From a blog called (appropriately, though not for the reasons its author imagines) “The Supreme Irony of Life”:
At Firedoglake Sunday, Dave Neiwert wrote a good post on being a stay-at-home dad. One of the points, is one that I was raised to believe:
People who talk about masculinity  especially conservatives, who seem to obsess about it, but in a peculiarly juvenile way  have always seemed a little weird to me. It’s like the cliche retort the wealthy like to use: “If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it.†Masculinity is one of those things where if you have to talk about it, you’re never going to get it. And the harder you try, the less a man you become.
I happen to drive a “gay” car. A green VW New Beetle Convertible. Ever since VW announced that they were going to make a New Beetle in convertible form, I waited anxiously until they were available. I know that people look at me driving that car, and automatically make a judgment about my sexual orientation. Frankly, I don’t care. I am secure in my orientation, and as such, your opinion of whether I am gay or not is none of my concern.
The point of this though, is this notion that in order to be a “manly man” one must go about asserting their “manliness” at every turn. In response to Neiwert’s post about staying home and raising his daughter, Jeff Goldstein sets about to try and prove his manliness. It is so twisted in its logic as to be almost incomprehensible.
In short, Goldstein’s position, and largely reaffirmed by his commenters, is that staying at home, raising ones child, and being proud of that is not masculine.
The reaction by him and others says more about their insecurity about being “masculine”, than their actual masculinity.
[my emphasis]
Evidently, the author doesn’t know that I am myself a proud stay at home dad — and that the only people who have ever attacked me for that are left-liberals looking to take a whack at my “masculinity.” I’ve been called, among other things, a “hausfrau” — but then, my being a conservative is, when one applies progressive logic, justification for the kinds of attacks that on the surface would seem to run counter to the whole tolerance message left-liberals are always on about.
But don’t hold it against them. They only do it because they care.
Which, you know how that goes: calling a Black man an “Uncle Tom” isn’t really racist if you’ve taken steps to embrace progressive politics, because progressives, bless their selfless souls, have — along with a dazzling righteousness! — emotional and ideological purity on their side. And if the wayward Negro they’re striving to help would just learn to listen to these sage shepherds of social justice, they wouldn’t need to coax the poor dumb ungrateful fuck back on the plantation with such a show of tough love.
That aside, what is clear is that the author of this piece, David from Austin, hasn’t bothered to read my post. Because nowhere in the post do I set about to “prove” my manliness. In fact, I find it ridiculous that one would even need to — though the point of my post was that I find it doubly ridiculous that Neiwert would write a post decrying how “conservatives” obsess upon these things, even as it is he who seems to be doing the obsessing (hence the disquisition, which tracks nicely with a similar piece by another leftist, Ric Caric), while conservatives seem rather amused by his tortured attempts to prove his manliness to himself.
As I noted in a comment somewhere, the only reason Neiwert would even write such a post to begin with is that he has completely bought into conventional notions of masculinity and femininity and so must now set about changing them to account for his own behaviors, which he fears don’t match those conventions. He demands that social perceptions bend to his will.
Me, I post about doing yoga and wearing bike shorts. And about how I’m hung like a particularly virile bull elk. Because the truth is, I couldn’t care less whether Neiwert or Marcotte or David in Austin or Tbogg find me “masculine” or not — and in fact, I tend to poke fun at the fact that they seem to think “conservatives” like me actually care about such things.
COCKSLAP!
I do, however, love the predictable dodge of the pseudo-intellectual David trots out here, namely, that my post is “incomprehensible” — the happy consequence of which is that it gives David himself the opportunity to re-phrase it in such a way that ordinary folks can understand it.
That our friend David appears incapable of pulling off something so simple as an accurate paraphrasing is, I offer, not indicative of any kind of gender problem, but rather points to intellectual laziness and a substandard education.
I blame his teachers.
Of course, there’s another possibility — this being that David read the post at Pandagon or some other such site where my actual argument was misrepresented, and simply bought into the characterization they were peddling. So rather than deal with what I actually wrote, he decided instead to erect a straw man and then burn it with the righteousness of his (secularly) holy fire.
Either way, quite lazy of him. And given that I don’t put much stock in conventional signals of “masculinity” and “femininity” as determinative of what makes someone a “real” man or a “real” woman, I find his post — which places me, quite curiously, in another camp — really rather embarrassing.
