Who knew that deep down, Men Going Their Own Way were really secret romantics?
In the midst of a tirade against the “childish, immature, cruel and narcissist[ic]” women of today, one Redditor Going His Own Way posits that it is men, not women, who are the truly romantic ones.
In a post on the MGTOW subreddit, FloydMayweatherGOAT declares
Men have superior intellect, Men work harder,Men are stronger, Men are more moral and kind, Men are more romantic,
As for the ladies:
Women only have wet holes to offer and that isnt even that grand.
Huh. That doesn’t really sound very, well, romantic.
They’re all just illusions , take away the make up, perfume, done up hair and fancy clothes and ask yourself what is she really offering me? Women are worthless in my opinion … I will ignore every Woman and view her as beneath me from this day forth. Men stop being intimidated by Women, You are better than Women in Every Single way. Destroy the illusion.
Not sure any of this is really helping your “men are more romantic” argument, dude, but I am definitely in favor of your plan to personally ignore all women from this day forth. Perhaps while sitting in a hut on one of these lovely islands?
Go forth, young MGTOW, and go your own damn way already!
In the meantime, I have made some more lovely greeting cards inspired by FloydMayweatherGOAT’s romantic philosophy.
@Valkyrine
It made sense to me. 🙂
Haven’t bothered to read the Downs article, but from the comments about it I gather that it’s (at least in part) one of those articles that go “Oh we can’t say that historical figures that have slept with the same sex are gay! They were influenced by culture at the time, and the culture then involved… blah blah blah… ‘Gay’ people only really appeared in the last hundred years or so, blah blah blah” stuff?
I find it interesting how I never encounter any articles that argue that we can’t identify prominent historical figures as straight or heterosexual. I mean, historically (wealthy) people married and had sex as a political tool, or to make heirs, or in the case of the less wealthy people, to get more hands to work. Who can say who those people might have chosen as a partner without this requirement? Maybe many historical figures were actually attracted to the same gender or all genders. Who can say?
And yet there are no arguments that I can find about how we can’t consider, say, King Henry XIII to be “straight”, as we know the term, because he came from a different time.
Funny how that is.
The act that brought them about is despicable, but Jeffersonjackson’s confession and remorse seem genuine to me. What possible inducement does someone posting in /r/MGTOW have for voicing his guilt over sexual assault? The best possible outcome for him among his fellow MGTOWs is indifference, with hostility being much more likely.
Also, everyone has the right to deal with wrongdoing and forgiveness in their own ways, but I personally am deeply uncomfortable with the idea that engagement of legal consequences is a sign of true repentance. Going through the system doesn’t absolve someone of the moral implications of their crime, why should the reverse be true?
“They’re all just illusions , take away the make up, perfume, done up hair and fancy clothes…”
This is hilarious, because I’m a self-confessed fragrance/perfume nut, and at least half the frag-tragics I know are guys. There’s nothing gender-specific about smelling nice, dude. You should try it sometime.
Catalpa:
In my opinion, any article that attempts to discuss the identity or orientation of a pre-modern figure in modern Western terminology is garbage. If that’s the topic of your article, there’s always room for a more nuanced description than just “gay” or “straight” or whatever.
That said, it’s much more complicated in the historiography. The fifties through the seventies saw a raft of scholarly articles arguing that any insufficiently promiscuous individual (almost always male) from the past was actually “gay.” That’s how we get the myth that Richard the Lionheart was gay because he performed a bed-sharing ritual with Philip Augustus, confessed twice to “grave sins” which could have been sodomy, was reluctant to marry his father’s concubine, and failed to have any children with the teenage girl he did marry in his mid-thirties. We know he coerced several women into sex, siring a bastard with one, but there’s a possibility that he had sex with a man, so he’s clearly gay. It’s the same with the ancient Greeks and Romans, part of a mid-century obsession with pathologizing non-heterosexual behavior — even though, when we have the evidence to say anything, it appears perfectly “straight” individuals are as much the exception as the rule in most historical cultures.
