carolinacurious:
I have mentioned how I feel about the whole Men's Movement, right? Personally, I found "Iron John" full of platitudes. But it is true that the end of the extended family is a big problem. With extended families, even death or divorce didn't mean an no more male role models. Mass media was the death knell to the masculine, and anything else not marketable.
Well, I personally haven't seen your thoughts on the Men's Movement, I'd be happy to follow a link.
I'm not recommending anyone go out and buy "Iron John", everything I found useful and original, at least to me, is in my previous post.
"Mass media was the death knell to the masculine, and anything else not marketable."
Am I the only person here who's ever seen an ad for a dodge pickup? They were selling make-up for men, dresses for men, lace for men back in the early 80's. I don't know if all of what's happening now is a fad or not, but some of it is. If they can figure out a way to make a dime off masculinity (marlboro man?), they'll bring it back. Masculinity is definitely marketable and marketed.
great "Are we not men?" intro!
Thank-you. I liked it myself.
Sure, certainly the industrial revolution had a lot to do with male secrecy, as perceived by others- not only children, but women too. As men left their homes for work, their lives became a mystery to their whole families. Then came stopping by some place "with the guys" after a hard day. More separation. Then in WWII, with the men all off defending our country, women were rallied in to feed the machine, and we found that they could operate heavy equipment, become accountants, work on an assembly line, basically do things previously thought by society to be "men's jobs". Then the men came home. Heroes! And these hard working women who had kept it going, gotten a taste of the freedom that earning your own money brings, were shoved back into the kitchen as viewed as second class citizens again. Not too surprising we've been fighting ever since.
Great Jana, I hadn't really thought of the mystery to the whole family angle but you're right.
Major tanget time: Isn't it interesting that it was the corporations who split up our family structure, the corporations who largely required us to go to war, the corporations who expected women to fill the gaps in the workplace when needed and to go back home like good little girls when done, the corporations who have it so an average family with two working parents (in some ways) don't live as well as a single wage earning family in the 50's but yet refuse to pay childcare or equal pay to women BUT yet it's the government and each other that we fight against.
Huh?, how lucky is that for those Corporations?!
There is absolutely NO chance for a return to the "Golden years", because women as a whole will never again accept being secondary to men. It's over- get on with it! We all need to redefine who we are and what we expect out of our lives. Blameshifting is useless, the past is only good for historical backdrop. Just like in racial issues, it is not mainly the people who are alive here and now who are at fault for the way things are, so now it is on us to do our duty as countrymen to correct mistakes of the past as we find them. I doesn't mean everything WE do will be right, either, but the onus is on us to try.
I like how you have "Golden Years (wop- wop- wahh)" in quotes because of course the "golden years" weren't always so golden and some of the things I rail against in the corporate sense above have actually been good for society. I guess you can see from above that I wouldn't say that "blameshifting is useless", I would just say that we have never, as a whole, shifted the blame to the proper place. (And of course it isn't really the Corporations that are to blame, now is it?)
Corporations probably aren't going away, I think the thing that pisses me off is that so many "societial revolutions" have actually just been a new way of making a quicker buck, the fact that there has been any benifit to society is merely happenstance. Seems like a really shitty and shortsighted way to run things if you ask me.
"Metro" men (and I define this as men who know how to dress themselves, cook for themselves, actually decorate their dwellings and not live out of boxes, use grammer properly, and have interests more varied than sports) are in high demand! Fewer and fewer women are into the beer-guzzling, grunting out orders, thick headed Archie-Bunkers who plagues the past. So the definition of "what is male" is certainly in chaos, and this is new. As I said before, men have had it too easy for too long. I like to think of society as a whole coming to a place where people can coexist without having to look like mannequins and act like stereotypical automatons, but I think we are literally decades away form even scratching the surface.
Now for the younger generation, in which our hope lies. I doubt you'll find very many girls who DON'T find effeminate men attractive! What young women doesn't love a poet, artist, or political anarchist? There may be hope for us yet. I look forward to becomming a dinosaur.
"I doubt you'll find very many girls who DON'T find effeminate men attractive! What young women doesn't love a poet, artist, or political anarchist?"
At least when I was coming along, that interest waned the more those young women started to think about having children. But as I was developing more of an interest in manly men myself it all worked out ok (for me at least).
"So the definition of "what is male" is certainly in chaos, and this is new."
I think you're right, I hope, rather than "effeminate men" we can move towards a new masculinity.
Of course Jung would have us, male and female, fully develop both our anima and animus, which is where I hope as a society that we are headed.
Strauss & Howe, in their generational studies actually predict that what they call the "Millenial" generation will return to more rigid gender roles, rejecting the the more fluid roles of Generation X.
