The Male Body And The Masculinity Police Part II

We live in a culture where violence against men is prevalent, normalized, excused, and celebrated by the media and in popular culture. Laugh if you want, but the best humor is practically indistinguishable from tragedy. The best comedians understand suffering. The best jokes are lamentations.

We have multi-billion dollar “sports” industries (e.g., the NFL and UFC) that glorify this violence against men. Families gather on Sundays to celebrate this violence. Corporations make billions on the cultural normalization of this violence against men–making the male body the most culturally acceptable locus of violence. All the while, folks scream “CONSENT,” failing to understand how these cultural norms influence consent, failing to understand that freedom is not the perpetuation of violence against men, failing to understand that consent does not change the underlying fact of violence committed against men. Freedom is not two men beating each other unconscious for entertainment or some false idea of sportsmanship and competition. If you believe such types of violence are freedom and sportsmanship, you have an impoverished sense of both and you are likely perpetuating a culture that glorifies violence against men.

We have a war machine that keeps turning–making billions more in profits off this exploitation, destruction, mutilation, and expendability of the male body. There is no end to it. It never stops because our culture demands it. We defend our freedom to consent to violence against the male body. We are proud of our “heroes.” We celebrate them. We love them for subjecting their bodies and the bodies of other men to violence.

If we learn to hate this violence against men and speak out against it, we are told to “shut the fuck up.” If we learn that all war is anti-male because all war is violence against men, our masculinity is policed and threatened because we must be “weak bitches” to complain about male suffering. Even feminists who claim to be working on male issues mock such complaints about male suffering as “man feelz.” Some of these feminists insist that male suffering is actually male privilege.  Anything else is “assholery.”

There is real “assholery,” our prison systems. They are monstrosities of prison guard unions, corporations, legal institutions, and law enforcement agencies that are partially sustained by our war on drugs. It is a war that throws men into cages and commits violence against them for non-violent drug “crimes.” Instead of “rehabilitation,” we punish these men with prison rape and other violence. Instead of recognizing our sick culture, we blame the drug addict for wanting to escape. As Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” While the “right” wags their finger of shame and screams for harsher punishments and more violence against these men, the “left” wags their finger of shame and clamors about “rehabilitating” these men to a profoundly sick culture that demands their submission, failing to recognize that our culture may need more rehab than these men, failing to recognize that these men are not dominating and that such violence against them is not male privilege and neither is it the privileging of masculinity. In fact, they often claim that such suffering of men is actually the devaluation of women.

Yes, in our sick culture of male submission, the suffering of men is caused by a society that doesn’t value women. In fact, it is claimed, that violence against men is actually the oppression of women. That’s what makes sense in our sick culture because the obvious truth is “assholery.” If a man learns to say that men suffer violence because men are systematically devalued in our culture—that man speaks pure misogynistic truth.

Only in a profoundly sick culture would violence against men be interpreted primarily as the devaluation of women, rather than the obvious–the devaluation and oppression of men. Only in a profoundly sick culture would violence against men be seen as the overvaluing and privileging of men and masculinity.

Fuck that and all you folks who fail to recognize that the male body is the most culturally acceptable locus of violence. Violence against one man is a “degradation, terror, and limitation to all” men. Most men and boys limit their behavior because of the existence of potential violence against them. Most men and boys box their emotions away to create a front of stolidity, an avoidance of the crushing reality that our culture demands their submission, obedience, oppression, and acquiescence to a culture that doesn’t value them, considers them cannon-fodder, expendable capital, human resources, objects-of-utility.

My dad is 76 years old. I had the “freedom” of watching him break into tears a few weeks ago as he recounted some of the horrors that he saw while in the Army. This is a man who never shed a tear or spoke a word about his suffering and the suffering of his Army buddies until he was no longer strong enough to “be a man.” At 76, he’s no longer strong enough to keep that shit boxed in. It was an emotional prison for him. There is nothing heroic about it. PTSD, survivor’s guilt, and being used as human cannon-fodder is not and should not be celebrated as awesome heroics of willpower. It’s a prison for men. It isn’t male privilege and it isn’t male domination. Such things are male submission. Such things are what my father did and experienced in submission to a culture that demanded it of him. Such things are what men do in submission to a culture that doesn’t value them.

