mikkipedia

October 23, 2011

"And recognizing that our male dominated culture is fucked up doesn’t make you a self-hating man, either. When I first heard Bikini Kill, it was fucking thrilling. Hearing someone lash out against dominant sexist attitudes wasn’t exciting in some sort of “oh good for women, they’re standing up for themselves,” type of way. It was liberating to hear someone take on those traditional expressions of masculinity, because I hated the ways I was expected to act as a man. I hated the toughness and numbness that was expected from men, because I wanted to be able to express my emotions without fear of ridicule. I hated the predatory way that men acted towards women, because I wanted to be free to have meaningful relationships with women. Likewise, I hated the homophobia, because I wanted to have meaningful relationships with the men in my life. I see men around me all the time who refuse to show any signs of vulnerability for fear of appearing feminine, and they tend to cut themselves off emotionally from the world. It’s fucking sad. I see men all the time who only view their relationships in terms of conquest, and I can’t think of one of them who has a healthy emotional life. Breaking down ideas around male superiority and masculinity is absolutely in mens’ best interests. In a punk context, I can say with certainty that the scenes I’ve visited that were the most gender inclusive have always been the most exciting and thriving music communities. There’s nothing to be gained for men in maintaining the boy’s club. —David Combs"

—

grungy white young man on a couch playing acoustic guitar

I am pro this, although Mr. David Combs (author of “Hegemonic Blowfish”!) might want to ponder his narrative of personal benefit as revolutionary strategy.*

Related: If you haven’t been reading ILiveSweat’s series on sexism and punk, you should be.

*Mandatory Killjoy Moment

PS: I often feel great killjoy solidarity with Mr. David Combs, who shares my tendency for moral overthink:

On the plane to northern Sweden I had a conversation with the woman sitting next to me about Americans’ perceptions of the Swedish. I told her about the insane conservative backlash currently popular in the states, the great fear of socialism and how conservative American pundits scare their audiences (who know shit about social democracies) by telling them that if Barack Obama has his way “we might end up like Sweden!” I also mentioned how Americans generally consider Scandavian people to be especially attractive, and she tied the two points together with an interesting theory: her proposal was that there must be some genetic link to the fact that there are better social programs in Scandavia to the seemingly higher proportion of attractive people there. If social programs are better, she argued, people are less stressed out and therefore better looking.

In spite of obvious holes in the theory, it comforted me briefly, as I’d been a bit disappointed in myself because of how succeptible I’d been to the aryan beauty standard. You could attribute it to American socialization and the high number of Scandanavian models who are imported by the American beauty industry, but as soon as we got to Denmark, Jordan and I were both embarrassed to admit that everywhere we looked we saw beautiful people, men and women equally. For example, In Copenhagen a girl fainted suddenly on the bus. We stopped to wait for an ambulence, and after a few minutes two ruggedly handsome EMT’s rushed on the bus, both of them with muscular model’s builds shown off by tight white tee shirts. They gazed sincerely at the girl (who was really pretty herself) and asked “are you alright? Can you hear me darling?” It was like a scene from a soap opera unfolding in front of us.

When we got to Umea I shared my friend from the plane’s theory with our friend Viktor, and he shot it down immediately. “That’s bullshit that people are less stressed in Sweden! We have the highest suicide rate in the world! You’re so bombarded with this beauty standard from a young age. That’s the only reason people think Scandanavians are more attractive.” He was right. The high suicide rate in Sweden is interesting too. Some people we met attributed it to the idleness of a society where people have so many things provided for them, though I think it’s probably related more to the fact that in the winter there gets to be as little as 3 hours of sunlight a day, and people who work indoors can go a whole week without ever seeing the sun. But hey, I’m no expert.

You have to assume he’s hitting on the woman on the plane, though, right? I mean, that’s a given.

PS Sweden doesn’t have the highest suicide rate, they rank 18-20 where I’ve looked. Enjoy tangents? This guy tracked down the source of the persistent myth about Sweden’s suicide rate.

(via roughguess)

2:22pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/Zu71EyB0y0fE

(Notes: 2,466)

Filed under: oh men