I have proof by anecdote.
That wimpy child was feminized. Those men were wrecked by soy products and the mainstreaming of LGBTQ ideas.
It’s an ongoing tragedy.
The article was from 1893, when everyone knew the correct answer to the question, “what is a woman?”
I saw an LGBTQ once. They turned me into a salamander. A boy salamander that changed sex to a girl salamander as well. A girl salamander that then had sex with itself to produce viable offspring.
It’s political correctness gone mad.
Louis
Hard-working men were probably just dehydrated.
As for the kid, well, HE was a wuss.
1893? pfft, that’s practically yesterday! Aristophanes was commenting on how modern culture (this newfangled thing called academia in his case) emasculated people in 423BC.
That’s nothing. My wife told me to mow the lawn…AND I DID!!
What’s wrong? Not all men want to be brutal thugs.
I used to watch reruns of Sex in the City…shudder. I managed several sappy Twilight movies with no harm done, though was glad to see the Nosferatu vampires return in The Strain. I watch Rap Sh!t which seems more female oriented. I do unapologetically drink soy.
Was the answer to the question “who cares, she can’t vote?”
Air conditioning and dressing like children (short pants on men!) have bred today’s manliness.
I suspect that fears that men are becoming “emasculated” and “feminine” have been around almost as long as there have been cultural concepts of masculinity. These fears seem to be almost as common across history as the conviction that “kids these days” are in various ways inferior to earlier generations.
The corollary of that argument is that women are being masculinized. My proof? I once attended a funeral of a 5 year old boy. Most of the feminized men were crying. All those butch women were stoically silent.
@9- garydargan
Women are really into hockey and football. Cam Newton thought the latter fact was “funny” but is he even playing football anymore?
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/20916366/cam-newton-carolina-panthers-laughs-female-reporter-media-session
OTOH I used to watch General Hospital, a soap opera, back in the day.
I regularly emasculate men by simply existing as single and female.
If I say no…emasculated.
If I am more knowledgeable…testes fall off.
Own and use power tools….balls disappear.
Speak for myself…..public humiliation leading to lack of gonads.
It’s so odd, since I’ve never once felt the need to defend my femininity, unless some dude has decided to attack me as unfeminine because they are insecure in their masculinity.
It’s not my fault if men lack mechanical skills, but they sure get their undies in a twist over that fact.
Tethys@11>
I’m going on a bit of a tangent here, but I like to point out that a sewing machine is a power tool.
Although, at this point, I’ve stopped associating with most people who will disagree with me and/or take umbrage at that claim…
And on to another tangent, why this reverence of “power tools”, wouldn’t it be more “manly” to use muscle power to do any given job? Maybe this is why cyclists are criticized for not being manly enough to drive an oversized pretty pick-up truck two miles?
‘Macho’ is the Spanish word for ‘manly’.
It’s been borrowed by English thus: (dictionary.com)
/ˈmatʃəʊ/
adjective
adjective: macho
masculine in an overly assertive or aggressive way.
"the big macho tough guy"
h
Similar:
(aggressively) male
(unpleasantly) masculine
manly
virile
red-blooded
swashbuckling
butch
laddish
h
Opposite:
wimpish
noun
noun: macho; plural noun: machos
a man who is aggressively proud of his masculinity.
"I realized just what a macho I was at heart"
Can I just say that if you don’t cry when you watch The Elephant Man, there is something seriously wrong with you.
The first time I saw this movie I was extremely uncomfortable. I was in a room full of near strangers and we were bonding by watching it. It was a real struggle to stay stoic.
I have watched it since just for the emotional release.
@ 13 John Morales
Lol. Dude “macho” entered conventional English via gay icons the Village People.
Silentbob:
I can’t decide whether you are attempting to be jocular or to be erudite, but in either case, your degree of success is… um, questionable.
Wait a minute. Men are ‘feminized’ because they fainted, while none of the actual women present fainted? What kind of twisted logic is that?
Remember when all those woke feminist snowflakes cancelled gendered nouns in Middle English?
They turned me into a newt.
OT: An advancing tropical storm has caused the launch of Artemis 1 to be postponed, missing the launch window and delaying the launch until late October.
This proves there is no god.
