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NY Times Op-Ed by Michael Ian Black: The Boys Are Not All Right

SageShinigami

SageShinigami

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Oct 27, 2017
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Comedian Michael Ian Black has some things to say about the recent shooting in a New York Times op-ed. I don't think this is old but apologies if so.

I used to have this one-liner: “If you want to emasculate a guy friend, when you’re at a restaurant, ask him everything that he’s going to order, and then when the waitress comes … order for him.” It’s funny because it shouldn’t be that easy to rob a man of his masculinity — but it is.

Last week, 17 people, most of them teenagers, were shot dead at a Florida school. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School now joins the ranks of Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine and too many other sites of American carnage. What do these shootings have in common? Guns, yes. But also, boys. Girls aren’t pulling the triggers. It’s boys. It’s almost always boys.

America’s boys are broken. And it’s killing us.
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I've seen this sentiment before but MIB takes it in a direction I hadn't really seen before. Usually it just begins and ends at being yelled at because it's just on Twitter lol. But Black's piece talks about how men often wind up broken because of their inability to discuss emotions. Moreover, it's a self-perpetuating problem because they're raised by men who also don't know how to discuss emotion.

If there's one thing the piece lacks IMO it's discussion of intersectionalism. (IE, these mass shootings are overwhelmingly male but also overwhelmingly white male as well.). But it's still worth a look, I think.
 
Surface of Me

Surface of Me

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Oct 25, 2017
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Friend posted this on his FB feed and I completely agree. I know I've gone through periods of just being frustrated and lost or both. I'm better now, still got some work to do though. I try my best to be as open as I can and show my peers that they can as well with me. It's a struggle.
 
Minty Freshness

Minty Freshness

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Oct 27, 2017
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It's probably long past time we had a societal conversation about this subject. In our current environment it's unlikely, but we've made great strides to address the idea of girls not being tied to a set of rules or jobs or personalities. Boys need the same kind of advocating, and the rise of the alt-right being fueled in part by toxic masculinity is hurting the progress that's needed.

Still have a long way to go on both.

EDIT: And I'm with the poster above in wondering what it is that makes white boys particularly susceptible to this.
 
Dyle

Dyle

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Hyper-masculinity sucks so much, it poisons every aspect of social/emotional relations
 
fundogmo

fundogmo

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Oct 25, 2017
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I'm not 100% with all the assertions but this quote is such a poignant cut:

"I believe in boys. I believe in my son. Sometimes though, I see him swallowing his frustration, burying his worry, stomping up the stairs without telling us what’s wrong. I want to show him what it looks like to be vulnerable and open but I can’t. Because I was a boy once, too."
 
PanickyFool

PanickyFool

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Oct 25, 2017
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***I am not using proper terminology in the following our of ignorance, not spite. Barbie is a shitty placeholder.

I always found it weird that the discussions about gender equality usually revolve around masculine-izing women, getting them into stem and not playing with Barbie. But society seems to have entirely avoided the discussion about feminizing males, encouraging them to play with Barbie.
 
Syriel

Syriel

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Dec 13, 2017
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SageShinigami said:
That was my first reaction when my homeboy showed it to me lol. It ain't black dudes doing this. Latino dudes either. And outside of maybe one case, asians either. Toxic masculinity doesn't seem to affect us the same way. Not to say it isn't there tho.
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Ignoring the DC snipers? Just because they didn't shoot up a school doesn't mean they didn't cause terror.
 
nasirum

nasirum

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SageShinigami said:
That was my first reaction when my homeboy showed it to me lol. It ain't black dudes doing this. Latino dudes either. And outside of maybe one case, asians either. Toxic masculinity doesn't seem to affect us the same way. Not to say it isn't there tho.
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Uh the dude that shot up the Florida school was hispanic.

Also what's with this racism? Quit it.
 