For him, I mean.
****
update: Ric Caric, Morehead’s Professor of Comparative Racial Epistemologies and Women’s Studies (who happens also to be a frumpy old white dude), has weighed in on my post poking fun at Neiwert’s argument (which, as I pointed out at the time, mirrored Caric’s own — as well as similar arguments made by Jim Henley, Glenn Greenwald, et al.).
Dr Caric’s considered “review”: “Labored, tedious, inaccurate, barely coherent, and even worse–boring.”
To which I respond thus:
That’s one of your big rhetorical tricks, isn’t it, professor? Call everything that you don’t agree with “labored†and “boring†and “tedious” and “barely coherentâ€Â.
Tell me, was Dave in Austin one of your students?
Your offhanded dismissiveness, though, doesn’t fool me: not only is it terribly mannered, but it’s the kind of predictable affectation that I’ve met a thousand times before from phony intellectuals like you, academics who survive by railing against a status quo that they themselves have come to represent.
Which is to say, your rhetorical defenses are as unoriginal as just about every thesis you’ve tried to pass off in the blogosphere as an original thought.
Thing is, you don’t get to grade me, Doc. So save the posturing and work instead on embracing your ubiquitous question begging, and maybe on expanding your repertoire to include arguments that rise above the level of festooned assertion.
As an aside, I should think it was obvious that the convolution (the “barely coherent†bit), with respect to pinning down Neiwert’s argument (it was his, wasn’t it? Or do you guys borrow from each liberally?), was quite intentional, and done both humorously and to make a point  namely, that the contortions such arguments require are risible, particularly when it is easier to just get right to the nut: “masculine†is what you and Neiwert and people who offer several thousand word treatises on the subject say it is; just as “racism†is what you and Neiwert say it is.
Miraculously, it always happens that it’s the “conservatives†who are engaging in faux-masculinity, and the “conservatives” who are working hard to beard their racism. Why, it’s almost like one can find a pattern, were one to squint just so!
Nothing labored about that, however, right?  though I’ll grant you, it certainly is tedious watching people of your anti-intellectual ilk trying to pawn such deceptively embroidered nonsense off as a reputable bit of academic consideration.
Jeff, stop being such a pussy. Crush a beer can on your forehead or something. Show them what true conservatism looks like.
If David was “raised to believe” how to interpret discussions of masculinity, then he was raised by pussies, weird ones. Just sayin’…
“I happen to drive a “gay†car. A green VW New Beetle Convertible.”
The new VW Beetle isn’t gay, so much as a desperate attention-whoremobile, a great big pastel sail that says “hey world, I’m not clever enough to come up with real irony, so I drive this funny looking contraption instead with a serious look on my face. Yes, I actually depend upon this thing for transportation.†Doubly so when you can take the top down and pretend that your car is a hot convertible, like riding a Vespa to Sturgis.
He admittedly states, more or less, that he deliberately bought the car to make a statement, and thinks we’re all fooled by the “I’m sooooo virile I can drive this and still bang broads†undercurrent.
REAL MEN DON’T TALK ABOUT MASCULINITY
HEY, THIS IS HOW I DEFINE MASCULINITY
DEFINING IT AS SUCH MAKES ME MASCULINE
BUT I DON’T TALK ABOUT IT, LIKE THOSE SOPHMORIC (i usde a BIG wurd, lol, b/c i m smrat) NEOCONS!!!!1
Seriously, methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Am I quoting, or stating an evaluation of their masculinity? If they have to ask, they’ll never understand.
btw: CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
yes, but do you eat quiche? I mean I thought that was the gold standard.
Let’s see. Jeff obviously hit the page. I went there. As of this moment, there are 5 comments in this thread.
I was never that good at math. What percent increase over zero readers per month does that give this guy?
It’s like he swung at a pitch, missed and fell over.
In a batting cage.
“It’s like he swung at a pitch, missed and fell over.
In a batting cage.”
Oh no, sports analogies – a definite sign of “anxious masculinity.”
Just like “unless you are man who touches other men’s penises, you must be gay.”
There really isn’t any part of that overlap which is “not gay,” because the only way to “prove” that you aren’t, is to actually do gay stuff.
And they find this irrefutable.
Actually, I’d forgotten to link to the original post, jeremy. Fixed it, though.