This is our culture. This is violence against men. It is prevalent, normalized, excused, celebrated, glamorized, and glorified. If you speak out against it, you will be subjected to further ridicule, shame, aggression, and oppression by the masculinity and language police. You will be accused of misappropriating words that are reserved for women because there is no such thing as violence against men. It’s not a real thing. It’s just plain old violence. Laugh if you want. It’s funny how that works–how tragedy becomes comedy, how the best jokes are lamentations, how the suffering of men makes for the best punchlines.

Violence Against Women: Spreading Gynocentric Lies & Fear

Domestic violence and abuse are practically gender symmetrical. The cycles of violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships are incredibly complex and blaming one gender over the other is an oversimplification and wrongheaded approach for addressing these problems. This gynocentric focus on violence against women discriminates against male victims of this sort of violence and abuse. The gynocentric focus neglects violence against men, which is the overwhelming sort of violence in this world.

If you can’t see that violence against men is far more prevalent than violence against women, you have lost touch with reality. The very act of elevating violence against women as some sort of divine slight that is in some way worse than violence against men is sexist. The vast majority of all violence in this world is violence against men. Again, if you fail to see this, then you have lost touch with reality. If you fail to have compassion or understanding for the humanity of those affected by this violence, you are probably blinded by your hate or callous indifference. 

Men are humans too. We suffer and struggle for dignity, for love, for compassion. Those who promote this gynocentric focus, who so callously deny compassion to men, do nothing to effect change. They do nothing to reduce violence in this world. In fact, their hatred and callous indifference is a violence of silence that violates the humanity of men and women and our interconnectedness. Like it or not, to be is to be related. Violence doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In fact, violence is perpetuated by the narrowness of mind and illusion of vacuous human individuality. No person is an island because we are all related/interconnected. Violence against one person affects the whole community. The caring (or lack thereof) of a whole community creates the violence. If you want to make changes, then you cannot deny the violence against men. You cannot deny the culture in which men grow up. The culture, the community in which men live creates violence. You cannot simply say that men alone create violence because it is their nature to be violent. That is as bad as saying that blacks or Irish make good slaves because their nature is to be subservient. I challenge you to rethink your callous indifference/hatred toward men and realize that there is far more to the story than simply screaming about violence against women and the blaming of men as violent base animals. Men are humans fully capable and worthy of the deepest depths of compassion. If you believe otherwise, I challenge the depths of your humanity.

The above photo was pulled from the j4mb blog:

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/facebook-censorship-of-an-image-of-a-male-victim-of-domestic-violence/

American Heroism: A Story about Doug Stanhope and Erectile Dysfunction

Doug Stanhope is one of my all-time favorite comedians. He is an artist, a true master of his craft. Of course I follow him on Twitter. A few weeks back, he tweeted about a marine who threw a fit of road rage. Here is the video. There were a lot of people criticizing the marine for going bezerk. There were many wishful thoughts for the marine’s death, some comments about his flag-draped coffin and etc. I thought those comments were a fine and comical way for people to lament about the sort of men we raise these days.

No offense to the good soldiers who signed up to protect the country and slaughter other people, but where else can murderous psychopaths go for work these days? With the faltering economy, it’s hard to make a living as a killer. Hard times are upon us and joining the military seems like a good choice for the aspiring killer. It’s a sound career move. He’s doing the right thing for his career and country, paying taxes, bills, and supporting his wife and kids. He shows up for work everyday, jazzed up on some ‘Merica…Fuck Yeah tunes, ready to do some killing, some maiming, and some torture. We spent thousands of dollars training him to be “all he could be” as a killer in the military. If he got a little confused about who he is supposed to kill, it’s something that society can overlook. Clearly, it’s easy to confuse a traffic accident with the enemy or a terrorist threat. It’s a mistake that any man could make. People should lay off the criticism of his actions. Minus his confusion, his actions were a perfectly acceptable way to resolve conflict. As such, he is good man, a protagonist, a hero in the American story.

 As with any good story, a protagonist needs an antagonist. Enter the degenerate pacifist lovers of peace who sat in their seats recording the actions of this good man. Notice how the villain sits in his car. He remains calm, only to enrage our heroic marine even further, deliberately pointing out to the marine that his silly monkey-taunts were not effective. This only magnifies the marine’s experience of impotence. Heroes who experience this lack of power must act out with ever more aggression. Violence is the hero’s only power and this power is an expression of the hero’s lack of power. America’s hero is impotent. He has no power, only violence. He is just a pawn. His life is practically meaningless. The totality of his identity is his impotent power–his violence.

