BABS: WHORE, GAY ICON, FEMINIST, DOLL

Of late the analysis of the Barbie Movie has overtaken the actual reviews of the film which were middling at best. Largely I suspect it was not the hard core hammer people expected about a Doll. It is what I agree with the one of many deep dives into the film, a placement product movie about what? A Doll from the largest advertiser in the Movie, and not even a subtle one as they were also the Production funders of the film – Mattel. And advertisement that made over 1 Billion dollars this past week, so it definitely succeeded. And with that I plan on going again. I loved every pink sweet minute. It was high comedy and yes a touch of Feminism thrown in for good measure. But in my “interpretation” it was about being a Girl and becoming a Woman and when you throw away your childish things do you throw away your dreams, your hopes and just become what everyone else is or where you always different just like everyone else? As for all the “diversity” of the world of Barbie and Ken they were not unique or different in their world view and of their beliefs. This was a world that largely day to day went unchanged and the one different was relegated to the name “Weird” Barbie and lived on a hill. The other outlier, Allan, was there with Pregnant Midge as a sort of reminder that you can be different but in turn also canceled off the production line at any time for whatever reason. And with that I can say Midge clearly was an unwed Mother and perhaps Allan the only Man in the crew of Kens who for what I saw in the film were very Gay and very Porn Star like sans the equipment needed to fill the role..in other words MY PERFECT MAN! So I guess Allan was the precursor to Jeffrey Epstein and that explains quite a bit right there.

I laughed when I read the article below as this week two more analysis arrived, Barbie as Therapy and Barbie as a Subversive film with a hidden message. I cannot wait til the next comic strip movie, Nancy and Sluggo and what that means for Domestic Violence and Sexism. Or how GI Joe contributed to the Military War Culture. And again the Kens were very very Gay so I am sure that is another analysis of how the film is recruiting children to the “lifestyle.” And can I just say that is one “lifestyle” I embrace!

With Barbie being a Doll and such the world in which she lived is conducive to two factors: Money and the one who is her Guardian/Owner/Manipulator aka Child who plays with her and either chooses the accessories sold for that same Doll or in turn creates their own world, aka “Weird” Barbie. Well I would take weird any day sans the dog shitting on the carpet which was canceled due to choking hazards. Really? The shitting balls no?

Aside from America Ferrera’s monologue that is a version of the many speeches, excuses, explanations, justifications, condemnations, rationalizations I have given over my last 64 years of living as a Woman on this planet, I did not see/hear a Feminist message. I did see a message about Conformity and Consumerism and the idea that when Barbie crossed over to the “real” world the reality of how one thinks they live and the way it truly is one message; the other that conformity makes life lived by the one who is playing with you.. as the “weird” Barbie advised Stereotypical Barbie to seek upon her journey in which to explain/understand/find why and what was happening to her. And with that she found out that her Guardian/Owner/Master was in fact not a child but an Adult with all that baggage and emotions that children do not have when they play with dolls. I also think many young girls don’t have their Barbies aspire to be Pulitzer Prize Winner or Supreme Court Justices. Disco parties and Cowgirls yes.

But with that I laughed my ass off from the movie. I did not care that the Board of Mattel is not all white men wearing the same suits or that the creator of Barbie was not a kindly Matron but in real life a ball buster, or that Barbie suddenly had a working Vagina upon her arrival but sure I am sure young girls do… or not. And just like in real life the men stole the show or at least the Ken’s and Allan’s did as who did not come out of that movie and discuss the blazing hot performance of Ryan Gosling as Ken – Beach! and Micheal Cera as the doorknob Allan. Wait until the right wing finds out that a Barbie was played by a Trans woman. QUELLE HORROEUR! says French Barbie.

Column: Is ‘Barbie’ the most overanalyzed movie in cinema history? Kenough, already, pundits!

By Robin Abcarian  Columnist  LA Times

If you thought the smash movie “Barbie” was merely a film about a plastic doll who comes to life, boy have you not been paying attention.

“Barbie” is so much more than the year’s blockbuster movie.

It is a Rorschach blot tickling the psyches of viewers, an onion whose multiple layers offer any number of conflicting interpretations, a “Rashomon”-like experience where every viewer comes away with a different idea of what they have just seen.

In addition to blowing past the billion-dollar mark in ticket sales, director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has spawned a mini-industry of punditry, analysis and controversy, offering grist to almost every mainstream and specialty publication for endless takes on every possible angle.

I daresay that in its very brief life, “Barbie” has not just revitalized the color pink, it has already become the most overanalyzed movie in cinema history. “Citizen Kane” has nothing on this flick.

