[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Fletch1986 wrote:
[quote]EmilyQ wrote:
[quote]Alpha F wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]imhungry wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
But your above posts in this thread do smell of beta-bitch insecurity.[/quote]
LOL. What does that even mean?[/quote]
You obviously play video games, which is why you went straight into defensive mode about my video games post, even taking it out of the context I intended.
The actual content of video games are not a problem but the behaviour of choosing to allocate time to that activity may be taking away from social interaction, which is a partial reason for the described deprecation of masculinity in men.[/quote]
I don’t play video games at all and haven’t owned any game system since the original Nintendo came out, which I grew bored of after about two years, so I’m hardly an expert on this matter. That being said, I have friends who play those fucking first-person shooter games until the early hours of the morning every goddamned weekend. I’m pretty sure that they play with each other all the time, as in they are all playing together in the same room.
Sure, they play with people from all over the planet and they do frequently also play by themselves, but the point is that they hardly play these things in solitary confinement on a regular basis. I’m not sure if three or four guys sitting in a room taking turns with the bong and the video controllers constitutes social interaction, but whatever.
Another thing to consider is that two centuries ago, when most people in this thread would probably argue that men were men and not “beta-bitches” as you have so eloquently stated, people didn’t interact with each other all that often either. They might have interacted with their own families, but people didn’t live in the same sort of clustered society that we live in today. Going to the store was a far less frequent occurrence, if they went at all. Many people lived in places where they rarely interacted with anyone outside their own families except on Sundays at church.
I think that video games definitely are a factor in people being different today than they were back then, but I don’t think those differences extend to the de-masculinization of men. I think the effect that video games is having is probably more in terms of our attention spans and what we need in order to be stimulated, sort of like the porn addiction thing. Are we playing more video games because we need more stimulus, or do we need more stimulus because we play video games more often? I don’t know, but I don’t think you know either.
The more pertinent question here as someone else mentioned, which has been covered ad nauseum and is ENTIRELY subjective, is what exactly makes a man a masculine man. Personally, I don’t really think it has anything to do with anything other than our abilities to take care of our families. I think the declining rate of violence in the United States is a clear sign of an increase in masculinity, but others might argue differently if they think that masculinity entails violence. I don’t think so at all, because violence is almost always in the form of a crime, and it is hard to take care of your family if you are in jail as a violent criminal.
However, that would also mean that being a masculine man would mean that you would have to have a family to take care of in the first place. Many men don’t have children or a wife and their parents aren’t old or infirm enough to need someone else taking care of them. I have no children and neither nor anyone else in my family needs me to care for them. So in that sense, masculinity may simply mean the ability to take care of oneself instead, which isn’t a masculine trait at all. Women are just as capable of doing that as I or any other man is, and I don’t think it’s fair to women to say that they are masculine simply because they can take care of their own shit.
So the reality is that the most all-encompassing definition of what it means to be masculine is more along the lines of what it means to be a good, responsible person in general, regardless of gender or sex. All that other bullshit like “masculine men shoot guns” or “masculine men are physically strong” or “masculine men don’t show emotions” or whatever is a bunch of Hollywood superficiality that has no bearing in reality whatsoever. In my mind, “masculine” men are simply good people, period. So even the most feminine of men can still be more masculine than someone who most people would point to as being masculine. It has nothing to do with sexuality or hobbies or anything else material like that. It’s a very ethereal quality that isn’t absolute by any means.[/quote]
Damn good post. As usual.
[/quote]
This is about the time that Pushharder comes in, calls me Delbert, and then says I’m wrong. I know a lot of people here think he’s masculine, and he appears to take care of his own shit pretty well so I won’t argue that he isn’t in that respect. But I think most of the people who think he’s the definition of masculinity think so for other reasons. Personally, I think most of what he believes when he and I get into these arguments is based in fear; he’s driven by his fears, not his strengths, and then identifies his ability to recognize those fears as a strength.
Take the whole gun thing. Who the fuck needs an automatic weapon? Do we really need to protect ourselves from the enemy that, for 99.999999999%of us will never come? Of course not. I don’t fear the govt or some random intruder coming into my home. I don’t think along fear-based lines like that.
Of course, knowing my luck this is probably the one long post that he’ll actually agree with 100%, so I apologize in advance, Push, if it is.[/quote]
How ironic that you should write about masculinity and behave in the true manner of a weak and wounded female.
So you took a beating from Push in the polar bear thread and on a different thread, after having your ego stroked, you start bitching behind his back and apologizing for it in advance?
Am I the only one who sees the female behavior in this move?
[/quote]
Would this be female behavior or just your standard-issue poor behavior? I would not like to think this is my go-to reaction to perceived slights*, though I am both female and feminine.
*I make no judgment of DB’s motive and behavior with regard to Push, and have not read the polar bear thread. I’ve certainly seen DB called “Delbert” by Push, though. I assume both parties are operating from a place of humor and good will. (Is that female thinking, or male?)[/quote]
I’m just speculating, but I think Push started in humor and good will, DB got butthurt, Push saw that so he started trolling DB.
Sound about right in a nutshell?[/quote]
Don’t know, don’t care, like them both, and won’t take sides. I only question this:
being labeled as “female” behavior. It distresses me that it is a female categorizing it so.[/quote]
To answer whether or not that’s female thinking or not after looking at your response to my post, I think it is female thinking. I say that because women are more likely to want people to ‘just get along’ and men will be more likely to see something as a confrontation.
[/quote]
Interesting. But I have no interest in whether Push and DB get along, don’t have any need to curry favor with either of them, and have I suppose aggressed against Alpha F, or at least her views, which would seem a poor way for me to go about this “getting along” business if that were my goal.
I only noted that I don’t judge the Push/DB thing because I didn’t want to label DB’s behavior when I don’t care about it and haven’t paid attention to it. I certainly have no dog in that particular race. My only interest was in Alpha F’s categorization as female of what she seemed to see as whinging, back-biting behavior.
[/quote]
Truth be told, I didn’t see you as being confrontational towards Alpha. At least not in the same way I saw DB and Push being confrontational. FTR, I haven’t taken a side with DB or Push.
