God save us, Ross Douthat has appointed “left-wing gadfly Fredrik De Boer” as spokesman for us libtards on the topic of “The Left and Masculinity.” Douthat analyzes a post in which FdB muses about the UCSB shooter’s twisted notions of masculine entitlement and calls for the overthrow of “traditional masculinity.”
Predictably, it’s that last part that shrivels Douthat’s raisins:
I mean, I understand his point insofar as ”the celebration of violence, sexual entitlement, throbbing misogyny, and a fake self-confidence” are problems that have always particularly infected the male half of humanity, and the sexism inherent in traditional gender hierarchies has allowed men to get away with violent, entitled, hateful behavior on an often-epic scale. But he’s making an argument about “traditional masculinity” as something distinct from “sexism,” as a cultural problem unto itself — an unworkable model for male aspiration, a life-ruining ideal, that straitjackets today’s young men with its toxic, sex-and-violence-saturated demands.
Douthat is confused by FdB’s separation of “traditional masculinity” and “sexism,” but I think it correlates roughly with “privilege” and “racism,” which are two distinct and yet interconnected phenomena. FdB specifically addresses what it is about “traditional masculinity” that makes it a model worth rejecting and describes what will replace it:
It won’t be anti-confidence or anti-leadership or anti-toughness. It won’t be anti-sex … But it will reject utterly the strangled, stupid, pathetic association between male strength and the capacity for violence. It will stop associating a man’s value with the number of women he has sex with.
You can quibble with FdB’s definition of traditional masculinity, but he’s defined his perception of it pretty clearly. That seems to sail right over Douthat’s chapeau for some reason.
Douthat then goes on to cite vintage matinee idols and fictional characters whom he believes embody the best in traditional masculinity and implies that modern developments like feminism and free love are more to blame for the warped values and behavior of the MRA and PUA types than vestiges of The Patriarchy. We would expect no less from the man who once distained the favors of Chunky Reese Witherspoon.
Anyway, the whole thing makes my lady-brain hurt. The end.
different-church-lady
Can’t we just ignore both of them?
BGinCHI
If the right has anything to say beyond blaming the victim please wake me up.
FlipYrWhig
@different-church-lady: Better yet, let’s just put them in a big glass jar and shake it to make them fight, then get bored and forget where we put the jar for a few weeks.
Feminist MRA
Nice Guys like Me yearn for long, thoughtful, platonic conversations where we can pick the brains of women, but it’s like women only ever want to share their deep thoughts with rich bad boys with nice cars.
Mandalay
Semi O/T: I’m pleased to see that Freddie is still on the author list on BJ’s home page. Sadly, Bernard Finel is not. I thought both of them wrote some pretty good OPs, but neither was cut out for the “rough and tumble” of BJ.
Bernard never writes anywhere anymore, but his final post was great:
If only everyone had that much self-awareness.
Quaker in a Basement
Now there’s two folks who deserve each other. You boys just entertain yourselves, OK?
Stella B.
I lke to read the insulting comments that follow Douthat’s articles, but I could not make myself click on that particular title. It made my head hurt just thinking about what I might accidentally read while waiting for the comments to load.
Epicurus
Setting the bar low, are we? The number of things in the universe which routinely sail over Ross Douthat’s head is a very large set….approaching infinity.
the Conster
Those two explaining masculinity? Really? No thanks.
The best discussion of Isla Vista so far, IMHO, is this one by Rebecca Solnit. The first two paragraphs alone are Pulitzer Prize-worthy.
Villago Delenda Est
Douchehat really needs to be consigned to some nether plane of existence where there is no net connectivity and we never have to hear from him in any way, shape, or form again.
canuckistani
Like listening to the Pope and Andrew Sullivan debating atheism.
Alexandra
Douthat, McArdle: failing upwards.
I chose the wrong career.
Trollhattan
@Quaker in a Basement:
Absolutely. Yet, one of them has the Safire Memorial Man Chair at the NYT Daycare Center, so we’re obligated to dope-slap him every time he shoots his yap.
The other, not so much.
Skippy-san
Ross Douhat can blow me. Wait, does that make us both gay? Not that there is anything wrong with that………….
RaflW
Because Douthat wants to miss the point. It’s a tried and true classic of punditry. Also, too, he’s an idiot.*
*I don’t think he’s dumb. His idiocy is self-unfurling. Like an overly fussy deck chair that can’t quite deploy, even though it looked so great in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.