Probably doesn’t even know about your yeast infection.
He admittedly states, more or less, that he deliberately bought the car to make a statement…
I smell a clue, Shaggy:
Was that too oblique? I can’t tell.
Austin boy wants a car that’s in your face to those for whom “the thought of being gay is abhorrent to everything they stand for.” He’s a straight boy that fantasizes about being gay-bashed. “I happen to drive a ‘gay’ car.” Yeah, like a Lutheran who “happens” to wear a Star of David earring when he goes to German soccer matches.
But, but, but, driving a VW Beetle in Austin is how you blend in.
“yes, but do you eat quiche? I mean I thought that was the gold standard.”
– Not only do I eat it, but I slaver it with Wasabbi, and swill a good stout Irish ale to wash it down. If you can’t do raw Wasabbi without crying you need to turn in your Man-card, or at the very least hide your black strap heels in the back of the closet.
Yeah, but the tension between his extraordinary sensitivity to the depth of the passion of anti-gay Republicans and his self-labeled “gay car” is telling, if you ask me. Being gay in Austin is how you blend in.
Liberals and their rape fantasies, it never ends.
Evidently, the author doesn’t know that I am myself a proud stay at home dad  and that the only people who have ever attacked me for that are left-liberals looking to take a whack at my “masculinity.â€Â
I am glad you addressed this, I raised this in your original post – the lefts haranguing and mocking that you are a stay at home dad and wondered if nitwit Dave Neiwert had even bothered to research his lefty brothers and sisters evident hostility to such.
Doubly so when you can take the top down and pretend that your car is a hot convertible, like riding a Vespa to Sturgis.
that’s just funny.
I’m surprised how much bandwidth the Leftys have devoted to this hypermasculinity crisis, given their conncern that nothing be allowed to distract from the mess that is Iraq (TM).
They always seem to find it necessary to approach the topic half apologetically, as if they were almost forced against their will to address it, because it is such a raging obsession on the conservative blogosphere. The seem not to have noticed that it is generating post after post of oh-so-serious psychoanalyzing in their circles, upon which “the conservatives” over here occasionally gaze with mild bemusement.
*reads through the various screeds about masculinity and how JeffG isn’t or something like that*
There must be a handbook I forgot to read or something.
*scratches head*
Aldo:
There’s a slight narrative drift. It’s now the Mess Iraq Isn’t Despite the Bungling of the Evil BusHitler Brigade!
The Mess Iraq Isn’t Despite the Bungling of the Evil BusHitler Brigade! = TMIIDTBOTEBB
Needs more cowbell.
“There’s a slight narrative drift.”
– Yes…”drift”….something along the lines of Emiley Litella’s take on “Violins on television”…
“Iraq is a mess…..the war is lost…..we have to get out now or the entire planet is in danger of rocketing off into space….We- (psssssttttt…..ummmmmmm)…What?….(the sutge is working….)….What?…..(the surge….its orking)…….?…..
…Oh, thats different…..Nevermind…..”
I tried to follow reactionary leftist logic one time.
I screwed myself into the ground.
The lefties really buy into their sterotypes. As soon as they find out my husband is Vietnamese, they automatically assume I’m going to be sensitive about his perceived masculinity. I ought to be, seeing as how he actually does listen to Depeche Mode and Erasure, but it’s hard to work up enough concern, especially considering who the insults are coming from.
All this reminds me of that quote from John Lennon’s final interview: “I know you wanted a picture of me in an apron, but like any rich housewife I can afford a cook.”
I’d be a lot more impressed by his oh-so-non-conformist choice of a VW convertible if it was triple-white.
“I tried to follow reactionary leftist logic one time.
I screwed myself into the ground.”
Yeah, like we haven’t already figured that it is simply the exact opposite of the true and sane.
Masculine is really feminine . . .
Straight is really gay . . .
America is evil, the Soviet is good and pure . . .
Wealth is bad, and the recklessly poor are virtuous . . .
Punish success, reward failure . . .
Not very different from the way that they only like strange, obtuse, commercially unviable music – and hate anything the slightest bit popular.
Just turn everything on its head, and make a profound face when you do.
Jeff, maybe you need to lose all your hair and develop a fearsome beer gut…maybe lose a couple front teeth? Then, maybe you would start to fit into the crude stereotyping going on here.
