[drunk theory question] do you all think revolutionary masculinity is an oxymoron? if not, what would it consist of

Having no left answer to masculinity means handing over teen boys to the far right, and effectively kneecapping your primary demographic for what becomes the fighting age of revolutionaries.

It's utopian behaviour.

The left absolutely needs to present something that is attractive to young males interested in the topics that usually end up filling the "masculinity" niche: Fighters, how to get girls, how to be brainier than other people. Andrew Tate is attractive to them for being a top fighter, he crosses over with mra and pua shit that segues boys into the right through the getting girls segment, and Jordan Peterson type stuff fills the last one.

The left has absolutely no answer to this because it's being utopian over the topic. It wants perfection but you simply can't do that with this topic. There needs to be a transition. We need healthy role models that fill the role of masculinity to compete with the far right and then we can eliminate it once they're defeated, otherwise it's just handing hordes of these boys over to them with no effective opposition.

I think that some of the comments in here are great, and others are completely wrong-headed. Patriarchy must be abolished, but Patriarchy is also one of the oldest and most pernicious of the oppressive systems we live under, and overturning capitalism will only even begin to allow that transformation to occur in a more unrestricted way. Toxic masculinity has recently been correctly identified during a period of consciousness raising, but failing to build a constructive and revolutionary alternative to understanding masculinity along side that has alienated and further entrenched many working class people who identify as masculine. But this could be a relatively easy task in the grand scheme of things, compared to dismantling Patriarchy itself.

Part of the issue I see could be a lack of imagination or insight into understanding positive aspects of masculinity, but it may just as well a pessimism that would deny "revolutionary" as much as the "masculine." ... many of the supposed masculine traits, toxic or positive, are just reframing and redefining aspects of masculinity that have been utilized to uphold class relations in different eras to suit different purposes. This is a normal occurrence, where some cultural gender constructs change to serve as an important component of the superstructure that upholds class relations.

I think a good example of this is the development of "chivalry" or the code of chivalry. Where a cultural tradition of a warriors code that probably predated the feudal era ended up becoming a complex and often contradictory social code that signaled a connection to the aristocracy, but also demanded fealty to the church and one's lord. Today we can see those old ideas being harkened back to by reactionaries who decontextualize, reimagine and romanticize that code to suite their own ends of keeping masculine-identifying people identifying with a bourgeois and reactionary understanding of masculinity to further everyone's oppression. But those traits could just as easily, and may necessarily, be reframed and shaped into something that upholds a new and better class relation, or at least something that facilitates the transition to it. If you write off a huge chuck of the masses based upon utopian understandings, you will be isolated and unable to move the masses of people in a progressive direction.

I think it would be relatively easy to spin masculine constructs into something positive and revolutionary. The current toxic masculinity bullshit fed to kids by Tate and Peterson can be subverted and turned on its head.

Strength isn't inherently masculine, but you can play with that concept all day. "Who is strong and brave: someone who defends the oppressed with their life, or an impotent person who kills unarmed civilians because they can't get laid?"
"Who is comfortable with their masculinity: someone who is unafraid of people who challenge gender norms, or a scared, weak-minded person who chooses to hate them?"
"Are you going to whine and whine about how unfairly you are being treated, or are you going to organize with your community to build a better world?" "If you cannot treat women as your equal, you must not love them after all?" Brotherhood and solidarity. Protecting the oppressed and the innocent. Giving your life to stand for your principles. Building a better world through hard work and determination. Selflessness in service of the community. Standing on principle. truth be told those things are honestly not masculine in and of themselves, but I could easily see them being used to construct a more positive vision of masculinity.

It involves the construction and maintenance of a robust Swoletariat

Anyone of any gender can be revolutionary, it's not really a gendered thing as I see it. Toxic masculinity and patriarchy are counter-revolutionary though, and if that's what masculinity looks like to you then yeah I can see how you'd think that. Everyone needs to be less of a shithead in order to bring about communism, although I think on average, men have more bullshit to unlearn.

