Masculinities of the far right

[Searcher08]

That could be a good segway into finding out what traits the "proper" healthy (and not politically correct) masculine male exhibits. Seems like we need a definition of masculinity here. Peacock strutting is not necessarily masculine, neither is what kind of car you drive or how much money you make or your politics...at least by my standards.

In the context of healthy masculinity, but not necessarily talking specifically about it, I'd like to refer to these pictures in the following posts:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39331&start=30#p579577

and

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39331&start=90#p579996

Look at all the muscular arming, especially over the area some people refer to as the heart chakra, an'hata. How many people do you see walking around with that sort of armouring trying to give off the impression of toughness?

Heaps of 'em. They look like they're on the juice, but only work out their arms, chest and shoulders.

Compare that to a gymnast or many other athletes and you'll see how relaxed they look before they actually compete. They aren't walking around like they have a metal rod between their shoulders. Well the good ones aren't. They are saving their energy for when they'll need it. You can see the same thing in all the martial arts, MMA and whatever other fighting sports you care to watch on youtube. The best fighters are always relaxed except when they are striking hard.

Its not always the case, but its definitely a trend that young men who want to appear tough, patriotic and attracted to the sort of right wing groups we see in this thread, especially the ones in Australia, want to walk around with their chest armoured and all their muscles puffed up on some permanent aggressive display. That interferes with chi flow through the chest and through an'hata. An'hata is associated with things like compassion, love, charity, by passing the "lower" self (concerned with its own needs etc) for the "higher" one. Which is more altruistic, less selfish etc etc.

I find it makes a lot of sense that the young men who carry themselves like that are associated with groups that don't really have much compassion, empathy or sympathy.

They have a blockage in An'hata chakra. the big arms and puffed out chest inhibit actual chi flow but probably reflect people who really need some sort of healing. They're hurt inside and go around with this massive protective wall that seems to make them look tough and protects their hearts from more pain. Now I consider that unhealthy.

I guess its easy to be pissed off at them cos the consequences of their actions are so annoying and potentially dangerous. And when they threaten us saying "Oh you poor thing have a hug" isn't going to de-escalate the situation.

At the same time they are behaving like children and need to grow up, man up and drop their baggage. They need to harden up mentally so they can learn to soften a bit psychically. The irony of what they do is that it usually slows their reactions and limb movement and makes pressure points on their arms and torso more vulnerable.

Diamond post, Joe

[Joe Hillshoist]

Thanks.

[American Dream]

A Kind of Grace

By Hannah Black

A few years back, I was called out, or challenged, for using transphobic language. I know from this experience that it hurts to be experienced as hurtful, or at least that it stings the pride to be wrong. But I was wrong, and now I know it. I would have been no less wrong for not knowing I was wrong, no less hurtful if no one told me they felt hurt. Like the writers of ungenerous caricatures of campus politics, I don’t enjoy being yelled at, or hearing that I’ve wounded someone, or being made to feel ignorant. My first response is also a kind of panicked cringe, or a lashing out: No, you can’t mean me! It’s you who are wrong! But I did, eventually, thankfully, realize that my suspicion of trans people was based on the worst kind of self-justifying nonsense. There is no reason why my sense of someone else’s gender should override their own. I am grateful to the people who yelled at me, told me that I’d hurt them, and made me feel my ignorance, to get me to this now-obvious point. The experience was not intellectually limiting, or an attack by the thought police: to the contrary, my realization about the complicated untruths of gender, and of my own previous bigotry, was one of the most intellectually expansive experiences of my life. It released me into a new, gentler conception of my own body and the bodies of others. It brought new people into my life and gave me a greater, sometimes scary, sense of possibility.

