Robert Webb: ally or grandstander?

[arousingcheer]

I'm not claiming to support/refute his views as I haven't read the book (just some excerpts). But my spidey senses are tingling. I admit I'm suspicious when everyone genuflects when a fella says something along the lines of 'Hey chaps, let's scratch the surface of this patriarchy gig and you'll see it's not all it's cracked up to be!' (Oh, you mean the patriarchy hurts everyone? Alert the authorities!)

My first thought was that it was a bit of grandstanding/exceptionalism to write your memoir centred around the concept of performative masculinity as though you have discovered it. There is a little bit of that thing where a bloke thinks he's being top-notch by saying 'Look how comfortable I am in my sexuality!' And I'm having trouble expressing why I rolled my eyes when he writes about what a badass his wife was in labour and using power tools. Like, is that not reductive and verging on biological essentialism in itself? And in a tiresomely predictable way (which may not reflect at all on RW himself) it has provoked a lot of chin-stroking about things women have been saying for ages, but, yk, it needed to be said by a man for anyone to hear it.

Is he being the kind of ally who amplifies the voices of those who stood up and said this stuff before he did, who taught him what he knows? Or is he bashfully shielding his eyes from the spotlight and allowing himself to be congratulated on how right-on he is?

Sad to say I feel a tiny bit the same way about Hannibal Buress making his name off the Bill Cosby rape allegations. No one heard it until he said it and didn't his career take off because of it. It has its own section on his Wiki page: 'The audience appeared to respond to Buress's accusation as an incredulous joke before he encouraged everyone to "Google 'Bill Cosby rape'" when they got home.' I sort of love him so I wouldn't like to think it was a calculated career move... but was it?

Because he didn't experience growing up as a girl and then woman, I don't think he'd call himself a feminist - however, his experiences are the other piece of the jigsaw along side feminism. Which he's seeing more complete - perhaps not totally due to his personal experiences, but I expect he will get more of it as he watches his daughters grow up.

I honestly feel it's harder for a young boy to be into 'girl' stereotypical things than girls into 'boy' stereotypical things.

I agree.
There was a thread on here a couple of years ago about bronies (adult males who like my little pony - not uncommon for young male teens with ASD) and there were more than a few mners who considered it to be deviant behaviour for young men but more acceptable for teen girls.

Read the book. For goodness sake. Then come back. How can you start a thread, in all seriousness and expect us to respond?

I haven't read the rest of the thread, just the OP

It's the whole thing about "feminine" interests/traits being seen as lesser. So a GNC girl is seen as improving herself, and a GNC boy is willingly demeaning himself.

I think society as a whole, especially those segments who are invested in men as dominant class, is comfortable with GNC girls as they see that as upholding their position. Preference for "masculine" interests and traits, to them at least, implies that those traits (and therefore men as a class) are better.

However a boy showing preferences for "feminine" traits is implying that those traits are better, and therefore women are better. Which they can excuse in a girl, because "she's just a girl, what would she know?" But a boy doing this is betraying his whole class. So he must be punished, often severely.

Then of course there's the homophobia tied in.

Reading RW's book he would have suffered under both of those conditions, so would have more of a perspective on gender as a hierachy.

I know my more effeminate gay male friends recognised the hierachy a lot more clearly than any of the straight men I know.

I now see that Tom Holland is stepping up to the plate, which is a good thing.

(And yes, yes, they are both getting treated much better than any of us have or will be, but it means the discussion is being had.)

I see the activists are telling Tom that she had the poor innocent activist in a headlock and they were defending themselves

If you want a cheap laugh, DamnDeDoubt, have a look at the #TransactivistsExplainFilms hashtag on twitter.

I saw that Annie, loved the one with "Countess" Dracula in a "stranglehold"