Masculinity, so fragile

[Dangerman]

I find the imagery compelling, and he has a good grasp on the importance of psychodrama, although I don't know that he sees it that way.

[JasonL]

I'll have to punt until if / when i engage source material better. The descriptions here don't seem to make a lot of sense to me but I could be missing something. My overall reaction is you can't isolate the implicit threat to the weaker party. The social threat to behave exists hand in glove with the real threat of harm. To argue the point in the Cathy Young tweet seems to me at least to be saying something like men are disadvantaged by a set of rules when engaging in debate with women because everyone knows the physical threat is not real. But, to me, everyone doesn't know that. It is real because it could happen. Follow you back to your car or something.

[Dangerman]

Nobody is asserting that it's not real. I think Peterson is saying that men are far more comfortable with closer proximity to violence (well, physicality, but violence is a red line), so they are more comfortable with an implied challenge in that dimension. An implied physical challenge doesn't need to cause Red Alert in a man, but a woman wouldn't have the luxury of not taking it seriously. The problem may actually be that the threat is MORE real for women, while not being serious for men, so men throw the concept of physicality around in a way that gets badly distorted when they interact with women.

This causes an increase in the noise in the signal, and is undesirable. The physical aspect of negotiation/bargaining/posturing doesn't help society properly sort a mixed-gender status hierarchy.

I don't think that Peterson would say that men are disadvantaged: I think he would say "they need to develop a better set of tools to compete with women for status, because the tools that allow a man to demonstrate competence in a male status competition do not allow him to succeed when he uses them to compete with women. We (society) should develop a set of tools that let men and women sort for competence in a integrated setting."

[Kolohe]

He's got the weirdest combination of evidence-based insights from psychological studies and Jungian Neo-Christian nonsense. His points are usually more sophisticated than the sound clips indicate, but...ultimately he's a TED talk read by Kermit the frog.

Kermit the Frog is a victim of domestic abuse tho.

Bitch was asking for it. Why doesn't he just leave?

She's the one that brings home the bacon.

[Warren]

Anti JasonL. Social interaction almost never involves a threat of violence unless alcohol is involved. Were violence to occur it would be a criminal act. The social compact takes it off the table. I suppose what you're saying is that violence is always a possibility. Well yes it is. But it doesn't color the interaction so long as one assumes one's opponent is not criminal.

What puts men at disadvantage in dealing with women, is the threat that the woman will make accusations.

[nicole]

Very long, but actually good, essay on J Peterson: https://areomagazine.com/2018/01/29/the ... ing-world/

[Jennifer]

Very long, but actually good, essay on J Peterson: https://areomagazine.com/2018/01/29/the ... ing-world/

Eh, I got as far as the sixth paragraph under the religious philosophy subheading before turning my attention to other matters. The premise mentioned in my brief reading -- basically, that the old religions and traditions have gone, so today's young adults (especially white males in America or western Europe) are limited to either becoming dogmatic SJWs or joining the alt-right -- sounds too much like an oversimplistic just-so story. And besides, the supposed loss of surety and sense of place left by the fall of traditional religion and the traditional family and every other traditional thing in our "post-everything world" isn't new; people have been complaining about it since at least the 60s, and there were complaints about alienation and ennui and other navel-gazing unpleasantries in the 1950s, too.

EDIT: added clarification

[nicole]

Very long, but actually good, essay on J Peterson: https://areomagazine.com/2018/01/29/the ... ing-world/

Eh, I got as far as the sixth paragraph under the religious philosophy subheading before turning my attention to other matters. The premise mentioned in my brief reading -- basically, that the old religions and traditions have gone, so today's young adults (especially white males in America or western Europe) are limited to either becoming dogmatic SJWs or joining the alt-right -- sounds too much like an oversimplistic just-so story. And besides, the supposed loss of surety and sense of place left by the fall of traditional religion and the traditional family and every other traditional thing in our "post-everything world" isn't new; people have been complaining about it since at least the 60s, and there were complaints about alienation and ennui and other navel-gazing unpleasantries in the 1950s, too.