Cassidy
@canuckistani: I’d listen to Frank.
Poopyman
@Villago Delenda Est: Isn’t that by definition a NYT blog?
Actually, the snippet of Freddie’s that Betty gives I can pretty much sorta kinda agree with. As for DoubtThat, I think it’s very brave of him to parade his understanding of the world on a blog of The Paper of Record for all to see, bless his heart.
tBone
@Quaker in a Basement:
Douthat vs DeBoer is the textbook definition of “rooting for injuries.”
Betsy
B/c feminism is what’s really responsible for men’s misbehavior. Always.
beltane
@FlipYrWhig: That’s a good idea. Just put some sort of botulism warning on the jar. Home canning must be done with meticulous attention to detail.
Betty Cracker
@Poopyman: I also agree with FdB, at least in this one instance. I’ve read some incredibly boneheaded stuff from him on the topic of feminism (mostly the scolding he tried to give the Tiger Beatdown peeps that prompted a legendary and well-deserved beatdown), but I think he’s mostly right on in the piece Douthat cites.
jl
Does Douthat have any actual people to demonstrate his ideal of manhood, or just story book nonsense from films and fiction?
If not, why not?
Anyway, if Douthat’s ideas and goals and exemplars come solely from film and fiction, that might help explain his comprehension problems on this topic.
If I have time, I will read this exchange between two well known BS artists. If the DeBoer stuff does not go on at the length of a Tolstoy novel, which it well might.
burnspbesq
Must be a reallllllly slow day if this is what we’re reduced to talking about.
I’m so not in. Catch y’all later.
SatanicPanic
@jl: Manhood cannot fail it can only be failed, so he probably doesn’t have anyone real, or if he does, he will reserve the right to dismiss that person later.
TerryC
@canuckistani: “Like listening to the Pope and Andrew Sullivan debating atheism.” Made my day, thanks. And I love Sullivan.
jl
I do agree with Douthat that there might be some recent cultural developments that have harmed the average young boy kid relative to the average young girl kid in school, and educational and career attainment. Might have something to do with the punitive criminalization of rebellious or ADHD prone behavior. Or rise of importance of rote learning. Or something.
Opposite Douthat, the goofy and narrow view of gender roles of his precious 1950s white middle class repressed worldview might be the cause of it too, in rapidly changing economic times. Douthat sees the return to it as some kind of magic remedy.
And anyway, what use is his carping about birth control? What does he propose, uninvent it so somehow, men can produce more unwanted pregnancies again, or outlaw it?
Douthat is so damn goofy. Even if young males are in some sort of psychic or cultural straightjacket, these days, I do not understand what connection that has with an abusive entitled attitude towards women and sex.
Edit: unless of course, Douthat’s vision comes down to a very genteel and polite version of an abusive attitude towards women and sex.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mandalay: I shuttered my blog in 2009 for exactly that reason.
And kudos to Freddie, who is not in any way “the left”, for writing something I 100% agree with. Good going.
Txkid
I can’t be the only one who thinks Ben and Jerry’s should be petitioned to make “Chunky Reese Witherspoon” a flavor, can I?
Schlemizel
@burnspbesq:
We really must talk of this more often.
Schlemizel
@Txkid: “Chunky Reese Witherspoon”
“Chunky Reese Wintergreenspoon” maybe
“Chunky Reese’s pieces With-a-spoon” ?
D.N. Nation
The problem with masculinity’s “goodness” in some areas is that it necessitates femininity’s “badness” in the same areas. And vice versa.
A solution: Take the good stuff from both, and say everyone should strive for such if they can.
OR, you could write a bunch of stuff about movie characters and get paid handsomely by the NYT to sit on your ass.
Trollhattan
@Txkid:
It would likewise make a great name for a frozen yogurt chain.
Crusty Dem
Douthat and DeBoer debating masculinity.
George W Bush and Bill O’Reilly discussing quantum mechanics.
Tori Spelling and Kathie Lee Gifford debating Tolstoy.
These are all equivalent.
kindness
Sounds like a match made for Sully. I think he posted about this already too.
D.N. Nation
@jl:
Basically, Ross likes to pretend that the very worst of misogyny comes from an apolitical dudebro place, not from his fellow churchy wingnuts who oh so want the very best for women and can’t ever be accused of misogyny at all. It’s all Seth MacFarlane’s fault!