Death to America

Welcome back. Death to America.

I mean, it's all social construct, so surewhy not? It's just a narrative you want to create. If toxic reactionary masculinity focuses on individualism and being king of the trash heap, we can have revolutionary masculinity be about building communities and sharing each other's burden; More shoulder make a lighter load and all that.

No.

My reason:

It exists and its whatever Che Guevara was doing

I’ve actually been thinking about this since Awoo brought it up in a couple threads earlier today. I think it would be really useful to have something to counteract the Jordan Petersons out there. The right actually is out there trying to recruit disillusioned young men, and succeeding with their bullshit masculinity.

The thing is, there are fellas out there who could do this and already have some fame. Hasan, JT, Hakim, Yugopnik, Felix, Matt Christman, etc. Problem is, these guys either dont seem to want to carry that mantle or they are just disembodied voices behind a podcast mic.

Ironically, the best person we had who could talk these young men out of toxic masculinity was a woman (Contra). But she’s a lib now and only makes videos once every two years with titles like “Spectacle”.

I would say being transmasc is honestly a form of revolutionary masculinity, so I hate to dump this on our transmasc comrades but they might know more than me

This is what The Will to Change is all about in my view, men learning to exit the mindset of domination and enter the mindset of equal partnership and collaboration. Patriarchy can only be broken when we’re free from this toxic cycle. It starts with our relationships with our partners, our children (especially our sons), and all of that will permeate into society and how we treat each other. bell hooks shows us a path to revolutionary masculinity.

thinkin bout those

Relevant article from a transmasculine perspective: https://hexbear.net/post/1651993

I'll try not to make a super long effort post. I think much of the issue is that so much of masculinity is based on non communist values: individualism, competition. Men are taught to repress their emotions, to remain aloof. I mean the current "sigma" male, "alpha" male rhetoric, really most of the manosphere, is not really new stuff but is just the contemporary packaging of what men have always been taught, by fathers, mentors, coaches and peers. Masculinity is based on values that are antithetical to communism.

My adolescent years were bliss, and because of this I do think a revolutionary masculinity exists because I believe that's what I experienced then. But maybe it wasn't so much a "revolutionary masculinity" but instead the antithesis of masculinity, to the extent something like that could exist among non-political teenage boys in the early 2010s. Tbh I don't know too much about the definitions of terms and I think a definition of masculinity needs to be decided upon before asking if revolutionary masculinity exists. Obviously machismo is not revolutionary - is machismo the same as masculinity? Tbh idk. But yeah I do agree that masculinity as it is presently understood cannot be revolutionary, because many of its essential characteristics are anti-revolutionary. But I know from experience men can learn to be communal, collaborative, emotional, caring, without necessarily adopting more "feminine" cultural tastes or even behaviors (so long as certain "masculine" behaviors are not inherently anti-revolutionary). Whether that still constitutes masculinity, revolutionary masculinity, or what idk, but I do think it gets at the core of your question.

Now what to do about gender identity itself moving forward I'm not the person for that. But in terms of what we need to be presently concerned about, especially after that "ideological gender gap" post last night (which I realize some people pushed back on a little but which also lines up with my experience - which granted might just be due to friends getting older and climbing their respective career ladders), I think it's an attempt at an answer. Culturally non-masculine behaviors can be embraced from a "masculine" perspective.

The answer to this conundrum is called Jojo's Bizarre Adventures

Removed

I agree with what everyone else is saying, and also that this is a very wide and hard to define question. I have another alternative.

My first thought was of the Southern Decadence pride marches in New Orleans. I remember seeing a video of some shithead Neo-Nazis hounding a pride event. People asked them to leave. They continued harassing... until a bunch of man-mountain leather daddies showed up, shouting, swearing, corralling and scaring these Nazis out of the way. Big meaty masculine men fighting fire with fire.

It's a difficult thing - men are unfortunately often great at being confrontational and violent (statistically), so they might as well make use of their 'talent" in a leftist sense if needs be.