“Barbie,” inevitably, has sparked discussions about sex, gender and gender roles, relationships, aging, feminism and patriarchy.

The Washington Post explored Barbie’s “pornographic origin story.” The New Yorker proposed “Decoding Barbie’s Radical Pose” and also explained “Why Barbie Must Be Punished.”

In the Atlantic, a child psychiatrist opined on “What ‘Barbie’ Understands About Mother-Daughter Relationships.”

Famous feminists have weighed in.

Susan Faludi, author of 1991’s “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” saw the film with Jessica Bennett of the New York Times and declared “Barbie” to be a movie about abortion, sort of. (Don’t forget, Barbie is an unmarried career woman with no children.)**AND FOR YEARS I BLAMED MY MOTHER.. WRONG BITCH APPARENTLY

I mean, it begins with little girls playing with dolls learning the origin story of Barbie — and the rejection of the idea that women can just be mothers,” Faludi told Bennett. “It ends with her going to the gynecologist.”

Author Mary Pipher, whose 1994 classic “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls” helped inspire Gerwig, changed her mind about the negative messages little girls get from Barbie dolls after watching the movie with a Daily Beast reporter.

“When I wrote ‘Reviving Ophelia,’ the Barbie doll personified everything I didn’t like about the idea of a woman,” Pipher said. But, she added, “Barbie has changed. If children like to play with Barbie dolls, that’s just fine with me, especially now that there’s a diverse group.”

One sub-genre of “Barbie” analysis plumbs the complexities of Ryan Gosling’s very tortured Ken, who, before Gerwig got her hands on him, was always just Barbie’s handsome bland boyfriend. (Movie tagline: “She’s everything. He’s just Ken.”)

Time magazine declares that “ ‘Barbie’ is a movie about male fragility.”

The Wall Street Journal says, “It’s a Weird Time to Be Named Ken.” (If you ask me, it’s a pretty weird time to be named Barbie too.) I have seen enough puns on his name — “Kenaissance,” “Kenpathy,” “My Kendom for a horse” to want to scream “Kenough!”

Not everyone appreciates the attention lavished on Ken. “Enough About Ken,” writes Xochitl Gonzalez in the Atlantic. “Men are not, in fact, always the center of women’s thoughts.”

Given its various themes, “Barbie,” predictably, has become part of the culture wars.

Bill Maher criticized the movie for being “preachy” and “man-hating.” Elon Musk took issue with the number of times the word “patriarchy” was uttered. Ben Shapiro set Barbie dolls on fire and tossed them into a trash can. *IRONY THERE THAT MISOGYNY AND WHITE MEN GO HAND IN HAND

A spate of stories has tried to decipher the meaning of the Allan doll, a buddy of Ken’s played by Michael Cera, who is maybe gay, maybe binary or maybe the unsung or surprise hero of the movie.  *I THINK ALLAN IS CHILD MOLESTER AND TRAFFICKER..JEFFREY EPSTEIN AS A DOLL… FOLLOW THE CLUES.

And who knew the busty, long-legged blond would find herself embroiled in geopolitical drama?

Republicans — well, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz anyway — have claimed Barbie is pushing a Chinese communist agenda because a world map shown in the trailer includes what is known as the “nine-dash line,” which is used on Chinese maps to depict its territory in the South China Sea. Vietnam, which disputes China’s claims, has banned the movie entirely.

While some conservatives have complained that “Barbie” is unforgivably silent on the issues of faith and family, Christianity Today, in a piece called “Barbie and Ken Go East of Eden,” sees an opportunity to “reckon with the ‘fortunate fall.’’’ That happens when the pair leave plastic fantastic Barbie Land and end up at gritty Venice Beach, where they suddenly realize, as Eve/Barbie puts it, “I do not have a vagina and he does not have a penis. We have no genitals.”

All this, I suppose, is a way of saying that “Barbie” has something for everyone. As the movie’s logline so aptly puts it: “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.”

Rather than read about it, you should probably just go see it.

Or, hell, go see it again.