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SageShinigami

SageShinigami

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Oct 27, 2017
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PanickyFool said:
***I am not using proper terminology in the following our of ignorance, not spite. Barbie is a shitty placeholder.

I always found it weird that the discussions about gender equality usually revolve around masculine-izing women, getting them into stem and not playing with Barbie. But society seems to have entirely avoided the discussion about feminizing males, encouraging them to play with Barbie.
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Because when you say that phrase it's almost a dog whistle for people who think the "long term liberal goal" is a world where women are masculine and men are feminine and useless. They think you won't be happy unless men are in dresses.

They don't realize the goal isn't 'put every man in a dress', it's "don't attack a man for displaying feminine behavior".
 
ZeroX

ZeroX

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KHarvey16

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I think focusing specifically on school shootings is artificially limiting the scope of the author’s thesis. Yes, school shooters have been primarily white but the issues talked about regarding toxic masculinity span all ethnic groups and manifests in various ways.
 
Krejlooc

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SageShinigami said:
That was my first reaction when my homeboy showed it to me lol. It ain't black dudes doing this. Latino dudes either. And outside of maybe one case, asians either. Toxic masculinity doesn't seem to affect us the same way. Not to say it isn't there tho.
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Not to slander my own people or my own family, but I see tons of toxic masculinity among my extended hispanic family. A few years ago, on christmas eve, after christmas eve dinner, me and my uncles and my cousins and second cousins were outside, drinking whiskey and smoking cigars. And one of my cousins notices his son texting someone. And he goes to make a joke about who he's texting, and my cousin's son says "It's my partner" -- now he said partner like "paht-na" in a joking way, indicating a close friend. But my cousin's response was "partner, or partner? Cause if it's partner, boy, you know I'll whoop your ass."

And it stuck with me. I thought, what if his son really was gay? He just communicated to his son that he better never, ever come out to him, or else he'll get violent. We have gay cousins, cousins who are trans, cousins who have been through all walks of life. What if one of the gay cousins had heard?

That my second cousin didn't grab a gun doesn't mean he's not affected by the toxic masculinity. It absolutely does affect us.
 
blame space

blame space

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we can acknowledge that men have a problem while also considering that white men especially have a problem.
 
Krejlooc

Krejlooc

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Black American Psycho said:
Yes but this article is a result of mass shootings by white terrorist
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Not really. That might be the immediate exigence, but it's clear Black is talking about a range of reactions, not just shooting up the school. That's why he noted that watching his son storm up the stairs in anger is a problem. Just because it's not manifested by shooting up a school doesn't make it less of a problem.
 
louiedog

louiedog

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Oct 25, 2017
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I still often think about something a friend told me when we saw a movie together while I was home from college one winter. We saw a movie together and when we sat down he said something like "this is refreshing." Apparently he had friends at college who refused to sit next to another man at the movies without leaving an empty seat because it would be gay. There were multiple of them and they were 20-21. That's way too old to live your life in such a ridiculous way and be so terrified of socializing properly.
 
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SageShinigami

SageShinigami

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Oct 27, 2017
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Krejlooc said:
Not to slander my own people or my own family, but I see tons of toxic masculinity among my extended hispanic family. A few years ago, on christmas eve, after christmas eve dinner, me and my uncles and my cousins and second cousins were outside, drinking whiskey and smoking cigars. And one of my cousins notices his son texting someone. And he goes to make a joke about who he's texting, and my cousin's son says "It's my partner" -- now he said partner like "paht-na" in a joking way, indicating a close friend. But my cousin's response was "partner, or partner? Cause if it's partner, boy, you know I'll whoop your ass."

And it stuck with me. I thought, what if his son really was gay? He just communicated to his son that he better never, ever come out to him, or else he'll get violent. We have gay cousins, cousins who are trans, cousins who have been through all walks of life. What if one of the gay cousins had heard?