We had a thread about this question. IMHO, the closest thing to a revolutionary masculinity is heroism, or more specifically, a martial heroism where a man fights and dies on behalf of a noble cause. This is operating under the assumption that revolutionary masculinity is contradictory and transitory towards a truly revolutionary conception of gender. In more plain words, if you want to be a macho tough guy, then do the ultimate macho tough guy of picking up a rifle and charging the foxhole with bayonets fixed.

By creating a transitional masculinity that appeals to young men and funnels them into revolutionary politics.

Capitalism has dropped the ball and no longer rewards the traditional masculinity. We have an opening here and nobody is even trying to take it in a manner with a chance of working.

You’d call somebody who tried to immediately transition to a fully communist organization of society with no in between a utopian at best.

Apply that logic to changing masculinity and you’ll find yourself with an idea of why this is both hard and necessary.

@Awoo@hexbear.net had some great points on this earlier today have had me thinking.

what even is 'masculinity' or 'femininity' it seems like arbitrary aesthetic categories at this point, i want to have breasts and long hair and a less boxy body, and also wear practical clothing with pockets and still be an emotionally unstable insecure weirdo obsessed with mecha and tanks and jets and parkour and martial arts. i'm still going to be a dork who wants to be a Good Person Who Does The Right Thing no matter what i am. i see a lot of presumed and implied definitions of 'masculine' and 'feminine' that seem wayyyyyy gender essentialist to me in this thread, like every time i put my interests aside for someone else its feminine? since when? everyone i know does that sometimes, everyone i know does the opposite too. soldiers have always put their interests aside for someone else (unless they were the leadership lol) and they were mostly men and its considered very masculine profession. is every woman who stands up for themselves 'masculine'? are we going to invalidate people's identities every time they are more dominant or submissive than usual?

I don't know about you, but seeing that Georgian gay man who wore a chokha to his wedding, knowing that it was seen as a sacred symbol of a very traditional form of masculinity that he was excluded from in his homeland, basically just to say "fuck the haters"... Yeah, asserting one's manhood can be a very provocative act indeed!

I would not doubt the existence of a revolutionary masculinity. Even aside from queer manhood, there are many different marginalized forms of manhood, and there are many ways that traditional masculine gender norms can be subverted into positive forces.

the cuban "New Man" was a failure often criticized by cuban feminist

Don't care about gender roles and masc-fem-iminity. Smash the patriarchy.

Be whatever, but be excellent to each other.

also if i have to stop making dumb jokes about Mike Oxhard it's not my revolution

Death to America

The properly revolutionary version of all ideology, religious or secular, is revolutionary to the extent that it promotes pro-social values and reactionary to the extent that it promotes anti-social values, relative to previous iterations. Socialist masculinity and socialist femininity (beyond the extent to which they correspond to sex/hormones/whatever) are only different from each other as an artifact of the backwards social values they are derived from and trend forward in the future in the direction of being identical. As strength in men is good, strength in women is good. As cowardice in men is bad, cowardice in women is bad, etc.

Socialist masculinity also shares a similar relationship with socialist Confucianism, socialist Cheondoism, socialist Christianity, socialist Dharma, etc. These are all systems of values created in old societies based on old relations and are, to some extent, backwards. The job of the socialist, who cannot simply declare the age of Christ over and the age of Marx its replacement (at least not in an enduring and effective way), must seek to elevate the aspects of (say) Christianity that are pro-social, reinterpret those that can be reconciled with being pro-social, and criticize those that are irreconcilable with being pro-social (making these determinations by appropriately exhaustive investigation). In this way, to borrow a certain reactionary's phrase, there should be a "revaluation of all values" towards sociality until the only distinction between them is a cultural affectation.

What seemed to be thoroughly established in the last thread about this is that leftist fame -> suspicious murders. However, the one thing the men mentioned had in common is that they were all peacemakers, even if they fought cops, carried a rifle, or knocked other guys out in a ring. They sought first to unite people and provide for people, only resorting to violence when something got in the way of unity and feeding the hungry.