The Brotherhood of the traveling Trumps

As I write this #Covidiots is trending on Twitter, not the first nor the last. What is wrong with this is that many of them are not Trumptards, in fact many are people of color, people who never voted for Trump, never voted for Biden and are not religious zealots. Some are new age advocates who “don’t believe” in modern medicine and that crosses color lines, both of skin and politics. Some are very political and with it disengenous as they are likely vaccinated and are using it to further their position with those who are politically aligned. Some are religious and regardless and many have deep seated emotional problems that they are associating this situation with that incident that has NOTHING to do with Covid, vaccines, Trump or politics. The are well, how do I say this, stupid. These are the people that react to everything emotionally and again can be well educated, voted for Biden but when it comes to making rational decisions about their health and public well being they cannot as their cat died the same week their beloved Grandmother died and this reminds them of that or some other nonsensical reason behind this decision. My former Barista who is Black and suffered child abuse and is all new age-y claims that if he contracts Covid it is “his time.” He is fascinated by Bitcoin, has no education other than acting school and can barely read. He has many many emotional problems and his brother is also mentally ill, diagnosed Schizophrenic, who is functioning for years before finally getting the medication he needs. But he and the rest of the family are never going to ever get the kind of mental health they need. Period, that they need. And this could be a White, Asian or any other family in America where poverty has segregated them into a dynamic where access and availability to proper health care, both physical and mental, is non existent. And hence that too is why many are anti-vaxx.

But mental health is perhaps the most significant factor in why many embraced Q’Anon and in turn accepted and vested into the Big Lie. The social isolation of Covid was nothing to these people who were already in marginal jobs, had little to few friends and opportunities to vest in a larger sense of belonging to a community; be that through actual engagement or through vested knowledge shared experiences. I don’t know how many people I meet daily that seem to think Manhattan is an island akin to Hawaii and rarely, if ever, go across the river to attend a show, a museum or just walk in the many boroughs or neighborhoods. I meet many who simply have to organize, plan and schedule any and all events as if to exert some type of control in a life that seems to be lacking said control. And that too is vaccinated related. I see that in the wine store clerk every time I run into him. He said he is vaxxed but continues to wear masks, bump fists the last time I saw him and seems utterly disconnected from anywhere in the city he grew up in let alone the one he works in. I get early in the pandemic looking for work and driving distance but at this point I have to wonder why he still does. Again that is control and safety in the familiar even when it is challenging, and the kid at the coffee shop also continued to work there for months while simultaneously complaining, whining and bitching about the job long after other businesses were open and looking for help. Fear is a factor and a large emotional responder to many. I feel that way with regards to conflict as I bail so fast your head will spin but I do have some sense of rational thought that enables me to work through some of it but that took decades of work and I still feel that it is exhausting dealing with the emotional issues of others so I do little to connect in anything but brief moments that are meaningful in the moment, nothing more. So in other words, we meet, exchange numbers and texts and I send the last text and then when no response, ghosted if you must, I delete the thread and move on. But I always end on a positive, something vague and open ended, leaving it to them to be the “bad guy.” I shudder to think if I actually did get a response, then what?

So we all carry our bags and we sort through them and in that process we find an item that recalls another time in another life and we want to replicate it, or try to seek out those who have similar recollections and experiences and that is Trump. And when I read this article last night after I came home from the Theater (a monologue about blow jobs and it was like giving one or having one that just goes on too long) I thought about the evening and the fun drinks I shared with a charming 25 year old gay boy who was very drunk and very sweet and bought my drinks, shared his food and we parted as “friends” who will never see each other again. It was better than the play, with the endless Covid protocol where we had to bring our vaxx card, our ID, wear masks and the minute the house lights went off so did the masks to sit and listen to a woman wax on about waxing a dick. And then I went home and it began to rain, which I have always loved it as it was a symbol, cleaning off the evening of drinks spilled and sweat and just exhaustion. I did not need to do it again, as once was enough, but like many times in the past I thought it wasn’t and I went out trying to replicate that same moment, a moment, an encounter, an experience, that can never happen again. The diagnosis of insanity is doing the same thing over again believing that the same outcome will result. Well folks it sorta kinda can if you do it with the same people and come up with a strategy, plan of action and continue to do it over and over again, Groundhog day folks and all under your control. Control matters to those where they seem to have so little it.

So in other words spending energy on trying to rationalize, empathize or even understand the motivations of those of the traveling Trumptards is wasting time, they are not worth that effort. When you read the article note that the one woman is quite clear on why she went to DC on January 6th, “It just looked so neat,” she said. “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

Yes, you were there JUST to overthrow the government. Really? Okay then. And here reason for loving Trump was less about Trump but the collective mind set, the sense of belonging and this was akin to her experience in the 80; for Saundra Kiczenski, a 56-year-old from Michigan, compared the energy at a Trump rally to the feelings she had as a teenager in 1980 watching the “Miracle on Ice” — when the U.S. Olympic hockey team unexpectedly beat the Soviet Union.