Of course, the general public is always playing a game of telephone with the academy, and the many well-meaning historians and anthropologists who’ve explained that sexuality wasn’t always performative like it (largely) is now and it’s not accurate to say that a man was gay because he had sex with men or straight because he had sex with women because he (and his society) wouldn’t have seen the distinction as more meaningful than (or even equally meaningful to) his gender, his cultural practices, or his social status get their words boiled down into “‘Gay’ didn’t exist as a concept in history (but ‘straight’ obviously did).” It happens with virtually every scholarly position, tragically, but I imagine the desire of many to erase LGBT people and practices from the histories of their shared cultures exacerbates it in this instance.
All of this is to say that the article is garbage and, some academics aside, you’re mostly right.
@Catalpa / Ben:
The article in question isn’t about historical figures – it’s just that Downs’ rhetoric is almost equivalent to anti-LGBT claims that the idea of a particular person’s homosexual identity doesn’t exist because it doesn’t match some stereotype. For the antis, it’s usually (as we know, not trying to preach to the choir here) the most negative image they can conjure; for Downs, it’s 1970’s NY/SF culture as he defines it, which is largely white/male dominated.
The New Protesters Defying Donald Trump: His Customers
That is, the people who used to be his customers.
Happyface! 🙂
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/politics/donald-trump-brand-reaction.html?_r=0
Yeah, it’s funny, guys….
Former Apprentice staffer: Gary Busey groped me ‘between my legs’ — and Trump stood by and laughed
Uhhg. I need a shower after slogging through that sewage of a sub-reddit. They’re all so…disconnected from reality. They really believe that THEY are the moral last bastion for western society. :/
@Kat
Well you just brought a great big smile to my day. Have a doggypack.
http://i.imgur.com/DyFj2Vj.jpg
Even the cat is happy to hear the protesters displaying their humanity.
http://i.imgur.com/HiMOezl.jpg
Just leaving a few furballs out to dry.
I agree 100%. Among academic historians (that I am familiar with) it’s considered discrediting to do this. We do apply the principle equally.
Although public discourse is all too often different and it’s that which has immediate and often harmful effects on the life of those living in our present society.
@SpleenyBadger – “They’re all just illusions”, and yet there’s a whole PUA movement dedicated to teaching men how to adopt a fake persona in order to get laid.
I suppose women are an illusion if you dismiss their humanity, their accomplishments, their empathy, their skills, their dreams, their talents, their contributions, their thoughts, and 99% of their physical presence. Then of course there’s nothing left but a hole. It’s like saying a house is nothing but a sink drain, which is true only if you engage in some Simone Biles-level mental gymnastics and disregard the entire structure around it.
FloydGoatse is certainly working hard to persuade himself that men are demigods perched unattainably up there on the
pedestalmountaintop with a crown of stars and a noble wind stirring their tragic wheaten manes, while women are disturbingly gross horror-movie apertures at the bottom of the Marianas trench. I love how he thinks he’s uncovered some long-hidden truth, when MGTOW is basically just aversion therapy for assholes.To add to my last comment:
Of course, there are those of us who do what you criticized, Catalpa, so I’m not trying to say your impression is wrong. I just wanted to say, a lot of us – and basically everyone I worked with or learned from – are not, and we’re working to get rid of what remains of that double-think. There is pretty harsh judgement of historians who engage in what you described and it happens to be one of my pet peeves, too, when they do that.
@Littlelurker
I’m not terribly familiar with a lot of historical articles and whatnot, but the vast majority of articles I’ve come across which involve sexuality are of the “but times were different and sexuality (i.e. non-straight orientations) was not the same concept that we know of today, and there was much cultural background involving whatever non-standard (i.e non-PIV) sexual acts that were done” variety.
I’ve never once, not once, seen a disclaimer on heterosexuality or heterosexual acts, just on homo-/bi-/pan-/a- sexuality and acts thereof.
So even if it’s standard practice of “oh don’t speculate on the sexualities of historical figures”, this comes across as “Yep, so this guy had like a whole bunch of wives.” and “So this guy had several trysts with men but it’s important to not ascribe current attitudes to the sexuality of people in previous eras…”. i.e. heterosexuality is something normal and completely unremarkable and even if we don’t automatically assume this person is heterosexual, there’s no need for a disclaimer, while non-heterosexuality is WEIRD and needs a disclaimer.
