Masculinity has always been associated with violence.
“…has become a staple in college communication, sociology, gender studies, psychology, criminology and linguistics courses, as well as numerous high school courses. It is regularly used by educators in the battered women’s and rape crisis movements, and counselors in the batterer intervention field. It has been seen by over 3 million people.”
Katz still presents similar material, and his speaking calendar is booked solid two months in advance. He’ll be educating young people at a wide variety of state universities and, notably, one Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego.
People take Katz seriously. Attached is a clip from his tour-de-force, “Tough Guise.”
Jackson Katz believes that there is a national crisis in masculinity because young men believe a man should be tough, strong, independent and respected. The US Government is paying him to educate Marines.
I always assumed the idea that men should be tough, strong, independent and respected was why young men joined the Marines in the first place. They prove that they’re strong and tough enough to be among the few and the proud, and thereby earn respect.
But, according to Katz, the idea that men should be tough, strong, independent and respected is a crisis in masculinity perpetuated by the media. And Jean-Claude Van Damme. He shows clips from contemporary films and claims that they help to construct violent masculinity as a social norm. His use of “construct” here pegs him as a blank slate, noble savage liberal who believes that if we pay enough educators like him to re-educate students and bring the media to heel, men will eventually stop associating violence with manhood.
I guess when we’ve purged violence from the planet, we’ll all sit around, hold hands and sing “Imagine.”
Surely Katz has studied some history. This makes his claim that the modern media is responsible for these very old ideas about manliness even more dissonant. Blaming the modern media for male violence is like holding Martha Stewart accountable for the habits of all women who enjoy cooking and decorating.
The Táin Bó Cúailnge, an ancient Irish epic, devotes a whole chapter to the boyhood deeds of Cú Chulainn. He was courting a young lady and studying tactics at six years old, the story goes, and by the age of seventeen he had a reputation as the “hardest man in Ulster.” It was during his seventeenth year that he cleaved trees in half with one stroke, and fought entire armies by himself. In one instance,
“He drove into their packed ranks, an enemy to beat all enemies, three times encircling them with great ramparts of their own corpses piled sole to sole and headless neck to headless neck, so all-encompassing was the carnage.”
One of my favorite phrases from Le Morte D’Arthur is “smote him down horse and man,” if for no other reason than the fact that some sort of ultraviolent “smoting” occurs on almost every other page of the two volume tale.
When Katz decided to blame the modern media for these “narrow” definitions of manhood that box men in…ancient Roman, Greek, Norse, Celtic, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Aztec and Native American mythologies that portrayed men in the same way must have slipped his mind.
It would make more sense for Katz to blame the ancient media.
If anything, violent stories probably shape violent acts and give form and outlet to the polymorphous violence of masculinity. They direct violence and give it a certain style, but the idea that a society without violent stories about men (will this demand book-burning, and revisionist history, too?) will become a society without male violence is specious and utopian nonsense. The fact that state-subsidized organizations pay Katz to peddle this idiocy is a travesty.
Katz also makes no distinction between kinds of violence. In this video, violence is presented as a completely amoral evil. He fails to distinguish between heroic violence and malevolent violence, or violence for its own sake. This is a shameful insult to countless men who have willingly risked or sacrificed their lives while using violence to protect others from malevolent violence, or the violence of enemies. Katz’s violence is violence without context.
Of the all-time American box-office blockbusters as listed in IMDB.com, I was able to count 86 that I felt were inarguably created to appeal to young men and older boys.* From those, easily 63 contained some sort of heroic violence, also known as “action.” I was stingy about this. I didn’t count the Pirates of the Caribbean series because the main character is a pirate, though he was clearly the hero of the films. The rest were comedies, with an occasional sports or car flick.
Of the films that contained heroic violence of some kind, 12 were based on comic book superheroes, like Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman or the X-Men. 300 was graphic novel, but it was history first. Batman is a rich guy who puts on a costume to fight crime, and in The Dark Knight, even endures the hatred of the people he wants to help, because he believes it’s the right thing to do. Superman, Spiderman, the X-Men and Iron Man have all been kicking ass to the cheers of boys and men for decades, but they dispense violence only to evildoers. All risk public criticism to do what they believe is right; they use their strength to protect those who can’t protect themselves.
The non-superhero films that feature violence follow the same basic theme. In fantasy epics like Star Wars, Star Trek, Independence Day, Planet of the Apes and The Lord of the Rings, heroic men employ violence to fight against tyranny and the destruction of their way of life. There are several Bond films in the list; the hard, brutal 007 is always saving the world with style. Other films have good-guy cops chasing bad guys. In Saving Private Ryan, numerous men risk their lives so that one bereaved mother who they’ll never meet doesn’t lose all of her sons to World War II.
To be fair, there are many glorifications of malevolent or morally ambiguous violence in films, music, books and videogames. And they probably do influence some young men in a negative way. But heroic displays of masculine strength are still a major part of our culture, and our cinematic cult of hero worship still brings men to the theaters in droves.