And that was that, the shared thrill of the moment. Group think is a powerful tool that on some level explains the behaviors: Group think is a phenomenon that occurs when a group of well-intentioned people makes irrational or non-optimal decisions spurred by the urge to conform and dissent is impossible. The problematic or premature consensus that is characteristic of group think may be fueled by a particular agenda—or it may be due to group members valuing harmony and coherence above critical thought.

With that a collective consciousness is shared. Collective consciousness refers to the set of shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that are common to a social group or society. The collective consciousness informs our sense of belonging and identity, and our behavior.

So the same hysteria over # and likes is the same across groups on social media regardless of their Race, Gender, Political tribe and any other moniker, label or acronym you use to identify yourself in which to become a member. The dogpiles on social media are no less aggressive or intimidating or in fact damaging. Just ask Chrissey Tiegen on that one. Self identity is one thing, projection, distraction and of course finger pointing is easy behind a keyboard less so in real life. So have at it. I like to do the work on myself and myself alone in every sense of the word.

To Trump’s hard-core supporters, his rallies weren’t politics. They were life.

What 2020 looked like from the front row on the campaign trail

Michael C. Bender is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the author of “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” from which this article is adapted. July 16, 2021|

Donald Trump soaked in the adoration as he commanded a rally stage inside a massive central Florida arena. I stewed in my seat and stopped taking notes.

It was the third summer of Trump’s presidency, and the event had been billed as the official kickoff of his reelection campaign. What unfolded, however, was effectively the exact same rally I’d already covered at least 50 times since 2016 as a White House and political reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Traditionally, a campaign launch marks an inflection point for a candidate to frame the race, offering a new message or a second-term agenda. But the only differences that day in June 2019 were cosmetic: The sound system was louder, the physical stage grander. Timeworn chants of “Lock her up” and “Build the wall” rippled through the arena, with Trump supporters echoing their favorite lines like childhood friends at a sleepover watching their favorite movie for the umpteenth time.

Then it struck me. The deafening roars and vigorous choruses from the capacity crowd at the 20,000-seat Amway Arena showed that Trump’s supporters were excited to watch a rerun. They’d stood in line for hours or camped overnight — enduring stifling humidity interrupted only by brief bursts of hard, heavy rain — to ensure a spot inside. Now I was rattled. I had let the rallies, which formed the core of one of the most steadfast political movements in modern American history and reordered the Republican Party, turn stale and rote. Why was Trump’s performance still so fresh and resonant for an entire arena of fellow Americans? I spent the next year and a half embedded with a group of Trump’s most hardcore rallygoers — known as the “Front Row Joes” — to try to understand what I’d overlooked.

The answer wasn’t so much what I’d missed as what they had found. They were mostly older White men and women who lived paycheck to paycheck with plenty of time on their hands — retired or close to it, estranged from their families or otherwise without children — and Trump had, in a surprising way, made their lives richer. The president himself almost always spent the night in his own bed and kept few close friends. But his rallies gave the Joes a reason to travel the country, staying at one another’s homes, sharing hotel rooms and carpooling. Two had married — and later divorced — by Trump’s second year in office.

In Trump, they’d found someone whose endless thirst for a fight encouraged them to speak up for themselves, not just in politics but also in relationships and at work. His rallies turned arenas into modern-day tent revivals, where the preacher and the parishioners engaged in an adrenaline-fueled psychic cleansing brought on by chanting and cheering with 15,000 other like-minded loyalists. Saundra Kiczenski, a 56-year-old from Michigan, compared the energy at a Trump rally to the feelings she had as a teenager in 1980 watching the “Miracle on Ice” — when the U.S. Olympic hockey team unexpectedly beat the Soviet Union.

“The whole place is erupting, everyone is screaming, and your heart is beating like, just, oh my God,” Kiczenski told me. “It’s like nothing I’ve experienced in my lifetime.”

Their devotion wasn’t reciprocated. Trump was careless with his supporters’ innocence, as he turned coronavirus tests into political scorecards and painted civil rights protests as a breeding ground for antifa. His last campaign-style event as president, the “Save America” rally on Jan. 6 in Washington, helped fuel a deadly riot at the Capitol that has resulted in the arrests of more than 500 Americans. But the former president still drew thousands to a rural fairground about an hour outside Cleveland last month and to another in central Florida. And the question from June 2019 about what keeps bringing his fans back remains a pressing one for the country — and an urgent one for the Republican Party.

