Lisa Wade: Straight White Men Don't Have Enough Friends Because Of Misogyny
12-16-2013, 03:37 PM
I'm always in awe of the ability of the writers at Salon and The Atlantic to take an issue, explore its dimensions, and meticulously concoct an analysis that manages to be totally wrong in every detail.
So men can't bond with other men because they are dissociating from the feminine? Well she is clearly using paradox as a tool to mystically express higher truths beyond the scope of masculine logic. My best interpretation: she's so arrogant that she believes emotional communication and bonding is inherently feminine and men are broken, stunted beings incapable of finding meaning and connection without the aid of the Mother Goddess. Or some shit like that.
Calling each other fags and bitches distances boys from one another instead of serving as a bonding tool and communicator of shared values and expectations? And they only start doing it at age 15? I feel like it took effort on this woman's part to be so totally clueless about boys. 15-16 is just about the age when kids have been calling each other faggots for so long that the term is pretty much exhausted as an insult and starts to be used in a somewhat different way that the author will never comprehend because she is a girl.
I don't doubt that the study's findings that white straight men have shallower and fewer friendships than other demographics are completely accurate, and the true explanation is pretty clear to me. It's because boys are dissociating from the masculine but cannot replace it with the feminine because...they're male. Men understand and express their emotions through their masculinity, if they are alienated from their masculinity they are likewise alienated from their emotions. The crucial 15/16 age the article mentions is, imo, the phase in adolescence where boys qualitatively become men. Young, immature, awkward men just starting out, but men. That process has been totally monkey-wrenched by our society leaving youths in a soulless limbo when their boyhood is stripped from them but their manhood is stunted. And now certain elements of our society want them to heal themselves by becoming quasi-women. A second dose of poison should help, right?
That kid the author quotes illustrates the process:
Boy: [My best friend and I] love each other… that’s it… you have this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a thing that you know that person is that person… I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust, respect and love for each other.
This first quote is of course not only faggy as shit but also essentially meaningless. Naturally the lady author gushes. But it's not the kids fault: he's a boy. As he matures he is supposed to learn from other men the foundations of male friendship in definite things like mutual respect, solidarity, integrity, and all that manly shit. Sometimes this is achieved by calling him a bitch ass little faggot or taking his lunch money or whatever. By hook or crook the job gets done. Ideally he'd eventually find himself surrounded by a select group of tested and loyal friends whose support he can count on. And yes, he can share his inner burdens with these men knowing that they will tell him what he needs rather than wants to hear as well as keep his secrets. Good look getting discretion and constructive feedback on your personal life from a woman, no matter how sympathetic she might be.
As it turns out there aren't really a lot of men around for this kid. And the attempts of his male peers to fill in the gaps themselves are always aborted by the public school environment that dominates their lives. Quite a few of them just become more and more isolated and withdrawn. They spend their free time on the margins of the student population in groups of three or four. They talk about video games and movies and you know whatever just like that sort of stuff. As their high school days draw to a close their female teachers are too busy not noticing them to be glad their discipline problems seem to have resolved themselves. Some of them let their grades tank while others bury themselves in their schoolwork. And our young hero becomes...
Psychically mutilated beta in training: [My friend and I] we mostly joke around. It’s not like really anything serious or whatever… I don’t talk to nobody about serious stuff… I don’t talk to nobody. I don’t share my feelings really. Not that kind of person or whatever… It’s just something that I don’t do.
Read that shit aloud. Kid isn't just uncomfortable sharing his feelings, he's uncomfortable in general. He sounds depressed and anxious as fuck. His relationship with his friend is completely shallow and he trashes it as insignificant. He doesn't mention other friends, much less a group he can be part of. Even if he would share his feelings, can he even articulate them? And let's say he could, what could our sympathetic author do for him? Give him a hug and tell him it'll be alright? The kid is socially withdrawn and seemingly totally unmotivated (i.e. depressed). Is having a good cry going to get him real friends? Will it help him find a passion or duty that gives meaning to his life? Feminization really has nothing to offer him but a pat on the back and a tender look of pity for the broken creature he is and might as well continue being because he's such a sweetheart and it's all gonna be alright.