As men we should reject the idea that masculinity must be dissociated from violence, strength and toughness. If we kill off or defame our masculine heroes and dismiss a strength-based masculine ideal, from what pool will we draw willing heroes when we need them? Who will stand up and protect us from the malevolent violence of bad men, of invaders, of tyrants? If we stigmatize “tough guys” and begin to believe, as Katz does, that men shouldn’t feel pressured to be strong, tough, independent or respected—who will volunteer to be our cops, prison guards, firefighters and soldiers? Will fathers even bother to protect their families? How, if they are weak, emotional, dependent and know nothing of violence?
We need tough guys, we need strong heroes, and we need men who can help young men distinguish between heroic violence and the kind of violence perpetrated by hostile ingrates, psychos and cretins.
Heroism is the noblest expression of manhood. Heroism demands strength, toughness, independence and honor.
What kind of sick, suicidal society enables weakness, uncontrolled emotion, dependence and dishonor in its men?
Jackson Katz is an enemy of men.
______________________________
* I avoided counting movies that I felt were marketed to both genders, and “family” films, even if they seemed to be fairly boy-oriented. No Harry Potter, no Shrek, etc.
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{ 56 comments… read them below or add one }
This is just more of the “men should be more like women, because women are more well adjusted than men” nonsense that we get from the contemporary psycho-babble industry. William Pollack is trying to peddle the same nonsense when it comes to raising boys as well. Masculinity is bad, or at least is “bad” as it currently is “constructed”, and what needs to change is men need to become more like women — a new feminine masculinity needs to emerge which we will “call” masculinity despite its content — some kind of “new masculinity” or some such nonsense. Just as feminism attempted — and largely succeeded — at turning American women into male/female hybrids, the pressure is now coming to hybridize American men into female/male hybrids, too. It’s all nonsense.
We need violence to keep creatures like Katz from standing on soap boxes, pretending he is thinker leading society.
This reminds me of the classic de Toqueville quote about what happens when one attempts to make the sexes alike.
BTW great post, Jack.
Feminist and modernist attempts to tame men of their violence have only succeeding in detaching violence from morality, not in suppressing the violence. When heroism, which is violence in the service of morality, becomes suspect rather than celebrated, there is only room for two kinds of men in society: immoral, violent thugs and moral, peaceful pussies. Given a choice between the hyper-masculine and the emasculated, it’s no wonder women choose the former. Peaceniks like to say that might does not make right, but neglect to mention that right without might is irrelevant.
What is also worthy of note is that in the past, not only was masculinity associated with violence, but women actively encouraged this. Martin van Creveld says this:
In short, throughout history women have played a major role in selected for “tough guys” who are violent, strong, and respected. These were (and are) the guys who got the poon.
Seeing the video I looked at it first. I only got as far as his nonsense graphs which we all know are rubbish. That said I disagree with Katz fundamentally. I see nothing wrong with men being strong and independent. For me it is the bloated, flabby man who lacks strength who is unmanly and there are far too many of them. To me these men have the characteristics of the baby.I go to the gym most days. I think a man should keep himself in shape and it is shameful not to be so. The gym I go to is a boxing gym. I see lots of young men in the peak of fitness working out on the punch bags. None of the are violent, some compete as amateur boxers. All are pleasant and friendly. There is a certain camaraderie in working out at the gym.
People like Katz could however prove me wrong as my reaction to him is certainly violent thoughts.
Doh. I should have noted that my numbers regarding the films were only from the first 200. Glad you guys liked the post.
Studies have shown that men testosterone production is linked to violence, not just in humans.
Take hyenas for example. Female hyenas produce more testosterone than the males, and they (the females) are the aggressors of their species, far more dominant and violent.
So Mr. Katz, in his first graph, is just pointing out the real-world results of basic human biology. Maybe we should give men shots of estrogen and make everyone ‘equal’, eh? Ban football, rock climbing, martial arts, anything that might build muscle or character.
What garbage. Thanks for the post, Mr. Donovan.
I posted the below to someone else yesterday about testosteron and behavior and society. It has relevant information about this J katz topic in it. [EDIT: Attacks based on religion are not allowed here]
Read it here…
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Testosterone in the womb and testosterone flood in early puberty are two different things.
That has been explained before. But there are so many studies and so much distraction and bunk, things get lost on top of getting stomped. (It’s just like there are too many entertainment choices.)
So if a man is high IQ and High T, it probably is womb testosterone rather than the puberty infusion (puberty infusion being eqauted with brutish male or female sthuggery). (In short in-utero T creates systems of the body early on; puberty T acts like a hormone shaping behavior specifics.)
High T womb are often bald.
Testos is not the simple PC buzz word it has been demonized as.
It is more complicated; in a complicated soup that mitigates it further.
Testos is what makes men smarter than females. (Cell and tissue, organ and system formation itself in the womb.) It’s what makes, the best men very smart and virile [and braggarts in front of pussy too].
What people are trying to express through the demonization of T is… male puberty has always been a quandary for civilization. Ie quandry for the aging en statused males who want to maintain their _sedentary_ rank [access to sex] as the young princes roar in the night for the [sexual] territory.
Fine. But it is a question of who’s going to deal with that ‘problem’ (of males maturing). ?Men who have the best interest of their sons* –ie their own continuation– at heart when they organize up some kind of ’social contract’**? Or will it be ethnic aliens who want to geld the host culture males; or female wallflowers with ax to grind issues; and/or other females(basically normal) who are simply envious and angry at boys?
