The Philosopher of Toxic Masculinity
Jun. 4th, 2017 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI'm disappointed that Peter Lawler has passed away, because his last essay is a terrible mess of confused impulses that doesn't really touch on the issues he's trying to address. He starts out with a flurry of insults about young people— that they're atomized, separated from one another, incapable of deep emotional feeling or the fully human impulses of eros and thanos that philosophers love to discuss.
He's not wrong when he talks about how corporate advertising has tried to turn us against each other in a constant competition to be "better" than the other, to play us against each other in a constant war of all against all to be the best, the better to convince us of our unworthiness to compel us to buy more stuff as compensation. That part's not at all controversial.
Where it really flails though is toward the end, and the "revolt" against our technological ages; he heaps praise on the "populist movement" and the "anti-political correctness movement," calling it a "revolt against the weaponized niceness of the elite." He backhands safer sex as "detached from the bare act's natural function for an animal born to die."
Because treating people with respect, you see, leads to the dissolution. There must be war. The must be some group to look down on, to hate, to loathe.
Lawler ends with a wonderful paragraph:
Michael Sweeny's twitter rant about how progressive must understand and embraces masculinity showcases the kind of people Lawler is siding with. Men who are barely more than beasts; men who run people off the road to feel strong; men who would rather poison the air than risk being perceived as weak. Note that Sweeny identifies creativity as weak, compassion as weak, care as weak.
Lawler wanted to end "toxic masculinity." Well, so do progressives. You know who loves toxic masculinity? The sort of people who romanticize the "bare act" of sex, an act even Fox-fucking-news knows is rape. The sort of men who identify their truck with their cock. The sort of men who will die of stubborness, and they'd drag us all down with it.
Lawler was one of those people for whom there must always be someone against whom we must wage war. The adventure of space travel, the moral imperative to cure disease, the humanity of ending hunger, pale in comparison to the need to define one's self against a human "other." Lawler even sneers at the populists he admires, claiming (as Christians always have) that the Trumpist populists are "parasites on those who orient their relational lives by God, country, and family."
I have oriented my relational lives on my family, my community, my species, and my world, thank you very much. I'm not so insecure as to need to deface and poison my world to feel manly. I'm not so broken than I must deepen intimacy with the twin threats of unwanted pregnancy or potentially fatal infection; hugs, kisses, and love are highs that can be enjoyed. Loyalty to one another and the nobility of relating one to another can be glorified without narrowing our vision to one sect, one country, one skin color, one sex.
He's not wrong when he talks about how corporate advertising has tried to turn us against each other in a constant competition to be "better" than the other, to play us against each other in a constant war of all against all to be the best, the better to convince us of our unworthiness to compel us to buy more stuff as compensation. That part's not at all controversial.
Where it really flails though is toward the end, and the "revolt" against our technological ages; he heaps praise on the "populist movement" and the "anti-political correctness movement," calling it a "revolt against the weaponized niceness of the elite." He backhands safer sex as "detached from the bare act's natural function for an animal born to die."
Because treating people with respect, you see, leads to the dissolution. There must be war. The must be some group to look down on, to hate, to loathe.
Lawler ends with a wonderful paragraph:
Now’s the time to praise manliness, but only in the context of showing the road from anger, meaninglessness, and despair to a world once again full of ladies and gentlemen—people who know who they are and what they’re supposed to do as beings born to know, love, and die, and designed for more than merely biological existence.I have a lot of sympathy for this quote, but when I look at the people he's praising, I just want to be ill.
Michael Sweeny's twitter rant about how progressive must understand and embraces masculinity showcases the kind of people Lawler is siding with. Men who are barely more than beasts; men who run people off the road to feel strong; men who would rather poison the air than risk being perceived as weak. Note that Sweeny identifies creativity as weak, compassion as weak, care as weak.
Lawler wanted to end "toxic masculinity." Well, so do progressives. You know who loves toxic masculinity? The sort of people who romanticize the "bare act" of sex, an act even Fox-fucking-news knows is rape. The sort of men who identify their truck with their cock. The sort of men who will die of stubborness, and they'd drag us all down with it.
Lawler was one of those people for whom there must always be someone against whom we must wage war. The adventure of space travel, the moral imperative to cure disease, the humanity of ending hunger, pale in comparison to the need to define one's self against a human "other." Lawler even sneers at the populists he admires, claiming (as Christians always have) that the Trumpist populists are "parasites on those who orient their relational lives by God, country, and family."
I have oriented my relational lives on my family, my community, my species, and my world, thank you very much. I'm not so insecure as to need to deface and poison my world to feel manly. I'm not so broken than I must deepen intimacy with the twin threats of unwanted pregnancy or potentially fatal infection; hugs, kisses, and love are highs that can be enjoyed. Loyalty to one another and the nobility of relating one to another can be glorified without narrowing our vision to one sect, one country, one skin color, one sex.
