known as the cool-talking hot guy who effortlessly picked up women. He's not that as much nowadays, though the rumors of him dating Valkyrae would probably draw more men who want to know "how did he get her?" You have to start somewhere and being dogmatic about it will push people away and create pockets of resistance, or worse, draw them to the open arms of the fascists.
It's a big reason why I think promoting gym and fitness culture is important. Attacking it as "Fascist" to a less political crowd that you could have more easily won over will then turn to the far-right. Anybody who argues "B-B-But guns!" Has never been in a fight and doesn't realize how much physical strength can make a difference even with guns involved.
Right?
I hate to say it but that's what these teen boys are looking for when they find these guys, and that's what the left needs an answer to. I know it sounds ridiculous to everyone that opposes patriarchy and so on, and I do to, but an imperfect solution is better than no solution.
The question is how to go about constructing these role models, actionable steps. There must be existing sports people who are already hidden or low-key leftists. I'd argue that turning the existing ones into leftists isn't impossible too, the method to do so however must come in critique of capitalism's effect on self-growth and sports. Turning existing athletes into leftists will come from finding what they care about and what they dislike in their sport and building a critique of capitalism causing it. For some it will just be about the money to them, but for others? I am certain a lot of them are genuinely passion-driven and that is something we can work with.
Banger reply. I need to start thinking about this more. /c/dudesrock when
I think that some of the comments in here are great, and others are completely wrong-headed. Patriarchy must be abolished, but Patriarchy is also one of the oldest and most pernicious of the oppressive systems we live under, and overturning capitalism will only even begin to allow that transformation to occur in a more unrestricted way. Toxic masculinity has recently been correctly identified during a period of consciousness raising, but failing to build a constructive and revolutionary alternative to understanding masculinity along side that has alienated and further entrenched many working class people who identify as masculine. But this could be a relatively easy task in the grand scheme of things, compared to dismantling Patriarchy itself.
Part of the issue I see could be a lack of imagination or insight into understanding positive aspects of masculinity, but it may just as well a pessimism that would deny "revolutionary" as much as the "masculine." ... many of the supposed masculine traits, toxic or positive, are just reframing and redefining aspects of masculinity that have been utilized to uphold class relations in different eras to suit different purposes. This is a normal occurrence, where some cultural gender constructs change to serve as an important component of the superstructure that upholds class relations.
I think a good example of this is the development of "chivalry" or the code of chivalry. Where a cultural tradition of a warriors code that probably predated the feudal era ended up becoming a complex and often contradictory social code that signaled a connection to the aristocracy, but also demanded fealty to the church and one's lord. Today we can see those old ideas being harkened back to by reactionaries who decontextualize, reimagine and romanticize that code to suite their own ends of keeping masculine-identifying people identifying with a bourgeois and reactionary understanding of masculinity to further everyone's oppression. But those traits could just as easily, and may necessarily, be reframed and shaped into something that upholds a new and better class relation, or at least something that facilitates the transition to it. If you write off a huge chuck of the masses based upon utopian understandings, you will be isolated and unable to move the masses of people in a progressive direction.
I think it would be relatively easy to spin masculine constructs into something positive and revolutionary. The current toxic masculinity bullshit fed to kids by Tate and Peterson can be subverted and turned on its head.
Strength isn't inherently masculine, but you can play with that concept all day. "Who is strong and brave: someone who defends the oppressed with their life, or an impotent person who kills unarmed civilians because they can't get laid?"
"Who is comfortable with their masculinity: someone who is unafraid of people who challenge gender norms, or a scared, weak-minded person who chooses to hate them?"
"Are you going to whine and whine about how unfairly you are being treated, or are you going to organize with your community to build a better world?" "If you cannot treat women as your equal, you must not love them after all?" Brotherhood and solidarity. Protecting the oppressed and the innocent. Giving your life to stand for your principles. Building a better world through hard work and determination. Selflessness in service of the community. Standing on principle. truth be told those things are honestly not masculine in and of themselves, but I could easily see them being used to construct a more positive vision of masculinity.It involves the construction and maintenance of a robust Swoletariat
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Anyone of any gender can be revolutionary, it's not really a gendered thing as I see it. Toxic masculinity and patriarchy are counter-revolutionary though, and if that's what masculinity looks like to you then yeah I can see how you'd think that. Everyone needs to be less of a shithead in order to bring about communism, although I think on average, men have more bullshit to unlearn.