(These ‘other females(basically normal)’ are confused and dualistic in their anger and demand for male-stunting, since females still expect boys to become men in order to be worth anything. …Reason number four billion six hundred [and] fifty two why females should not be in charge of anything or be considered “philosophers”.)
_________
[*Fathers are a threat to sons as sons are a threat to fathers. This has always been the THING. Whether literally in a family or abstractly between the generations. (Either the adult male runs the young male(s) off the land or they/he run(s) him off; Humans have complexifed /muddy that like we do everything --with our specially designed complexifier growing on our shoulders.)
Man has not dealt with this well... Constant coup d eta and counter-strategy snowballs and pendulums which have complexified to the point we became a female hyper-leverage _hive structure_.
That is what I'm getting at when I talk of MY "alpha beta gamma theory" of human evolution and civic/political snowballs.]
[**Note many/most fathers are already princess-spoiling enablers.]
“His use of “construct” here pegs him as a blank slate, noble savage liberal who believes that if we pay enough educators like him to re-educate students and bring the media to heel, men will eventually stop associating violence with manhood.”
Maybe men will stop associating violence with manhood when violence doesn’t get you pussy as it does now.
You don’t actaully have to use violence in order to get what you want. The threat of violence is enough. I am 187cm and 100kgs so I am a reasonably big guy. Not huge but well able to look after myself. I was in Bucharest a while back and three guys tried a well known sting on me to steal my laptop. I merely had to say to them “Guys, I know you are trying to rob me, if you do I will catch one of you and I will beat him to death. Now, do you still want to try and rob me or do you want to fuck off?”
They decided they didn’t want my laptop that badly.
Women do not understand violence between men and how the vast majority of it is merely the threat of violence.
Though, I must say, in younger men this is starting not to be true. Young men raised by women have little honour or integrity, because women have none at all. So there has been a marked increase in violence in younger men. Also, there has been a marked increase in what us older guys would call ‘cowardly attacks’ from behind and young men actually being seriously injured.
When I was young the guys who got into fights were generally stupid and there was generally not that much damage done.
There are some places where violence is so prevalent I’d fear to tread. South africa made be feel uneasy the whole time I was there. The guys have nothing to lose. I never go into inner city areas in the US either. Same reason. The young guys will kill you for your shoes and fear no retribution. There is violence and then there is violence.
And it used to be ‘manly’ to be tough on the sports field. The 1989 Australian Football League Final between Geelong and Hawthorn was one of the toughest games of modern times. It was fanstastic. Now? It’s handbags at 20 paces. Sportmen are being turned into sports manginas. Our football is now so womanly I can’t stand to watch it any more.
Yeah Bucharest is a rough place. I was there around 10 years ago and it was probably even rougher then — you needed to be a bit tough to get people to not take you to the cleaners there.
Globalman -
Women do not understand violence between men and how the vast majority of it is merely the threat of violence.
Exactly. There’s a whole world of interaction and negotiation that goes on between men that women really don’t get, because they don’t have to. Because they aren’t men.
The threat of violence is the standard, kind of in the way that gold can back currency. One of my best pals would probably never hit me, but the fact that he has thrown a grown man through a windshield definitely colors our social dynamic. It’s a simple reality. I am aware in a subtle, barely conscious way that if I crossed a certain line, he could kill me with relatively little effort. I am not a small guy myself, and I’d like to think that occasionally other men think of me in the same way.
Men have an awareness of the potential for violence, and the implied threat of violence is understood as they negotiate their social relationships.
Effeminacy could be defined as behavior that implies submission and voids the threat of violence.
One of the reason women can mouth off to much larger men is that they know they will always be able to get away with it, so long as other men are present. Women are protected, so they don’t have to see violence or the threat of violence in the same way men do.
“Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.” – Don Corleone, The Godfather
Hey macloud, it looks like your anti semetic nonsense is exposing your true weakness. Punks like you buckle in a second in the face of a real man.
Great quote, Elusive Wapiti.
I’m going to repost that on my own blog.
>Vito October 10, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hey macloud, it looks like your anti semetic nonsense is exposing your true weakness. Punks like you buckle in a second in the face of a real man.
>
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“Vito”, prevent people like katz et al _et al_ from publishing (and agitating with) their marxist screeds and then the people who see the “marxists” for _who they really are_ (wink wink nudge nudge) will be out of business.
Deal?
I think some of the reason men are so explosive, impulsive, amoral, and unethical in their expressions of aggression is because they have adopted a type of masculinity that conceptualized through the lens of female thought and desire.
There are a lot of things you can blame women for, but men being more violent than women probably isn’t one of them. I doubt they’d be peaceful, gentle creatures even if they didn’t have women to show off for and fight over.
Hormonal and biological arguments aside, men are more violent because they can be. Women have to learn very early on to rely on other means of getting what they want, because they can be overpowered by most men.
Decent civilizations, as I said, figure out how to temper men’s violent impulses or re-direct them in a constructive way. The idea that men are not “naturally” violent interferes with the process of acknowledging and re-directing male violence through positive outlets.
While I think that violence is very often justified, it surely behooves us in the MM to castigate the promotion of violence itself (which we do by glamourising it, or by turning unjustifiably violent men into heroes) – particularly given that we, men, are mostly on the receiving end of it.
