Masculinism Part 2,3, and 4

Continuing on this masculinism philosophy, I will critique the final three principles:

2:All Men are Good.

All Men are able to practice kindness, respect and love.

All Men are redeemable.

When Men practice kindness, respect love and misandry ends.

I have no issue with the first statement. All men (Could probably be changed to all people), are indeed capable of doing good. I disagree with the second and third points however.Not all men are redeemable. Some men I would say are beyond hope. Not many, but there are some genuine sociopaths out there where they psychologically contain. I would change this to 'Most men are redeemable.' The third statement is a bit unclear. To give the author interpretive charity, I will reword this to be "When men practice kindness, respect and love follows, while misandry ends." This I can see as useful. However, I still don't see how these reasons instantly mean all men are good. I would add a statement "Most men are capable of being kind." Finally, I would change the premise "All men are good," to Men as a group have the capability of being good."

3:All Men are Worthy.

All Men deserve kindness, respect and love.

A Man must recognize that he is worthy.

A Man must recognize that all other Men are worthy.

Overall, I like the beliefs behind this, but I would call them too naive. Not all men deserve kindness, respect, and love. Believing that all men are worthy of this is a nice ideal, but there are just some horrible men out there. Therefore, I would change this entire argument to:

3: Most Men are Worthy.

Man should have kindness, respect, and love, until proof shows otherwise

A man must realise and try to acheive his worth

A PERSON must realize that most men are worthy of Kindness, respect, and love.

4: All Masculinists are Dutiful.

A Masculinist internalizes these truths.

A Masculinist lives these truths.

A Masculinist teaches these truths.

I have no argument with these ideas. I might want to make them less constant, but these are only minor flaws.

Tell me if you have any other ideas on what to do with this philosophy, please tell me.

Masculinism Part 1.

So, we often talk about feminist philosophy, but is there a masculinist philosophy? Curious about what I would find, I typed in "Masculinist Philosophy" on google and discovered an interesting website. Now, I am not saying that all masculine philosophy is like this, since I have had such limited experience with it, but judging from what I read, I am a bit skeptical. On the site I found, it listed "The Four Truths and Twelve Principles of Masculinism." I have a few issues with them. I will discuss their first truth and first three principles in this post, and my criticisms of it.

Truth 1: All Men are Men
Yay Tautology! But anyways, the three principles behind this are:

1. A Man’s self declaration makes him a Man.
2. A Man’s thoughts, feelings, words and deeds are always Manly.
3. Therefore, a Man is always a Man.

What does it exactly mean to declare oneself as a man? And if a self declaration makes him a man, then he was not one before this declaration. Therefore, a man could not self declare himself a man since he was not one beforehand. Also, the second statement: "A Man’s thoughts, feelings, words and deeds are always Manly," I find incredibly wrong. I do not hold the belief that all actions or thoughts have a gendered connotation. Compassion is neither male or female, hitting a baseball is not masculine or feminine, and there is nothing gendered about sleeping, showering, eating, so on and so forth.

Although I wholeheartedly disagree with the second principle, The first principle might still be salvaged? Perhaps what This philosophy was trying to state is that when a man self declares himself as a man, it means to say that when a biological male identifies himself with and takes pride in his masculinity, he becomes an 'ideal' version of a man. I think this would be a slightly more defensible version of the principles. I still find problems with it, but it is much more clear. If anyone has any more ideas on making this idea more defensible or wants to critique this, feel free.

Personality and Gender

So, I happen to be a huge fan of a blog called Phillolzophy, which is a site that is written by two women in their mid twenties with philosophy degrees. They try to make philosophy fun and entertaining, and have often succeeded (Some successes include describing reality TV shows certain philosophers would be on, to  a platonic view of orgasms). They just recently posted up an article  on the confusion of personality traits and gender. The example the author gives is when she was at college, her professor chastised her for not being more outspoken in class. The professor then explained that this occurred because women were taught to be small and nonthreatening in public areas. The authors response to this comment went a little something like this:

The author argues that just because someone didn't like to talk in class did not mean that it was because of a forced gender role. She then goes on a tirade about how feminism is sometimes taken way to seriously by a few people. She acknowledges that feminism is good, but has the potential to be over-applied in society (much like any concept that has the potential to be dogmatized can). Overall I agree with her. I think she might be a bit too harsh on feminism, but it is still a good read, and one really should take a look at other posts on the site. They are really cool authors.