Death to America
Yeah, the non-reactionary elements of masculinity (just like the non-reactionary elements of feminity) are just aesthetics. That's easily reclaimed by communists, but it will take work to remove it from the brainworms of "masculinity".
Welcome back. Death to America.
I mean, it's all social construct, so surewhy not? It's just a narrative you want to create. If toxic reactionary masculinity focuses on individualism and being king of the trash heap, we can have revolutionary masculinity be about building communities and sharing each other's burden; More shoulder make a lighter load and all that.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice. The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives, from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution. In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
- Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Guevara eventually fell into idealism, which is a large part of why he died in relative isolation at the hands of a Nazi death squad in Bolivia instead of as a nation-builder in Cuba. Prior to his leaving Cuba, you are right.
I’ve actually been thinking about this since Awoo brought it up in a couple threads earlier today. I think it would be really useful to have something to counteract the Jordan Petersons out there. The right actually is out there trying to recruit disillusioned young men, and succeeding with their bullshit masculinity.
The thing is, there are fellas out there who could do this and already have some fame. Hasan, JT, Hakim, Yugopnik, Felix, Matt Christman, etc. Problem is, these guys either dont seem to want to carry that mantle or they are just disembodied voices behind a podcast mic.
Ironically, the best person we had who could talk these young men out of toxic masculinity was a woman (Contra). But she’s a lib now and only makes videos once every two years with titles like “Spectacle”.
It's hard to come at this with a "we need to do what the right does, but leftistly" mindset because fundamentally what the right and left offer are incompatible things. JP and co say to young men who are being hurt by the system, "you deserve to be treated like a king and here's a list of boogeymen to blame for why you're not", while Hasan and co say "everyone deserves to be treated equally and here's a sometimes complex and unfulfilling explanation for the problems you're having". Young men who have an expectation of privilege are not going to be especially convinced by the person telling them that they shouldn't have it, which is why men tend to cling to these kinds of reactionary sentiments.
Comrades, a fucking podcaster or twitch streamer isn’t going to deradicalize young men. We need Marxist theory in childhood education, we need a zero tolerance policy towards rape, we have to rid our culture of all traces of masculinity from gender reveals, gender orientated marketing, any kind of gender segregated sport or workplace, and a heavy promotion of femininity to make up for the millennia of masculinity that dominated our society. I think not naming children would be a first step, so would be abolishing the cishet nuclear family. The current generation will never meet the ideological standards we want so fuck them lets move onto the next one, if they feel alienated or society isn’t working for them fuck them. Equality feels like oppression to the privileged. Maybe we should try to demoralize these young white men from taking any reactionary action instead of listening to every single grievance they have, our politics simply isn’t for them.
We cannot pity men who lost the social benefits of being a man because every loss to them is a gain for everyone else. Are we persecuting them? No, we are saying they have no inherent right to sex, we are saying that no form of masculinity good, we are not saying that femininity is bad, we are no longer okay with men treating women as sex objects, as house slaves, as property, as someone less than equal. We cannot view men as soldiers to fight the class war that we dispose of later because men will not fight the class war, workers will fight the class war. Men are the reactionary force against it because we live in a patriarchal society and that means men control the means of production and they will offer up women as property when there’s no more land, wages, or social mobility to be taken. And do you know why this is predominantly white men? Because black men never had the privileges of the white man in the first place. They were denied the institution of marriage, of the nuclear family, of even participating in capitalism, the black bourgeoisie never had the chance to develop sexism, they had all those moral values placed upon them by their colonizers. Sexism as we know it is a white construct. So maybe instead of trying to get the oppressor seeing OUR humanity through some twitch streamer, it’s THEIR moral imperative to become an ally and recognize without our help. And that’s a very hard thing to do, i know that a lot of the baizuos on the internet doing ecommunism or whatever you want to call to it through prolonged radicalization from different propagandists, and they are fucking rare. Most leftists are not them, and the only way we can make the average young man a leftist is through early education when they are a child, so that’s why I think their a lost cause, I think it would be better to target the right wing propagandists and make it harder for them to speak rather than trying to debate bro them to make the left look cool to their audience.