Furthermore, the more violent are men (hence, the more violent is society) the bigger does the government justify its own growth – TO A VERY LARGE EXTENT.
(Governments LOVE violence.)
It strikes me, therefore, that the MM should seek to reduce the amount of (unnecessary) violence among men.
And while there are numerous ways in which the MM could do this through activism, I would also suggest that women, themselves, should be taken to task for promoting violence; which they do; e.g. by supporting policies that promote single motherhood, by refusing to complain about the feminisation of the education system, by prejudicing the justice system against fathers and men when it comes to relationship disputes, by supporting an ideology that demonises men, and so on.
Thus, while I think that we should all think about how to reduce male violence, I see no reason why we should not blame society for much of it.
For example, when men are being pilloried for being violent, we should hit back and point out that this could be reduced were it not for the determination of feminists – and others – to continue promoting violence.
Thus, while I agree wholeheartedly with Jack Donovan’s piece above, there is clearly a problem here – because most of us actually do want men to be less violent, don’t we?
Solution?
Point to Jack Donovan’s ideas – generally speaking, about how violence is not as unjustifiable as it is often portrayed to be – but ALSO point out that today’s unnecessary violence is being actively promoted by, say, feminist policies.
I love this bit from Jack Donovan’s piece, …
“Katz also makes no distinction between kinds of violence. In this video, violence is presented as a completely amoral evil. He fails to distinguish between heroic violence and malevolent violence, or violence for its own sake. This is a shameful insult to countless men who have willingly risked or sacrificed their lives while using violence to protect others from malevolent violence, or the violence of enemies. Katz’s violence is violence without context.”
What a lovely paragraph!
Excellent post. As an interesting coincidence, I’m writing a paper on the Táin right now. This is a story which was first committed to writing around 800 AD.
A large part of the epic involves the queen, Medb, convincing various men to fight the hero Cúchullain by offering both her daughter in marriage and her own sexual services to the man who will slay the warrior. One of the tales of Cúchullain’s childhood involves him going off and plundering half of Scotland on behalf of a woman.
Either Julius Caesar or Posidonius (I can’t be bothered to look this up right now) wrote about how Celtic women made themselves present on the battlefield as to make the men too ashamed to retreat, or show other “cowardly” behaviours.
Similar behaviour patterns occurred among countless societies, many of them completely unrelated – the Aztecs come to mind. To assert that the “media” is somehow responsible for the association of masculinity with violence is, quite frankly, the kind of tin-hat idiocy that we should associate with ancient astronaut theories and the like.
As for the noble savage bullshit, the only reason why so-called primitive societies were more “peaceful” than bronze-age or later ones is because the number of able-bodied men, and the state of medical technology are so low as to make actual armed conflict undesirable. In other words, they had a finer appreciation for the inherent violence in all relations between men.
Ok, I have to laugh, because you probably left OUT a film – iroically called “Tough Guys” – because there WAS very littel real violence in it. Yet it indicates some of the points beautifully.
I think the problem we have with violence is the mis-application of violence. For example, in schools these days, if a fight gets started, it doesn’t matter who did what, who got hurt, why there was a fight – each party gets the same punishment. If the girl goes foetal and gets kicked for 15 minutes, she’ll get suspended the same as her attackers, whether they be male or female.
Seriously, WTF?
So the woman and I made it VERY clear she shouldn’t instigate anything, but if violence comes looking for her, do as much damage as possible, and we’ll sort out the details afterwards.
Target Focus Training was a group at a seminar I went to, and the point was the same from them – violence is a tool, use it as such, and therefore you have optoins. Walk away, be elsewhere. If violence comes looking for you, you can be either a victim, or a survivor. No other choices. (We’ll leave aside semantics, the words can overlap.)
So, violence as social aggression – theft, muggings, assualt, rape, etc. are improper uses of violence. Self-defense against someone trying to inflict any of those on you is proper use of violence. Know how ot use it, like fire, and you may get burned occasionally, but not as often as if you can’t learn what fire is.
And as at least one person noted, women CANNOT GET IT. Women don’t live in a world where ugliness occurs. I think that’s one of the reasons rape and robbery are so traumatizing for them – it’s not the loss, it’s the violation of their beautiful world that warps the mind.
Women don’t understand that the threat of violence can be enough of a dissuasion, nor do they understand that there are times when violence becomes the only option – such as during mugging, rape, etc. Other option is to be a victim, and maybe end up dead just because.
Women can not wrap their minds around the violence inherent in being a man. For us, it is necessary – brings home food, keeps out predators, keeps our neighbor from bashing in our skulls while we sleep. For women, it seems that if they don’t have to see it, it doesn’t happen, not really. And they keep that mindset generally all life long. People like my mother (NYC girl, dark Italian, Brooklyn, professional ballerina at the time) and grandmother (Irish, county Cork, built like a brick shithouse, was at one point able to burst a shoelace by flexing her biceps) were of the old ways, and they DID get (some) of it. But there was a progression – Grandmother was a hellion; mom tried to avoid trouble; she berated me for even being assertive. Now I’ve grown up, I’m able to understand violence as an optoin, but I am completely unable to explain the reality to my (ex)girlfriend, mother, sister, female friends. The only one who “got” it even remotely was a foreign woman I flirted with at a job. She was light enough I could pick her up like a rag doll…
She enjoyed it, we had fun flirting, but there’s that hint of male violence there… And her biggest problem was with a Momma’s Boy BETA husband. He took EVERYTHING, and I called her on her BS, plus enforced my will on her (tickles, picking her up, etc), wihtout it being too much (IE, it was playfull violence, and demonstrated what I could do if it was needed, while words and actions indicated it would not be done to HER… Think Protective violence instead of random violence, which is most crime.)