At least no benevolent one. You-know-who on the dark sea floor could very well have messed with the weather systems.
Wait a minute. Men are ‘feminized’ because they fainted, while none of the actual women present fainted?
Women do childbirth. No thanks, I’d rather dig a long ditch with my eyelids, judging from the sound and the blood (I did not watch the blessed event) – I am persistently baffled at how men can be “feminized” by being less thugly, when women regularly undergo something worse than torture.
When I see someone talking about “feminization” I assume they are bemoaning the fact that some men are no longer able to strut around as if Mad Max is arguing for a moral philosophy of power. I am always reminded that Nietzsche, the mouthpiece of a particularly toxic masculinity, was a momma’s boy, neurasthenic, wimp – the opposite of Max Rogatansky. I see the whole discussion as vaguely in line with Rousseau’s imagined “state of nature” – the incorrect imagining that before civilization, men were men, etc. but if we look at actual ancient history, the characters are a mix just like people are, today. Alcibiades would have made a good drag performer or a general, was he “feminized”?
It’s basically “jocks versus nerds” and always has been. People who complain about “feminization” are just hoisting the banner of ‘jocks forever’. As Henry Rollins said, “a former jock mows my lawn.”
Silentbob@15 I grew up in the 70s, and in my recollection, the word “macho” was showing up in media (e.g. an interview where the star* is described as macho) years before the Village People’s hit.
The somewhat backs up my childhood impression: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=macho&year_start=1970&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3
*Burt Reynolds comes immediately to my mind as an icon of 70s machismo. This seemed like a perfect example: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/06/burt-reynolds-more-than-macho/ but unfortunately it came out a half year later than the Village People. So all I can say with some level of confidence was that when “Macho Man” was released, nobody had to ask what “macho” meant.
It’s certainly possible that it came into English through gay vernacular, but you can’t prove that with the Village People.
mastmaker@7
The logic is just this: Women are supposed to faint. It’s part of the definition of woman. Society would go to ruin if they stopped doing this.
Still, it’s reassuring to see that one of them at least became “hysterical”.
@ ^ Marcus Ranum : Thinking Alcibiades and ancient manly Greeks; Odysseus (Ulysses) in Homer’s Iliad wept a lot and of course, Achilles and Patroklus were lovers*.. also epic poetry literally NOT that the anti-unterlekshual types of Murdoch -rotted, homophobic, emotionally repressed, stereotype-straightjacketed American “manleez menz” would have a clue about that..
@ 19. birgerjohansson : Off topic but in other spaaaaace neeeews the DART mission will be slamming a spacecraft into the moonlet of an asteroid – Didymos which orbist Dimorphis – tomoorow / today or thedaty after Aussie time see :
https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-impact-crash-what-time
& https://www.space.com/dart-asteroid-impact-science
Via space dot com and Dr Becky’s under 15 min youtube clip here which I’m really looking forward to – the event itself that is not the pre-event clip which I’ve seen already.
.* Like King David & Prince Jonathon in the Bible & Alexander the great and Hephaestion, etc..
I’m fascinated by the social fainting response.
Also macheesemo
https://youtu.be/FlW1aPIEQcI
And that clip is ok, but I can’t make the same claims about the rest of the movie it goes with.
Amanda Marcotte in Salon.
I’m not sure what to make of this demented logic, though it has the seeds of a reductio ad absurdum argument about the impossibility of pure “masculinity”. Is Brokeback Mountain gay or among the most manly films ever produced? Or maybe the Three Stooges style of male bonding is a less suspect model to follow. Nobody ever said they were gay (probably false but I’ll leave it.)
Sadly, it doesn’t rule out abusive heterosexual relationships. You don’t bring roses, just death threats, and there’s nothing hypothetical about it. It happens all the time. Maybe that’s the ideal you’re striving for.
me@27 I can’t help adding that I have a friend from long ago (haven’t spoken in ages) who once seriously insisted that he could not have a girlfriend because he was a Paladin (for real and not just his D&D character). He wasn’t drunk, just getting loquacious during a long drive. Maybe that’s what Fuentes is going for. My friend is not as repulsive as Fuentes but he was a Reagan free-market fanboy (as well as overall fanboy). I avoid talking to any of these people now for fear that they’ve gone full-on Trump. I mean, of course they have.