Im just trying to advocate for cutting losses where they exist.
Most workers are men though.
No, they are very slightly under half, not that it matters to the rest of your comment.
we are saying that no form of masculinity good
this is blatantly untrue unless you mean it in a hegemonic or ideological, and not aesthetic way. If you DO mean it in an aesthetic way than what do you think transmasc people are supposed to do? Die?
So maybe instead of trying to get the oppressor seeing OUR humanity through some twitch streamer, it’s THEIR moral imperative to become an ally and recognize without our help.
We aren't trying to get oppressors to see our humanity, we're trying to reclaim people who are optimally already being forcibly oppressed by a socialist state to prevent them from hurting people. We aren't asking kindly, we're re-educating. They will learn or they won't... with the consequences that follow
this is blatantly untrue unless you mean it in a hegemonic or ideological, and not aesthetic way. If you DO mean it in an aesthetic way than what do you think transmasc people are supposed to do? Die?
I don't give a shit about aesthetics, but I think it's good to remember that MLs, too, believe in the saying that "So long as there is a state, there is no freedom, and we can only talk about 'freedom' existing insofar as there is no state" and yet also advocate for the creation of new states at the same time as seeking the liberation of the human race. Statehood cannot simply be abolished in one stroke, it must be systematically destroyed, and the system doing the destruction is itself a state, and that state tends towards its last action being the completion its own destruction.
Something similar can be said for gender. There is no contradiction between holding gender as being fundamentally backwards and yet acknowledging that we live in a gendered world where people -- for reasons other than having an inborn gender, as gender is socially constructed -- need to cope in different ways, cis and trans identities included. Eventually, there should be no gender and therefore no cis or trans people, but that doesn't mean telling all of humanity right now to cleanse the entirety of gender from their minds or die.
My point isn’t that gender is some sort of good thing, or even retrievable, but that “masculinity” is often used to refer to superficial aesthetics, of which people can often enjoy presenting as (or not). This wouldn’t go away if we abolished gender.
It might be worth interrogating the connection between aesthetic values and other values, as in Society of the Spectacle in its real meaning and not the flanderized "wot if e'erywun wah jus' wa'chin' the telly?" version. Gender is overwhelmingly what makes what we view as gendered presentations appealing, and this is demonstrated by the way that it varies across cultural differences in what gendered presentation is. To use a very obvious example, I would fully expect wearing a skirt to make a transmasc person here and now feel potentially dysphoric, but in medieval Scotland transmasc people were generally probably quite happy to wear kilts in the situations they could get away with doing so. Why? It's just a slightly different arrangement of cloth! Because it is a signifier for a certain position in a certain framework of social values, not just aesthetic ones.
Men will not fight the class war, workers will fight the class war. Men are the reactionary force against it because we live in a patriarchal society and that means men control the means of production and they will offer up women as property when there’s no more land, wages, or social mobility to be taken
I'm sorry but wtf are you on it about? Men are half the population, and half of the working class.
Men do not control the means of production, owners do. I have no idea what you're getting at with this comment either.
I sympathize with what you're saying and agree with some of it, but it's a bit idealistic. People's ideologies are molded by how they interact with the world. Ideas do not sprout from nowhere, so I completely disagree that "conservative generations" must be abandoned for younger ones. Unless you get to the roots of what's causing reactionary ideology, the younger generation will just be as conservative. Other than that, I firmly believe both the nuclear family and the gender binary will wither away and be sublated, but there's no swift abolition especially in a pre-revolutionary or mid-revolutionary situation. We're already seeing the beginning of withering away of these things due to the contradictions of capitalism, and they'll be completed as communism is built. Besides radical support for queer issues I'm not sure what the strategy here should be.