But it’s entirely possible that I’ve just come across a few bad eggs of historical writings. I’d be more than happy to be proved wrong.
Can confirm – “we can’t interpret historical sexuality by modern standards” (the subtext being “hands off, you greedy queers – you’ll find no representation or precedent here”) is still all too common a narrative. Even beside the blatant straightwashing, the whole thing reeks of bad historiography. If we’re going to dismiss the possibility of understanding and empathising with past humans, what’s the point of studying history at all? If “this person loved like I love” or “this person fucked like I fuck” is too big a stretch to be sound scholarship, then what can we possibly claim as sound historical knowledge? ’cause love and sex are a hell of a lot more fundamental to human experience than, say, governance, or naval strategy.
This is one of the things that makes me glad I write historical fiction–I can, at the end of the day, come down wherever I darn well feel like it.
Work it harder,
Make it better,
Do it faster,
Makes us stronger,
More than ever,
Hour after hour
Work is
Never over.
Thinking about it, it is possible that the way society sees it, men are more capable of being romantic than women, but that’s only because of double standards. Like, if a man says he wants to get married or that he likes to cuddle, he is considered romantic, but if a woman says the same thing it’s just how women are supposed to be. Likewise, most actions that are considered romantic are only so if it’s a man doing it, whereas for women those actions are considered weird, clingy and desperate. I really can’t think of a single thing a woman could do that would make her seem more romantic than women are expected to be from the get go… 🙁
@Ooglyboggles
I celebrate the downfall of Donald Trump with my new furry friends!
Catalpa, Diptych, Hawk, Ariblester, anyone else interested in historians view on sexuality and the distinct otherness (in all aspects actually!) of other times.
I have spent a while looking for literature. Problem is, there is an incredible amount (and I have a deadline in two months for a project and I can’t afford to spend the time right now to do this justice, but I can do so later, even ask more experienced people what they’d recommend, if anyone wants to know more).
First, to understand why we say those things, it’s necessary to understand how we came to be as a discipline. So any overview of the history of historiography or the establishment as history as an academic discipline is going to help a lot. Especially look for the beginning: 19th century, historicism, understanding and empathy in interpreting history. The mistakes, absurdities and abuses on the part of the dominant elite that approach led to will illustrate why we don’t see this as a valid approach anymore. In the search of different approaches there were social history and later (very broadly) cultural history approaches. For the new approaches that are common and which I referred to in my original comment, try:
Cultural turns : new orientations in the study of culture by Doris Bachmann-Medick.
A warning, that’s one of the most complicated books I ever read. But it does have a lot of the relevant literature to understand the concepts in its references as well, so if you really want to get what historians mean, start here.
Alternatively you could try:
New perspectives on historical writing by Peter Burke.
History in crisis? : recent directions in historiography by Norman J. Wilson
Since this is all very much on the theory (but it does explain what historians mean when we say the past was essentially very different), here is a selection on what I found on the actual topic. This isn’t my specific area of study, so I did my own research just now and this is a short list of what I might find interesting if I had to approach this.
