The Rage of the Angry White Male Continues Its Battle Against Equality

poet1b
reply to post by mr10k

 

The US didn't exist until Brits, Dutch, and Germans settled the territory and founded the US. The people who were here when the nation was founded are not immigrants.

The people who founded the U.S. hadn't done so, it would have eventually been taken over by the Spanish, and would be another Latin America hell hole.

Are you aware how much more horribly the Spanish treated the native Americans when they arrived than the areas settled by the Brits, Dutch, and Germans?

There were wave and waves of people who came to these continents, and they formed their own nations.

Everyone wants to live in the US because it is the most prosperous nation on the planet.

Don't you think the people who founded the US, and built it into such a great nation should get some credit?

Everyone wants to go to the US because of ........... Hollywood.
Everyone wants to go to the UK because of ........... Benefits.

reply to post by cbaskins


It is a sad statement about the institutions of education around the world. Reminds me of how these same institutions relegated Mark twain and John Steinbeck to the ranks of regionalists, while attempting to put lessor authors on a pedestal. It never did take.

I am sure that the academic world cares nothing of our opinion, they already know it all. I think it is worth it to look at some of Prof Kimmel's work , who knows, maybe he is on to something.

www.stonybrook.edu...

Michael Kimmel's books include Changing Men (1987), Men Confront Pornography (1990), Men's Lives (9th edition, 2012), Against the Tide: Profeminist Men in the United States, 1776 - 1990 (1992), The Politics of Manhood (1996), Manhood: A Cultural History (1996), and The Gendered Society (5th edition, 2013), and the best-seller Guyland (2008).

I looked at the reviews of two of these books, "Manhood In America" and "Guyland."

rwnolan.wordpress.com...

Thesis: Kimmel aims to do “2 things: first, to chart how the definition of masculinity has changed over time; second, to explore how the experience of manhood has shaped the activities of American men.”

I like the thesis, maybe I am wrong, and Kimmel isn't an elitist bigot.

However, I have to completely disagree with his argument.

Argument: He argues that the quest for manhood–the effort to achieve, to demonstrate, to prove our masculinity–has been one of the formative and persistent experiences in men’s lives.

From my experience, men that other men admire, aren't out to prove their masculinity. This is a constant and false projection that academics like to throw out all the time.

Men don't play sports or climb mountains in order to prove their masculinity, any more than women shop and to dress up in order to prove their femininity. Physical competition and the desire to hunt is as natural to men as physical competition, in the arena of beauty, and gathering is important to a woman. This is typical behavior of all predatory mammals on planet Earth. Men like sports because it is in their nature, every bit as much as academics want to be the smartest person in the room. They enjoy engaging in these activities, it gives them pleasure.

At the beginning of the 19th century, manhood was understood as an arbitrary move from boyhood to adulthood, but as the century progressed the term manhood fell out of use in favor of the term masculinity. Masculinity was understood to be a set of characteristics and actions that men had to constantly perform in order to be seen as a man among their peers. Men had a few ways to prove their masculinity in the first half of the 19th century, including moving West in order to live a more strenuous life away from the ease of the city, living a life of self-control—both personally and sexually, and keeping the public and private spheres separate—especially making sure that women stayed in the private sphere.

This is where many academics fall down, IMO.

Men didn't act like men in order to get approval from other men, they acted the way they act in order to survive, especially the pioneers. It is not about approval, it is about trust, the glue that holds society together, the reason for morality. Men who proved themselves, and it has always been more about good decisions than it ever was physical prowess, were trusted and followed because they had demonstrated excellent survival skills, and a ability to flourish. They are not admired for their manhood, they are admired for their ability to succeed.

Human kind has always fought battles and wars. We live in peace now far more than we ever have in the past. The women might not do much of the fighting, but they certainly do support the wars, and always have. Women want their men to engage in conquests. The academic world wants to pretend that fighting for survival is not a reality of nature, but all the evidence is against them.

I wonder if Prof Kimmel ever looked into the history of the men who went with Louis and Clarke on their famous expedition. These men, IMO, deserve far more credit than the history books have ever been willing to offer. Many of the men who went on the Louis and Clark expedition, even though richly rewarded with lands, returned to the territories they had explored and became Mountain Men of famous lore. It wasn't about proving themselves as men, it was about getting away from civilization, and people who love to play politics, like most academics.