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: I don’t know if I’d call them “BS artists”. They’re more like “BS fingerpainters”
Roger Moore
@jl:
Which is a pretty good summary of modern Republicanism. They aren’t really conservatives at all; they’re reactionaries who don’t realize how unrealistic their fuzzy memories of the past are. They want us to go back to the 1950s, when everything was great- if you were a straight white conformist man or a white woman who wanted to be a housewife. Not so great if you were a minority, gay, didn’t want to behave like everyone else, or simply didn’t like the perpetual threat of nuclear war.
jl
@Schlemizel: To be honest, when I leaned about Douthat’s chunky Reese Witherspoon episode, that was enough. The guy is repressed in a weird and goofed not-good up way. End of story. Case closed. Period. Full stop. Say no more. Nothing I have read of him on gender or sex has changed my mind one bit.
The additional bad news is that his repression problems seem to saturate every other topic he thinks about as well.
Gorgon Zola
By characterizing Freddie’s view of the male icon as “Grand Theft Auto” / “Scarface”, Douthat is employing that most unctuous of argument techniques: strawmansplaining.
Ash Can
And in other news, Hailey ID has canceled its planned public celebration of Bowe Bergdahl’s release. I’d provide a link, but all I can find is a namby-pamby blurb from Reuters (“cancelled amid allegations that Bergdahl had deserted, blah blah blah”) and no link to the Hailey town press release. The text of the press release, reported by an LGF commenter, is as follows:
I’m sure that the people of Hailey will find a way to celebrate and welcome home Sgt. Bergdahl on their own. And maybe it’s for the best; this way there won’t be a load of right-wing terrorists crashing the celebration. But really. Good fucking grief. The right wing has gone straight to hell in this country.
piratedan
it would be more interesting to put the two of them in a ring with olive oil and let them rassle it out. We could have Sullivan be the ref to ensure that all of the proprieties that are associated with near naked man wrassling are observed, such as no promotional tags on their speedos and such.
I believe that an event such as this would help to raise the nature of discourse in our proud nation……
Baud
A coup d’ick?
Mandalay
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
It’s disappointing but not surprising to see the “yawn” brigade on this thread logging in to sneer at Freddie without bothering to read what he actually wrote, which was pretty awesome:
Roger Moore
@Crusty Dem:
Freddie doesn’t seem out of place in that argument; he is taking the anti- side, after all.
Long Tooth
Betty Crackler: Your lady brain would be singing a different tune if nature herself impelled you to hunt giraffes, only for you to discover there were none to be hunted.
If Newt Gingrich taught America one thing, toots, that was it.
Schlemizel
@jl:
I don’t think asshat is really that messed up, I think he is a bullshit artist. He does not believe he turned down any sort of Witherspoon but he wants you to believe it so he can make his asinine point. Same with this retch, he didn’t miss the point because he is obtuse or ignorant. He missed the point so he could make up the story he wanted to tell to support he BS he already believes.
Nobody could be as stupid as asshat pretends to be and still make it to the office every day without a handler.
Betty Cracker
@Gorgon Zola: I wish I’d thought of “strawmansplaining.” It’s perfect.
KS in MA
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ha!
SatanicPanic
@jl: the Chunky Reese Witherspoon thing was an episode of “I do not speak your language man”. A girl you think is pretty wants to make out with you and you freak out? OK, I guess that could happen. Writing a column on it like other people should draw some deep meaning from it= fucking weird.
Schlemizel
@piratedan:
change the olive oil to bits of fiberglass, remove the speedos and I’d be onboard with the event.
jl
@Roger Moore: I read some books in US economic history about the history of household economics. I think you are exactly right, the 1950s view of gender roles is very ahistorical. And to some extent,their spontaneous natural free market 1950s wonderland was very much a product of cooperative government and big corporate planning. Some of it was due to primitive and mistaken economic analysis of the inability of the US to reabsorb the war workforce into a peace time economy without risking more economic stagnation.
Read about how average working class and poor families worked economically and socially at other times in U.S. history. Much more free wheeling, much more flexible idea of gender roles than in the 1950s.
But I guess if Douthat’s understanding of the world comes from watching 1950s Hollywood versions of Little Women, or Ozzie and Harriet reruns, he might have a different view.