Sorry for the triple post, but I think came out with the 80s ideal of pure hetero-masculinity. You just have to act like the dickwad in ‘Til Tuesday’s Voices Carry video. What he lacks in physical build, he makes up for in being a complete asshole. And he’s not looking for cuddles, just control.
(No point except I admit I like this video and the song. I am not sure what the message is supposed to be. Should I enjoy a song about emotional abuse?)
Paul BC @ 28
Paladin?
You humans… I mean, you fellow humans are weird.
Putin allegedly just lost one of his most senior generals to a HIMARS attack. I doubt Putin will weep for him. Not because he is a manly man, but because his henchmen mean nothing to him.
I think I recall that some of the warrior orders (Templars, Knights of St John) were anti-sex. And I suspect that’s the template for the D&D paladin. So the incels are pursuing a pretty well-worn intellectual rut.
Oops! Just in. Giuliani has not fulfilled his ex-spousal duties and is about to be held in contempt.
He could med up in jail in the near future.
birgerjohansson@33
He’s clearly been off his meds for a while, so this would be an improvement. (What am I saying, Giuliani in jail is an improvement already.)
(Yes, I know it was a typo.)
OT
Hell just froze over.
Geraldo Rivera criticize Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley over election denialism; “They decided the world is flat “.
I think the Spanish terms macho and machismo were well known to Americans via Ernest Hemingway. His writing is saturated with the strong, silent, manliness that generally dooms the protagonist to an unhappy fate.
Lochaber @12
Indeed, but the production of fabric and clothing has been something women worldwide have been doing for all of human history. Men are only involved when mechanization and mass production came into existence. Before the industrial age, men traditionally did operate some of the heavier looms, but most cloth production was exclusively a female occupation. (often enslaved) Spinsters have been at the bottom social rung of multiple empires.
My main issue with power tools is that they are built for the average male human. Even things like ladders, drills, and snowblowers are designed by and for an average 6’ tall man, and require a long reach and upper body strength.
I regularly have completely random passing men inform me that some man should be out clearing my sidewalk, while I am in the process of shoveling my sidewalks. It’s so ingrained into modern culture that women should not do physical labor with extension ladders or shovels; but are allowed brooms, mops, hoes, vacuums, etc….
Tethys@36 Lochaber@12
This brings up one of my minor peeves. I recently started fiddling around with a Cricut die cutter (for all kinds of nerdy projects mostly centered around math: tilings and puzzles, though not exclusively). I was trying to decide whether to get that or a 3D printer. A laser cutter wasn’t an option due to the expensive and trouble (e.g. having to vent the smoke).
While all three of these are “maker tools” in the broadest sense, and Cricut even brands its top model as “maker”, it’s quite clear looking at the how-to videos that Cricut is not the manly option. E.g., a how-to on 3D printing is usually set in a sparse garage or workshop and narrated by a man whereas a how-to on Cricut is usually set in decorated craft room, often with an inspirational poster on the wall, and nearly always narrated by a woman.
And to be honest, this fact actually nudged me a little away from getting a Cricut, which is incredibly silly. I am mostly interested in planar construction, and I really like being able to reuse found material (e.g. box cardboard). So this was definitely the right choice. It’s interesting how arbitrarily this boundaries are set and how hard they are to change once established.
Tethys @36:
Perhaps best expressed by the imagined Hemingway response to the immortal question “why did the chicken cross the road?”;
To die, in the rain.
If that’s Williamsburg, VA, where I currently live, I suspect they fainted from the heat in those steamy, pre-AC days.
I have always been scared of sewing machines because of the potential for horror-film-worthy accidents with the fingers.
Give me a safer job, like zookeeper for velociraptors.
PaulBC @ 34
Spell check is set om Swedish, this creates oddities which I often do not catch before pressing “post”.
And, yes, you are right about Giuliani.
“A former jock mowes my lawn ”
:)
Also, spell check first swapped “jock” for “Koch”, which would be appropriate in terms of justice.
Given all the power tools mentions I’ll drop this. I’m really surprised some company didn’t use it in a commercial.