What is it with you and all these third rate, long distance psychoanalysis types? They scurry at you like raccoons toward a tipped over dumpster.
Fruit.
I’m a Lumberjack and I’m OK!
He defines himself by his car? How lame is that.
I hear TNR has a new piece by Scott Thomas Beauchamp describing how, while home on leave, he and his buddies were eating at a Burger King, and Beauchamp questioned the masculinity of a male customer who drove up in a Volkswagen convertible.
“What is it with you and all these third rate, long distance psychoanalysis types? They scurry at you like raccoons toward a tipped over dumpster.”
Actually, MJ, I believe it’s more like pests buzzing around a BugZapper. Mostly their singed carcasses drop lifelessly, but occasionally one with a large ego-span gets caught up and they just hang there sizzling and smoking for awhile.
Watching the spectacle is questionable entertainment, but entertaining none the less.
I love the sound they make when they get stuck.
“People who talk about masculinity  especially conservatives, who seem to obsess about it…”
I wish one of these guys would link to some of these wingers obsessing about it, because as far as I knew this douche and Caric were the only ones obsessing about it.
“He defines himself by his car? How lame is that.”
Dude, I have a 89 LeBaron Convertible hoopty that is the absolute essence of B Moe.
I drive a Subaru, and I’m not a lesbian.
But I do love me a good woman.
And comfortable shoes.
Major John – I believe “tipped over dumpster” is code for something in Austin.
BUGGEROPHOBIC!!!
jkrank–
Footwear is the only part of my wardrobe I spend good money on. Maybe because I’m a Wisconsinite transplanted to Vermont.
And given that I don’t put much stock in conventional signals of “masculinity†and “femininity†as determinative of what makes someone a “real†man or a “real†woman….
You don’t like hooters, boy? What are you, some kinda homo?
No, Patrick, but it offers a valuable clue why here in Dallas Austin is better known as Berkley on the Brazos.
It seems like it is mostly Glenn Greenwald and the members of his personality cult who take this stuff very, very seriously. In fact, just last week Greenwald linked his Salon hive up to this post on the Dr. Helen column, which is what started them buzzing about it again.
Comment by lee on 8/22 @ 6:31 pm #
I do believe your metaphor is better than mine. I feel emasculated…
Patrick – please, DO NOT decode that for me!
Hey, I had a 2001 New Beetle (before it got totalled). Say what you will, that thing had a GREAT engine. When I got the insurance check, I got an ’01 Passat, just so I could have the same engine. (It was the 4-cyl turbo).
The discussion about driving a VW Beetle reminds me of a joke I saw in a magazine the other day:
Q: What is the hardest thing about learning to rollerblade?
A: Breaking the news to your parents that you’re gay.
MJ,
WILCO.
I’m pretty sure that you have to put your trash out on the curb for pick-up in Austin. They’re a little too effiminate for the dumpster thing.
Of course we conservatives mock the shit out of stay at home dads and call them queer and everything. Just look at the way we rejected that Lileks character. And that Goldstine dude who used to blog at Dan Collins’es site…
“Thing is, you don’t get to grade me, Doc. So save the posturing and work instead on embracing your ubiquitously question begging, and maybe on expanding your repertoire to including arguments that rise above the level of festooned assertion.”
That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back Jeff!
Wanna see my scar?
“…why here in Dallas, Austin is better known as Berkley on the Brazos.”
Actually, it’s Berkley on the Colorado. The Brazos runs through Waco. Sorry to be so pedantic.
But that spoils the alliteration!
I’m such a bastard.
I love Austin. It’s ok if it’s liberal. It’s kind of good to have em all in one place really.
I’m stealing “festooned assertion”, by the way.
=^D
happyfeet,
A moonbat reservation?
Am I the only that thinks Ric Caric sounds like Mrs. Drysdale?
Only difference is that most of us would do Mrs. Drysdale, in a pinch.
A moonbat reservation?
No. A hunting preserve.
” A hunting preserve. ”
Sorry, it’s a Zoo.
Trust me, I got very bad vibs when I tried to get a hunt’n licence.
Somebody’s got to thin the herd a little. Without some population control they will soon reach the Kilkenny provisioning stage.