Genders and galas.

So, I went to the valentines day gala last weekend (Quite unwillingly) to celebrate the fact that I have yet again managed to avoid the crushing grip of a relationship. In order to occupy my time there, my mind wandered back to my women and philosophy course and I tried to view the gala from a feminist perspective (Yes, I was that bored). I was curious about gender roles in our society and whether or not women and men were allowed to enjoy them or take pleasure in them despite them being stereotypical. Before the dance, some of the girls I was going with were taking their precious time getting ready and it took them over an hour to finish it. They claimed to do this to look pretty and proper. Now, this is a typical stereotype where women take forever to get ready, and I was wondering whether or not it was socially acceptable to further this kind of stereotype if one honestly enjoyed getting ready.
It was the same with the dancing. Some of the men and women were dancing in a manner that asserted their gender. Some men were dancing with the woman in a clearly masculine and dominant manner, while the women danced in a sensual, submissive manner around the men. And once again, everyone seemed to be having so much fun, despite these stereotypical gender roles. I was just wondering if this was fueling the feminist or egalitarian cause and if it was okay to fall into one's gender role if one enjoys it.

Women and Nerds

As a nerd, I feel that it is my duty to try and see what information I can dig up on women in nerd culture. I remember from a long while an interesting article on male privilege and the role of women in the subgroup that I read and tried to dig it up. You can read it here.
After reading this article, I can completely agree that even though the men are stereotyped in places such as videogames and comic books, they do not experience nearly as many negative stereotypes or are objectified as much as women despite how geeks tend to claim they have an open and non-judgemental atmosphere.
In addition, his point that girls in geek culture are first seen as girls and not geeks points to the fact that there is definitelyu not equality in the mix.
Overall, it is a very amusing and informative read. I highly recommend you read it.

Sexist Jokes Part 4

Now, I do acknowledge that there is a time and place for categorization and stereotype jokes. Telling a black joke to a group of Black Panthers would not be very productive. Neither would telling gay jokes at a gay pride event, or a sexist joke at a feminist rally. There is a time and a place for these things which depend on cultural norms and level of intimacy with the audience. If one is with a comfortable audience who understands one's intentions, the stereotype joke can be very humorous and not at all insulting. Same with when one is a different culture. What is treated as acceptable in one culture can be the taboo of another.
I still promote caution when practicing such jokes, but there are times when they can be used when they are socially acceptable.

On sexist jokes part 3

Humor is experienced when we experience absurdity that our minds cannot handle, which cause us to laugh. I talked a little bit about that in my last post. This post I want to talk about what subjects jokes normally discuss. The short answer is everything. If one tries, one can find humor in or from almost any object or situation (the appropriate time or environment for those jokes will be discussed later.). However, this does not particularly help me when trying to defend jokes at the expense of women, since many people don't agree with this.

Therefore, I will try and take another approach. Many jokes make use of stereotypes in order to be humorous (examples: Women talk all the time, Mexicans are lazy, Asians are smart, etc). However, this joke merely makes use of categorization, and many jokes that people find funny use this. For example, many people find political jokes funny and many friends and professors at my campus have made such jokes which people find hilarious (Note, this is probably because I am at a very liberal college, but the point still stands.). To give an even less controvertial topic, we often make fun of people who like certain things or have certain hobbies. People make fun of sports fans, Actors, Jersey Shore watchers, Gamers, or any other kind of thing that can be fit into a category. And when used in the proper place, these jokes can be hilarious. Why is it okay if we make fun of sports fans for cliche stereotypes that is not true of all of them, but not okay to poke fun at women from time to time?

I acknowledge that there is a time and a place for certain types of jokes. And I will discuss this in my next blog post.

In the mean time, thoughts? Critiques?