I hope the 64% of young white Gen Z who voted for Trump are happy with what they chose for themselves and for everyone else including their children and grandchildren.
I hope the thrill of asserting straight male dominance is sufficient to cancel out the economic suffering, damage to the environment, global instability, and destruction of federal programs including the CDC that we've gotten with Trump.
“Hey, White Dudes! So, I think we’re all pretty sick of hearing how much we suck. Every time you go online, it’s the same story: we’re the problem.
#Masculinity #TonicMasculinity #MAGA #ToxicMasculinity #Men #Women #misogyny #honesty #decency #character #sportsmanship #Strength #truth #evolved #meta #gender #WeAreNotGoingBack
#HarrisWalz2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjnyiMSKB3Q
Bloomberg offers a valuable, well-documented discussion of the key role that a number of YouTube "influencers" played in pushing young males towards Donald Trump in the last election:
Men, and particularly white men, have long made up Trump’s core support base. But in November’s election, young men swung especially hard to the right.
#Trump #males #men #YoungMen #masculinity #YouTube
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https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-youtube-podcast-men-for-trump/
Subverting the Script: Alan Bissett on Class, Masculinity, & the Telling of Tales
Playwright, novelist & performer Alan Bissett speaks to Scott Cassidy on The Creative Resistance podcast about class, masculinity, & the telling of tales.
https://thecreativeresistancepodcast.substack.com/p/subverting-the-script-alan-bissett
#Scottish #literature #class #masculinity #AlanBissett #podcast
I wrote a poem, dedicated to all those "men" "too manly" to spend time with their #daughters.
"Sounds a bit gay, to be honest!"
https://yorkshiregeek.co.uk/posts/sounds-a-bit-gay-tbh/
#Dad #Father #Poetry #poem #Parenting #CreativeWriting #Men #Toxicmasculinity #masculinity
NPR Fresh Air: Douglas Stuart
“It’s hard to tell people about grief. It’s hard to talk to people about poverty... and so I’d got very used to the silence in my own life, and my writing is the only thing that allows me to connect with myself.”
Douglas Stuart speaks to Terry Gross about Scotland, masculinity, and the isolation of secret-keeping.
#Scottish #literature #novel #writing #Scotland #masculinity
Rated The Grey 5/10
Liam Neeson is the only watchable character among the survivors. Part of this is because he gets the opportunity to wax philosophical, but it's also because the remaining crew never become useful characters. If you've seen The Edge you'll realize this is a poor entry in the survivor genre since it, too, follows the formulaic trope of the last man standing. There's plenty of man vs. nature symbolism, but not enough depth about other things--family, masculinities, and the relationship(s) between capitalism and conservation, for starters. As a film it's about as barren as its wintry landscapes. Neeson is great, there's just nothing new here.
Rated A Moment in the Reeds 6/10
Rated Saint George 6/10
SÃO JORGE should be lauded for its self-awareness of the history and social functions of race and class. In it the eponymous protagonist Jorge (Nuno Lopes), a retired boxer, struggles to financially assist the woman he loves and feed and clothe their mixed-race son (she is black and from Brazil, he is white and from Portugal). To do this he first returns to the sport, serving mostly as glorified punching bag, but the impact these fights have on son Nelson (David Semedo) leave an impression. In a touching sequence following one such bout, Nelson asks his bruised and bloodied father a simple question: why do humans eat other humans? Jorge asserts, perhaps too-confidently, that they don't.It turns out that what he will do for the remainder of the film is eat those words. The threat of Nelson's mother Susana (Mariana Nunes) leaving Portugal and leaving Jorge for the former colonial territory, itself made possible through slave labor, is deeply ironic--backwards, even--but it underscores just how drastically the economic malaise has affected those who comprise the underclass. This looming threat also serves as a kind of moral test for Jorge on his worth as a man. He and others in his predicament frequently find themselves emasculated by their economic disempowerment and in this way SÃO JORGE offers a peephole through which one can view how masculinity and power are forged through access to capital. Money talks, sure, but it frequently compels listening as well.To reclaim this masculinity, stolen from him by the financial crisis much like Susana's affections appear pilfered, Jorge reverts further to an archetypal masculine identity defined primarily by muscled biceps and taut sinews. In this new capacity he cuts a figure as a menacing debt collector with his earnings tied directly to the cash that he intimidates out of borrowers. Jorge has then willingly become an agent of the oppressive economic system that victimizes people for their lack of access to resources. Ultimately his desire to provide a home and comfort for Susana and Nelson catalyzes a more complete metamorphosis--he becomes less a person and more a hunting dog, dishing violence out at another's behest.The comparison of Jorge to a beast and a dog in particular is not accidental. In taking on the character of a servile animal Jorge is effectively enslaved (like his peers) to a certain economic order, chained to the politics and realities of resource scarcity. That he could go so far is neither surprising nor particularly compelling because what the film shows is that we are, each of us, animals, often prioritizing personal wants over social equity--we each desire our own pound of flesh as an analgesic. If the question Nelson poses is do humans eat other humans and Jorge's 'no' is truthful, then SÃO JORGE contends that none of us is human and that we are all beasts in human drag. We all are capable of great harm in ensuring that we and others we love are able to survive. In fact the one truism of the film may be that harm endures and is inescapable.SÃO JORGE tackles the soul-crushing realities of living under debt with refreshing frankness, but its slow pacing and singular focus on Jorge do get a bit stale and place hamper it in terms of complexity. (I was particularly hoping Nunes's Susana would play a larger role as she is the character most susceptible to the winds of change.) Nonetheless one strength of the film is in the texture of Marco Martins's characters, polished as they are by economic austerity and social neglect. Slipping into this world happens with relative ease, but the film is not without its fair share of bumps: stilted dialogue often makes husks of the on-screen performers, while and the long runtime might have conveyed a stronger sense of both purpose and intensity. SÃO JORGE certainly has good intentions and it is impressive that it was made at all, but it is a truly dispassionate film. This shouldn't be surprising.
Rated The Place Beyond the Pines 7/10
This is a slow, well-directed movie that aims to bring to life meditations on fatherhood and the cyclical nature of violence, but never quite does so because its narrative and thematic focus is frequently interrupted. The idea of tackling the the material through a time-spanning saga was an interesting take, but in focusing so much on the masculinities of fathers and sons this film leaves its female characters thinly drawn and wanting. Offering some of her most engaged acting, the treatment of Eva Mendes was, for me, a decisive misstep.