Don’t the columnists and op-ed writers ever have the terror and joy of becoming suspicious of their certainties? Because of my race, perhaps, some things came easier: it is not hard for me to understand that whiteness comes with social rewards that are subtended by violence against those outside the magic circle. I mean not only that, as the child of a black father, I could sense from an early age that the appearance of my body triggered strange reactions in white people. I am also referring to how, as the relatively light-skinned and white-assimilated black child of a white mother, I became aware of the ways I benefited from racial privileges. Although it’s not anywhere near as hard as magnetizing and managing other people’s racism, it is a strange feeling to carry around the benefits accrued from histories of violence. Often innocently, just by being lighter-skinned or cis or white or male, you remind people of things that they are forced to bear and that you don’t have to. But the innocence evaporates, I think, when you can’t receive other people’s anger with grace, because the anger is a kind of grace: it insists on the importance of experience. Acknowledging this does not seem to me to be intellectually stultifying or quasi-fascist or any of the other labels that are applied to campus organizers. It is only a recognition of the fact, at once banal and extraordinary, that race is a complex constellation of historical phenomena that we all carry around as if it inhered in our bodies.

I think I know why, when given the opportunity, some people will cling to their faith in dubiously self-evident facts (“sex and rape can always be clearly distinguished”), in tautologies (“a woman is a woman”), in a narrowly shared “common sense.” It is hard to perceive yourself as invested with advantages, even as subjectively meager an advantage as a socially favored gender position, let alone to perceive that advantage as politically important. Perhaps because of this, I have met few people as painfully preoccupied with their own vulnerability as straight white men, who often seem to hear analyses of gender domination and white supremacy as if they were only claims about the relative happiness or suffering of individuals. Yes, we know that many white men are very unhappy, we have read the midlife-crisis novels and seen the quarter-life-crisis movies, and conversely we all know about the death-defying inventiveness and joy of people whose culture and communities are under erasure: black, queer, and so on. The politics of safety and violence (i.e., race and gender) concern not only affect but social organization and history above all.

Excerpted from: https://harpers.org/archive/2016/03/a-kind-of-grace/

[American Dream]

FUNDRAISER STARTED FOR WOMAN ACCUSED OF HITTING “YOU DESERVE RAPE” PREACHER WITH BASEBALL BAT



The internet erupted when a video came to light of an angry street preacher standing in front of a Phoenix high school with a sandwich board sign that said “You Deserve Rape.” The video, taken by the preacher himself, showed him yelling at students with aggressive homophobic, sexist, and violent rhetoric. Several people came up to him to ask him to leave, yet eventually someone had enough and hit him in the head with a baseball bat. The video shows the preacher, named Brother Dean Saxton, walking away defeated and bleeding.

https://antifascistnews.net/2016/05/31/ ... eball-bat/

[Searcher08]

FUNDRAISER STARTED FOR WOMAN ACCUSED OF HITTING “YOU DESERVE RAPE” PREACHER WITH BASEBALL BAT



The internet erupted when a video came to light of an angry street preacher standing in front of a Phoenix high school with a sandwich board sign that said “You Deserve Rape.” The video, taken by the preacher himself, showed him yelling at students with aggressive homophobic, sexist, and violent rhetoric. Several people came up to him to ask him to leave, yet eventually someone had enough and hit him in the head with a baseball bat. The video shows the preacher, named Brother Dean Saxton, walking away defeated and bleeding.

https://antifascistnews.net/2016/05/31/ ... eball-bat/

Is hitting a person (whose views you disagree with passionately) with a baseball bat - an action that has often resulted in death - something that you agree with in this case, American Dream?

Or was it ok because he was shouting "aggressive and violent rhetoric"?

Free speech is a precious right - so precious it needs to be rationed, doesn't it?

[Wombaticus Rex]

Perhaps because of this, I have met few people as painfully preoccupied with their own vulnerability as straight white men, who often seem to hear analyses of gender domination and white supremacy as if they were only claims about the relative happiness or suffering of individuals. Yes, we know that many white men are very unhappy, we have read the midlife-crisis novels and seen the quarter-life-crisis movies

1. Take universal negative attributes
2. Claim they are unique features of the out-group
3. Feel better about your own gnawing neurosis
4. Belittle the out-group again if doubt returns

[American Dream]

Matthew Lyons is, one of the most knowledgable and nuanced of the anti-fascist researchers. For his analysis of patriarchy in the far right, see for example:

http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/search?q=feminism

[Wombaticus Rex]

Matthew Lyons is, one of the most knowledgable and nuanced of the anti-fascist researchers. For his analysis of patriarchy in the far right, see for example:

http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/search?q=feminism

So his armchair pathologizing of "straight white men" is about anti-fascism? Interesting.