Many of the people facing criminal charges related to the riot have pointed to Trump and his lies about the election as the reason they stormed the symbolic heart of the world’s longest-standing democracy. But those arguments have taken place inside courtrooms. Outside Trump rallies, there are alternative facts.

“It’s ridiculous those people are in prison for no reason,” Kiczenski told me at the Ohio rally last month. “And it’s a shame because if Donald Trump were still the president, they’d all be free.”

The Front Row Joes include several Trump aficionados who had spent decades keeping tabs on his political flirtations, tabloid melodrama and star turns on reality television. But I talked to a surprising number who’d also voted for Barack Obama at least once, attracted to the Democrat’s charisma and fed up with Republicans over foreign adventurism and the growing national debt.https://a71f6c6c32f2d06fb08c8a2d996b745e.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Kiczenski met people like Ben Hirschmann, a Michigan legislative intern who posted on Facebook anytime he had an open seat in his car on the way to a rally. She bonded with Brendan Gutenschwager and flew with him to Hong Kong, where they spent 24 hours waving their red, white and blue Trump flags during protests over China’s extradition laws. She occasionally overnighted about an hour outside Detroit with Judy Chiodo, a fellow Trump rally-trotter, rather than drive all the way home to Sault Ste. Marie.

But 2020 proved grueling for the Joes. In March, Hirschmann was among the first Americans to die of covid-19. His death, at 24, shook his Trump friends. “I talked to him more than my own daughter,” Cindy Hoffman, a 60-year-old Iowa woman who ran a tool-sharpening business, said on a Zoom call that the Joes held to grieve.

Yet within a few months, as Trump’s response to the pandemic became increasingly politicized, the Front Row Joes had pinned Hirschmann’s death on a push for doctors to see patients remotely by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Her changes largely mirrored steps the Trump administration had taken, but she was a Democrat who had emerged as a foil for the president. They also turned on one another, shaming friends who wanted to wear masks or were nervous about attending rallies during the pandemic.

When Randal Thom, a 60-year-old ex-Marine with a long gray mustache, fell severely ill with a high fever and debilitating congestion, he refused to go to the hospital. He was a heavy smoker who was significantly overweight and knew he faced an increased risk of severe effects from covid-19. Still, he refused to take a coronavirus test and potentially increase the caseload on Trump’s watch: “I’m not going to add to the numbers,” he told me. Thom survived the scare, but died months later in a car accident while returning home to Minnesota from a Trump boat parade in Florida.

While most Americans only occasionally left their homes, the pandemic proved a blessing for Kiczenski’s Trump travel plans. She bought cheap airfare, repeatedly basked in the extravagance of an airplane aisle all to herself and logged more flights in 2020 than at any other point in her life. She attended 25 Trump rallies, boosting her total to 56. She spent 79 nights of the year away from her bed. Kiczenski traveled so often during the pandemic that a Delta flight attendant thanked her for being a Silver Medallion member and upgraded her to first class; she initially assumed it was a mistake.

Kiczenski was in Washington with friends for the Jan. 6 rally. She was convinced beyond a doubt that Trump had been reelected on Nov. 3, only to have his victory stolen in what she described as “a takeover by the communist devils.” She said she believed that, in part, because she had crossed paths with Corey Lewandowski, a well-known and ubiquitous Trump adviser, in the Trump International Hotel the previous summer. Lewandowski told her, she said, that the only way Trump could lose was if there was massive election fraud.

“If someone put a gun to my head and said: ‘Did Donald Trump win, yes or no? And if you’re wrong, we’re going to shoot your head off!’ I would say yes,” Kiczenski told me. “I’m that confident that this stuff is not made up.”

On Jan. 6, she and her friends made their way to the west side of the Capitol, where a mob pushed through police barricades and turned steel bike racks on their sides, leaning them against stone walls like ladders. Some men helped her climb up the rungs. People were everywhere, and it was difficult to move. Kiczenski and her friends scaled one more wall and were within about 100 yards of the Capitol. But it had become so crowded — they didn’t want to lose one another — that they decided to stop on the west terrace, take pictures and soak up the atmosphere.

They paused in the place where Trump and Vice President Mike Pence had been inaugurated in 2017 amid a crowd of former presidents and against a Capitol decorated in red, white and blue bunting. Now, four years later, Trump’s supporters swarmed the ornate building. Outside that evening, countless Trump flags flapped in the wind. Clouds of tear gas hung in the air against the purple twilight sky, and the orange light glowing from inside the Capitol’s windows gave the scene a surreal, apocalyptic feel.