From my perspective, transitioning, I think that what most men need (and what most great communist leaders have) is a kind of peace within themselves. A lot of the issues I had with my own masculinity, cis men also have with their masculinity and public impotence (but they actually want to perform it better instead of exiting entirely). If you solve this with a power fantasy and romanticize projections of power then you get empty patsoc hero worship which, as we have seen the past few years, is no better than alt-right hero worship. A person who can be at peace with themselves and their community will naturally come to the conclusion that they have something worth fighting for when their peace comes under threat. This is very obvious when you read the works of Palestinians, Zapatistas, and other revolutionaries. The love they have for their community and their humanity precedes the desire they have to destroy threats to the way they live and their pathways to unalienation.

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves.

• Che Guevara: Statement in Mexico (1958)

This is what will happen; whomever sees us, we will be seen by those above, and we won’t appear in the newspapers or in the television and radio news, because La Otra Campaña does not exist for those above, or rather they wish it did not exist. They see, filled with fear, that despite all the silence they’ve directed at us, and despite all the money they are directing towards the funding for their electoral campaigns, despite all of that, more and more people from below, without names and without faces, are taking the name and the face of those of us in La Otra Campaña.

• Subcomandante Marcos: Until Death if it is Needed (2013)

Sun Ch'uan-fang of course obeyed the order of the landlords. Last November, he dissolved the 'Tenant Farmers' Cooperative Self-help Society' and arrested Chou Shui-ping, who was executed in January of this year. It seemed that the movement for rent reduction had been suppressed for a time. But when Chou Shui-p'ing's coffin was returned to Kushan to be exhibited in his house, the farmers went up to the coffin daily in crowds and kowtowed before it, saying, 'Mr. Chou died for us, we will avenge his death.' This year there was a big drought, and the harvest was poor; the farmers again thought of rising up to demand rent reduction. This shows that they are not in the least afraid to die. They know that a united struggle to reduce the exploitation of the avaricious and cruel landlords is their only way out.

• Mao Zedong: THE BITTER SUFFERINGS OF THE PEASANTS IN KIANGSU AND CHEKIANG, AND THEIR MOVEMENT OF RESISTANCE (1926)

However, when we look at oppressor nations in the west, whose entire culture is built upon exploitation, we arrive at the situation where asking the workers of the global north to give up something of themselves for the good of community and of all communities leaves a bad taste in their mouth. They flock to influencers who tell them there's something in it for them, that they, too, can climb the rungs of power to finally feel in control of their own lives (of which they feel almost no control at all). They don't realize that this is a lie, because society will continuously tell them their entire lives that they just need to try a little harder to get there. Just one more chance and they'll make their big break (after all, others have succeeded, why shouldn't you?). To see through the lie, you have to shut out all these voices, all the propaganda, the constant unending exposure from birth to death. They won't do so willingly until you propose that you have something better. Which I think is why Patsoc rhetoric is more enticing. Patsocs do copy the self-help grift but on a national scope: "Look at these successful socialist countries. Wouldn't it be great if you could also benefit from this kind of power?"

Is the actual condition of the workers in the oppressor and in the oppressed nations the same, from the standpoint of the national question? No, it is not the same. (1) Economically, the difference is that sections of the working class in the oppressor nations receive crumbs from the superprofits the bourgeoisie of these nations obtains by extra exploitation of the workers of the oppressed nations... To a certain degree the workers of the oppressor nations are partners of their own bourgeoisie in plundering, the workers (and the mass of the population) of the oppressed nations. (2) Politically, the difference is that, compared with the workers of the oppressed nations, they occupy a privileged position in many spheres of political life. (3) Ideologically, or spiritually, the difference is that they are taught, at school and in life, disdain and contempt for the workers of the oppressed nations. This has been experienced, for example, by every Great Russian who has been brought up or who has lived among Great Russians.