Back on topic:
I don’t really understand how someone can even define masculinity by what one does. It’s what one is that defines masculinity. I have never even thought about my own masculinity until these wierd discussions started up courtesy of the Greenwad. I decided, after considering my love of ballet and cooking, that I won’t bother worrying about it. I will do what I do. I will like what I like. Anyone who doubts my masculinity over it can go fuck themselves. Is that masculine enough for you?
Austin’s unofficial slogan is “Keep Austin Weird“…
Runaway italics!
Hey RIP…
Since we’re being pedantic, it’s “Berkeley”, not Berkly or Berkley or whatever. Great place, actually, if you can afford to live there.
I used to have a festooned assertion, but it died from italics-poisoning.
BTW, “Festooned Assertions” would be a GREAT name for a blog!
There ain’t no way that a VW Bug is a masculine car! I mean, where would you put your harp case if you were going to go jam somewhere?
Jeff, I was thinking about how the reactionary left reacts to your pieces, and the image that came to mind is a shaman reading from the Necronomicon by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation, and the incantations not working.
Or the incantations working, but you turn out to be a demon who doesn’t believe in pentagrams.
Ah, hell. It’s run-away italics like this that bankrupted that site in Australia.
Italics are so gay.
“…And I’m telling you, its just not right, just not right…..exposing people to these “Festooned insertions .You mark my words…a society can’t survive when the common talk gets down to the gutter level of phrases like “Festooned Insertions and just who do these people think they are, running around festooning insertions anyway…..Why the planet will rocket off into space if we don’t clean up….(ppppssssssttt Emiley….its “Festooned Assertionsâ€Â)…..What?….(“Festooned Assertions .“Assertions, not Insertions….Assertions ..Oh…
– Well thats different……Nevermind…..
– Wonder if Caric blushed when he read that passage……
Mishu – Isn’t pointing out that something is teh gay quite gay itself? Or is it not pointing it out that is teh gay?
….So then what happens if you add italics tags to lines that are already italic’d…..Does tha text bend waaaaaayyyy over, because that would definately look teh ghey…. especially if it happened during a soap-on-a-rope commercial…..
Instalanche! Wooooooooooooo!
I had a ’68 Bug, one tough little car. No one ever accused me of being gay, but they probably thought I was a hippie.
Now a Real Man(tm) could ride a Vespa to Sturgis, but I understand the current gold standard is whether you’re tough enough to wear pink [man that is one gay-lookin’ cowboy though].
I’m with mishu on this. Closing your HTML tags is definately teh gay.
Now here’s a Vespa I’d ride to Sturgis..
The VW convertible isn’t gay–it’s hopelessly precious, a rolling nostalgia OD. Twee-W is more like it.
Drive a Buick–they’re just there.
So if I have it right, because I’m conservative, I’m teh ghey AND a racist. So having an African fiancee is really a double beard, masking my gheyness and rascism. Wow, I’ll have to tell her, she’s going to be surprised.
BTW being masculine means not giving a shit about what other people think. You do what you want to do, and damn thm all. Obsessing about what others think of you is so teh ghey.
or did that sound teh ghey too?
BTW, I once lived in Sturgis. They’re so tough the local dentist’s name is Payne. [Seriously]
Morehead State has a Professor of Comparative Racial Epistemologies and Women’s Studies!! Wow! Any left-winger must find living and teaching in Morehead a special challenge. Living less than an hour from Morehead, I go there a half dozen or more times a year. Son’s band activities and football games, daughter’s basketball team, etc.
Caric probably encounters more ultra masculine good ole boy types than he can stand. Personally, I love the rural areas of Kentucky and the straight forward manner and friendliness of its people. But I ain’t no left-winger with a threatened masculinity.
Okay, I didn’t live in Sturgis, I lived out at Ft. Meade, the Veteran’s Mental Hospital. You didn’t have to be crazy to work there..
Hey, happyfeet, I don’t know if loons in Boulder stole that from the wackos in Austin or vice versa, but that’s eerily similar to Boulder’s motto: http://www.keepboulderweird.org/
Sorry, I have no HTML-fu.
The guys at the Udder College (NDSU) made a lot of jokes about Morehead. Of course, we at UND were above all that so I don’t know any..
Oh, and I’m with mishu & DaveS on this, fully italicized blogs are teh gay.