Need a smoke.
So men can't bond with other men because they are dissociating from the feminine? Well she is clearly using paradox as a tool to mystically express higher truths beyond the scope of masculine logic. My best interpretation: she's so arrogant that she believes emotional communication and bonding is inherently feminine and men are broken, stunted beings incapable of finding meaning and connection without the aid of the Mother Goddess. Or some shit like that.
Calling each other fags and bitches distances boys from one another instead of serving as a bonding tool and communicator of shared values and expectations? And they only start doing it at age 15? I feel like it took effort on this woman's part to be so totally clueless about boys. 15-16 is just about the age when kids have been calling each other faggots for so long that the term is pretty much exhausted as an insult and starts to be used in a somewhat different way that the author will never comprehend because she is a girl.
I don't doubt that the study's findings that white straight men have shallower and fewer friendships than other demographics are completely accurate, and the true explanation is pretty clear to me. It's because boys are dissociating from the masculine but cannot replace it with the feminine because...they're male. Men understand and express their emotions through their masculinity, if they are alienated from their masculinity they are likewise alienated from their emotions. The crucial 15/16 age the article mentions is, imo, the phase in adolescence where boys qualitatively become men. Young, immature, awkward men just starting out, but men. That process has been totally monkey-wrenched by our society leaving youths in a soulless limbo when their boyhood is stripped from them but their manhood is stunted. And now certain elements of our society want them to heal themselves by becoming quasi-women. A second dose of poison should help, right?
That kid the author quotes illustrates the process:
Boy: [My best friend and I] love each other… that’s it… you have this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it. It’s just a thing that you know that person is that person… I guess in life, sometimes two people can really, really understand each other and really have a trust, respect and love for each other.
This first quote is of course not only faggy as shit but also essentially meaningless. Naturally the lady author gushes. But it's not the kids fault: he's a boy. As he matures he is supposed to learn from other men the foundations of male friendship in definite things like mutual respect, solidarity, integrity, and all that manly shit. Sometimes this is achieved by calling him a bitch ass little faggot or taking his lunch money or whatever. By hook or crook the job gets done. Ideally he'd eventually find himself surrounded by a select group of tested and loyal friends whose support he can count on. And yes, he can share his inner burdens with these men knowing that they will tell him what he needs rather than wants to hear as well as keep his secrets. Good look getting discretion and constructive feedback on your personal life from a woman, no matter how sympathetic she might be.
As it turns out there aren't really a lot of men around for this kid. And the attempts of his male peers to fill in the gaps themselves are always aborted by the public school environment that dominates their lives. Quite a few of them just become more and more isolated and withdrawn. They spend their free time on the margins of the student population in groups of three or four. They talk about video games and movies and you know whatever just like that sort of stuff. As their high school days draw to a close their female teachers are too busy not noticing them to be glad their discipline problems seem to have resolved themselves. Some of them let their grades tank while others bury themselves in their schoolwork. And our young hero becomes...
Psychically mutilated beta in training: [My friend and I] we mostly joke around. It’s not like really anything serious or whatever… I don’t talk to nobody about serious stuff… I don’t talk to nobody. I don’t share my feelings really. Not that kind of person or whatever… It’s just something that I don’t do.
Read that shit aloud. Kid isn't just uncomfortable sharing his feelings, he's uncomfortable in general. He sounds depressed and anxious as fuck. His relationship with his friend is completely shallow and he trashes it as insignificant. He doesn't mention other friends, much less a group he can be part of. Even if he would share his feelings, can he even articulate them? And let's say he could, what could our sympathetic author do for him? Give him a hug and tell him it'll be alright? The kid is socially withdrawn and seemingly totally unmotivated (i.e. depressed). Is having a good cry going to get him real friends? Will it help him find a passion or duty that gives meaning to his life? Feminization really has nothing to offer him but a pat on the back and a tender look of pity for the broken creature he is and might as well continue being because he's such a sweetheart and it's all gonna be alright.
Need a smoke.