I loved the handwriting article! I tried the interactive thing and my style seems to be kind of a mix. Schools still teach cursive where I live, so thatâs what I learnt first and thereâs some vestiges in my current handwriting so Iâm not surprised itâs all over the place.
I tried the interactive thing, too, and it did NOT like my z! I make a classic lower case cursive z and it kept telling me to pick one of the available letters. :( It was so judgy.
Iâm old enough that learning cursive was part of my early schooling. My son, who is an elder millennial, was robbed. We moved in the middle of the school year. His original school wasnât going to teach cursive until the next year. The new school had already taught it the previous year. His writing ended up being chicken scratch. I tried a few times to teach him cursive but I canât begin to describe how uninterested he was in that.
That was a positively horrifying post to read, and I deeply appreciate the fact you wrote it. I keep wanting to think better of a lot of the guys I know, but reading this post helped things connect in my head in the way you said they would:
in drawing something out to its extreme- you can see how even lighter gradations of the same basis of thought can spit out men who engage just as thoughtlessly in sexist behaviours
âOh it really is just that. That explains a lot.â Itâs fucked.
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Speaking as a left-handed person who went to school in the 1980s and 1990s? Fuck cursive.
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Yeah, in too many cases itâs really that simple. Too many men need the women in their lives to flee by night, leaving nothing behind but âWe are not things!â painted across a wall.
In other cases, I think the problem is that boys are neglected in ways that arenât immediately apparent. Iâll probably write about this at greater length on my website, but letâs just talk about sex ed real quick. I grew up in a part of the US where sex ed consisted mainly of scaremongering about unplanned pregnancy, HIV, and other STIs. Nothing about consent, nothing about courting or dating, nothing about pleasure for women or for men; I grew up thinking that the mere sight of a naked woman should be enough arouse me, and I spent years wondering if there was something wrong with me before it occurred to me that maybe foreplay shouldnât just be something men do for women.
But, speaking of foreplay for women, I had to learn about a fundamental component of female sexual anatomy (and the importance of not stampeding after it, but starting her off instead with a nice kiss) from Monty Pythonâs The Meaning of Life. No, Iâm not bullshitting you here; I wish to Crom that I was.
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I enjoyed it as well, and it seems to have my own handwriting pegged :) I did notice one bit towards the end, though, where it mentioned the lady who tutors students said her most recent are less able to articulate their thoughts. But I wonder if theyâre simply less able to articulate them via hand written essays and notes? I have a feeling that if they were handed a keyboard of some sort they would be just as eloquent as previous students.
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So I was kinda isolating myself from the community last month because I was kinda burned out with making sites. Although, Iâm not gonna guarantee any frequent updates, I decided to write something about what I felt in June and a little bit of whatâs going on so.
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Hereâs a post I forgot to upload last week 'cause I was on vacation.
And here is a response to recent posts by @optimisticlucio and @RosariaDelacroix.
I am tempted to say that for boys the process of becoming a man is one of surviving systematic emotional neglect, but itâs worse than that. We actively punish boys when they engage in any behavior we have reserved for the feminine sphere. No wonder masculinity often seems toxic; contemporary masculinity is a trauma response, we punish boys and men for being fully human until they internalize it and start doing it to themselves and each other.
It gets even worse, though. Being a man means being subject to a double-bind. Unless youâve made an effort to do and be better, our society seems determined to make you useless to women, if not outright repulsive. We are not taught to make ourselves attractive to women through fashion. We are not encouraged or taught to be pleasant company for each other, let alone for women. We donât get taught to dance. We are deprived of opportunities for artistic expression by cuts to art and music education in school. We are expected to be purely functional and utilitarian, and to be narrowly specialized so that we can only do one or two things well. Society doesnât seem to want us to be whole men. Worse, society seems to tell us that even though we have nothing to offer, we are not truly men without the very women who have no use for us.
