Excerpt from Manly Tears, Nick Offerman’s 2017 HBO Special
As boys we are taught that “boys don’t cry”. Moreso, we are taught that tears are a sign of weakness and indeed that any emotion which is not anger, arrogance, stubbornness, or lust is a sign of weakness.
Even more insidious, these emotions are deemed
feminine, and anything
feminine is implicitly, and often explicitly, considered
weak. And yet I have thus far failed to meet a single self-proclaimed Alpha Male willing to trade places with women on the reproductive task and spend several hours slowly pushing a nine-pound wriggling mass of muscle and bone through his urethra, something that women have done since the dawn of time, and most of that time without painkillers.
The “weaker sex” indeed.
[laughter and cheers from audience]
Humans are emotional beings. We all, regardless of gender or sexuality, have the same basic circuitry in our brains, in place since birth, that delivers a wide variety of visceral responses to the many challenges and pleasures of life. Each one holds an important place in our survival, and part of that survival is the success of the family and the clan, assured through our emotional connections to one another.
And yet so often our traditions, which began as the rituals that bind the clan, get weaponized into implements of control. Girls are taught to be submissive and cheery and ashamed of their bodies. Boys are taught to be cold and aggressive and judgmental, even when this flies in the face of the clan’s spiritual values, as it so often does. While this dichotomy leads to a society where men are in charge, it is none the less just as dehumanizing and damaging for these emotionally stunted boys, a case of generational trauma disguised as tradition.
And this trauma, as is often the case, feeds back upon itself. Men, being told since childhood that strong emotions, to include joy and love, are weak, and that lust is sinful and disgusting even as a man is judged by his sexual prowess, externalize this internal loathing onto the women who often through no intent on their part inspired the perfectly natural feelings. It wasn’t your body responding naturally to its genetic preprogramming, it was the seductions of a vile temptress. This deflection leads naturally to female sexuality being stigmatized. This has led time and time again to cultures that hide and conceal their women, nominally for protecting the women, but in reality, this is done to protect the males from experiencing any of the emotions that they are apparently too weak to handle, all the while simultaneously shielding said males from culpability in any crimes that they commit against the women who violate any cultural norms.
And in the name of enforcing the notion of women as weak, chaste, and in need of male protection, all manner of heinous and crippling disfigurements have been instituted upon them, often in the name of “beauty” and “chastity”. Criminal abuses that are originally devised by insecure males, but soon self-enforced by the women, continuing the practice of generational trauma as tradition.
All so that men don’t have to express girly emotion.
This is literal insanity. We’re trying to shield ourselves from who we are. We have one part of the brain initiating these natural personal and social survival mechanisms and another part telling us we’re weak and wrong to have them. The only way to react to this internal cognitive dissonance is with anger and violence, be this violence against the ones that we claim that we “love”, or heinous acts of violence against the “other”, whomever that “other” might be, within our society or beyond it. Acts of violence that “they” in turn often revisit upon “us”, leading to losses that men feel ashamed of mourning, reinforcing the very toxic behaviors that led to the violence to begin with in a self-perpetuating cycle.
This madness needs to end. We cry for a reason, and that reason is not “weakness”. We cry because our minds need an outlet for the multitude of complex situations that are beyond our immediate comprehension, be that the tears of loss at a funeral or the tears of joy at a birth. We cry in the same way that we bleed upon being cut: the first critical step in the healing process that makes us stronger. We cry because a shared emotion is the bond that glues us to our loved ones and to our families and to our clans.
Thus, when we cry, we are strengthening ourselves and our families. When we don’t, we short circuit the healing and bonding process and produce trauma and division, making us weaker, not stronger.
I submit that tears are not weakness, they are proof that weakness is leaving the body.
[loud cheers and applause from audience]
And yet the damaging, insidious lies to our boys continue.
“Man up, crybaby.”
“Quit acting so gay.”
“Don’t be a
pussy.”
Consider the magnitude of the toxic, subconsciously self-loathing misogyny in that last one. As though the very parts of the female anatomy that brought us all life are a source of weakness rather than a giver of life and strength. The very idea of a vagina – and some insecure males can’t even say the word “vagina” – as anything other than a source of temporary lustful satiation-through-conquest is made a source of scorn and contempt.
Is it any wonder why we confuse self-hatred and toxicity for masculinity?
Similarly, anything even indirectly associated with that part of the female anatomy and its connected parts is the source of fear and discomfort for these insecure males. Take tampons, a class of health care product that began their existence as the wad of cotton that held back the powder and bullet in a musket before finding new uses, the first being to plug bullet wounds. Despite this “manly” martial origin, some male-dominated State Legislatures can’t even openly say the word out loud when legislating on their availability in schools and government offices.
Man up, crybabies.
[laughter and cheers]
Insecure males, and I shudder to call them “men”, are mortified when they’re asked by their wives or daughters or girlfriends to pick up a box of tampons at the store.
