Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Apparently I'm responsible for the crisis in masculinity. Maybe its my pink shirt.
Murder and rape on Moorlands Estate/ Somerleyton Road, Brixton
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soupdragon
Well-Known Member
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
no your arguments arent popular.
How about people getting proper pay and conditions for the work they do?
I know what how about enforced sterilization of those who clearly did not apply themselves at school and live in poverty? This kind of thing used to go on in parts of Western world.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
if u havent noticed the cuts have led to people having pay cuts, hours cut and threat of losing job as well.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
perhaps you should amend your tagline, to read 'thick as fuck'. you clearly haven't understood post 139
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
Look, I'm not being funny but if you really do plan on sticking round here and learning some stuff (and I don't mean from just a few posters - this is a huge community with a lot to give in different ways) then try and remember that people who do stick around tend to do so for a very long time - a username is not just for christmas, etc, etc.
You can tell I thought mine out really well, for example.
It takes a lot to offend me, but much much less to offend other people, and it's not nice to have to back down but have a good think about a new username, something cool sounding but vague, and since so many of us have been around for 5-10 years or more (and several old skol posters have had more than one username over the years) have a thought for your future self as well when you think of one.
If you're serious about engaging with people then start the thread yourself about your change of name, and why. I know you probably want to 'stick to your guns' out of some sort of principal but one important lesson in life is to chose which battles it benefits you to fight to the death and which are less important than the potential gains of gracefully withdrawing from the fray.
/twopennyworth
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
You have not dealt with my main objection to your post that root cause is the permissive society/ rampant consumerism. You said in your original post on permissive society/marketisation,
" it's all part of the generations long story of the pluralisation of society in a whole range of ways (permissive society / marketisation are both two squabbling sides of this same movement) that has rendered individualism as the bed rock of our social reality.... Your response is absolutely correct from within that pluralist world view and completely contrary to the collectivist world view that enabled those kind of organisations to exist in the first place."
So I dont understand your post. Either marketisation/ permissive society are leading to individualist society or some form of neo feudalism. Which is it?
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
On a serious note I get irritated when the masculinity issue crops up. It crops up in relation to working class and poor people a lot.
The masculinity of the Bankers is not criticised in same way. They wont be sent to Scout clubs etc to get them to learn to treat others as more than a means to an end. (Muppets as Goldman Sachs workers called there clients. )
The one book I have that does is Affluenza.
soupdragon
Well-Known Member
Well I suppose it seems to me those old left / right arguments about 1968 etc are right. The collectivist forms of government had problems for the new left - the Industrial Military Complex, Modernist planning etc - and for the new right - strong unions etc.
So inadvertently the two sides coincided - and though the opposition between a 'conservative cultural / liberal economic right' and a 'liberal cultural / collectivist economic left' went on through the 80s, the reconfiguration of the left to a 'liberal cultural / liberal economic' form under New Labour - because they could beat the tories on the cultural ground if not the economic - has been the story every since.
The old sense of community, society, the state as ideal etc etc all got lost. Now we're all (wanna be) expressive individuals and the free market provides all the sub-niches we need. And in our innate need for some kind of cohesive social form, we jump on kind of fluid network-y forms and festivals, but never something as solidaristic as society and state.
By the way I think the masculinity thing is important - the metaphor of War was always important to these formations - war against poverty, scarcity etc if not actual war - although it was the actual wars of C20 that made right as well as left feel they owed it to the people to give them welfare etc. The bankers would've been officer class. Now they're set free to be fantasy Masters of the Universe and go White Collar Boxing.
And one of the reasons households needs to be dual income is because feminism doubled the workforce! Wages forced down, no one at home to help out, and all of us pursuing our individual dreams of self-fulfillment.
I'm not saying all forms of collectivity have to be based on that stuff (war, traditional households, nationalism etc) just that's what we had and what fell apart. The job is to try to find new metaphors etc...no?
Individualism / neo-feudalism: both. Corporate feudalism fills the power vacuums opened by the democratic deficit that comes from marketisation / individualism
Edmund Burke: I'm still confused.
So inadvertently the two sides coincided - and though the opposition between a 'conservative cultural / liberal economic right' and a 'liberal cultural / collectivist economic left' went on through the 80s, the reconfiguration of the left to a 'liberal cultural / liberal economic' form under New Labour - because they could beat the tories on the cultural ground if not the economic - has been the story every since.
The old sense of community, society, the state as ideal etc etc all got lost. Now we're all (wanna be) expressive individuals and the free market provides all the sub-niches we need. And in our innate need for some kind of cohesive social form, we jump on kind of fluid network-y forms and festivals, but never something as solidaristic as society and state.
By the way I think the masculinity thing is important - the metaphor of War was always important to these formations - war against poverty, scarcity etc if not actual war - although it was the actual wars of C20 that made right as well as left feel they owed it to the people to give them welfare etc. The bankers would've been officer class. Now they're set free to be fantasy Masters of the Universe and go White Collar Boxing.
And one of the reasons households needs to be dual income is because feminism doubled the workforce! Wages forced down, no one at home to help out, and all of us pursuing our individual dreams of self-fulfillment.
I'm not saying all forms of collectivity have to be based on that stuff (war, traditional households, nationalism etc) just that's what we had and what fell apart. The job is to try to find new metaphors etc...no?
Individualism / neo-feudalism: both. Corporate feudalism fills the power vacuums opened by the democratic deficit that comes from marketisation / individualism
Edmund Burke: I'm still confused.
Not in the same way, because the symptoms are different, but it is criticised - most trenchantly and effectively, in Iceland. But this adds to the feminisation, generally a good thing imo, of the workplace, which further closes off the perceived and actual employment opportunities for young men.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
Yep, also masculinity issues are pointed at black men not white men, muslims not christians etc etc. Out groups.
There is an argument that this has some basis in our social reality. It's a complicated argument and I haven't really got time to get into it properly but I think the explanation would be to do with the idea that in a patriarchal society men (or rather masculinity) is defined as intrinsically "powerful" therefore meaning that men who don't have much power (especially economic power) are forced to defend their masculinity in other ways, e.g by being more macho, claiming public territory as theirs (to replace the private space they do not own) etc. Homophobia is a good example imo. The economically marginalised man becomes a "man who is not quite a man" - he doesn't deliver the goods, bring home the bacon etc. One version of the the "man who is not really a man" is The Gay Man - and shouty homophobia is a good way to defend yourself from this "slur".
If you're a top banker, you're already a Master of the Universe, you don't need to get into that stuff in the same way.
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
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