My workplace has a ton of these "Rise & Grind™️©️®️" Sigma and Ligma mindset books all over the place. I read them from time to time to gaze into the dreaded and loathsome Manosphere and understand my enemy.

The core of these books is a sort of bastardized self-actualization. I genuinely don't think becoming accountable to set of values and being active member in one's own life is a bad thing; in fact I think if they left it at that a lot of guys would be better for it. However, I find it to be uniquely corrupted by neoliberalism and capitalism, in that it twists and warps manhood into this ideal that demands the domination of everything and everyone around. It turns manhood into a zero-sum game.

A lot of these books blogs websites do offer somewhat meaningful mental frameworks for “achievement” but I'm always questioned as to what end. much of it is a false myth of manhood and recapturing a masculinity that never existed which I feel uniquely disappoints men. Patriarchy leaves men particularly vulnerable to these sorts of traps and snares when they are feeling down and out.

I do think it's good to strive and do your best, but that should never EVER come at the cost of someone else doing the same. If anything you should be helping others become their best too, so you two can be your best together and shine even brighter. I hate how the modern world has made being a dude about just being a dick with a bunch of stuff rather than being a good person. Discipline, steadfast commitment, pushing through failure, all that sort of stuff is great and good but not if it's just implemented to get a new shiny bauble or whatever. Capitalism really does hinder men's ability to live up their supposed values and virtues. We can’t be the mean we want to be with under capitalism, we can’t be the men we actually should be as along as capitalism is rules over us

Being a great man should be defined by your ability actually live out manly virtues, not these fast food Mc-ideals of debasing yourself for some coin. A good dude is more than his ability to dominate.

I don't know what my larger point is, but I'm just typing this at work cause they got me working on a Sunday and all these dumb books are lying around the "leadership" library. It's just so fuckin' corny.

  • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    but is that even a solution? what relief does someone dealing with these problems get from that

    none! i think gender abolition would help a bunch of these guys but I haven't found a way to do that without ruining a bunch of things trans people have spent years fighting for.

        • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I read the whole article and while I still don't think gender abolition will help me in particular there were some ideas in the essay that got the cogwheels in my brain turning. I wrote a great deal more in the other comment thread.

          • Ideology [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I think one of the issues I have bringing this up with men is that they tend to put up a wall when it comes to that final leap of accepting that gender is fake. Most (lib/left) women tend to kinda at least get on board with the idea of disinvesting from gender and I think that's due to the general awareness of their own oppression.

            In order to beat patriarchy we need a mass movement of not just queer people and not just 'allies' but a mass line of everyone, because gender is fake for everyone and it oppresses everyone. If only queer people are talking about this stuff and doing the organizing around it, as we have been for decades, it won't get off the ground. Masc investment in patriarchal norms seems to be the biggest block, and whenever I bring it up with men they just kinda shut down and don't wanna talk about it. But they have no issues blaming women for their problems and get tons of engagement when that's the spin on the topic.

            • SadStruggle92 [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              I think one of the issues I have bringing this up with men is that they tend to put up a wall when it comes to that final leap of accepting that gender is fake.

              Gender is fake in the same way that money, culture, and national borders are fake. You can't possibly strictly reduce them down to purely naturalistic phenomenon, but they also couldn't possibly exist without a natural & material world to make reference to. Also while they absolutely do change in exactly what they mean, and how they function over time, they're still extremely important & have very real consequences to people in the times & places where they exist. You can't just act like they aren't real at all, and expect to not face consequences for doing so.

              They're also all deeply inextricable to the fabric of Class Society, and can only really begin to be challenged with the abolition of economic classes.

              That's my position on things.

              • Ideology [she/her]
                ·
                2 years ago

                You can’t just act like they aren’t real at all, and expect to not face consequences for doing so.

                I do face consequences for doing so, every day. I just decided that it was worth dealing with to not be depressed all the time.

        • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Haven't finished it yet but there's already some really good bits:

          Gender was defined by the intrigues of court or the necessities of toil in the fields or in the cities. But, with capitalism, we find it more and more tied to wage labor and marriage transformed with it. The male part of reproductive labor was increasingly to labor for a capitalistic boss and the female part to support his wage labor from home. This effect on the material base of gender caused it to transform, both in how the classes worked and in the characteristics of the superstructure.

          necessities of toil in the fields

          This is especially apparent in Chinese where man 男 is the character for field 田 over the character for strength 力 basically meaning "field worker"

          Also of interest is the section of how men and women are socialized. The problem I have always had with this isn't that it's not true, but that it's only a generalization and not a set of solid rules as to how they are expected to behave. What is masculine and feminine varies a great deal and versions expected of society still vary considerably. How do these variations fit into Marxism?

          ...and the next paragraph addresses it :picard:

          • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Continuing reading

            By objecting to my gender, you are objecting to that which is inherently me.

            This is how I generally feel too. I'm curious to see how the article deals with it.

            To do away with gender, so to must go capitalism, race, neuronormativity, and the state.

            Solid agree here. You can't abolish this system without abolishing the others.

            Looks like we've gotten to the revolution and future plans section of the article

            Dictatorship of the Queer

            This could be very easily misinterpreted just as Dictatorship of the Proletariat is. Curious to see where they go with it.

            • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              This means creating queer organizations and institutions. Counterpowers to the dominant patriarchal class system. These allow for us to provide people with what they need for transition, including providing HRT drugs, supporting victims of sexual assault, empowering women outside of the system, and ultimately providing spaces to be different, to escape the domination of gender.

              Although it's only online, I feel that Hexbear provides a space to be different and escape the domination of gender. Thanks to comrades like @TransComrade69 and many more for making that possible :flag-gay-pride:

              • wtypstanaccount04 [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                It looks like one of the things they are proposing is something similar to the Black Panthers but for queer people, which sounds really cool.

                Overall I think that this essay has some really interesting ideas regarding gender. I found the baker metaphor very apt. I think that this essay is helpful for giving us a tiny glimpse at how gender will be (or not be) under full communism, and some helpful advice for how queer people might be empowered. I still don't think that this has much to benefit me and my current gender personally, however.

                The good news is that this is giving me some ideas as to how we could decommodify romance. I think the biggest problem here will be keeping the sexual abusers out and not recreating the systems of capitalism. I think that some will inevitably sneak in but we can kick them out.

                A couple ideas that I had might be creating communist mixers and whatnot that people could get into for free. A communist program that allows for recreation and is interested in helping its members bond. Another idea is strikewaves that point out that the capitalist system takes us away from our spouses and dating opportunities. One thing I noticed at my most recent job is how all of the men there were kept away from their wives and families almost every day.

                Making a space to date where women feel safe is of utmost importance. I think this would help a great deal. Additionally, removing ourselves from capitalist expectations of beauty will do a great deal to make love attainable. I know it's possible because I can remember how my own attractions have been influenced by capitalist media overtime. While bringing it up might make some people uncomfortable, I think that there should be more demands for representation in pornography and erotic material in particular.

                Covid, a disease fueled almost entirely by capitalism, has made my health worse and forced me and many many others away from each other. We know the cause that is preventing affection, let's wipe it out!