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I had a busy end of spring, then took it easy for most of June. Hereâs a mid-year update~
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One, whoever that anon commentor is theyâve got their head up their ass. I thought we left entitlement at the door when we all decided to make our own space, but apparently not lmaoo
Two, your response took the words right out my mouth. It also gave me a good chuckle (like what the hell? What do you mean some men donât wipe their asses? Itâs probably silly to call them men at that point, theyâre more like oversized children istg.).
I completely agree with your sentiment; men arenât allowed to be humans with their own individual personalities and interests. Itâs either they need to be a big beefy statue of an ideal that doesnât exist, or theyâre a âfailureâ. Femininity and Masculinity are often forced into boxes, when they really are just part of the same identity spectrum. So pretending that like men and women two different species has always been kinda silly to me. Underneath all these shallow archetypes are just arbitrary labels that serves to further divide us into groups, dehumanizing the other side as a way to avoid responsibility.
I donât know if this is relevant, but I notice trans men and trans mascs get the short end of the stick too. In both sides. Itâs either theyâre not a âreal manâ because they donât have (insert some goal post reason misogynists keep moving here) or theyâre âbetraying the sanctity of womanhoodâ by not living as a woman. Itâs really exhausting being picked apart for every single part of your identity just because you donât meet some sort of outdated checklist. I just wanna wear a skirt or dress without there being a whole damn riot about it, man. Not constantly deal with micro-agressions from people who think they know better than you about your own gender. 
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Great post, agreed with most of it. (I do think some of the issues brought up are general issues with society rather than stuff that affects men primarily, so the framing is a little off, but I digress.)
Wanted to comment on something you brought up in passing:
Worse, society seems to tell us that even though we have nothing to offer, we are not truly men without the very women who have no use for us.
[âŚ]
A whole man, secure in himself, should not need a woman for anything.
Something that kills me is how traditional masculinity seemingly agrees with your second statement, but doesnât actually provide any method for its âfollowersâ to be able to achieve it. The traditional Macho Man is someone who holds the weight of the world on his back without cracking, who is a world on his own, and rejects having anyone hold him up. This Macho Man sleeps with women by the dozen, but doesnât actually create emotional ties with any of them. Emotions are for Wimps.
This person is fictional, and anyone trying to imitate them is taking the fast lane to a nervous breakdown at age 20.
Unsurprisingly, this is exactly why said âMacho Menâ are infamous for using their partners as both therapist and mom; theyâre the only person that they feel safe to put down the mask of machismo around! Everyone needs other people, so if you grow up seeing your fellow men as threats and all women as sex objects, you donât see anyone you can talk with! Youâd go insane!
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Since men are, unfortunately for us, part of society itâs hard to discuss menâs issues without also touching upon general social issues. All of that intersects, you know?
Perhaps I was quite explicit enough, but this isnât what I was encouraging. As I had written earlier in that post before I brought up fish and bicycles, my idea of meaningful self-reliance is the ability to take care of oneâs health, home, and social life without depending on a woman. It seems like that kind of wide-ranging competency to manage oneâs own affairs without help has â at least in the US â been relegated to the feminine sphere and men suffer for it. Thereâs a quiet and gentle pride to be found in knowing that youâve got your shit together and can simply enjoy somebodyâs company without being dependent upon them.
As for taking the weight of the world on oneâs shoulders? Screw that. Any man mistaken for Atlas by those around him should shrug off that burden even if it means hurling the very earth into the inferno.
Likewise screwing around indiscriminately without caring a whit for the women one takes to bed. If Iâm going to take off my clothes in front of somebody and let them see all of my shortcomings, I want to feel safe with them first. Maybe Iâd feel differently if I had done a better job of conforming to American male beauty standards, but that ship sailed already, struck an iceberg, and sank with no survivors.
I honestly donât think Iâve ever not been insane. But thatâs life under capitalism for you; a man has no friends, only competitors, and that competition doesnât come exclusively from men nowadays, but also from women. This is why I talk to my cat. Itâs also why I think we should be more like cats: able to survive on our own while still being able to enjoy othersâ company.