Kiczenski was inspired by a vista of Trumpian strength and patriotism: the Washington Monument in the distance, the majestic Capitol in the foreground, and freedom-loving patriots fighting like hell to stop a stolen and fraudulent election, liberate their country and save their president. She snapped pictures and recorded videos.

“It just looked so neat,” she said. “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

But when Trump posted a video to social media asking supporters to go home (and saying he loved them) after the riot raged for hours, Kiczenski felt confused and depressed. “We were supposed to be fighting until the end,” she said.

She reminded herself that the president hadn’t technically conceded, and as soon as she arrived home in Michigan, she packed for the next Trump trip. Kiczenski trusted that something was coming and wanted a go-bag ready if she needed to leave for a rally at a moment’s notice.

“We’re all on the edge of our seats waiting to hear about the next event,” she said. “Now we’re like an army, and it’s like boots on the ground. Tell us where we need to go!

“The time is now,” she continued, sounding at once urgent and wistful. “It’s time to go.”

And when Trump returned to the rally circuit in June, so did Kiczenski. “We have a lot of down time now that we’re trying to fill,” she told me in Ohio. “It’s basically like we don’t have a president right now

Style Making

Last night I watched the new series, American Style, on CNN. While not ground breaking in any sense of the word if one did not realize the concept of how fashion, style, politics and economics are all part of the American economy then this is the series for you.   I personally loved the look back on how the American fashion industry grew and how it influenced all factors of the economy literally changing how Women were viewed as an industry in and of itself as a result. 

Now with all that comes good and bad and in turn the appearances, the popular culture, advertising and the economic growth in post war America led to what has become the bell weather for defining the belief that this was what made America great.  The reality is that it also clearly established the dividing lines between the sexes and races and of course later between those of sexuality and religion.  Yes it was America at its greatest, clearly!

If you watched the series Mad Men I think that it did a great job capturing that essential period over time and in turn how times change and people not so much unless they choose to.  And choice is how advertising, marketing, and competition began. That enabled new businesses to grow to fuel said competition and in turn consumption.  Today’s business acumen seems to center around buying one’s competitors and making giant conglomerates that do little to help the consumer.  As for technology it too contributed to our version of style that took us to new heights that to this day seems to be the only industry that matters and to which we aspire.  Aspiration was and is still the key to measure one’s success and in turn failure of attaining the “American Dream.”

Ah dreaming, isn’t that just that, a dream?  Much like the concept of meritocracy it is like a dream, illusive and yet so real but isn’t.  The venerable unicorn of life.

I read the article below about the concept of masculinity and there are some truths about this belief and last night on the CNN show the same issues came to light on the concept of how men were to act, to dress, to behave. The same expectations were for women and all of this of course was a reflection on the larger society and to provide appropriate role models for the expected 2.5 children one would of course have in their suburban home surrounded by people just like them.  From said conformity came the fear of communism as anyone different poses a threat to the very existence we fought a war for.   Again funny how history repeats itself.   And the very close friend of the current President was just that, a commie hunter who hid his own secret, his sexuality, as he eviscerated the creative class of many of his own.  America, let’s make it great again!

Men bore me.  Women bore me even more.  It is as if I have to pick the lesser of two evils.   For the record the great hero worship of Planned Parenthood may be misguided as they internally organized to crush women by offering little support to women who want to be mothers and thrive in a working environment that ironically enables women to chose that very option.   So good to know they are no different than any other large corporation in America and that little has changed since the 50s. Everything old is the same again, not new just the same. Sort of like the tech industry that gives us three same brands of scooters but they are different colors. Sure great how inventive.  You electrified a kids scooter that was a fad about 5 years ago and remember the hover board?  God almighty this is from the minds of men, boys and their toys.

What defines masculinity? What defines femininity?  What is so gay?  What is so butch? And on and on and on.   All of it toxic and all of it about conformity to a set of rules that are written by who and why?   Start there.

How ‘traditional masculinity’ hurts the men who believe in it most

New American Psychological Association guidelines suggest that certain masculine behaviors can harm everyone — including men.

By Monica Hesse
The Washington Post
January 13 at 6:00 AM

My grandfather is traditionally masculine in most senses of the word: He was a soldier, then a bait-shop owner, then a garbage collector; he rose before dawn most days of his life and I never heard him complain about it. He raised six good kids, he tells funny one-liners, he’s an expert fisherman. He once refused over-the-counter pain meds even while at death’s door.

I’ve been thinking about him lately, for reasons I’ll get to in a bit.