That my second cousin didn't grab a gun doesn't mean he's not affected by the toxic masculinity. It absolutely does affect us.
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But the last two sentences of my post are literally "other races have toxic masculinity, it just works differently". I wouldnt argue against that. I have family members that are terrified of the "LGBT agenda" and have threatened to beat the gay out of people before.
 
Just_a_Mouse

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Toxic masculinity is one of the biggest problems facing society today. It is surely one of the root causes as to why so many men turn to murder, bigotry, white supremacy, and sex assault. But how do you even tackle something so entrenched in our culture? It could take years, you need to start in on it from the very first day of school.
 
Chief Malik

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nasirum said:
I'm not wrong. Cruz is hispanic. And you as well as Black American Psycho are making this into a racist issue.
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It's racist because the response to these massacres would be very different. We'e seen what happened when black people wanted to own guns legally, imagine what would happen if they were going around doing school massacres. Guns would be banned entirely and even the most crazy gun nuts would be all for it.
 
Krejlooc

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SageShinigami said:
But the last two sentences of my post are literally "other races have toxic masculinity, it just works differently". I wouldnt argue against that. I have family members that are terrified of the "LGBT agenda" and have threatened to beat the gay out of people before.
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the point of that post was that it doesn't work differently. It is all the same. It all pools into the exact same culture. White people aren't special here. It's rather gross that you are trying to make that point, actually. That very point is part of the problem.
 
PanickyFool

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SageShinigami said:
But the last two sentences of my post are literally "other races have toxic masculinity, it just works differently". I wouldnt argue against that. I have family members that are terrified of the "LGBT agenda" and have threatened to beat the gay out of people before.
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Racial and economic segregation are likely a reason for the different scopes of the issue and how it occurs among different racial and economic groups.

Schools shootings of media worth scale seem to be more a suburban/rural thing. Smaller school shootings not of media scale (for skin color or just casualty count appears) to be a urban thing.
 
Heshinsi

Heshinsi

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Oct 25, 2017
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Question. After 9/11 the US decided as a county that the Patriot Act was ok to be used to violate the constitutional rights of Brown Americans. How come after all these mass shootings, certain white males aren't in a sort of no-gun mass data base? Why aren’t they rolling into schools and pulling White males out of classes for what they call “randomly selected” searches?

The argument that the 2nd Amendment and that constitutional rights are inalienable is bunk, considering the number of constitutional rights the Patriot Act has been used to violate. Why are there different rules in play for different groups?
 
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phanphare

phanphare

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Oct 25, 2017
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I do think it's worth discussing why so many of these shootings are done by white men but we shouldn't limit the scope of the discussion to only white men. toxic masculinity affects men of all races and the article in the OP was using these shootings as a jumping off point for a larger conversation. I think we desperately need to have that conversation and I think limiting the scope of that conversation would do everyone a disservice.
 
nick shaw

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if you think toxic masculinity doesnt affect all races equally, then you are hopelessly sheltered from the lower class in the US.
 
Chief Malik

Chief Malik

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phanphare said:
I do think it's worth discussing why so many of these shootings are done by white men but we shouldn't limit the scope of the discussion to only white men. toxic masculinity affects men of all races and the article in the OP was using these shootings as a jumping off point for a larger conversation. I think we desperately need to have that conversation and I think limiting the scope of that conversation would do everyone a disservice.
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Yeah but I feel it's different over here. I don't really think this white man can really speak on it. Black men generally not being able to get into position of powers definitely leads us to over compensating in toxic ass ways is something he's not going to touch on. White men esmasculting black men is not something he's going to touch on.
 
Kurdel

Kurdel

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Nov 7, 2017
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phanphare said:
I do think it's worth discussing why so many of these shootings are done by white men but we shouldn't limit the scope of the discussion to only white men. toxic masculinity affects men of all races and the article in the OP was using these shootings as a jumping off point for a larger conversation. I think we desperately need to have that conversation and I think limiting the scope of that conversation would do everyone a disservice.
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I was going to say something like this, but you did a great job.
 
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