Schlemizel
@Mandalay:
Nobody is sneering at what he wrote in this piece – we are sneering at the turds he dropped here. If you notice people are expressing agreement with him, mixed with some surprise. We knew he had it in him, he just chooses not to deliver too often.
jl
@Mandalay: OK, thanks. I did read the Douthat and aimed mostly at him. I will take a look at deBoer and if it is not too long will read it.
jayjaybear
Douchehat vs. Freddie? Can we root for injuries or is that unseemly?
jl
@Schlemizel: The length is too damn long (usually).
CONGRATULATIONS!
@jl: To this day that’s one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever read. The sheer level of misogyny is off the charts.
Suffern ACE
@jl: Anyway, if Douthat’s ideas and goals and exemplars come solely from film and fiction, that might help explain his comprehension problems on this topic.
You see that issue is the problem caused by the gays. Feminists make men angry. Gays homoeroticise everything so its impossible to form decent friendships with guys who meet the movie star ideals.
Citizen Alan
@different-church-lady:
As with the Cochran-McDaniel run-off, I’m rooting for mutually annihilation.
Baud
Rhett Butler?
big ole hound
@Ash Can: I believe Hailey one of the only towns in Idaho that does not have a large chunk of preppers, teahadists or religious nuts. They are kind of a commune leftover group.
Citizen Alan
@jl:
Yeah, I’ll be damned if I actually read the SOB’s column, but I am curious. If I had to guess, I’d say he put Rhett Butler on his list of ideal manly men, mainly because one of the movie’s most iconic scenes is when he rapes Scarlett into loving him and another is when he coldly abandons her at the end just as she starts to get “clingy.” Am I right?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Citizen Alan: No. he went with the obvious. Shane and High Noon. Cary Grant, Bogie, Spencer Tracy.
ETA: Stewart and Wayne as well.
SatanicPanic
@Citizen Alan: I’ve never watched that movie because I figured it was racist, but it sounds like the awfulness doesn’t end there
Suffern ACE
@Citizen Alan: Rhett was too one off as a character to be a role model anyway. I think maybe James Stewart or Cary Grant characters.
srv
This all started when Ronnie cheated on Jane wyman
Cacti
@Ash Can:
The right wing has gone straight to hell in this country.
I’m waiting for all of this demonization of Bergdahl to start unravelling, just like the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman right wing fan fictions.
Then the media will feel some momentary remorse for jumping on the bandwagon with the hateful mob…and wonder why President Obama allowed them to print such nasty falsehoods about this slandered soldier.
Has any mainstream media outlet even commented on the Stalinesque attempt of GOPer pols to scrub the internet of all their previous supportive statements for his release?
Mandalay
@Schlemizel:
Exactly, and that is precisely the problem. How many years ago did he last post here? Folks are sneering without bothering to read or address what he actually wrote in the OP (which was very important, and was something that is rarely said by men).
What’s the point of that? If you think Freddie sucks then post it in an open thread. If you want to criticize what Freddie wrote then go ahead, but if you want to post a message that ignores the OP and just posts abuse because you disapproved of what he wrote several years ago…well that seems pretty vacuous, and pointless waste of pixels to me. YMMV.
Free speech BJ style I guess.
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
Your yawns and sneers are duly noted.
Rex Everything
@the Conster: I dunno, man, I think it sails pretty nearly into Friedmanian waters.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
It’s the best new term since MomSense’s “assholigarch”.
Schlemizel
@Chyron HR:
I was going to reply but I like yours better.
jl
@Cacti: What kind of jackasses want to go butt into the local hometown ceremonies to support OR protest? I have to say that the ones who want to go protest are worse than mere jackasses, though. I mean, cripes, do we have to make everything into a vicious partisan political circus?
Cacti
Barbara Starr of CNN now reports that Pentagon says the allegations of Bergdahl leaving behind a note that he was deserting are FALSE.
Pentagon also reports that Bergdahl had left the post before, unnoticed, raising questions about the security practices in place there.
Given the vigor with which his “brothers in arms” jumped in to slime the guy, I had a feeling that a preemptive CYA was in the works.
Schlemizel
Thought this was interestinf:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-troll-army-hit-america
anyone heard from BiL recently?
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
As I’m sure Mnem will point out, those wonderful roles of restrained masculinity that Douthat talks about were all during the period of most rigorous censorship under the Hays Code, which prevented heroes from being excessively violent womanizers. As soon as the Code was lifted, the excessive violence and womanizing in movies really took off.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Mandalay: How many chances are we supposed to give the guy? He was tediously idiotic when he was here and has been tediously idiotic every time I’ve read him since he departed. So maybe he pulled off a great column this time but I’m not getting off the boat. If you think there’s something important to say, say it yourself and don’t rely on someone who is reliably tediously idiotic.