More than a decade ago, the American Psychological Association released a set of guidelines for treating women and girls: a document that addressed sexual violence and pay inequality, discussed how women disproportionately suffer from eating disorders and anxiety, and advised clinicians with female clients on how to be more sensitive and more effective. The APA has also, over the years, released guidelines for treating older folks, and racial and ethnic minorities, and members of the LGBT community.

What the largest psychological organization in the United States had never done was release guidelines for treating men.

Men were already perceived as the default, unneeding of individuated study. “Unless you’re in a men’s group, you’re probably not regularly reflecting on what it means to be male,” says Matt Englar-Carlson, who directs the Center for Boys and Men at California State University at Fullerton. “You’re probably just enacting it.”

Psychologists want to change that, though, and last week marked the release of the APA’s inaugural Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men — developed over 13 years and using four decades of research. Men are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than women, for example. They have more academic challenges and receive harsher punishments in school settings. They’re the victims of 77 percent of homicides (and they commit 90 percent of them).

One cause for this consortium of maladies, the guidelines suggested? “Traditional masculinity” itself — the term refers to a Western concept of manliness that relies — and sometimes over-relies — on stoicism, dominance, aggression and competitiveness.

“Everybody has beliefs about how men should behave,” says Ronald Levant, who was the APA president when the guidelines were initially conceived, and who has worked on them ever since. “We found incredible evidence that the extent to which men strongly endorse those beliefs, it’s strongly associated with negative outcomes.” The more men cling to rigid views of masculinity, the more likely they are to be depressed, or disdainful, or lonely.

The guidelines are saying some men are sick, in other words. But are they saying some men are sick, like, we need to gently care for them with aspirin and a thermometer? Or are they saying some men are sick, like, we need to put them in Hannibal Lecter masks and keep them away from everyone else?

Levant was shocked this past week by how many people responded as if the guidelines were suggesting the latter — people who read the 30-page document as an indictment not of rigid, traditional masculinity but of all masculinity, and of men themselves.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham accused the APA of conflating masculinity with “Harvey Weinstein”-like behaviors.

In the conservative National Review magazine, writer David French also critiqued the study: “It is interesting that in a world that otherwise teaches boys and girls to ‘be yourself,’ that rule often applies to everyone but the ‘traditional’ male who has traditional male impulses and characteristics. Then, they’re a problem. Then, they’re often deemed toxic.”

I covered a men’s rights activist conference a few years ago: Several dozen men — white men, mostly — had flown to a Detroit suburb to talk about how they felt men were under attack. Worse, they said, nobody was paying attention to their suffering.

Some of the men were, as we’d say, “toxic,” (one kept telling me to make him a sandwich, then saying he was joking, then telling me again — ham and cheese on wheat, b—-). But a lot of them were just sad. They talked about male suicide rates, male depression, male isolation. They talked, in other words, about a lot of the information included in the new APA guidelines. They were desperate, begging, for someone to pay attention and find a solution.

Most of them, however, were sure the correct solution would have something to do with fixing women. As soon as women would stop taking their jobs, they wouldn’t be depressed anymore. As soon as women would stop categorizing sexual attention as harassment, they wouldn’t be lonely anymore.

These able-bodied straight white men were, as a group, the most privileged class in America — the Founding Fathers demographic — but they were convinced they were oppressed.

While reading the APA guidelines this week, I thought a lot about those men in Detroit. I thought about how it’s possible to be crushed by something you built, how it’s possible to invent a game that exhausts you to play.

What’s difficult about the APA’s guidelines is that they ask us to wrestle with a complicated idea: that in a society in which gender roles have historically been rigid — and that rigidity has placed the lion’s share of power in the hands of one of the genders — it’s possible for the rulers to be harmed right along with the ruled. But that’s what bad systems do. They mess up everyone.

I thought about how hard it would be to accept that healing yourself might mean letting go of the very things you believed defined who you were.

Englar-Carlson, the California professor, worked on the APA guidelines for several years. When I talked to him, he kept repeating this point: He didn’t believe that men were bad, or even that many forms of masculinity were.

“A lot of men have the expectation that they need to be stoic, and independent, and take care of things on their own — and those can all be quite helpful tools,” Englar-Carlson says.

The trouble comes, though, when those are the only tools men believe they have: when they need help and are afraid to ask for it, when they’re experiencing emotions they can’t even name, much less express. And when they blame themselves for being unable to make those insufficient tools work, and the result is to lash out — or lash in — in violence.

“The guidelines are about, how do we help men live healthier lives?” he says. “How do we help men live lives that aren’t trapped in straitjackets of gender expectations?”