Hmmm…maybe Jeff’s making some sort of meta-point about…uh, actually, I get lost when he starts getting meta.
It’s bad to pick a fight with anyone from up that way though. How can we not root for Morehead?
[Rimshot! Thud. Sound of body being dragged off stage.]
“Comment by Swen Swenson on 8/23 @ 6:42 am #
BTW, I once lived in Sturgis. They’re so tough the local dentist’s name is Payne. [Seriously]”
Mheh!
My family doctor is named Bleeden..
Seriously.
There is one lesson I’ve learned, however.
Never hire and electrician who’s nickname is “Sparky”.
– So then is it safe to say that a Pink Man-card would be considered closet ghey?
Mmmmmmm, quiche. Thanks for the dinner idea!
And who left the italics tag open? Is someone trying to be swishy?
I enjoy being a boy!
ALL electricians’ nicknames are “Sparky.” Or “Wirenut.”
I had a dentist named Pullen. He had a son who was also a dentist, that shared office space with him. Pullen&Pullen, Dentists.
My brother’s urologist was Dr. Blank, which is just the all-time best name for a guy who performs vasectomies.
I’d never given much thought to the possibility of cars being gay until I caught my Nisan making it with a Subaru…then I realized they were lesbians and decided to be OK with it. BTW – I blame Bush.
Wouldn’t it then be a purloined festooned assertion?
My urologist is Dr. Tsang, which is pronounced twong.
Believe it or not.
Bah! If you were a real man, you’d wear a dress.
What continues to kill me, is why do people like Caric and other leftists have to lie about what their political opponents say and what their political opponents’ arguments are?
If they were so sure that they are right on the merits, they would not need to resort to lying about our arguments and statements. I can’t believe it is because they are all too stupid to read simply arguments, thus it has to be done purposefully.
So, that must mean that they realize that our arguments are better, otherwise why do it at all? And, if they realize our arguemnts are stronger, more rational and more persuasive, why do they continue to cling to their positions?
I mean, does someone like Caric, whose very career is something of a joke based on what he teaches and writes about – after all it is not a real science, nor is it any more than post-modern posturing – really believe that he is smarter, better read, or that he writes better than those of us who are just as or more educated, who actually work in real intellectual fields? Does he really believe that his snide statements claiming the arguments are without merit actually accomplish anyone or convince anyone (aside from perhaps his 18 year old students who still swallow the tripe he serves them)?
It must be shattering to their own personas and world-views that they cannot compete in rational argument but must resort to lies and name calling.
I just don’t understand these people. When I am confronted by better arguments about something, I tend to change my mind. I don’t cover my ears and act like a child to preserve some sense of intellectual superiority. Why is it that those on the left are unable to do the same?
“…particularly when it is easier to just get right to the nut: “masculine†is what you and Neiwert and people who offer several thousand word treatises on the subject say it is; just as “racism†is what you and Neiwert say it is.”
Lovely, that’s it. And I point I was hoping would get some more sunlight. What makes people think they have the right redefine words to suit their purposes? If we can’t agree on definitions of words from a common dictionary, how do we communicate?
When I was a child I had to go to an allergist to be desensitized to bee, yellowjacket and wasp venom. I couldn’t have been older than eight when I first started going, and it was three shots every week. As you can imagine, this wasn’t very much fun. The guy’s name, I shit you not, was Dr. Slaughter. Scared the shit out me.
-Ann Coulter
I knew a girl in college named, fairly appropriately (but: relax; figuratively) Karen Kill. She had a brother that was a doctor. Hopefully, not a surgeon.
Or, we could turn it around, and say their techniques of suppressing the viewpoints of those they disagree with are inherited from those of Mao Zedong, only stripped of that pesky tendency to render tens of millions of people quite dead.
Oh no, he refuses to be defined by his car, even as he uses it to define every other person driving one.
Which is such a perfect reduction of his entire mindset it is almost as if he were just one big fractal.
– Tell you what Ann. I’ll embrace the Leftards cultist religion of Theism the day I see one moonbat rise from the dead.
Must somebody say it? It is pretty much not very manly to be giddy with excitement about a VW Beetle Convertible.
What’s the gayest thing you do? I trim my eyebrows when they get too wild, for example.
Actually, a little latent homosexuality doesn’t bother me–so long as it stays latent.
