Regardless of your political inclinations, Obama’s speech last night shows a distinct care for issues predominantly affecting men.
Moby Dickery
14 comments on a post about an ad of a man being abused. 94 comments on a post critiquing a Feministe post. 15 comments on a post about masculist views of social welfare policies. 255 comments on a link to a Shakesville post about rape of men, mostly talking about how Shakesville got it wrong. Guys, we have a problem. Judging…
Open Thread: Depression Part Five: What The Hell?
Women attempt suicide more than men, but men are more likely to succeed. The primary reason for this is the difference in the methods used. Men tend to use typically masculine methods of committing suicide, such as hanging or guns, while women tend to use typically feminine methods of committing suicide, such as poisoning or…
The Right to Say No
Feministe has been posting recently about men who don’t like particular sex acts, namely, period sex and cunnilingus. Everyone has the right to say no. This includes men. For what it was worth, I think Jill did make a gesture towards there being people with “legitimate” reasons (spine issues, disliking the sight of blood) not to like…
Depression Part Four: Male-Pattern Depression
Trigger warning for discussion of suicide, depression, and mental illness. The core paradox of men and depression is this: women are more likely to be depressed; men are more likely to kill themselves. This makes literally no sense. Unless one is assuming a giant epidemic of men who wake up bright and early one morning,…
Sexism Against Men: A Pictoral Tour
Hat tip to This Is Hysteria and Sociological Images. Warning, lotsa pictures after the cut, people with crappy computers beware.
Depression Part Three: Social Support
Trigger warning for discussion of depression and suicide. (Author’s Note: Much of the material for this post and subsequent posts in this series comes from this document on men’s mental health problems.) Men are currently undergoing a social support crisis. “Social capital” is the social connectedness of a particular person– his or her connections within and between…
Femmephobia: Two Misconceptions
Trigger warning for brief mentions of rape. Mod Note: If you want to go argue about trans people and cissexism, argue on this thread. I have recently been doing a lot of posts about femmephobia, i.e., the cultural fear, hatred and devaluation of femininity (i.e. weakness, vulnerability and various traits that attempt to appeal to the powerful,…
Shakesville Has An Excellent Post On Rape Culture
Trigger warning for discussion of rape. I am a ridiculous Melissa McEwan fangirl, and this post today cements my love: Also: I suspect, though I could be wrong, that if the letter-writer had been a woman whose platonic male friend had twice masturbated in bed with her, while staring at her and touching her while…
Scientific Study of PUA Techniques
Science Daily has an interesting press release from new research about pick-up artistry. Turns out that pick-up techniques do work… on sexist women. Hall and Canterberry set out to understand the characteristics of men who use aggressive court-ship strategies, based on speed seduction techniques described in the US bestseller “The Game” by Neil Strauss and the popular…
Depression Part Two: Providing Emotional Support To Men Who Are Depressed
Trigger warning for discussion of depression. (Note: Through this piece, I referenced the depressed person as “a man” and “he,” because this is part of a series about men with depression. Much of my advice, however, applies to depressed people of all genders.) The most important thing to remember about helping a man with depression…
Miscellaneous Cool Links
1) Dar Williams’s When I Was A Boy is one of the most powerful anti-gender-roles songs I’ve ever heard– and it includes a bonus criticism of femmephobia: And so I tell the man I’m with about the other life I lived And I say, “Now you’re top gun, I have lost and you have won”…
Bisexual Men, Like, Exist And Stuff
In “no, duh” news, several new studies reported by the New York Times show that bisexual men actually exist. One of the most common biphobic narratives is that the penis is what counts. A woman who has sex with men is really straight, even if she also fucks women; a man who has sex with men is…
Depression Part One: Unemployment, Men and Suicide
Trigger warning for discussion of suicide. Recently, I came across this very interesting study about suicide rates as they relate to unemployment. Since I basically read everything with my Masculism Goggles on now (seriously, I do, it’s terrible), I happened to notice a few interesting statistics. A 10% increase in the unemployment rate (for instance, from…
Women’s Media Center On The Masculine Mystique
Suzanne Levine, a nationally recognized authority on the choices women make as they age, writes an article for the Women’s Media Center about what she calls “the masculine mystique”:
Guernica Magazine Expose: Burn Pits Dangerous to Soldiers, Civilians
Guernica Magazine runs an interesting article on burn pits, open dump sites used to dispose of waste in Afghanistan, and the health problems that may result from their use for both soldiers and Afghani civilians. Veterans Administration and private physicians have seen a significant increase in respiratory problems in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.…