What a pathetic bunch of babies!
[laughter]
I proudly carry that box to the register, devoid of shame, for I am doing that manliest of actions: I am providing for my woman.
[loud, ongoing applause from audience]
- - -
Back to the Futurism: The New Progressivism of the 2010s
Article in J Street Review by Harlan H. Hughes, May 2023 Edition
A decade ago, I wrote an article on the Conservative shift in US social politics in the 2000s. I discussed the rise of the Men’s Rights movement and the resulting effects on Pop Culture. And I predicted, based on the trends of the time, that the pendulum would swing back.
And it appears that, to some degree, it has. But in other ways, it has not.
While the mainstream pop culture, aiming to appeal to the much more socially progressive Millennium and Postmillennial Generations, has embraced Inclusion and Diversity, the increasing Congolization[1] of the media has allowed for the ongoing self-segregation of Conservatives and Progressives, and allowed for some channels and corners of the net to harbor extremist ideologist.
In fact, if one trend seems to be driving culture and politics in this first quarter of the 21st Century, it’s the slow death of the shared culture space. Gone are the days where all Americans watch the same TV shows and get the same news from the same evening news anchor, with only major sporting events like the Super Bowl or World Series remaining within the shared space. Today folks, whatever their political preference, can choose from a laundry list of stations and netsites where their Confirmation Bias button can be repeatedly clicked, and even finding a shared set of agreed-upon facts is increasingly hard.
And while the long-term ramifications of this trend have yet to be fully known, one imagines that they can’t be all sunshine and rainbows.
But while the Congolization goes on, there remains a definitive shared space in the realm of film in particular, and even several small screen shows have broken out across a wide spectrum of viewers, albeit increasingly from Direct Viewing channels rather than network TV. And in general, the trends with these productions have followed a leftwards shift, and a similar shift has occurred in advertising, with products marketed towards more diverse audiences, risking boycotts in many cases from their established core customer base.
And why has there been such an ongoing shift? Is it just the pendulum returning after the 2000s? Has industry “gone Lib” as conservative politicians in deeply red states and the commentators on PNN insist?
Well, it’s more fundamental than even that. Simply put, the Postmillennial Generation is coming of age, and are starting to define themselves and make their consumer choices. If you’re a major beverage company and you want to still
be a major beverage company in twenty to thirty years, you’ll need to attract the Postmillennials to
your brands before they’ve chosen “their” brands going forward. And this means appealing to their values.
Did you really think that beer company’s board of directors really cares about Trans Rights, the objectification of women, or Climate Change? Cynically, no, they could likely care less, at least from a business standpoint. But 18–24-year-olds overwhelmingly
do care about these things, and if you want them in your customer base going forward, you’ll at least pretend to care too, even if it means potentially losing some lifelong-loyal Boomer customers in the process, since in that next twenty to thirty years it’ll be increasingly likely that you’ll lose them anyway.
Such is the cold calculus of market capitalism.
With all of this in mind, we shouldn’t totally discount the grassroots shifts of the 2010s. The landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized same sex marriage marked a watershed in acceptance for LGBTQ+ people not just on the left, but among the swing voters of the center. Likewise, as the threat of climate change becomes more real and the technology of renewable energy alternatives more cost competitive with fossil fuels, environmentalism has become increasingly mainstream.
And how has the Progressive grassroots mobilized? Since the Men’s Rights Movement formed the centerpiece of my article a decade ago, I’ll focus on its Progressive response: the True Manliness Movement, spearheaded by folks like comedian and author Nick Offerman, actor and former WCW star Dave Bautista, and NFL player turned actor Terry Crews of
Ballers franchise fame. These three outwardly traditionally masculine men have been surprisingly open about their lives, their emotions, and their vulnerability, openly rejecting the toxicity of the Men’s Rights movement. In doing so they have openly embraced diversity and feminism and LGBTQ+ inclusivity. And they openly dared any “insecure male” to challenge them on it.
“I’ve always rejected this idea that manliness and feminism are at odds or that manliness and acceptance are incompatible,” Swanson told
Ms. Magazine. “A man who is secure in himself and in who he is has no reason to fear a powerful woman. A cisgender, heterosexual man secure in his identity has no reason to be homophobic or transphobic. To the contrary, to be a man is to stand up for those less privileged than you. To walk arm and arm with a gay man and a trans woman down the street in broad daylight in solidarity against injustice is an act of manhood up there with taking down a mastodon with a spear in order to feed your family.”
(Image source Mashable)
Crews likewise has been vocal about his feminism and disdain for male toxicity. “Millions have died because of male pride,” he said in an interview, “just because they didn’t want to back down. Just because they were more afraid of how they’d be judged. They say, ‘I’d rather blow up my whole family than have everyone look at me as though I’d just lost.’”