• V. Lenin: A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism (1924)

[A]ll sections of white settler society — even the artisan, worker, and farmer — were totally dependent upon Afrikan slave labor: the fisherman whose low-grade, "refuse fish" was dried and sold as slave meal in the Indies; the New York farmer who found his market for surpluses in the Southern plantations; the forester whose timber was used by shipyard workers rapidly turning out slave ships; the clerk in the New York City export house checking bales of tobacco awaiting shipment to London; the master cooper in the Boston rum distillery; the young Virginia overseer building up his "stake" to try and start his own plantation; the immigrant German farmer renting a team of five slaves to get his farm started; and on and on. While the cream of the profits went to the planter and merchant capitalists, the entire settler economy was raised up on a foundation of slave labor, slave products, and the slave trade.

• J. Sakai: Settlers (1983)

But even when the contradiction is resolved authentically by a new situation established by the liberated laborers, the former oppressors do not feel liberated. On the contrary, they genuinely consider themselves to be oppressed. Conditioned by the experience of oppressing others, any situation other than their former seems to them like oppression.

• Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

When I've debated with men hopeless about their position in society, they tend to fall back on this; "How is communism going to take care of shut-ins like me?" "Will communism do something useful like get me a girlfriend?" and other similar questions (don't even get me started on guys I've known irl who think it's their moral duty to control women). They are so used to viewing things through a lens of exploitation that they can't fathom an equality where they don't receive a greater share of crumbs from global superprofits. So while we preach "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need," in practice, the path of liberation requires a great deal of self-sacrifice. Being concerned with the well-being of the masses comes at a cost when fighting the unconcerned exploiters who will grind us to dust for trying to be good people.

In the cruel days to come, I failed to project myself as the courageous hero the doctor intended. I felt that the small details which make up life had lost their importance to me, and that the future would be barren. I failed in my attempts at heroism; exhausted and depleted, life once again raised a tower in front of me like a huge wall of despair.

I am walking, in spite of myself, in my own funeral. All the hollow advice administered to me over the past years seems to have vaporized like soap bubbles. A person is courageous so long as he has no need for courage, but he collapses when the issue becomes real, and he is forced to understand courage as an act of “surrender,” a detachment from human involvement, and is content himself with being a spectator rather than a participant in life.

• Ghassan Kanafani: All That's Left to You (1966)

So how do we give western men a community worth fighting for when they don't even have the psychological toolset to appreciate such a community? Some of the worst chuds will profess loving and being willing to fight for their nuclear family (even fighting imperialist wars or becoming police officers to do so), but the nuclear family, especially as they envision it, is designed for their own ego and is constructed in service to them. What they have to come to understand is the necessity to serve others — not for recognition, fame, or an esteemed post in the social order — but because to serve in-itself will make them happy. Some men do take that leap, even in the face of further poverty, imprisonment, or death. It's worth it to them. Some of them are even posters here. But it's not a particularly popular proposition, especially with the frequency western leftist movements are crushed. For that, I don't have a good answer.

Revolutionary masculinity has to exist otherwise men are a lost cause and they’ll be taken over by the right. What does it look like? Don’t know.

No but that's because I don't know what masculinity even means.

No, it exists, the key is to adapt that masculinity into more praxis motivated rather than damaging, ex use supposed masculine traits to aid one's comrades and lil homies to build society, the environment and each other up, instead of at the detriment of all to the benefit of the individual and his immediate personal and selfish interests.

Society also hasn't truly realized there are multiple ways to be strong and adaptive for example (nor that anyone regardless of identity or body can be strong, that baffles society to no end), to presevere through hardship is something pretty much anyone can feel some consolation and sense of belonging in. Its that sense of belonging and hope-drive to self-development that right wing grifters and hacks latch on to and flip around to prey upon young men in particular.

The Young Lords tried doing something called "revolutionary machismo" and that was deemed as a failure strategy-wise.

Although gratified that the party had thought to include gender at all, the Women’s Caucus began to question this point, arguing that “revolutionary machismo” was a non-sequitor, or even an oxymoron, designed to keep gendered hierarchy intact. As Morales writes, one woman pointed out that “It’s like revolutionary racism. It just doesn’t make sense.”