EDIT: added clarification

Who says it was new? In previous decades people joined other cults. Now they are joining Peterson's. I also don't think there's anything "just-so" about pointing out that Peterson arose as an alternative to two major cultural currents right now among young people.

[Jennifer]

Thinking further on the subject, it reminds me of that article Milo Y. (IIRC) wrote before his fall, basically saying that if certain young men are in fact becoming racists, it's only because they're being accused of racism anyway, so why not? Which of course is bullshit -- feminist women have been called "Nazis" ever since Rush Limbaugh first got popular, and we did not respond by waving swastikas, celebrating Hitler's birthday and adopting conspiracy stories about Jews. And despite the title of this thread I don't believe men in general are inherently emotionally weaker than women, to the point where you can make a man do anything merely by sneeringly applying the label.

[nicole]

If you think the article is in any way pro-Peterson, or sympathetic to Peterson, I don't really know what to say.

[Jennifer]

Very long, but actually good, essay on J Peterson: https://areomagazine.com/2018/01/29/the ... ing-world/

Eh, I got as far as the sixth paragraph under the religious philosophy subheading before turning my attention to other matters. The premise mentioned in my brief reading -- basically, that the old religions and traditions have gone, so today's young adults (especially white males in America or western Europe) are limited to either becoming dogmatic SJWs or joining the alt-right -- sounds too much like an oversimplistic just-so story. And besides, the supposed loss of surety and sense of place left by the fall of traditional religion and the traditional family and every other traditional thing in our "post-everything world" isn't new; people have been complaining about it since at least the 60s, and there were complaints about alienation and ennui and other navel-gazing unpleasantries in the 1950s, too.

EDIT: added clarification

Who says it was new? In previous decades people joined other cults. Now they are joining Peterson's. I also don't think there's anything "just-so" about pointing out that Peterson arose as an alternative to two major cultural currents right now among young people.

Perhaps I am misinterpreting "observation" as "explanation" or "explanation" as an "excuse/justification." (I've seen others make that mistake in different contexts; perhaps I'm doing it here myself.) But I think such pieces are confusing symptoms with causes, essentially.

[Jennifer]

If you think the article is in any way pro-Peterson, or sympathetic to Peterson, I don't really know what to say.

We cross-posted; as I said, I could very well be misinterpreting the tone (especially since I haven't read the whole thing). I'm not giving this remotely my full attention right now.

[Jennifer]

Oh, wait a minute -- I see that, in part, I was conflating Douglas Murray's piece about Peterson with James Lindsay's piece about Murray's piece about Peterson.

[Jadagul]

Very long, but actually good, essay on J Peterson: https://areomagazine.com/2018/01/29/the ... ing-world/

Eh, I got as far as the sixth paragraph under the religious philosophy subheading before turning my attention to other matters. The premise mentioned in my brief reading -- basically, that the old religions and traditions have gone, so today's young adults (especially white males in America or western Europe) are limited to either becoming dogmatic SJWs or joining the alt-right -- sounds too much like an oversimplistic just-so story. And besides, the supposed loss of surety and sense of place left by the fall of traditional religion and the traditional family and every other traditional thing in our "post-everything world" isn't new; people have been complaining about it since at least the 60s, and there were complaints about alienation and ennui and other navel-gazing unpleasantries in the 1950s, too.

EDIT: added clarification

Who says it was new? In previous decades people joined other cults. Now they are joining Peterson's. I also don't think there's anything "just-so" about pointing out that Peterson arose as an alternative to two major cultural currents right now among young people.

Only somewhat relevant, but one of my friends elsewhere used to say that if you thought you didn't like the Religious Right, wait until you saw what the non-religious Right was going to look like.

