Loved the article. Brings to mind a heuristic of mine that might help with sense-making:
Living systems only focus their attention inwards when they receive a signal that there is a problem.
And a second-tier heuristic:
There are two sorts of parasites. One sort integrates seamlessly into the host system. The second trips immune system alarms far out of proportion by the danger it poses and/or latches on to existing injury sites in order to profit from the increased resources that are rushed to repair the damage.
If you consider that our body politic is a living system, and apply the above heuristics, you might come up with something like the following:
Masculinity, and the lives of men, are in serious trouble at this point in history, so the entire civilization is bending around the problem (in much the same way it did with the crisis of femininity occasioned by the complete technological and economic disruption of women's lives in the 50s and 60s). As a result, the second sort of parasite, in many different guises (i.e. self-help gurus, politicians of all stripes, cult leaders, hucksters, and purveyors of various drugs and distractions) is swarming around the topic--and will likely continue to do so until there is once again a valid, broadly accepted and understandable-by-the-average-high-school-drop-out role and manner for male adulthood.
This post pushed me over the edge to become paid, BTW. Thanks also for the pointer to Sam Kahn's excellent post - I already read Castalia, but not rigorously, and somehow I missed that one.
If you will forgive a tangent, you wrote en passant that "Yet, in 2016, Trump was the most gay-friendly Republican nominee ever". You have written the same thing a couple of other times in the last few months (since I started following you).
I wonder how true that is, in terms of Trump's positioning relative to the nominal median point of the Republican Party. From your inside Republican politics perspective, was Trump (in terms of his public *party* persona, so not just in appearances but when talking to donors, etc.) from Golden Escalator day to election day 2016) more accepting of gays relative to, for example Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or even Scott Walker as *they* positioned themselves of say June 2015, or more accepting than McCain in 2007-2008 relative for example to the 2007-2008 release of Mitt Romney (versus the "severely conservative" 2011/12 release), any edition of Mike Huckabee, etc. ...
How did Huntsman position himself during his no-hope** run for the nomination? He took a fairly clear civil unions yes, SSM no stand starting early in his governorship, 2009 [1], and did not come out for SSM until early 2013.
I'd also say, very much in the spirit of parsing loophole abuse :), that the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee *ever* relative to the party's contemporary Overton window on the topic has to have been Barry Goldwater in his 1990s version, re DADT in particular and the Religious Right more generally. Of course he was long out of the Senate by then, but when he was in the Senate he certainly did not hesitate to speak his mind.
** a party that would nominate a 2012 Huntsman would be a party that I would have rejoined without much angst. A party that will nominate Trump three times will have to wait for the Ds to fall much much further than they have so far before that Trumpy party gets my vote for any Federal office (fortunately or otherwise, I don't live in a state or CD where there is one of the relatively rare Republicans who both has a reasonable chance of winning in for Senate or House in Nov and is also someone I could vote for in good conscience).
Many thanks for the support. What pushed you over the edge, and what are your interests? (feel free to dm) Regarding Trump, he was noticeably more gay-accepting than other Republican contenders in 2015/16. He said he was fine with gay marriage, it was settled, and held out a rainbow flag lol. It was clear he had no issues there. You could say others like Goldwater were more accepting on a relative basis, in their historical contexts. I haven't studied it in any detail, but that's my two cents. In the context of this piece, I was trying to draw a complexity with Trump in the way he brought both masculinity and a social moderation in 2016, as I perceived him at the time - which obviously has evolved.
…even the media is manspreading!…and during an election that might hinge on women issues and with a female candidate to boot…to think that we are in the year 2024 and we are still hung up on adam and eve speaks volume about our evolution…
Something about Walz gives me pause. As a NeverTrump libertarian-conservative, I was ready to vote for Harris until she picked Walz for veep. I’ll probably still vote for her, but Walz somehow feels condescending and insulting—almost like a male version of Sarah Palin, a bald faced attempt to appeal to a demographic. Something about him rubs me the wrong way.
Hi Jeff! This brings up an interesting question for me. As Gen X kid coming up in the 70's, there was a lot of talk about androgyny and self-expression, maybe as a holdover of the Hippie movement. I have vague memories of a show called *Free to Be... You and Me" that pushed this this idea very hard. The Replacements even had a song, "Androgynous" with lyrics about "unisex evolution."
I think it's odd how society has turned its back on that idea of gender as personal expression. These days the message seems to be that there are two gender teams with different uniforms and you have to play for one (if you don't like Team Blue, you can switch to Team Pink, or vice versa, but it's a big deal.). The idea that you can just do stuff and not worry about whether it's appropriate for your gender , and everyone else can too, doesn't seem to occur to young people.
In other words, I wonder if some of the conflicts and distress around masculinity are just the outcome of people getting very invested in a concept which is kind of vague and ageworn, not fit to build an identity around.