I trim my eyebrows, otherwise I start getting a monobrown. I also had a facial and a pedicure, because I lost a bet. I did not die while doing so, which made me feel like I was teh gay.
I trim my eyebrows, otherwise I start getting a monobrow. I also had a facial and a pedicure, because I lost a bet. I did not die while doing so, which made me feel like I was teh gay.
Has it occurred to anyone, particularly the male “anxious masculine†qua overcompensation gang that it is most likely they themselves that feel like they are posturing when they do typically male things?
I mean, maybe it is a “put on†FOR them much more than TO them . . . As in, “gee golly, I sure don’t like to play football, and all this running and collisions and pushing doesn’t feel very natural to me,†and I am male, ergo, Shawne Merriman is “faking it†too, instead of being a stone cold killer on the gridiron.
Alec – Projection is one of their better qualities.
RE Caric’s criticism of Jeff’s post:
Ala Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if…”
“You might be an English professor if…”
[BTW, I claim absolute moral authority, because I am one]
You might be an English Department professor if…
If you think Marx was reasonableâ€â€
If your last article was on the literary value of a grocery listâ€â€
If you believe Moby Dick isn’t worth readingâ€â€
But that the “Porky’s†movies are culturally revealingâ€â€
If your course content is yourselfâ€â€
If you demean liberal education because it is “elitistâ€Ââ€â€
If you can look in the mirror and say any of these without cracking up:
–visual rhetoric
–cultural studies
–technological literacy
–gender studies
–queer studies
–“I am a specialist in post-Imperialist Jamaican Feminist and Transgendered
Literature.†If that doesn’t crack you up, then add any one of these to the above statement: “and yes, I am qualified to teach survey courses to your undergraduate English Majorsâ€Â
Or “My research and writing have direct connections to my teaching.â€Â
Or “and my studies have serious social value.â€Â
Or “My articles (and/or book) are read by many people.â€Â
If your last royalty check and $4 could buy you a frapaccinoâ€â€
If your superpower is the ability to make students hate great literatureâ€â€
If you think that Sylvia Plath is anything other than just sadâ€â€
If you hate, and I mean really hate, Ted Hughes but can’t name one of his poemsâ€â€
If you think hate speech codes protect students’ rightsâ€â€
If you can defend Wade Churchill on any groundsâ€â€
If you claim to be a male feminist, but have slept with and/or married your student(s) and/or secretaryâ€â€
If you think the culture wars are over . . . and you wonâ€â€
If you think a rifle is the same as a shotgunâ€â€
If you quit shaving in protest when George W. Bush “stole†the presidencyâ€â€
You know, this whole thing has gotten way out of hand.
Masculine is feminine is masculine is feminine. Give me a fuckin’ break.
First off, a man who behaves like a man, and by that, I mean, acts responsibly (I won’t get into details because that is what this whole thing seems to have done), is a man.
A man who eschews his responsibilities is not a man. Simple. You have to be male to be a man, but being male doesn’t make you a man. Personal note here: I don’t think I really became a man until I was 31. That is when I owned up to the fact that I was addicted to alcohol and made up my mind to do something about it. It has nothing to do with how many children you sire or how many women you bed. It has everything to do with how you treat said women and children. In fact, a man who beds just one woman (repeatedly, and protects (i.e. marries) her) is far more of a man than any Wilt Chamberlain or Shawn Kemp. My dad, who married my mom in 1964 and has remained ever since, is a MAN. A man takes care of business.
J.G. appears to be in this category, as well. Myself, I’ve had some female companions, but I’ve not procreated yet; instead, I prefer to hold out for a woman I deem responsible enough to raise my children. Yeah, that’s right. What makes a woman is the same as that which makes a man: responsibility. At one time, I thought I’d found her, but circumstances proved otherwise: she aborted my child and I had nothing to do with her after that fact. You can go on with your stereotypes and all that, but the truth is, what makes a man and what makes a woman is something that we all instictively know. And anyone who denies these instincts is just denying human nature.
…and I like to wear pink shirts. I don’t give a rat’s ass what people think about that. And nobody has every commented on that. Nobody has ever told me it made me teh ghey.
…and you know what? Being called teh ghey, and responding by punching out that person’s teeth, is not a sign of insecurity. It’s being a MAN.
Uh, guilty.