[Jennifer]

Very long, but actually good, essay on J Peterson: https://areomagazine.com/2018/01/29/the ... ing-world/

Eh, I got as far as the sixth paragraph under the religious philosophy subheading before turning my attention to other matters. The premise mentioned in my brief reading -- basically, that the old religions and traditions have gone, so today's young adults (especially white males in America or western Europe) are limited to either becoming dogmatic SJWs or joining the alt-right -- sounds too much like an oversimplistic just-so story. And besides, the supposed loss of surety and sense of place left by the fall of traditional religion and the traditional family and every other traditional thing in our "post-everything world" isn't new; people have been complaining about it since at least the 60s, and there were complaints about alienation and ennui and other navel-gazing unpleasantries in the 1950s, too.

EDIT: added clarification

Who says it was new? In previous decades people joined other cults. Now they are joining Peterson's. I also don't think there's anything "just-so" about pointing out that Peterson arose as an alternative to two major cultural currents right now among young people.

Only somewhat relevant, but one of my friends elsewhere used to say that if you thought you didn't like the Religious Right, wait until you saw what the non-religious Right was going to look like.

Michael Shermer is getting cozy with the likes of Stefan Molyneux. Why the hell atheism is getting cozy with the alt-right baffles me. Even befriending Communists would make more sense; atheists did better under far-left regimes than far-right.

[nicole]

I mean, from watching it happen in real time it does seem to me like people who were willing to go up against identity politics types just all ended up making friends with each other.

[thoreau]

I mean, from watching it happen in real time it does seem to me like people who were willing to go up against identity politics types just all ended up making friends with each other.

Yeah, a bit too much "Enemy of my enemy..." stuff. Probably made easier by the realization that the enemies of their enemies are often not (at least on the surface) the monsters that they were made out to be, and are actually reasonable (at least on certain topics). And that enemy of their enemies isn't merely fighting the same people, they're also willing to listen and (apparently) not judge.

And the SJWs and identitarians are awful good at bringing together strange bedfellows.

[Jennifer]

Huh? The alt-right types aren't going up against identity politics; they're embracing it to toxic extremes. Ditto the MRA-types who loathe those with the identity of "woman."

[D.A. Ridgely]

Physical strength of the sort that wins fights is how men have exercised power over women and weaker men since the beginning of the species. I don't see that as particularly controversial or insightful. But we are civilized now. We don't think "I'm going to beat that motherfucker up!" We think "I'm going to sue that motherfucker!"

[Sandy]

Huh? The alt-right types aren't going up against identity politics; they're embracing it to toxic extremes. Ditto the MRA-types who loathe those with the identity of "woman."

Yes, but they don’t police other people’s speech (in public), and they attack the identity politicians who attack run of the mill atheists and liberals.

That being said, the “skeptic” community on YouTube is having drama because when they turned their skepticism on their erstwhile alt-right allies, said allies demonstrated levels of butthurt that shouldn’t even be possible.

The crime was pointing out what you just pointed out: that the alt right are identitarians with the polarity reversed. They also haaaate questioning race realism.

[JasonL]

What’s a representative thing of Petersen I could read to quickly get a gist of his actual perspective.

[JasonL]

I think it naive to believe that the party who can inflict harm and the party who historically can’t see the reality of underlying threat the same way. Lots of people may think about suing as resolution to conflict but put those two people in a car or away from public eyes and ask if a reasonable woman wouldn’t be at some level concerned about sexual violence.

[nicole]

What’s a representative thing of Petersen I could read to quickly get a gist of his actual perspective.

Part of the problem is you mostly have to watch him, not read him.

I seriously recommend the piece I posted upthread.

[Mo]

Because of the implication.

[JasonL]

What’s a representative thing of Petersen I could read to quickly get a gist of his actual perspective.

Part of the problem is you mostly have to watch him, not read him.

I seriously recommend the piece I posted upthread.

I read it. Aren't people taking issue with the characterizations in there though?