Heterosexuality as a concept:
The invention of heterosexuality by Jonathan Ned Katz
The invention of heterosexual culture by Louis-Georges Tin
Straight : the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality by Hanne Blank
Homosexuality as a concept and the historiography of it:
Born to be gay : a history of homosexuality by William Naphy
Sexualities in history : a reader by Kim M. Phillips
Developments in the histories of sexualities : in search of the normal, 1600 – 1800 by by Chris Mounsey
How to do the history of homosexuality by David M. Halperin
Gender and sex(uality) as historical concepts:
Making sex : body and gender from the Greeks to Freud by
Thomas Laqueur
Meanings of sex difference in the middle ages : medicine, science, and culture by Joan Cadden
Before sexuality : the construction of erotic experience in the ancient Greek world by David M. Halperin
Love stories : sex between men before homosexuality by Jonathan Ned Katz
Different eras (especially before the Enlightenment/Victorian periods that influence a lot of what to us are “obvious” things in regards to gender, sexuality and similar concepts):
Man to man : desire, homosociality, and authority in late-Roman manhood by Mark Masterson
Images of ancient Greek pederasty : boys were their gods by Andrew Leara and Eva Cantarella
Roman homosexuality by Craig A. Williams
The Greeks and Greek love : a radical reappraisal of homosexuality in Ancient Greece by James Davidson
Same-sex desire and love in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the classical tradition of the west by Beert C. Verstraete
Sex and sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England : essays in memory of Daniel Gillmore Calder by Carol Braun Pasternack and Lisa M.C. Weston
Same-sex sexuality in later medieval English culture by Tom Linkinen
Nothing natural is shameful : sodomy and science in late medieval Europe by Joan Cadden
Homoeroticism and chivalry : discourses of male same-sex desire in the fourteenth century by Richard E. Zeikowitz
A gay history of Britain : love and sex between men since the Middle Ages by Matt Cook
Queer Renaissance historiography : backward gaze ed. by Vin Nardizzi; Stephen Guy-Bray; Will Stockton
The sciences of homosexuality in early modern Europe ed. by Kenneth Borris and George Rousseau
Queer masculinities, 1550 – 1800 : siting same-sex desire in the early modern world ed. by Katherine O’Donnell and Michael O’Rourke
Forbidden friendships : homosexuality and male culture in Renaissance Florence by Michael Rocke
Other cultures as well as other times:
When did Indians become straight? : Kinship, the history of sexuality, and native sovereignty by Mark Rifkin
Cartographies of desire : male-male sexuality in Japanese discourse, 1600 – 1950 by Gregory M. Pflugfelder
Female homosexuality in the Middle East : histories and representations by Samar Habib
And since people are generally doing more on male homosexuality, which I find dissatisfactory in the extreme, some I looked for this especially:
The renaissance of lesbianism in early modern England by Valerie Traub
The lesbian premodern ed. by Noreen Giffney
Sapphistries : a global history of love between women by Leila J. Rupp
And finally (hopefully someone takes this up in more detail soon):
Third sex, third gender : beyond sexual dimorphism in culture and history ed. by Gilbert Herdt
Bisexuality in the ancient world by Eva Cantarella.
Right. 🙂
I don’t expect anyone to read this, don’t get me wrong. This is not a demand or something. It’s an offer, if you want it or even just look for a new book, you can take it.
Diptych, probably this wasn’t what you meant in your comment but still: If any person ever said those words to you, I hate them for it. If I come across stuff like this in my environment, I’m going to do whatever I can to stop it, I promise. It’s not at all how we usually mean that approach and it made me so speechless to read your comment, that I did this list also (kind of) for you especially.
I’m certain that in those writings on the history of queerness and homosexuality you will find a *lot* of evidence that in all times and places people have loved as you (and I) love, that the shit homophobes try to twist history into is just that and that if I insisit as a historian on the otherness of sexuality in the past that’s not ever to say that there weren’t men who loved men and women who loved women at all times, even though their understanding and their own descriptions and explanations of their feelings may have been different than ours are today. Should you ever be interested or you need ammunition to shut some homophobe up, maybe some of this is useful. As I said, just an offer.
Please don’t think I’m dismissing anyone if I (try to) not reply anymore in this thread. The deadline is looming, so I will be busy.
Luxbelitx-
Thanks for letting us know! I will definitely show my support! ?
Mah dude, it’s 2016. You can stop posting hate on Reddit and just go get all the dick you’ve been DREAMING of…
It’s been a stressful presidential campaign season. Our friend Canada decided to cheer us up….
Canadians Tweeting Nice Things About U.S. Is The Election Therapy We Need
Of course #TellAmericaItsGreat was started by Canadians!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tell-america-its-great-election-2016_us_5804e415e4b0162c043cfe28
LittleLurker, you are true academic and a credit to your field. Thank you for that – I’m going to read a bunch of those books and there’s a few which I think would make good gifts for certain people in my life.
@Calmdown, I just wanted to say that your comments always make me grin.