Sad we have lost so much even from the America I grew up in – and it’s getting worse. EU, Canada, USA, Australia, all feminized. I mean, it’s ridiculous…. Great Britain managed to get overcrowded at a period of time when there were rampant issues, religious, physical, social… The criminals they caught went to Australia, the ones they didn’t catch made it to America, and those too pig-headed, stubborn, or “set” to leave made England the country that Hitler couldn’t beat… You’d think there’d be SOME kind of spirit left in these places, but mostly it’s just Mother Gaia. (Not even Mother Earth, who understands that a good tsunami, earthquake, eruption, or tidal wave is just good pest control.)
Nature never makes things for mean or no use. – John Locke
The stereotype of men as protector and provider is the reason why men make up 75% of suicides, 85% of the homeless, 90% of workplace deaths. It’s the reason why mutilating a males genitals isn’t only condoned but in many cultures institutionalized, and the reason for male only conscription. It’s the reason why on average men die 6 years before women do.
It’s also the reason the reason for alimony and child support laws.
The stereotype, at it’s core, is masandry because the only works in a framework where a man’s life is worth less than a woman’s.
The only way you can make the world better place FOR MEN is to break this stereotype. It shouldn’t be that difficult either when you stop and think that men have NOTHING to gain from it and everything to lose.
The only thing I resent about “the Tough Guise” is that it only covers the violent aspects of masculinity while leaving out all the others.
But the biggest reason you and you’re article are not only completely wrong, but antithetical to a men’s rights movement is this. You want men to stay the same.
The biggest hurdle for a woman’s right to vote was not the attitudes of men. It was OTHER WOMEN. And the reason the movement was successful was because the suffragettes focused on speaking to women and changing women’s attitude of THEMSELVES.
And it’s going to be the same thing for a mens rights movement.
If you sit there whining about women and the way they act and expecting them to change you’re going to alienate yourself and get nowhere. The mens rights movement needs to focus on talking to other men and changing the way they look at themselves. That is the only way any progress is going to be made.
I’d also like to point out that society has everything to gain from perpetuating these completely unrealistic images of masculinity because it’s going to make men feel more insecure about theirs and keep them striving to meet it.
Sure it’s going to fuck men up in the head (Because you know that short of injecting Dianabol into their corroted artery with a caulking gun, they’re never going to meet it.) but since when have men’s feelings mattered?
Faolán –
Yeah, I only gave the Tain a quick read a few months ago, but Queen Medb is a great example of a manipulative woman.
As for the noble savage bullshit, the only reason why so-called primitive societies were more “peaceful” than bronze-age or later ones is because the number of able-bodied men, and the state of medical technology are so low as to make actual armed conflict undesirable. In other words, they had a finer appreciation for the inherent violence in all relations between men.
Excellent point. Reminds me of the Robert Heinlein quote gun advocates love:
“An armed society is a polite society.”
I think there are two kinds of men in this world:
-Men who have been punched in the face.
-Men who haven’t been punched in the face.
Now, on rare occasion you’ll run into a guy who’s been repeatedly decked, is a major asshole and likes to get into and start fights. But more often, you’ll run into a very poorly behaved man who thinks anything offensive up to physical violence is his right in life and who has never been decked. The only kind of person with worse manners than that type of guy is the worst type of woman who will antagonized a man knowing she will never be hit.
Spend enough time in bars and at sporting events where alcohol is served and you meet plenty of folks who could use a nice jab, for the betterment of all.
No deal macloud. Again you’re showing your weakness by trying to censor somebody you don’t agree with. This is America. Lets give everyone their say. Most people are smart enough to sort it all out. I never even heard of this guy Katz or his film till I came on this web site and nobody else I know has either.
First of all I very much believe in censorship. And eugenics and disbanding the school system and control of females and a lot more. I’m not a dunce.
But that’s not what I meant.
I meant more like people should police their own weirdos and then others don’t have to. The jews (a race of migrants) disproportionally come up with this marxist (katz) horsecrap. _They always have_ (since they invented it just like that jesus delusion). This milquetoast website here keeps censoring that FACT of HISTORY but it’s still true. (Milquetoast … This is an english site?)
>Lets give everyone their say.
You mean like the KKK? The Skinheads? Black nationalists? You support their right to not only talk at schools but to shape the curriculum too, all paid for by tax payer state monies? (JKatz is a government employee defacto.)
Yeah Right. “let’s give everybody their say”. Hogwash: you don’t believe it; nor does anybody else.
>Most people are smart enough to sort it all out.
Hardly.
History –and jewish run 20th social babble –has long since demonstrated that people are susceptible to group “synergies-of-conformity”/brainwashing and religious-devotion to nonsense –in large dangerous groups.
