1) Gonna thread up something about 'incels'/MRAs/PUAs that started as a response in another context, because that’s polite. Ready?
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12) As a queer man I think the question of how these men can be deprogrammed and made reachable is a tough question to answer without holistic theses of the social moment, which is why I ended up with so much to say here.
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13) We have been born into the culmination of 40 years of winner-take-all deregulation and reaction. Of pandering to majoritarian insecurity, incapability, and indolence.
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14) Those chickens have come home to roost in entirely predictable ways. They have poisoned wells we all have to drink from.
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15) Our grandfathers, fathers and uncles built a Skinner box, and we are in it. Do you want to escape from the box, or are you content to try to rewire the pedals to get more pellets?
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16) And do you really want to embrace a view of society and other people in it that reduces some, most, or all of them into reward pellets for you to cram down your gullet? Is that the most expansive view of life, work, and relationships you can see for yourself?
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17) Successful men in the modern era are largely successful by breaking some or all of the traditional rules of masculinity, or by hacking reward systems abusively. I have a personal and spiritual preference to avoid the latter, even though it’s more work. How about you?
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18) Men - straight, gay, bi, questioning, trans, whatever - right now are in need of an expansive, multifaceted masculinity that makes room for real expressions of loss, confusion, fear, anguish, and failure without brutalizing either the self or others.
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19) It will require a solidarity *between* masculinities, not the creation of a new, monolithic masculinity. And it will require a nuanced engagement with the plethora of femininities that have emerged in the past 40 years.
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20) And it will require dismantling winner-take-all status structures, bit-by-bit, wherever we can get our hands on them.
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21) I think it’s important to hook this into traditional conceptions of masculine self-worth by explicitly conceptualizing it as work. It is labor, it is hard, it is uncertain and dangerous. It will kill or cripple, and for some of us it already has.
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22) Solidarity is powerful because it’s something you consciously choose, not because it comes naturally. It’s a choice to cut across the grain of your prejudices and fears.
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23) Rather than self-flagellating declamations of one’s privileged status, build up women, gender-variant people, and other men who are experiencing pain, loss, marginalization and grief. Seek out a diversity of experience that can inform your own growth.
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24) See otherness, not as a resource to mine for insight, but an experience to engage with, one equal to your own. In solving the problems others have with you, you learn tools to solve your own.
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25) Being a good man doesn’t mean abjuring yourself. It means finding and creating yourself as a more complete and capable person. Lean into your weaknesses until they turn into strengths.
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(I expected this to run to, like, ten tweets; might as well end it here. Thanks for reading, shit, this has blown up, I should have a tip jar or something.)
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End of conversation
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