this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2024
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was discussing this with a friend of mine (she's an anarchist but she actually organizes and shit). she was saying there can be no such thing as revolutionary masculinity because the two things are contradictory. but i'm a marxist so contradictions really butter my bread.

i think in a utopian, communist world gender identity would be completely different, to the point where it might not even be legible to us today, but my question is more about how we get from here to there. basically, can we men find a way to not be shitheads in such a way as to bring about communism, or does that not even make sense

feel free to dunk on me if this is a dumb question

Death to America

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The closest thing is literally just Dudes Rock, I think that's approaching the absolute peak of this

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

feels important to note how ironic it all is though, same as those "the masculine urge to..." jokes

Feels like people are aware on some level that a lot of these social gender norms are more arbitrary than we pretend and irony becomes useful for sort of letting the air out of the balloon. Dropping behaviors and expectations you've been conditioned to think are the bedrock of social interaction is no easy feat, it's like untangling a line of Xmas lights that are as long as your own life

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Ah shit, half my sky is falling down

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think there are values such as courage, bravery and hard-workingness (or whatever you call it) which are positive and in a revolutionary situation would come in handy. I read "How the steel was tempered" and Pavel was kinda like this

Dunno how I feel about saying that's "masculinity" though since women can have these attributes too

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

revolutionary masculinity is when you frot with another dude

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

The way I see it, a more utopian communist organization of society transcends the individual too much for this. Maybe revolutionaries should have only one gender: comrade

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Destroying your enemies, seeing them driven before you l, and hearing the lamentations of their non binary pals.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Revolutionary defeatism I guess

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah, it's a bit of an oxymoron. Masculinity just has so many connotations that I don't really see us escaping. Masculinity is also sorta the status quo, exemplifying many of the characteristics we don't want. If it was a gay thing though, that might make sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

can we men find a way to not be shitheads in such a way as to bring about communism

Dunno. There are certainly ways men can be better, by reaching a fuller understanding of "traditional" gender roles (which can be largely understood as superstructure for economic relations between men and women rather). There's bad stuff in there that you and I are doing unknowingly. But men being better is not the same thing as being better men: if we take our blueprint of what not to do from what masculinity currently is, we are pointing in a new direction.

It has been the case that men have changed what it means to be a man within the bounds of masculinity. Dworkin gives an example: for a long time going to war made you manly. Then men refused the Vietnam draft, and suddenly that refusal no longer meant cowardice: instead it was a bold statement of your masculine individual power against the system, your individual moral clarity and strength, blah blah. But it was integrated within the existing ideological framework of male supremacy where we claim transcendence (courage, self-knowledge, achievement, ambition, what you do) and relegate women to immanence (passivity, beauty, what you are).

I suppose that if men get "better" the meaning of masculinity may improve, but I think that "revolutionary masculinity" is going to be subsumed into ordinary cultural masculinity and end up reinforcing it. For instance, if a revolutionary man loves the people, that will be incorporated as meaning that a man is capable of self-sacrifice and transcendent love in the old chivalric way, relegating women's love to passivity. I do not know how we can do these things without reifying the Subject/Other division. Perhaps by aspiring to neuter revolutionary ideals, not revolutionary masculinity, with vigilance that the two don't merge. That would need visibility of women who are revolutionaries and whose traditionally-feminine qualities are meaningful parts of that, not just upholding male supremacy values and showing off "mannish" women who are revolutionaries.

So I guess revolutionary masculinity is probably not possible. I suppose that if women achieve real economic liberation from men, the superstructure will no longer need to justify their oppression and we will have an easier time rescuing gender identities from what they are now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Worship of "masculinity" is part of fascist and other reactionary ideology and is often used to promote anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

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