Loved the article. Brings to mind a heuristic of mine that might help with sense-making:
Living systems only focus their attention inwards when they receive a signal that there is a problem.
And a second-tier heuristic:
There are two sorts of parasites. One sort integrates seamlessly into the host system. The second trips immune system alarms far out of proportion by the danger it poses and/or latches on to existing injury sites in order to profit from the increased resources that are rushed to repair the damage.
If you consider that our body politic is a living system, and apply the above heuristics, you might come up with something like the following:
Masculinity, and the lives of men, are in serious trouble at this point in history, so the entire civilization is bending around the problem (in much the same way it did with the crisis of femininity occasioned by the complete technological and economic disruption of women's lives in the 50s and 60s). As a result, the second sort of parasite, in many different guises (i.e. self-help gurus, politicians of all stripes, cult leaders, hucksters, and purveyors of various drugs and distractions) is swarming around the topic--and will likely continue to do so until there is once again a valid, broadly accepted and understandable-by-the-average-high-school-drop-out role and manner for male adulthood.
Like you, I look forward to that day.
This post pushed me over the edge to become paid, BTW. Thanks also for the pointer to Sam Kahn's excellent post - I already read Castalia, but not rigorously, and somehow I missed that one.
If you will forgive a tangent, you wrote en passant that "Yet, in 2016, Trump was the most gay-friendly Republican nominee ever". You have written the same thing a couple of other times in the last few months (since I started following you).
I wonder how true that is, in terms of Trump's positioning relative to the nominal median point of the Republican Party. From your inside Republican politics perspective, was Trump (in terms of his public *party* persona, so not just in appearances but when talking to donors, etc.) from Golden Escalator day to election day 2016) more accepting of gays relative to, for example Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, or even Scott Walker as *they* positioned themselves of say June 2015, or more accepting than McCain in 2007-2008 relative for example to the 2007-2008 release of Mitt Romney (versus the "severely conservative" 2011/12 release), any edition of Mike Huckabee, etc. ...
How did Huntsman position himself during his no-hope** run for the nomination? He took a fairly clear civil unions yes, SSM no stand starting early in his governorship, 2009 [1], and did not come out for SSM until early 2013.
I'd also say, very much in the spirit of parsing loophole abuse :), that the most gay-friendly Republican presidential nominee *ever* relative to the party's contemporary Overton window on the topic has to have been Barry Goldwater in his 1990s version, re DADT in particular and the Religious Right more generally. Of course he was long out of the Senate by then, but when he was in the Senate he certainly did not hesitate to speak his mind.
** a party that would nominate a 2012 Huntsman would be a party that I would have rejoined without much angst. A party that will nominate Trump three times will have to wait for the Ds to fall much much further than they have so far before that Trumpy party gets my vote for any Federal office (fortunately or otherwise, I don't live in a state or CD where there is one of the relatively rare Republicans who both has a reasonable chance of winning in for Senate or House in Nov and is also someone I could vote for in good conscience).
[1] https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=51795519&itype=CMSID
Many thanks for the support. What pushed you over the edge, and what are your interests? (feel free to dm) Regarding Trump, he was noticeably more gay-accepting than other Republican contenders in 2015/16. He said he was fine with gay marriage, it was settled, and held out a rainbow flag lol. It was clear he had no issues there. You could say others like Goldwater were more accepting on a relative basis, in their historical contexts. I haven't studied it in any detail, but that's my two cents. In the context of this piece, I was trying to draw a complexity with Trump in the way he brought both masculinity and a social moderation in 2016, as I perceived him at the time - which obviously has evolved.
…even the media is manspreading!…and during an election that might hinge on women issues and with a female candidate to boot…to think that we are in the year 2024 and we are still hung up on adam and eve speaks volume about our evolution…
Haha, true. And thank you.
Something about Walz gives me pause. As a NeverTrump libertarian-conservative, I was ready to vote for Harris until she picked Walz for veep. I’ll probably still vote for her, but Walz somehow feels condescending and insulting—almost like a male version of Sarah Palin, a bald faced attempt to appeal to a demographic. Something about him rubs me the wrong way.
Hi Jeff! This brings up an interesting question for me. As Gen X kid coming up in the 70's, there was a lot of talk about androgyny and self-expression, maybe as a holdover of the Hippie movement. I have vague memories of a show called *Free to Be... You and Me" that pushed this this idea very hard. The Replacements even had a song, "Androgynous" with lyrics about "unisex evolution."
I think it's odd how society has turned its back on that idea of gender as personal expression. These days the message seems to be that there are two gender teams with different uniforms and you have to play for one (if you don't like Team Blue, you can switch to Team Pink, or vice versa, but it's a big deal.). The idea that you can just do stuff and not worry about whether it's appropriate for your gender , and everyone else can too, doesn't seem to occur to young people.
In other words, I wonder if some of the conflicts and distress around masculinity are just the outcome of people getting very invested in a concept which is kind of vague and ageworn, not fit to build an identity around.