All week long, he said, he’d been getting emails accusing him of “not liking” traditional men. He told me he wanted to write back, “I do like them! That’s why I don’t want them to suffer!”

I told him about my grandfather. How much I loved and respected him. How most everyone who met him respected him. How our family stories centered on him being a good provider and a good man. But also — how I couldn’t remember anyone asking my grandfather how he felt about that. Whether he would have preferred a different life. Whether he had ever felt trapped in the one he had.

I told Englar-Carlson that I wanted everyone in the world to be like my grandfather. But I also wanted everyone to know they have the option not to be.

Mask Wearers

I read this today next to a desk as I sat in a classroom virtually ignored by the co teacher, whom irony would have have subbed for in the past. “We all wear masks, and the times comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.” I wear a mask every day and it is getting harder with each passing day when one walks into a school and  varying staff members that have shared the classroom with me, ate in the classroom and walked through it to gain access to an adjacent office and not one individual acknowledged me nor spoke to me.    These are professional adults and this is how they treat a “peer” by ignoring me.  And you wonder why people hate Teachers.

And then I read this blog entry from a young girl and I thought it summed up Seattle quite well.

The dominant negative vibration in Seattle is: Annoyed, a state of perpetual irritation.  Seattle is not a friendly city.  In fact, its inhabitants have a reputation for unfriendliness and I’ve yet to see this stereotype contradicted.  This would be a very, very hard place to live for anyone who was trying to stop caring what other people thought of them.  The social judgment in Seattle is palpable.  The vibe between people is “I don’t have any time for you so… what do you want from me? 

In general, people here are highly self-involved and not outgoing.  It would be very hard to make friends here.  It is an unwritten social standard to not look into other people’s eyes and to not smile.  If you do either, people are taken aback and the meaning they add to the experience, causes them to be “creeped out”.  It puts one on edge trying to figure out just how to behave so as to not be perceived in a negative light.  In my opinion, Seattle is the hipster capital of the world.  A subculture of people whom felt misunderstood growing up and who now value counter culture, progressive politics and independent thinking.  This is wonderful in theory, but ironically the hipster culture has become a highly judgmental group that demands conformity to its unique ideals and tastes for acceptance.  I had the opportunity to observe a street party on Capitol Hill yesterday, which brought the hipsters out into the streets in droves.  A part of me felt sad.  I saw a collection of people, who are desperate to be loved for who they are, but who must wear the identity of their urban radical façade just as thick as a southern bell in a cotillion to belong.

I have long said that the migrants who came in here in search of a life forgot to bring one with them. They expected it to be handed to them with the joint and $15/hr that we provide upon entering city lines.

I think this is a MEllinneal thing. Although the group in my room today were a little long in the tooth to fit that but Gen X they were and that is the Glenn Beckheads and others of that collective who seem jealous that they never got the respect they deserve. For what I am unclear? Anger? Income Inequity? Reagan?

But one thing is certain that Seattle is very reflective of that cohort. Angry, paranoid, superficial and aspirational.  And this week a Yoga class was cancelled for its appropriation of the word “yoga” and its cultural history; a Professor on leave for using a “slur” which I am guessing begins with “N” and ends in “er” in context of a larger discussion, not as a superlative directed towards a student; and of course the eradication of Woodrow Wilson from anything in Princeton.  Well University of Virginia be next with its glorification of slave owner and baby daddy of slaves, Thomas Jefferson? What about FDR and his womanizing? And the list can go on.

I am not sure what to make of this. The supposed “disrupters” seem to mimics or again almost all of their big schemes and plans are having private cars and drivers at your disposal – Uber; having a private home at your beck and call – AirBnB; private bus service, having food delivered, having it cooked for you, your house cleaned, a Butler service (I love that one); personal taxis for children; special shoppers and pet loaning, like tools only without the vet bills and actual responsiblilty.

And yes all of those are legitimate businesses and well all of them have long existed in one form or another.  It is lather rinse repeat and ride the unicorn to riches.  What.ever.

I think the last sentence in that young woman’s blog post says it all:   people, who are desperate to be loved for who they are, but who must wear the identity of their urban radical façade just as thick as a southern bell in a cotillion to belong.

We are wearing many masks and this belief that you can erase, oppress, bully and intimidate people to conform to your world view is one small world.  When you remove your mask will we see how ugly you really are beneath it?   Perhaps that is the problem, no one wants to be ugly and everyone wants to be liked.  This is what is now diversity – not disagreeing with the status quo.