Yeah abandoning "reactionary generations" would require mass, repeated homicide of billions of people. It isn't because it's wrong or something that's the main issue, though, it just isn't practical to kill that many people, they literally outnumber you thousands to one.
You might disagree that it wouldn't require it, but it would, unless you can somehow completely isolate the same billions of people from the "newer generations" socially. Completely, not a single word would be able to pass from the lips of an older person to the ears of a younger one.
Communists and refusing to learn from their historical counterparts, name a better duo. In Iraq, the communists wanted to decree away Islam. Instead, they created pockets of resistance because leading with "We will take away your closely held beliefs by force." fucking sucks as an opener. Learn from Modern China, who used actual Islamic teachings to explain why ISIS was incorrect. You literally want to be a frothing liberal's dream of a communist government.
if they feel alienated or society isn’t working for them fuck them.
You don't want results, you want purity. You'd rather have a state fail for the right reasons than succeed on a compromise. Your policy is literally to create disaffected billions because the idea of presenting an healthy masculinity is morally repugnant to you. You are a liberal in all but your goal.
I would say being transmasc is honestly a form of revolutionary masculinity, so I hate to dump this on our transmasc comrades but they might know more than me
This is what The Will to Change is all about in my view, men learning to exit the mindset of domination and enter the mindset of equal partnership and collaboration. Patriarchy can only be broken when we’re free from this toxic cycle. It starts with our relationships with our partners, our children (especially our sons), and all of that will permeate into society and how we treat each other. bell hooks shows us a path to revolutionary masculinity.
I'll try not to make a super long effort post. I think much of the issue is that so much of masculinity is based on non communist values: individualism, competition. Men are taught to repress their emotions, to remain aloof. I mean the current "sigma" male, "alpha" male rhetoric, really most of the manosphere, is not really new stuff but is just the contemporary packaging of what men have always been taught, by fathers, mentors, coaches and peers. Masculinity is based on values that are antithetical to communism.
My adolescent years were bliss, and because of this I do think a revolutionary masculinity exists because I believe that's what I experienced then. But maybe it wasn't so much a "revolutionary masculinity" but instead the antithesis of masculinity, to the extent something like that could exist among non-political teenage boys in the early 2010s. Tbh I don't know too much about the definitions of terms and I think a definition of masculinity needs to be decided upon before asking if revolutionary masculinity exists. Obviously machismo is not revolutionary - is machismo the same as masculinity? Tbh idk. But yeah I do agree that masculinity as it is presently understood cannot be revolutionary, because many of its essential characteristics are anti-revolutionary. But I know from experience men can learn to be communal, collaborative, emotional, caring, without necessarily adopting more "feminine" cultural tastes or even behaviors (so long as certain "masculine" behaviors are not inherently anti-revolutionary). Whether that still constitutes masculinity, revolutionary masculinity, or what idk, but I do think it gets at the core of your question.
Now what to do about gender identity itself moving forward I'm not the person for that. But in terms of what we need to be presently concerned about, especially after that "ideological gender gap" post last night (which I realize some people pushed back on a little but which also lines up with my experience - which granted might just be due to friends getting older and climbing their respective career ladders), I think it's an attempt at an answer. Culturally non-masculine behaviors can be embraced from a "masculine" perspective.
What we need to do is construct an entire masculinity from scratch. This is not an easy task, but it is possible, and we have some inklings of where to start. The notion of responsibility is already considered integral to some people's ideas of masculinity, and we could possibly extend that in a communist sense if we worked at it. Though, I'm not sure if I like behavioral masculinity or feminity. I think it would be easier and less toxic or reactionary to simply emphasize masculine-presenting, revolutionary people to those who need an idea of what masculinity means.
So, what we want is revolutionary masculine (AND feminine) aesthetics, not vague philosophies. Communist theory should be able to encourage good behavior regardless of gender identity or presentation.
Thank you very much for posting this; I'm struggling with some of these same knots and that was a helpful way to have it laid out.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