[American Dream]

The Matthew Lyons link was something different. Do you consider his feminism to be in contradiction to his anti-fascism? I don't.

Honestly, your (cherrypicked) critique of Hannah Black only gains any sort of traction whatsoever in the absence of any sort of cohesive analysis of the forces that empower straight white men- as opposed to others- within the current institutional framework.

In the complete absence of that, maybe/possibly it could be "unfair". I see it personally as flipping the script.

[Karmamatterz]

Not buying into your knocking white men, that's me. I'm very comfortable with my masculinity. I don't tote his paperback in my pocket but would pick Jack Donovan over most of the anti-male "fascist" stuff you copy/pasta.

Honestly, your (cherrypicked) critique of Hannah Black only gains any sort of traction whatsoever in the absence of any sort of cohesive analysis of the forces that empower straight white men- as opposed to others- within the current institutional framework.

Please enlighten us on the forces that empower men. DNA is the most powerful, curious AD, make a list of these evil things at play.

What opposing "institutional framework" are you referring to? Do tell...

[82_28]

Can we please have a moratorium on giving AD shit? That'd be great. He is as free as any of us to post here. He never argues or disrespects. He just posts. He must have a very thick skin. SLAD doesn't like him and that's her choice while I love her. Just lay off for the most part is what I am asking.

[Wombaticus Rex]

First of all, I am quite fond of 82_28's role here as friendly bartender, and equally first of all, I want to encourage any and all efforts to police the sheriff.

He never argues or disrespects. He just posts. He must have a very thick skin.

I think that consistently and clearly implying that our fair forum on the verge of neo-nazi takeover might approach "disrespect."

I'm not too concerned either way, but, my own drive-by, cis-het, hick-cracker quibbles mostly stem from that and that alone: precisely AD's assertions about the nature & future of our community.

AD is a tremendous contributor and informed commentary, I do not want to see him leave - ever. All of us have biases and blind spots and I hope we can continue to rib each other aboot them.

[American Dream]

I think that consistently and clearly implying that our fair forum on the verge of neo-nazi takeover might approach "disrespect."

You are shadowboxing here. Not how I would describe things at all.

I suppose you get something of characterizing things that way, so don't let me stop you though.

[82_28]

End of day we are all unique that have like interests and questions. It should not have to devalue anyone who has stuck it out this long to even be here any more. I know I'll be here until the lights go out -- just because.

Thanks, Wombat. A kind thing to say and I appreciate everything you ever have to say. I just think there is enough turmoil to go around outside RI and some of us still come here because it is an oasis of free thought and link sharing -- at least how we remembered it to be when we all joined up.

No harm. No foul, I say. If you stuffed us all into a bar having drinks we would find that all of us can get along just instinctively.

[Karmamatterz]

So ya, continue copy/pasta galore about simpleton individual right wing nutters who:

Do not command policy on trade of national economies
Do not command standing armies//navies/air corp
Do not make foreign policy
Do not sign legislation or veto it
Do not run enormous global corporations
Cannot command the press to broadcast a speech across all networks
Etc etc....

Page after page about losers who parade around waving swastika emblems, have no political power and are at best insignificant doorknobs in the totalitarian apparatus that controls above mentioned things. We're supposed to take all that seriously? There at many, many more demons out there wielding great power that enslave and subvert real democracy and freedom. There is a thread all about state crimes against democracy which seems like it was buried a while ago,because it's more self righteous to proclaim white males are evil. Meanwhile the people behind the curtain laugh and laugh as they are ignored, unseen or reported on for their evil shenanigans. Perhaps I'm the only one that recognizes this...? Doubtful. These buffoons that AD is obsessed with are a fart in the breeze compared to the people with real power that are fucking evil.

So he doesn't like guys that don't exhibit beta traits and/or are masculine than feminine, whatevs. The general smearing of all whites males as guilty of being fascist by association because they are white males is a disrespect to the collective intelligence of the board. Just my opinion, which of course we're all allowed to have.