Bautista goes on and on about the strength, tenacity, resilience, and power of his mother Donna Raye, who came out as a lesbian, using her story and others to assert that true strength doesn’t come from muscles (though he certainly has no deficit there), but from strength of character, which is something that “transcends race, sex, sexuality, or any other such bull****.”
Offerman, Bautista, and Crews are three of the loudest and most central voices in the movement that calls itself “True Manhood” or “True Manliness”, but more and more men, both famous and anonymous, joined the call and spoke up for such things as the Masculine Act of changing a diaper or being there for your gay or transgender teenager. Non-cis/het men have likewise joined the chorus, which has increasingly featured queer men, including trans men such as Chaz Bono, and numerous female or trans-female allies as well. And writers and actors in Hollywood and on Direct View services increasingly made it a point to have their characters taking actions like having tea time with their daughters or folding laundry without comment or comedy, or with said comedy being at the expense of the toxic insecure male who can’t reconcile the manly man he looked up to acting unironically “girly”. This all came alongside a second wave of activism against sexual assault and harassment in the mid-2010s on par with the 1990s, with True Manhood activists taking up the banner alongside the women.
And on the subject of the 1990s, that decade was all the rage alongside the 1980 in a wave of nostalgia touched with reevaluation. The pop culture of the 2010s evoked these decades in many ways, such as the relaunch of classic franchises and various period pieces set within those decades, but it was often openly critical of their toxic excesses. This can be seen in films like 2016’s
Lockup, which explored the overcrowded for-profit prisons that resulted from the 1994 Crime Bill, or the 2014 film
Consequences, where actor Robert Carradine, in a silent acknowledgement of the rape culture tropes present in his breakout film
Revenge of the Nerds, plays a former frat boy turned suburban family man and father of an 18-year-old daughter who is forced to reckon with his sex crimes back in the 1980s.
Even superheroes have been explored in this way, with Peacock’s
Over Man serving as a savage deconstruction of the unfortunate implications of and eugenics-linked history behind super men. Blockbuster Direct’s
Miracleman reboot explored similar topics, and even Disney’s animated
Superior looked at some of the unstated undercurrents in the genre, albeit in a more family friendly manner. Alan Moore, meanwhile, has gone to court to try to stop a planned WB Now series based on his
Watchmen, whose production rights are in a legal limbo with Warner Brothers.
But other productions are more conservative or even reactionary. The Patriot’s Choice direct view service, for example, has spun up a variety of anti-immigrant, anti-diversity, pro-gun, right-Evangelical, and even borderline White Nationalist productions. Sequels to
Agent X and its spinoff film series featuring highly-sexualized side character Nadia Kula continued up until 2018, with a new series in production for Patriot’s Choice.
Indeed, right-wing anger, in particular the far right MWNO aspects, have grown louder, angrier, and more brazen in the last couple of years. If the election of Sebelius in 2012 stoked anger, the election of the hated Barack Obama, the first non-white president and the subject of a thousand conspiracy theories, has elicited
rage. The Take Back America movement has sprung up in the last two years, possibly indicating a swing of the pendulum back, and yet the demographic realities mean that the TBA, which skews overwhelmingly older, whiter, and less educated, is increasingly a minority movement as Millennium and Postmillennial Generations largely avoid it, as do an overwhelming majority of non-whites. This has exacerbated the existing Congolization and is, many fear, leading to a “besiegement mentality” that could further radicalize susceptible conservatives and stoke a return to the MWNO terrorism of the 1990s, only with potentially more grassroots support, particularly should some demagogue come along to rally around.
And as the political far-right gets more insular and besieged, they drift further into their own cultural sphere, separated not just from the rest of the country politically, but culturally as well.
And meanwhile, far left politics has begun to gain traction among Postmillennials in some parts of the Progressive infosphere, driven by dwindling opportunity and a growing wealth gap. The People’s Front and similar groups have begun calling for direct, potentially violent opposition to the angrier fringe elements of the TBA Movement. While still the nucleus of a political movement, a violent clash between PF and Saxon Nation protestors in Nashville last summer could be a forerunner of things to come, and a return of MWNO violence could spur further growth of the PF and similar organizations in response.
It appears that the pendulum, rather than swing back, has to some degree split in two.
Time will tell where the rise of TBA and PF will lead. They could be a simple, healthy social pressure release, giving a voice to groups that feel disenfranchised. So far, the vast majority of participants in the TBA movement have remained peaceful and refused calls by MWNOs for violence, content to peaceful grassroots protests and product boycotts. Or this could be the start of something more confrontational and violent, particularly as growing Youth Progressivism causes these “sons of the soil” to become increasingly isolated. Only time will tell, and the actions that we take now could have serious consequences going forward.
Perhaps the best thing that we can do right now is to reach out to our neighbors and remind them that, regardless of our differences, we are all in this together.
[1] We would call it “Balkanization”.
starwars.fandom.com