I'll post something about Guyland later.

reply to post by FyreByrd


I am sorry, but your post demonstrates that you know nothing about the very multi-cultural place known as Silicon Valley.

How does the board members all being men demonstrate sexism. They developed the company, they made it happen. It is like you want to claim that it is wrong for men to be successful. Technology is an arena, where those who develop the technology succeed, irregardless of gender or any other such persuasion.

reply to post by OneManArmy


Hollywood? Not opportunity?

Not the people I know who came to the U.S.

Not to live someplace that is not ruled by a group of elite families?

Oh yeah, that used to be the U.S., before all this political correctness got so popular.

"Guyland", essentially an entire book devoted to attacking young white males, this guy has a serious problem, and so does the academic world that supports him. I have read some messed up logic before, but this book seems to want to take the prize when it comes to bad observations.

www.nytimes.com...

Back in 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men under 30 had attained the five milestones that mark a transition to adulthood: “leaving home, completing one’s education, starting work, getting married and becoming a parent.” In 2000, those figures had declined to 46 percent of women and 31 percent of men. One-fifth of all 25-year-olds live with their parents. “The passage between adolescence and adulthood,” Kimmel concludes, “has ­morphed from a transitional moment to a separate life stage.”
...
They move into communal housing with their college buddies. They work dead-end jobs. “The young have been raised in a culture that promises instant gratification,” he tells us. “The idea of working hard for future rewards just doesn’t resonate with them.” They play video games like Grand Theft Auto, in which the player’s avatar can have sex with a prostitute and recover his money by murdering her. They watch pornography in groups, “jiving with each other about what they’d like to do to the girl on the screen.” They “ ‘hook up’ occasionally with a ‘friend with benefits,’ go out with their buddies, drink too much and save too little.” They listen to violent rap music and to talk radio hosts who encourage their sense of “aggrieved entitlement” toward a world that has snatched away the masculine dominance they imagined would someday be theirs.

Yeah, coming from a boomer, this is Hypocrisy at its peak. What an elitist bigot. This guy and all who support him deserve the title.

In 1960 the US economy was completely different, there was a good demand for workers. A high school education was all that was needed, and most companies provided schools to advanced education in the trades. A guy working a blue collar job could support a stay at home wife, buy a house, take vacations, and send his kids to college. Not today, the US industry has been dismantled, and the banking system is now completely corrupt. The boomers inherited the greatest economy in the history of civilization, and they ran it into the ground, and have completely screwed future generations on a scale that is sickening.

What was immigration in the 1960ties compared to today?

Masculinity, Kimmel tells us, is not biological or “hard-wired” but rather “coerced and policed relentlessly by other guys.” “Homophobia — the fear that people might misperceive you as gay — is the animating fear of American guys’ masculinity.” High school is “a terrifying torment of bullying, gay-bashing and violence.”

I know the high school kids in my neighborhood, and guys in their twenties, and this guy knows nothing about young men. The boomers were probably more homophobic, and there was even more bullying.

Kimmel should read "Less than Zero" by Ellison, or basket ball diaries by Jim Carroll. He is so far off of the reality it is sad.

reply to post by poet1b


Yeah I bailed on this when I figured out this was merely a misandrist rant.

reply to post by intrepid


I felt the need to re-visit this thread, and point out just how bad this guy's ideas are.

It is liberal elitism at its worse.

FyreByrd
An example of ongoing and entrenched white male privilege:

The Problem with ‘Brogrammers’
Why is Silicon Valley so stubbornly white and male?

inthesetimes.org...

It’s no secret that Silicon Valley has a problem with sexism and racism, but the revelation in October, as Twitter prepared for its initial public stock offering (IPO), that the company didn’t have a single woman or person of color on its board, rekindled a long-running debate on how to challenge these exclusions from the tech industry.

This is exactly the type of trash that needs to stop. Just because someone is black or a woman doesn't entitle them to anything. If there were no "colored " or women on the board of directors that just means that none were elected. It has nothing to do with racism or sexism.