Ash Can
@Cacti: I’m 56 years old, have been interested in domestic and international politics since I was in grade school, and remember the Soviet Union very clearly. All of my hip and sarcastic high school and college classmates and I would make fun of the USSR (among most other countries) on a regular basis, and a very common running joke back in those days was “Who’s been airbrushed out of the latest Tass photo?”
Seeing this actually happening now in my own country is, well, if I drink enough tonight I might eventually come up with the words for it.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Ash Can: Will the words be: Aaaaarrrggghhh! I hate you fucking assholes; Just fucking die in a fire already for fuck’s sake?”
Pogonip
@the Conster: I was interested by the cultural difference in auditory hallucinations. Violence against women is not exactly unknown in India and that’s been the case for a long time ( suttee, anyone)? So the interesting question is, what causes the cultural difference in voices? What do we have that India lacks, or vice versa?
MoeLarryAndJesus
Douthat is about as masculine as a tipped uterus.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
We must do EVERYTHING we can to fight the near sheriff, at all times.
Pogonip
P.S. what’s this chunky Reese Witherspoon business? I googled it but didn’t find where Douthat wrote that, just a lot of profiles of him (and no, I did not read through every single item).
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): Ha! Good, but I’m even past that. The American right wing is becoming everything America fought against during my childhood and young adulthood. And even during my not-so-young-anymore adulthood. A huge chunk of this nation has gone completely fucking batshit insane. It ain’t pretty, and I don’t even want to think about where it’s eventually going to lead.
jayjaybear
@Pogonip: From the Lexicon:
Chunky Reese Witherspoon – Ross Douthat, while blogging professionally at The Atlantic, published a memoir using this phrase to describe a fellow collegian whose feminine wiles he claimed to have resisted due to his distaste for her birth-control-pill-popping, hedonistic habits. The story solidified Douthat’s reputation as the new young right-wing Culture Scold, and possibly led to his current position at the New York Times, but it also offered endless entertainment speculating about Douthat’s personal sexual foibles to bloggers who do not care for professional culture scolds.
bemused
@the Conster:
Thanks for the link. I don’t have time to read the whole article right now but from the first paragraphs, I can tell it definitely should be widely read.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@bemused: On the other hand I thought the first two paragraphs were such ridiculous prose that I didn’t bother reading the rest. She beat that soccer metaphor to death with a crowbar.
superfly
@canuckistani: You win.
bemused
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
I went beyond the first two paragraphs and then I got interested.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Is “real men don’t punch women” that hard to understand? It’s really curious to see all this angst from conservatives over this since it is a traditional American value.
Pogonip
@jayjaybear: Pfft. I didn’t even think about the lexicon (bless me, Tunch, for I have sinned). Thanks!
Rex Everything
@Mandalay: As I recall, Freddie was criticized less for the content of pieces he wrote here than for having previously written about primarying Obama, abstaining from voting, or some such firebaggery. I remember people commenting “he once said [ ], so fuck this guy forever.”
Tehanu
@Roger Moore:
And if they stopped and thought for one single second, which of course they are congenitally unable to do, their 1-percenter masters would object to it as well. Bring back the 90% tax rate for the top tier!
mclaren
Real men burn brown babies with napalm by pressing a button at 30,000 feet. That’s all you need to know.
PJ
@Rex Everything: Sometime in the past few months, Freddie made a great clamor that John Cole (who gave him a front-page spot, too which I believe he still has access) was a McCarthyite who was intent on oppressing him.
Having read enough of deBoer to never want to read him again, I can’t address of the substance of the posting discussed here. But the reason I never want to read him again is that he makes every discussion about himself and how important and right he is and why is everybody so mean to him (without ever addressing their criticisms of his frequently ill-considered opinions.)
brantl
Isnt’t there a sort of galactic karma in two diametrically opposed pinheads, pissing each other off, and leaving the rest of us alone? I kind of like it.
Paul in KY
@RaflW: That’s a good analogy.
Paul in KY
@Pogonip: India is a much more patriarchal culture than ours, if you can imagine that. Both main religions (Hinduism & Islam are very male-centric).
Rex Everything
@PJ: He was hated around here LONG before the recent Cole dust-up.
Ah, you haven’t read enough of him to address the content discussed here, yet you know what he does to “every” conversation. Lulz.