Most people are well below a _sentient human line_. Only a couple of clever human males here and there. (And we keep alive all manner of failed sperm now that use to die in childhood only a couple centuries ago, so I wager the ‘delusional tendency’ is worse despite “our” better understanding of the cosmos now.
>I never even heard of this guy Katz or his film till I came on this web site and nobody else I know has either.
Me neither. I thought the activist-pushing of all this “philosophical feminism” stuff was done. I thought the only problem left now was deconstructing its control over “Town Hall”(college and stuff). Hard enough. But apparently the wackjob vanguard-thrusting is _still_ brainwashing the simpletons that make up society!
Katz is a government paid speaker and curriculum policy shaper. I wonder what else he’s done? He is not alone in this: someone ultimately makes the video strips and texts books of childhood. (Three guesses what “religion” they are. And if the “spearhead” doesn’t like it– Tough.)
The fact that these nobodies(katz et al) are doing this stuff in darkness now (instead of on the dick cavet and donohue 60’s-80’s TV shows) just underscores how creepy this “newspeak” big brother society is. They aren’t even looking for public mandate anymore from a public of credulous dunces.
———–
If you types won’t stop this marxist mental illness typical of “the tribe” from within, than others WILL. (Same for black crime and etc: eg either blacks solve it or someone else will.)
Cont. on censorship.
Not to mention I was censored here above for saying something totally reasonable about the jews*. (*a _RACE_ –made of genes and everything.) Specifically that coming up with this fem speak goobly gook marxism tripe is their Modus Operandi.
Nobody believes in letting everybody just speak and then letting the masses solve it all out.
Everybody believes in censorship. Some groups/worldviews are simply better –or more lucky–at being in the good graces of the _zeitgeist_. A zeitgeist that their censorship helps to create. …So there ya go.
=====
On to another aspect of the subject…
When a fem speak type pulls a katz, hit em with how most pathology is female generated: how children are abused more by mommy than anyone else; how females start most fights in house; and how female only want to breed with bad asses. And etc.
You could then get into big picture stuff about how there is no such thing as the underlying belief the katz types hold dear. It is all fantasy world (equate it with christian creationism) wherein the lion invents the savanna rather than the savanna simply selecting for the behavior we call lion. And etc.
When they puke out their crime stats point out that the communities have been controled by liberalism for generations now, so the fault is of libralism–ethnic battery and female parent induced pathology.
The fact I have to come up with this stuff for you at demonstrates that you just aint ready yet for “real change” (when the big guns will come out–and things will… well… change). And it evidences my position above about how society is rife with the simple and cajolable. That is why the “marxism” needs to be suppressed out right: There aren’t enough hours in the day to rescue all the cajoled an prevent them from becoming “Useful Idiots” for their enemies.
(Regarding “anti semitism”: Search “Kevin MacDonald”)
Just a note, MacCloud. One thing I’ve learned is that you have to choose your battles. I follow Steve Sailer and some other politically incorrect writers who speak pretty frankly about race, and other taboo subjects. I am not unsympathetic to certain claims, though I remain skeptical.
I’d rather talk about men, and what Western men can do to save their culture. For me, the thing to do is start saying “no” to influences that are destroying the men of the west, no matter who they are coming from. Unfortunately, I’ve found that because of the way people have been raised, if you fixate on race, they are less likely to take you seriously when you talk about culture. You get thrown in the crackpot bin and no one pays attention to you.
I’d rather see the guys here create something that can gain momentum, not get hobbled by peripheral issues before it starts. You, of course, can do what you like. I think people should be free to say whatever they want, even if it offends people. I don’t think, however, that others are obligated to host or pay for it.
Sean, please read the “Commenting Policy” page.
Exactly, Jack.
I aint afraid of marxists spewing their crap because marxism has been proven a world wide failure. And yeah lets let klansmen et al have their say in their own media and not in schools of course. Your anti Jewish and anti Jesus stuff really rubs me the wrong way and previous experience with your type has shown to have weak character.
“Marxism” is not the same as soviet nationalism. Soviet post war (WWII) nationalism failed; it did because of the economic dynamism of the liberal/capitalist democracy zeitgeist which is economically more virulent than other systems but politically vulnerable to unchallenged soap box demagogues and therefore psychologically and socially dangerous.
Soviet post war regimentation failed but Marxism certianly did not fail. It spread from eg Frankfurt Germany and took up shop in NY and has been using tactically its “civil rights” and feminism protectionist political demagougery and sophistry to gut american culture ever since. (Admittedly, american culture was and is simple and dense and the 1500 years of jesus –another “marxist” cult ;o/ — is prone to soggy headed sappiness.) “Cultural Marxism” is the raisson d tre of modern western culture; it did not fail–it evolved.
There is less “marxism” in Russia now than america. The reason is psychological/ontologically profound… A massive life threating acute invasion [by WWII Germans] and the _consequenting surviving nationalist militant ism_ has a tendency to pyschologically boot the liberal marxist-types off soap boxes.
Meanwhile in america et al the comfort-of-success allowed the “never ending revolution” of soap box demagogy (have-and-have-not mostly) –exploiting the good intentioned but ill thought through “freedom” jive and _traditional chivalry_– to take over using the _media_ and lower/relevant academia and the _legal_ and political structures until…
Wam bam feminism and ethnic replacements.