 Feminists will typically point to our hero’s behavior as a shining example of male privilege, domination, and power–the patriarchy in all its glory. Feminists may point to our hero’s behavior as proof that men are vile monkeys who will abuse each other and women to compete in some patriarchal hierarchy of dominance. Feminists and his critics will say that our hero’s behavior is evidence of his power, when in fact, our hero’s behavior is evidence of his weakness.

 If this society gave a damn about men, we would give men options other than violence. We wouldn’t sell them false ideas of heroics. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t create murderous psychopaths and call them heroes. We wouldn’t call the peaceful guy who sat calmly in the car a faggot or a coward. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t teach men that their value is derived from their ability to slaughter other people. If this society gave a damn about men, we wouldn’t teach men to be some sort of heroic pawns, willing to sacrifice their lives in a blaze of violent glory for pride, for money, for woman, for some corporate entity–America. If this society gave a damn about men, compassion for men wouldn’t be a revolutionary action. If this society gave a damn about men, Doug Stanhope and others would have no reason to lament about the sort of men we raise these days.

Moral Turpitude: An Open Letter to Facebook

Feminists are pissed. According to WAM, Facebook has completely failed to produce an adequate response to feminist’s demands regarding censorship of “hate-speech” against women. WAM’s contention is that Facebook’s “inadequate” response contributes to violence against women, catering to a culture where violence against women is normalized. How could Facebook be so callous to the plight of women? What are the demands of these feminists?

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.
2. Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

On the surface, such demands seem reasonable. No moral person would deliberately support speech that trivializes and glorifies violence. No moral person acting as a moderator would deliberately tolerate gender-based hate-speech. No moral person would deliberately misunderstand how violence affects women and men. Any failure to comply with these demands is proof of Facebook’s callous attitude and contribution to the normalization of violence. In fact, failure to acquiesce to these demands is proof of Facebook’s moral depravity. As such, corporate businesses should pull sponsorship from Facebook on the grounds of moral turpitude.

As a moral lesson for Facebook and as an attempt to instill at least a bit of virtue into this vile corporation, let us walk the grounds of moral turpitude for a moment. Let us deliberately support speech that trivializes violence, tolerates gender-based hate-speech and misunderstands how violence affects men and women. What would that speech be? Who would support that speech? What would be misunderstood about the effects of violence?

As we walk the grounds of moral turpitude for a moment, try typing into a search engine the phrase “violence against.” You will get scores of pages linking to articles and information regarding violence against women. Of the first 50 results, I counted only two results about violence against men.

 

That’s right. Searching for “violence against” leads to information about violence against women. The language itself and search engine results reflect this sort of negligence against men and about the violence done to them. However, violence against women receives a sort of special status and notice. This elevated attention to violence against women is a sort of de facto discrimination against men. This focus on violence against women minimizes and trivializes the savage violence that men experience every day in this world. It is men who are overwhelmingly brutalized by a “justice” system that throws them into cages for non-violent drug crimes. It is men who are overwhelmingly slaughtered on battlefields and glorified for being great at slaughtering other men. It is men who are overwhelmingly homeless. It is men who are glorified for their brutality against other men in the ring as “sportsmen.” It is men who suffer overwhelmingly from sports related head trauma. It is men who juice their bodies in order to be glorified as objects of utility for a sports team. It is men who suffer the trivialization of violence done to them by society, by women, and by other men. We are often too busy elevating the violence against women to some sort of superior status, some sort of slight against the divine, in some ridiculous feminist pissing-match about which gender is the longest suffering long-sufferer in the history of long-suffering. That is a walk along the grounds of moral turpitude.

Those are the grounds of moral turpitude and along those grounds we see the lack of care, understanding, and compassion for the lived experiences of men. If feminists gave a damn about equality, they would be screaming about violence against men. They remain silent. The more they scream about violence against women, the louder is their silence about violence against men. This silence is hate. This silence is ignorance. This silence is bigotry. This silence trivializes and glorifies violence against men. This silence distorts the “real-world pandemic” of violence against men. This silence is violence. Nobody notices. Nobody cares. Feminists are pissed.

[Correction: Content has been edited by the editor of the content. :-)]