Gillette | Toxic masculinity advert.

ThomasFlynn wrote: »

We're living in a world where we're encouraging men to become more like women, and encouraging women to become more like men.

Put another way though - on a few threads in the past, especially on the Ladies Lounge forum and Gentlemans Club forum - I have asked people what they think a "real man" or a "real woman" actually is. Or how they would define words like "gentleman". Or what do they actually mean with phrases like "man up" and so on.

What I have noticed is that every answer - every time - are attributes you would want more of in _any_ person. Gender irrelevant.

So perhaps we are not actually "encouraging men to become more like women, and encouraging women to become more like men" so much as we are often attempting to stop imagining divisions between the two that are not even there - or creating some that for no reason at all we think should be there.

One painfully obvious example of this is in the threads where gay adoption or gay parenting comes up. And you get the usual types lining up to tell you a child has a "right" or "deserves" or "needs" this "ideal" of one male parent and one female parent. But none of them can actually explain why. Because there is no reason why. And no one has to pretend "men" as a whole" and "women" as a whole are identical when they are not - to notice this.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I just don't feel responsible for other men.

Not to direct my reply specifically to you - your post is just a useful spring board. But I agree - nor do I for the most part. At least not specifically men.

As a society I think we all have _some_ responsibility to hold some awareness to the actions and well being of others. Gender independent though. My being a man does not make me feel I have a particular responsibility to police other men specifically. I am happy to accept some level of it for other people in general however.

But even then I do not object that much to some of the core message of the Ad. But the thing about the ad for me is it genders some issues that do not need to be gendered - and in other places makes things into issues that are not even issues.

An example of the former - the ad opens showing two kinds of bullying. A small group running down a smaller kid - and online name calling and abuse. Bullying happens between all kids of all genders. The people who should step into stop it should be too.

An example of the latter - it goes on to show one guy stopping another guys from following a woman down the road. Like most others on the thread who discussed that particular scene - I do not see anything wrong with that at all. And if someone tried to stop me physically from simply walking down the road I would instantly switch into the mode of treating it as a self defence situation.

I see nothing specifically wrong with the "I think what she is trying to say is" situation either. This is something we should all do when it makes sense. Important however is always go back and ask the paraphrased person if the paraphrasing person got it right. "Steel Manning" the position of another in conversation is a good thing.

The "smile sweety" scene was at least not too off the mark but again we can de-gender it. Approaching people is fine as I said but I have seen way too many situations where I wish someone had - and I direct this at myself too - vocalized at the time how poor an approach it was when it was out of line.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Do you mean the bit in the ad where the man steps in to help the boy being chased by a group? That stood out as a noble thing to do.

Was it though In a fun attempt to derail the discussion of gender on the thread I think I will have fun being divisive over a completely non-gender related issue as a devils advocate - just to mix it up a little

That parent moved to intervene in a group of bullies by pulling their own child at speed across a road - without seemingly checking traffic and physically pushing innocent bystanders out of the way potentially into said traffic while at it - all to drag their small child into what was a potentially dangerous and violent situation that could have turned on them badly.

Does not strike me as the best parenting move I have ever watched. Any number of ways emulating that scene in real life could get you - or your innocent little one who did not ask to be dragged over to it - hurt or even killed.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

the reaction was that stoicism forced men to suffer in silence and not speak about their concerns

Zorya wrote: »

Am not sure stoicism is a good word to connect with masculinity; it has implications of fatalism, bowing the head, suffering in silence, resignation to a fate.

I have not studied stoicism very much but enough to wonder where the use of the word got associated with the idea of essentially suffering in silence.

When I was reading Montaigne's work for example which refers back to the stoics a lot and led me to look at Seneca a lot too - I got a much different impression of it's content.

Rather the understanding of it that I have formed can well be represented in a quote I read in that work of "He who knows how to suffer suffers less". I think it was Montaigne who then wrote "He who fears he shall suffer already suffers that fear".

So for me stoicism is a lot about our approach to suffering - and how the narratives we parse that suffering through are actually a greater source of the suffering than the suffering itself. And quite often a lot of our suffering can be alleviated by accepting the things that are out of our control and learning to focus on the things that are.

Seneca for example taught that one way to deal with the pain of grief around death - rather than suffering in silence - was to stop yourself and others being silent and to invite people to share openly the memories they had of the departed. Seneca is said to have told a grieving mother for example to “invite talk in which his actions may be re-told and hold open your ears to the name and memories of your son”.

In fact when I looked at the wiki article on stoicism right now the only mention of the word silence I could find was an acknowledgement that lay men describe stoicism as "suffering in silence".

Zorya wrote: »

There is time for stoicism and there is time for kicking arse.

I think my understanding of stoicism informs me that one can - and maybe even should - do a lot of both at the same time And in fact one can make you more effective at the other.