The fact you all don’t get that demonstrates you’re either dumb or deceptive.
As wrong as I might or might not be, “marxism” certainly is more than soviet tank armies from the 60s.
You too far out there. Sounds like you might be a little fascist there. Listen to rush. He tells it like it is.
this was a greaaaaat post. the notion of heroism as a positive force in young boy’s lives is often underestimated. the hero who must use violence to protect others is AN ARCHETYPE upon which the bedrock of our society is formed. the hero dates back to pre f’ing Beowulf. The quest narrative, violence in the Epic of Gilgamesh….passive resistance has only formed in our society b/c of the men who would protect such a society from OUTside invaders.
If we don’t raise the next generation to be as ignorant as we are, who will fight to maintain the precious system of dominance that rich, white men have on the Earth? Who will stand up and continue to exploit the under-privileged if all the boys turn into weak, whining, spineless, helpless creatures — girls? Who will carry the flag that bears the motto “It’s always been this way! And it always will! ‘Cause status quo is the world we want!”
I, for one, appreciate a world where one is given the freedom to “Imagine” . That’s even hyped as an American value. Would you rather a world that imposes norms and does all the work to define – and enforce – your and my identity? That’s the stuff of fundamentalism – be it Christian, Islamic, or good ol’ fashioned mainstream pop culture.
The media wraps it all up in a slick package. We all know how we’re SUPPOSED to act, and look, and be. And if we don’t, there’s a road of ridicule and victimization we can walk down. But who’d want that? Who wants to really explore who they are, when the risk is so dangerous?
The freedom to choose is the beauty of Katz’s message. He tells us that to lift the rigid, unbending gender infrastructure from society; is in fact a freeing of us all. Free to be who we are – who we want. Free to exist in equal pertnerships with our loved ones. Free of the threat of violence from our neighbors (or loved ones).
These aren’t issues for somebody else to grapple with. We. as real men, have got to expect better – from ourselves and from mankind.
Carlin Whitehouse-
“If we don’t raise the next generation to be as ignorant as we are, who will fight to maintain the precious system of dominance that rich, white men have on the Earth? ”
The Muslims.
“The media wraps it all up in a slick package. We all know how we’re SUPPOSED to act, and look, and be. And if we don’t, there’s a road of ridicule and victimization we can walk down. But who’d want that? Who wants to really explore who they are, when the risk is so dangerous?
The freedom to choose is the beauty of Katz’s message. He tells us that to lift the rigid, unbending gender infrastructure from society; is in fact a freeing of us all. Free to be who we are – who we want. Free to exist in equal pertnerships with our loved ones. Free of the threat of violence from our neighbors (or loved ones).”
This is what the MRA is about. Freedom for men to be men, but how we define it, not how Feminist or academics define it. Keep reading this blog.
“He tells us that to lift the rigid, unbending gender infrastructure from society;”
If gender is a choice, then being gay should be criminalized. If gender is not a choice, then you are wrong. Which is it? A bigot or an idiot?
If this wasn’t the web, I’d beat the shit out of you for being such a politically correct useful idiot, as you wouldn’t fight back anyways because you apparently never learned to fight, as you expect all people to be pacifist like you. Good luck with that you evolutionary dead end. Come back earth. This shit ain’t roses and rainbows. I say, give peace a chance, but prepare for war motherfucker. Thats just the reality of it.
Come back “to” earth.
“Gender” itself is a non-word — it’s made up by feminists and “gender theorists” who dislike the idea that certain behaviors are innate for each sex. Men should step away from the word gender, and instead use the word “sex”, because to buy into “gender” is really to buy into feminist theory.
This is entirely backwards, from start to finish. Violence is not merely a tool of the ignorant. It is the last resort of those who task themselves with effecting change to the willfully ignorant. If you insist on refraining entirely from force, even in defense of truth and freedom, you and your ideology will be overrun by those who are willing to use force to take what they want. Freedom needs defenders willing to give the last full measure of devotion in protection of life, liberty, and property, or else it cannot stand.
That’s nice. But in order to live in a world where one can “Imagine” you need everyone else in the world not to stop you (you also need them to do other things, like grow food). The only way to achieve that is to prevent those who would try to stop you with force or the threat of force. In order for force (or the credible threat thereof) to be applied, someone has to be willing to apply the force (and many people have to be complicit in the application of force).
Yes, it’s sooo dangerous…somebody might not like you if you “explore who you really are”. Buck up…if you’re holding out for universal approval, you’ll be waiting a while.
No, his message is to accept certain particular choices he likes, or else he’ll keep talking at you (since he doesn’t believe in violence) until you do. His message–the fundamental message of the government enforced tolerance movement–is that there are particular behaviors (non-violent, non-tough “men”, for example) that will be protected and defended by force of law, and anyone who might want to think differently will be punished.
Your final “freedom” is especially entertaining, since it is the thing you are least free from if you adopt his ideology.
And how, exactly, do you propose to “expect better…from mankind” without the means to enforce–or even meaningfully encourage–good behavior?
Somehow I missed this piece when it was originally posted.
The ways in which attempts are being made to make men into something that they are not almost reminds me of so many wives as soon as they are married. Eventually they realize how futile the endeavor is and either live with it or leave.