But if it helps me out, my wife (a former English Dept assistant while a student) was a women’s studies major (along with English and Italian) — and if I’d been given the opportunity, I would have slept with women outside the department, too.
Another thing:
I don’t watch professional football. Does that make me less a man? No, it makes me a bitter, former Oilers fan who hates Bud Adams with ever fiber of his being.
I love sports, though, especially basketball and auto racing. Not that foo-foo F1, either. Good, old IndyCar racing.
And I have various other pursuits that are considered manly, like hunting, hiking, and playing heavy metal guitar in front of huge-breasted women. None of this is bragging. It’s just that I do these things. Not because I think, “hey, this is a manly thing to do in order to detract from my ultimate gayness,” but because it’s COOL. The first thought I gave to any of this is when I typed it.
Hmmm…methinks that wide receiver who just had his brain geletanized inside his skull, really doesn’t consider whether or not Shawn is a man. He probably wonders where the freight train came from.
I, also, trim my eyebrows to avoid the monobrow. Nothing more disturbing than looking like Bert. But I’m even more vain than you are; I’m blonde, and nobody would notice the hairs I’m trimming anyway. But I still feel brutish and foul if I don’t do it.
Trimming “other” areas? I won’t do that. Did it once, too damn itchy. And yeah, I felt ghey until it grew back.
And you know what? I LIKE the New Beetle. It’s a cute little car, and yeah, I like little cars (I drive a ZX2). But then, I’m a little guy, and they just fit. But I like the New Beetle the same way I like, say, Sesame Street. I’ll watch it, but I won’t be involved in it. And yet, my girlfriend drives a candy-apple red Beetle, and there’s always this conversation when we go to the grocery store…
“Hey, I’ll drive!”
“Um, no babe, let me take you there.”
Real names I’ve encountered over the years:
Gayle Force
Justin Case
Candy Caine
It’s quite amusing when you run across one of those.
“Real names I’ve encountered over the years:
Gayle Force
Justin Case
Candy Caine”
Try “Hardy Bang,” now, “Dr. Hardy Bang”
I think the point of my above, most lengthy, post, is this:
When you have to define masculinity, you’ve automatically showed that you don’t have it.
Like the Spirit of AggieLand: Those who have been there cannot explain it, and those who haven’t, can not understand it.
Heh. I knew a guy in college named Richard O’Shea. (Ricochet).
He was a lousy shot, too.
Tell you what Ann. I’ll embrace the Leftards cultist religion of Theism the day I see one moonbat rise from the dead.
Does Al Gore count?
I pluck errant mustache whiskers.
But with dirty tweezers!
I worked with a guy whose sadistic parents named him Harold. His last name was Beaver.
I cannot fathom why parents do that to their children. I am fairly sure that the double entendre represented by his name was already in use in the early 1960’s, when he was born.
A guy I used to know belonged to a marketing association for small liquor stores. The guy in charge of the marketing association was named Richard Likker.
You’d think he’d tell people to call him Rick, or Rich, or Richard, or something. Apparently not.
I’m not much into labels–for me of for anybody else. so I don’t really know if I am “manly” or “conservative” or what.
But I do know that we (wife and I) agreed that we were going to raise our children, so when the first was nigh, she quit her day job because she feels strongly that there _is_ “women’s” work.
It happens that I was working shift work a lot, so I was home during the day a lot.
The only time I remember being questioned about my “manlyness” was when I showed up at a PTA “thankyou” luncheon (to which I had been invited because of my participation in class-room and field-trip stuff) where the bouncer pointed out that this was a PTA thing…..
The shift-work thing got really good when “they” decided we should work 3-day 37 1/2-hour weeks (which for us shift chief types was sweet — 12 1/2 hour days three days a week instead of 7 days a week).
[…] a follow-up post to the one Long Haired Weirdo links: […] what is clear is that the author of this piece, David […]
Dismissals are all the Left has in its quiver these days. Strip them of their dismissals and they have nothing but ad hominems and puerile insults…which is exactly how we want the politically engaged public to remember them.
Verbum sat sapienti.
Sad Attempts at (Insider) Humor Rectified (With Your Aid)…
A comment on a thread about (this-is-not-a-theme) another The Narrative hits close to home. Its author, the self-styled Cowboy, claims absolute moral authority, because he’s an English professor. I have my doubts, as might you after you read his riff…
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