Did a good thing? Brag about it here!
New Comod
NSWATM is pleased to welcome the fabulous Noah Brand, author of such brilliant posts as Masturbation’s Okay If You Don’t Get Into It, What If It’s All Just Made Up? and Emotions: Threat or Menace?, as our new comoderator. He will do exactly the same things he did before, except this time he has a…
Announcement
Doctor Mindbeam has left NSWATM for personal reasons. We at NSWATM thank him for everything he has contributed to the blog in these first few months as a moderator and contributor and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors. A new comoderator will be announced within the next couple days. In addition, Godless…
Strictly Moderated Open Thread: Men and Mental Illness
Trigger warning for discussion of mental illness. Next week I’m beginning a series on masculinity and depression, and to kick it off I thought I’d open up a thread about the men here’s experiences with being mentally ill. Anything from mild depression to being Baker Acted multiple times is welcome in this discussion. The experiences of…
Sex, Gender, Presentation, Sexual Orientation
The discussion on Andrej Pejic made me think of the distinction between gender, sex, presentation and sexuality, and I decided to toss out a quick post explaining the differences. Obviously, we are all Advanced Gender Warriors here, saving the Internet with the power of our keyboards, and so need no review, but for the few…
Sunday Social Justice
You know the drill. Do a good thing, brag about it here, bask in the applause of others and don’t be that asshole who fucks it up for everyone. 🙂
On Femmephobia
Trigger warning for mentions of rape and violence. When I was a freshman in high school, I and my friends were Cool Chicks. We weren’t like those other girls, the ones who were passive and weak and giggled and watched romantic comedies and thought about their hair and makeup. Those girls were stupid and frivolous and vapid, and we made…
Jonathan Kay and The Exciting Adventure Into The Land of Confounding Variables
Admittedly I have only read one article by Jonathan Kay. For all I know, he’s won Nobel Prizes in multiple disciplines in his spare time from writing Pulitzer-Prize-winning articles about the national debt, programming open-source software, working as a UN translator and directing and starring in a Broadway musical about his life. However, judging from this article, he…
I Realize This Has Nothing To Do With Masculism, But
29,000 children have died in the past ninety days in Somalia. That means: imagine the number of people at an average Major League Baseball game, except every one of them is a child dead of famine. 3.7 million people are currently in crisis in Somalia thanks to the famine, and 3.2 million of them are…
Harrowing Tale of an Abused Man
Trigger warning for description of abuse. From Tumblr: She complained that I had upset her by wanting to talk when she had told me she didn’t want to talk. As I began to feel uncomfortable, I said, “You’re saying it’s my fault you can’t express your emotions responsibly like an adult?” She said, “Yes!! It’s…
Sexual Harassment and Men
(hat tip to 2ndnin) A week ago, Shakesville had a very interesting post about the invisibility of certain women in sexual harassment: It is a conversation I’ve had before with trans women, with fat cis women, women with noticeable physical disabilities, and with a women who has severe craniofacial deformities—the “I don’t want to be…
Paternity Leave Increases in South Korea
(Hat tip to startledoctopus.) Great news from South Korea! The number of fathers taking time off work to take care of their children is increasing as parental leave becomes accepted in Korea. According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor on Wednesday, 819 male salaried workers took paternity leave last year, up 63 percent from…
An Addendum, On Rape Jokes
Trigger warning for discussion of rape. I don’t know if rape jokes encourage rape culture. I don’t care. You still shouldn’t tell them. Statistically, if you have told a rape joke to a group of more than five people, one of the people you told it to was a rape survivor, possibly of multiple rapes. They will…
Strictly Moderated: What I Mean When I Talk About Rape Culture, Part Two
Trigger warning for discussion of rape. Toxic Masculinity Thomas at Yes Means Yes quotes from a paper by Lisak, the groundbreaking rape researcher, about the characteristics of male rapists (unfortunately, I am unaware of similar studies about female rapists): “more angry at women, more motivated by the need to dominate and control women, more impulsive and disinhibited in…
Strictly Moderated: Sunday Social Justice
You know the drill. What awesome social-justice-y things did you do this week?
Strictly Moderated: What I Mean When I Talk About Rape Culture, Part 1
Trigger warning for discussion of rape and abuse. Note: This thread is not the thread to argue about the reality of rape culture, the accuracy of rape statistics, etc. While those are interesting discussions to have, I would prefer for this thread to be a discussion of the major cultural narratives that cause the high rape rate…