C'mon Guys (Toxic Masculinity)

Yeah, I used to enjoy reading his stuff, before he went completely off the rails.

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It’s all more gaslighting.

It doesn’t matter that there is no such thing “woke culture”, except so far as the Right Wing has invented it, which forces the Left “elites” to have to disavow “wokeness” and not be seen to be too progressive, lest they be accused of “wokeness” which won’t work because they’ll be accused of it anyway even if nobody can actually define what it is beyond a vague “you know it when you see it” vibe.

It doesn’t matter that insofar as there are “liberal elites”, that they haven’t been demonizing or oppressing men. All they have to do is keep repeating that that’s what’s been happening until everyone just sort of knows it’s true, even though nobody can actually point to evidence beyond “everyone knows” and “I heard that…”.

It’s all projection and lies that it’s not enough to deny or disprove the statements, it’s the framing and the base assumptions which are lies. And yet what I see is the left correctly disproving the individual points, but thereby reinforcing the underlying framing lie, and the right deflecting direct, pointed, specific questions about their incompetence, malfeasance, or malevolent intent, with “I reject the premise of your question.”

It’s like, when a progressivish politician suggests, oh, I don’t know, some anti-discrimination measure, then they’ll be accused of supporting perverts and child molesters. “Actually no, because this bill excludes cases of X and Y, and we’ve very carefully defined this to be blah blah blah…”, which accepts the underlying framing that LGBT folk are child molesters and perverts.

Meanwhile the “conservative” politicians get held up in a corridor with “Minister, is it true that you accepted tens of thousands of dollars of donations from this organised crime figure, met with him multiple times, then pushed this bill which actively benefits that man’s business?”, only to be brushed off with “I reject the premise of your vile accusation, and my lawyers will be talking to your publisher.”

It’s the eternal Upside Down.

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A few choice snippets:

Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Graham said Mr Rogers had been “ostracised” in the preceding days after a woman expressed discomfort about a sexual encounter between the pair.

He said Mr Rogers had reported being subjected to “name calling, targeted behaviour and exclusion and rejection following allegations made against him about his conduct”.

Mr Graham added: “I did not find on the balance of probabilities that this culture specifically caused or contributed to Alexander’s death, but it did give rise to a concern that circumstances creating a risk of future deaths could occur.”

And of course, absolutely no concern about the lack of either university or police investigation into the alleged abuse, other than how it wasn’t helpful to this young man. How dare that woman tell him he did something wrong?

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I think she’s right.

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It is childish but childishness can be fun. Plus, if the “boys” referenced are children, something silly can mean the difference between a kid trying something new or refusing

I think they should have put a bit more thought into the placement of the cream and car. The cream needs to be more of a spiral and the car canted a bit more. Also, really hope they washed the car first!

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Interesting take.

I read “the boys” as his adult friends, and what the car is doing as “rolling coal,” which as I understand it is a toxic macho thing for “owning the libs,” in part by heedlessly ripping through fossil fuel (because climate change is a myth, don’tcha know).

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To me that looks more like the car’s doing donuts, ie. sliding, and raising a cloud of dust.

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Context (not correction): Seconding @LurksNoMore, as I think they’re showcasing a classic drifting/donut technique, as pictured here in the classic The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Ripping through tires rather than the fuel, and for show/sport/skill rather than any political reason. (I believe the pie car is also from that movie series) Not that it’s any less toxic.

Edit: Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) Dodge Charger from the movie series:

image

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True, doing donuts is indeed a different macho and childish way of wasting fuel.

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I think it’s childish, AND that the boys will love it.

Personally I hate both pumpkin pie and whipped cream, so as far as I’m concerned, this is the best option I’ve ever seen!

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Same I thought it was cute and I think white smoke usually is “drifting.”

I knew some one who died doing this though!!! :+1: :+1: :+1:

But… i dunno. It’s fun. It’s childish. It’s a… picture of a dessert. There’s a cleverness in setting it up and getting the perspective in the photo to feel right.

Not really my thing and frankly my friends irl I think wouldn’t care beyond “ha ha creative play.”

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Me too. And amusing because it’s not what you would expect on a cake. At most kind of a satire of the whole car=compensation.

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at least the car is not general lee from dukes of hazzard.
that would be childish and stupid and belongs more on a peach cobbler than a pumpkin pie!

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Of course it’s childish. Having decorations on cakes and pies is inherently childish. (Even bride and/or groom dolls on top of a wedding cake isn’t exactly mature sophistication… it’s meant to be fun.) If the boys are kids, they’ll appreciate it. If the boys are fully-grown men, they’ll appreciate it.

Really, I’ve eaten countless pumpkin pies, both with and without whipped cream, and though I’ve loved them all, I don’t remember any of them particularly.

This one would make a memory.

(And yeah, rolling coal generates black smoke, not white.)

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It strikes me that piling on to reiterate a point others already made isn’t very helpful. I think @Millie_Fink gets the point even if she disagrees. :woman_shrugging:

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Who’s piling on? The point I’m making is that it’s an attempt to decorate a dessert in a way that “the boys” will appreciate. If my opinion that doing so in this manner is no more childish than any other given cake in the bakery is somehow repeating what others have said, then I must have missed a few intervening posts. An argument could certainly be made that glorifying Excessive Displays of Speed is a form of toxic masculinity, but nobody approached from that vector. But no: this was “childish,” and it’s something that could, as far as any of us know, be something that was actually intended for and targeted to children. “Boys,” at least. I’d have done the same thing for my son and young nephews, if I’d thought of it.

Okay, now I’m piling on.

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Right? Jeebus, so much splaining and hepeating. In this thread too, of all places!

And I wouldn’t deny that a pumpkin pie like that could be fun for boys and for men-- but not harmless fun. What I think is toxic (in more ways than one) is the idea that blowing through fossil fuels (whether by rolling coal or doing donuts) is harmless fun is, well, quite an appropriate sign of our patriarchal, idiotic timeline, isn’t it.

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You’ve definitely got a point there. Decorating the pie is good. Choice of decor probably not :confused:

It didn’t click we were in the toxic masculinity thread when I commented or that it could have been rolling coal until you mentioned it. All the vehicles around here that do that are stupid huge trucks. The kind they can never park, but won’t park at the back, and are so loud. I always want to fill the exhaust pipes with expanding foam.

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I don’t think that’s entirely fair, but you’re right. This is your thread, not mine.

For whatever it’s worth, I offer this 8-minute video of the late Ken Block “hooning” his way across a pre-dawn Las Vegas in a fully electric all-wheel-drive Audi. Lots of tire smoke, but the “fuel” he’s burning could probably keep seven or eight of those slot machines working all night.

You don’t have to watch it obviously if precision driving and tiresmoke aren’t your thing. But again, for whatever it’s worth, lots of guys seem to like this sort of thing, and perhaps it’s not as toxic as it used to be.

He also prefaces and ends his videos with this rather salutary disclaimer.

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