At one of their first meetings, caucus members conducted a close reading of the 13-point program. When they came to point 10, the women laughed. It was obvious to them that this document was written by men. The idea of positive machismo made no sense. The word machismo implied aggression towards women. This work resulted in a “YLP Position Paper on Women.” It was published as a special insert in the September 25, 1970 issue of the Young Lords bilingual newspaper, Palante. Following the position paper, the leadership revised the 13-point program. The point on women was moved from point 10 to point 5. Machismo was no longer revolutionary. Instead, the Young Lords declared “Down with Machismo!”

If we’re talking about labeling things, that’s not going to go away. People are always gonna associate xyz with a group, and maybe masculinity will consist of different things and omit certain things. It’s a waste of time and perhaps detrimental to try to “eliminate” these labels. Instead, we should eliminate the moralizing and strict exclusivity with these labels.

For example, weightlifting and sports can still be considered masculine, but it shouldn’t be a bad thing if you’re a man and not into it, and it shouldn’t be a bad thing if you’re a woman and are into it, and it shouldn’t be a bad thing if you do those things and still paint your nails or do ballet or whatever.

The closest thing is literally just Dudes Rock, I think that's approaching the absolute peak of this

Ah shit, half my sky is falling down

I think there are values such as courage, bravery and hard-workingness (or whatever you call it) which are positive and in a revolutionary situation would come in handy. I read "How the steel was tempered" and Pavel was kinda like this

Dunno how I feel about saying that's "masculinity" though since women can have these attributes too

The way I see it, a more utopian communist organization of society transcends the individual too much for this. Maybe revolutionaries should have only one gender: comrade

revolutionary masculinity is when you frot with another dude

Destroying your enemies, seeing them driven before you l, and hearing the lamentations of their non binary pals.

Revolutionary defeatism I guess

Worship of "masculinity" is part of fascist and other reactionary ideology and is often used to promote anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

Yeah, it's a bit of an oxymoron. Masculinity just has so many connotations that I don't really see us escaping. Masculinity is also sorta the status quo, exemplifying many of the characteristics we don't want. If it was a gay thing though, that might make sense.

can we men find a way to not be shitheads in such a way as to bring about communism

Dunno. There are certainly ways men can be better, by reaching a fuller understanding of "traditional" gender roles (which can be largely understood as superstructure for economic relations between men and women rather). There's bad stuff in there that you and I are doing unknowingly. But men being better is not the same thing as being better men: if we take our blueprint of what not to do from what masculinity currently is, we are pointing in a new direction.

It has been the case that men have changed what it means to be a man within the bounds of masculinity. Dworkin gives an example: for a long time going to war made you manly. Then men refused the Vietnam draft, and suddenly that refusal no longer meant cowardice: instead it was a bold statement of your masculine individual power against the system, your individual moral clarity and strength, blah blah. But it was integrated within the existing ideological framework of male supremacy where we claim transcendence (courage, self-knowledge, achievement, ambition, what you do) and relegate women to immanence (passivity, beauty, what you are).

I suppose that if men get "better" the meaning of masculinity may improve, but I think that "revolutionary masculinity" is going to be subsumed into ordinary cultural masculinity and end up reinforcing it. For instance, if a revolutionary man loves the people, that will be incorporated as meaning that a man is capable of self-sacrifice and transcendent love in the old chivalric way, relegating women's love to passivity. I do not know how we can do these things without reifying the Subject/Other division. Perhaps by aspiring to neuter revolutionary ideals, not revolutionary masculinity, with vigilance that the two don't merge. That would need visibility of women who are revolutionaries and whose traditionally-feminine qualities are meaningful parts of that, not just upholding male supremacy values and showing off "mannish" women who are revolutionaries.

So I guess revolutionary masculinity is probably not possible. I suppose that if women achieve real economic liberation from men, the superstructure will no longer need to justify their oppression and we will have an easier time rescuing gender identities from what they are now.