Looks as if Katz has been hired as part of this same misguided thinking being rolled out on a societal scale. There’s no question the media is doing its best to feminize men – one need only count the number of times the word ‘emotion’ is mentioned on every news show. Your recent piece about Transsexualism hints at the same force. Another area is how predominantly male personality features, such as strong single focus, are being pathologized as ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’, whereas the typically weepy, irrational, herd behavior of so many women has so far escaped a medical diagnosis. The education system needs no further elaboration.
Great new perspectives Jack.
Independence, courage and strength should be stressed as valued feature for both women and men, not just men(women can also be your soldiers, firefighters etc). At the same time, independence, courage and strength cannot be equaled with a total lack of emotion or weakness. These things are not mutually exclusive. Expecting total, non stop super hero strength from men is unhealthy.
I don’t think Katz wants men to be effeminate and weak. He just calls for changing the expectations to more healthy and realistic ones, where it is ok for men to have moments of weakness, without bashing them for it.
Agnes, it is easy to say that you are strong and independent when nothing is going wrong. Being strong and independent means showing strength in times when things are not going well for yourself, or stepping in and taking an actual risk to save someone else. Whenever you certify public moments of weakness, you take away from the meaning of strength.
That said, there are times when it is okay to show weakness. In private, the cathartic value makes it worth it; it’s not like there is any particular value in being able to present a strong outer face for yourself.
Public shows of weakness should only occur in cases beyond the limits of human endurance; lowering this standard only serves to reduce the human ability to endure.
“I don’t think Katz wants men to be effeminate and weak. He just calls for changing the expectations to more healthy and realistic ones, where it is ok for men to have moments of weakness, without bashing them for it.”
But women don’t change their expectations for us, unless it suits their current whims. We are products of our environments. By women telling us, on one hand, to be sensitive and empathetic, but then on the other, to choose the fearless and aggressive men as mates, you just piss us off. “Nice guys finish last” isn’t a saying that came out of thin air. If young women would choose the sensitive, empathetic types as mates, I promise you, men would emulate that behavior. Men become what women want us to become. Since women want it all now and days, they are setting men up for failure. Very few people can achieve a perfect balance, especially when women want us to be empathetic nurtures when their feelings are hurt, but then suppress our emotions to be fearless heros when the house is burning. Do you see my point. Women don’t know what the fuck they want, and when they do, its bound to change depending on the circumstance, so how bout this, how bout you let men decide what we want to be, and you deal with it.
I agree that women’s expectations are stereotyped and perpetuate gender and masculine stereotypes. I am not one of them, but I do realize that majority of woman think in certain way. I hope that in the future the expectations for genders will not be that rigid, that is all. I believe the way we are should be more fueled by our personalities, not by gender roles that society assigns to us.
Arbitrary – I believe it should be personal choice. If for you showing weakness is unacceptable, so be it, but why bash others that do. I am not saying we should cry and weep at all times, but sometimes it is ok, for both men and women to be weak.
Agnes, when you hold people to higher standards, they work harder to meet those standards. This is true of athletics. This is true of academics. This is true of emotional control.
Take away the standards, and you will reduce the degree of achievement.
I guess we are coming from totally different perspectives. From my observations, unrealistically high standards often lead to substance abuse, eating disorders, high anxiety, ulcers, bottled up anger, and so on. Maybe some kind of middle ground is possible? Where we expect the best, and praise for it, but we do not ostracize someone for having a bad day, and we are able to get over somebody’s moment of weakness instead of giving them tons of negative attention for it.
That of course is being said for the majority of population, I do understand that there are professions where “bad days” are less acceptable (for both men and women), such as president of the country for example
There is a difference between holding people to high standards, and holding them to impossible standards (the former drives success, the latter inevitably creates the problems you’ve described). That said, high standards enable success only in those capable of meeting them; if the standards are not high enough that some people would fail to reach them, they also aren’t high enough to drive those with the greatest ability. The only happy medium is to divide people based on ability, and apply different standards, but it is not considered politically correct to do so.
Aside from political incorrectness, that would be detrimental for human development and progress, since people assigned to their level of ability would internalize that they cannot do any better, and they would not likely exceed what you expect of them, which thankfully, does happen in the real life.
Btw, thank you for respectful conversation, I do come from a very different background, but as feminist I do care about men issues. I will follow this magazine, I like to keep an open mind.
Assigning standards based on ability is a fix to the negative aspects of assigning equal high standards to everyone, despite their inability to reach those levels of achievement (at those rates). If you are assigning low standards to those capable of high achievement, you are not accurately assessing ability, and that is the primary flaw of concern; the best solution (that I know of) is to assign high enough standards to everyone that failure to meet those standards is possible and meaningful (but not guaranteed), and then honestly report the results along with the standards.
The problems with our current system are three-fold. The default standards are uniformly too low. Expectations of achievement are applied unevenly at best (and punitively at worst). And differing standards, where applied, are largely unreported.
In general I try to maintain civil discourse, even towards those who (unlike you) have not extended me the same courtesy. Make no mistake, your choice to come in here with an opinion rather than a pointless insult or a poorly directed rant is most appreciated.
clearly, the person who wrote this is an idiot – enough said.
I remain unconvinced of the brilliance of my critics.
I had not seen this article until now and I thought it was excellent.
Even if I did find it depressing.