Why do you think so many guys think they want to roll back the clock and force women back into being housewives? Jobs that arenât male-dominated donât pay nearly as well because the bosses donât respect women and donât think work a woman can do needs to pay a decent wage. But thereâs plenty of money in lying to men and conning them into blaming feminism for the problems of capitalism. It works, too, because weâve relegated literacy and critical thinking to the feminine sphere, too.
See what I mean about intersecting sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues affecting men?
I donât think that person has actually made their own space, otherwise they might have replied to my post on their own website while quoting and linking to it.
Not only is the ideal an unattainable fantasy, but it is entirely outdated. It doesnât even make sense anymore, even if it made sense a century ago.
True, but itâs also hella convenient for those who presume to rule over us. If weâre at each othersâ throats over bullshit weâre not eating the rich after cooking them over the smoldering ruins of their mansions and corporate campuses.
They do, but being cisgender by habit if not necessarily by inclination, I did not want to go there. Also, I donât really give a shit if you were born with XX chromosomes. If you see yourself as a man and live as a man, Iâm not going to be so presumptuous as to tell you that you arenât a man. Nobody elected me to be the masculinity police, and I sure as hell ainât getting paid enough for that. That goes for trans women and trans femmes as well; when I say ACAB I mean the gender police, too.
Besides, itâs none of my business if the person in the stall next to me is built like me or not. We all have assholes, and if youâre out of toilet paper but Iâve got a spare roll in my stall, Iâm gonna pass it under the partition no questions asked.
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I love your blog post, but⌠If there are some things I canât do by myself, at least not while doing everything else as well, then Iâm a burden on any potential partner? People should only seek out a partner because the company is pleasant? Iâm probably reading that wrong. This canât be what youâre saying.
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No, itâs possible for generally competent people to complement one another, where your virtues can compensate for the otherâs flaws and vice versa. My wifeâs a lot better with people than I am, but Iâm the sysadmin in our house and I handle the finances. She also likes yard work and gardening better than I do, whereas Iâm comfortable doing most of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry. We divide the household labor according to our skills and inclinations so that itâs a roughly equitable arrangement. And when my wife had cancer, I took care of everything. (Sheâs better now.)
What weâre seeing with entirely too many men is that they are incapable of being equal partners with women because theyâre utterly useless. They canât do anything for themselves around the house. They canât even put their dirty underwear in the hamper, let alone wash clothes, dry them, fold/hang them, and put them away. They donât even know how to groom themselves properly. Their approach to sex is masturbatory; theyâd be equally well-served with a Fleshlight or one of those dolls that look like a prop from Boxing Helena. These guys have next to nothing to offer a woman, except perhaps a paycheck, and women can earn their own paychecks nowadays. Such men are indeed burdens. They donât even make good pets.
Conversely, if a woman couldnât take care of her own home or herself, couldnât manage her own social life, would just lay there in bed expecting to be pleased without making any reciprocal effort, or couldnât do anything on her own outside of her paying job, if she even had one: I wouldnât want to date her, let alone marry her. I would feel like a predator; she might look like an adult, but she sure as hell doesnât play the part. Why should women put up with men who havenât grown up but still expect mommy to take care of everything?
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Agreed, my issue was that it felt like it was framed as a male-centric issue rather than one that affects everyone.
Oh yeah, I was using your post as a springboard. Not implying this is what you think.
iâm back from the blog graveyard, due to academics, burnout, and frantic transferring thanks to glitchâs shutdown. i miss being in this part of the internet!
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Violence is never the answer.
Violence is instead a question.
When it comes to scammers like this guy, the answer is âHell yeah, motherfucker!â
Vlad Tepes would have known how to deal with these people.
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i think a relevant interesting article about scammers is
horrifying world we live in
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