Long time no see, and excellent post. I think Avery raises an interesting point about what function these constant affirmations of masculinity have in the lives of men, though I disagree with his conclusion. I don’t see a culture of masculinity as an ultimately harmless waste of time; as you point out, it marginalizes women, queer men, and men of any sexual identity who have a nonstandard gender expression, and warps hegemonic men’s relations with women. It makes masculinity a constant game of catch-up for men who are insecure for one reason or another. And it alienates and restricts discourse, when discourse is just what we need. When men* “know it’s wrong” — never mind the less pronounced effects of gender expectations that many of us don’t think of in terms of right or wrong — then it’s important to have this conversation so that they recognize the effects of their words or performances. I think that for many of these men, their lives aren’t just boring: they’re painful, because of the very same culture of masculinity (gotta be muscular, a jock, domineering, confident, aloof, emotionally unattached, sexually active, what have you) their jokes perpetuate. Conversation can make everyone more content.

And it’s not a question of censorship or self-censorship (which no one has suggested yet), but a question of how we frame humor — what the jokers themselves find funny, whether it’s racist or sexist or homophobic slurs or something we might find more constructive. I know my sense of humor has developed through exposure to different social environments, and I think a dialogue can have similar effects for others.

Oh, and that ballet ad tagline is crap. Everyone should learn some dance moves.

best,
mike

*It’s also relevant to think about the ways that men and women together reinforce expectations of masculinity and femininity. We could think of a gajillion examples of women reinforcing norms in the lives of other women, but what I’ve found interesting are instances in which women aid in the construction of normative masculinity for men. Sometime last year, I was eating in the LDC with a few friends and — I forgot the context — one of them, a man, responded to someone’s story by saying (facetiously), “I played with dolls.” The woman telling the story responded with “That’s because you’re a freak.”

One day my senior year of high school, I told a friend that I’d bought a pair of jeans. Somehow, the fact they were boot-cut came up, and she made some comment to the effect that boot-cut jeans are seen as gay. That conversation led me to gender jeans in a way I never had before, and probably didn’t help my insecurities much at the time. The fact that she was someone I’d recently come out to as bisexual, and was probably one of the most supportive people I knew then, may have factored into how much weight I gave her judgment then. Haven’t bought many pairs of jeans recently anyway, but when I do, I haven’t managed to dissociate my purchases from gender expectations: now I go for a tighter, admittedly more sexual, perhaps queerer look, but that could just be my following the fashion I see around me. They also feel more comfortable than baggy things, but again, that may be largely psychological — physical comfort through a positive self-image.

In any case, one of the joys of blogging IS discussion. If I disagree with what someone says, I’m going to say so, but I’m not going to stop them from saying it. So if you have something to say, comment.

I didn’t mean “yeah, I understand” so much as “Ok, NOW I understand”.

I’m sorry for assuming that you shared the filmmakers misunderstanding of evolution. That was very presumptive of me, and I apologize if I came of as a condescending jerk.

To be fair however, the movie synopsis was written in your words, and it was unclear if you shared the model of evolution you assumed the filmmakers were using.

Anyway, sorry for my invasion and subsequent derailing of your blog. I’ll sit quietly and observe now so as to avoid making even more an ass of myself :)

Some people were in the theater laughing at it as pointed satire of racist Americans, and some WERE racist Americans going “ha ha, A-rabs are so backwards”

I’m sure that “Alphabet of Manliness” will be purchased and laughed at for equally disparate reasons.

The actual point of your post was well made, and I agree that jokes that were made in the film (and the “manliness” book) as critical satire are often made as straight-forward jokes in our culture. You have pointed several excellent examples. They were not “kidding”. That ad is seriously going “haha, let’s laugh at the sissy ballet boys, because we are real men.” This is indeed a disturbing glorification of crude ignorance.

I suppose the point of my nitpicking is that however unpleasant this trend may be, it is not a sign of “nature” being broken. The fact may be that there is very likely good (short-term) evolutionary sense in rude over-masculine behavior, and the dominance of women in general. Something can be vile and evil while being perfectly “natural”.

The unique position we humans find ourselves in is that we have forward-looking brains (theoretically) and we have at least the possibility of seeing that our short term reproductive and cultural strategies and what is good for us long term as a species are often VERY different things.

We have the ability to say that yes, raping and pillaging of our neighbors pays off strong evolutionary dividends today, but TOMORROW, we are going to wish we treated them with respect.

Nature can never see tomorrow.

Now, the trick is to actually get people to USE the oversized primate brains they are lucky enough to have inherited….

Firstly, I understand your frustrations on how Hollywood uses pseudoscience, but please don’t read my own understanding of evolution into my explanation of the plot of a movie. I understand that this is not how evolution works; most of my reading/classes taken on biology has involved genes and evolution. However, the movie’s plot is based on this fundamental misunderstanding of evolution, and, therefore, explaining the movie involves operating within this misunderstanding. Nevertheless, this post was not about evolution, and the movie was a launching point into a larger discussion of what the movie says about our culture.

This…

——-
“it’s a sort of devolution horror story. Since natural selection no longer seems to effect humans, the genes that get passed on are from people who have the most kids. According to the movie, it’s not the intelligent people who are breeding, but the idiots.”
——

… Is a fairly fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works.

(To be fair, it may be a misunderstand that filmmakers share with you, because I’m not sure their plot showed much of an understanding of evolution either, but I will get back to that.)

The fact that today all “around the world only stupid people are breeding”, (to paraphrase Harvey Danger) is in fact exactly how natural selection is working at the moment.

Natural selection has no goal, no foresight. It does not “prefer” smart people, or strong people, or good people. It only prefers successfully horny people who live long enough to procreate more successfully horny people.

What that means in today’s environment is that procreation ethics, intelligence, and reasonableness are very strong evolutionary HANDICAPS in the eyes of natural selection, because short term reproductive success the the only thing natural selection cares about.

This: “…the genes that get passed on are from people who have the most kids…” IS natural selection. Nothing more, nothing less.

Even the term “devolution”, though understandable and evocative, is quite missing the point. Evolution is not bound to “improve” a species. It can only ensure that a species is prolific, not more impressive or “better” by our forward-thinking reason based value systems.

Where I think the plot of the movie falls apart slightly is that although the world is now overrun by cretins, they still somehow have working technology.

Who keeps the TVs working? Who builds the monster trucks? Who refines the gasoline?

That is the self correcting mechanism built into evolution… a prolific but stupid population quickly stops being able to sustain itself, and eventually starves to death or blows itself up.

I suppose it can be argued that was exactly what was happening in the film, but I don’t think it was happening fast or consistently enough to be believable…

But as a satire and parable, wow did it pack a vicious and disturbing punch. And yeah, for every funny moment, there were three that had my head diving for a pillow.