Male archetypes in fairy tales
sharonblackie.substack.com
Male archetypes in fairy tales
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Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#2Thinking of bellatores, oratores, and laboratores yields the Knight-errant, the Trickster, and the Apprentice.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#3> Well, if the men want their stories, let them go and find them
She then goes on to mention the first(ish) man to do so, Robert Bly. The New York times, for his obiturary, wrote that Bly "started a controversial men’s movement with a best seller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity." Which underlines why most men don't want to do it and why actually it is better if women lead this study at this current time: even if your intentions are good, your statements may be misjudged by some. In Bly's case, it was misjudged by some anti-feminists to launch some actual misogynistic countercultures and misjudged by some feminists to blame Bly for some of this and prior misogyny.
Anyways, a round about way to say thank you, Dr. Sharon Blackie for writing this. As opposed to it being misplaced, I quite appreciate it and find it necessary.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#4> Well, if the men want their stories, let them go and find them She then goes on to mention the first(ish) man to do so, Robert Bly. The New York times, for his obiturary, wrote that Bly "started a controversial men’s movement with a best seller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity." Which underlines why most men don't want to do it and why actually it is better if women lead this study at this curr…
"actually it is better if women lead this study at this current time"
This is such an indictment of our society.
I still believe that the proper response to women's mistreatment in the past and present is to stop mistreating women, not to start mistreating men.
Constraining men from discussing things of interest and value to them, basically because they're not women and don't have the societal "indulgence" of being female, is sexism and should be opposed.
Maybe that's the wrong read of the situation, I'd appreciate being steered aright, but that seems like the situation to me right now.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#5> I hate it more than I can say when I read books or listen to talks and performances by men who tell and ‘interpret’ women’s stories, and who are kind enough then to suggest to us ways in which our lives as women might be improved. I’ve never wanted to do the same to them
What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combination of labels is so radically different from everybody else's that we can't possibly learn anything from anybody else.
> but the knowledge of psychology, myth and folklore that I’ve acquired over the past several decades isn’t restricted to women, and it seems a pity to hold back information and ideas that might be useful
Ah, some common sense prevailed. Thank goodness. It can't possibly be the case that when men do the same it's somehow with the same goal of trying to be useful; no, it must be that they are trying to "'interpret' women's stories".
Look, I'm an immigrant queer disabled man, and if all I did was listening to what other immigrant queer disabled men had to say and looked down on input from other people my information bubble would be very small indeed.
Fortunately, most people are willing to listen to all sorts of other people and judge what they have to say fot what it is, not based on some labels we assigned to the source. And conversely, when the information they have provided falls below our standards, we should place the blame on the individual rather than the collective that we think they belong to.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#6> Well, if the men want their stories, let them go and find them She then goes on to mention the first(ish) man to do so, Robert Bly. The New York times, for his obiturary, wrote that Bly "started a controversial men’s movement with a best seller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity." Which underlines why most men don't want to do it and why actually it is better if women lead this study at this curr…
"actually it is better if women lead this study at this current time" This is such an indictment of our society. I still believe that the proper response to women's mistreatment in the past and present is to stop mistreating women, not to start mistreating men. Constraining men from discussing things of interest and value to them, basically because they're not women and don't have the societal "indulgence" of being f…
Well, I don't think it is an indictment so much as the typical indication of how we humans swing to extremes. I find it somewhat lamentable (although perhaps more enviable) how gay men are able to more openly discuss with one another what it means to be a man (because the biggest thing they need to grapple with is this gender norm that to "be a man" means having sex with women), but even they risk charges of misogyny and a heterosexual man would have to be quite lucky to be invited to such a men's group to be part of the discussions which I certainly feel is much more about grappling with the gender norm.
The problem here is that I can imagine Dr Blackie here might actually welcome with honest interest such an analysis by men. She certainly had only fair words for Robert Bly. But others would appear out of the woodwork to call such analysis some misogynistic manifesto. In some sense that should be expected, any good work should have breathless fans and seething critics. But the potential charge of misogyny is felt to carry too heavy a risk for most men nowadays.
I do not think the problem is that men are not women. Instead, there are some genuine jerks out there beating a war drum on the male identity. They create another nasty problem for the man who wants to honestly look at what it means to be a man because they create noise. The problem is that with this fear that men have, the only ones courageous enough to stand up and speak seem to be the jerks that don't really offer much insight, or at least the men with insight get buried under that noise and the noise of charges of misogyny when their insight is misappropriated by actual misogynists.
There needs to be fear before there can be courage is how I see it.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#7> I hate it more than I can say when I read books or listen to talks and performances by men who tell and ‘interpret’ women’s stories, and who are kind enough then to suggest to us ways in which our lives as women might be improved. I’ve never wanted to do the same to them What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combinati…
As a heterosexual immigrant woman, the two people in the world who understand me best are men. And also not immigrants. Indeed, our personal experiences have rather little overlap, but they understand me best because their thought processes are similar to mine and because they are thoughtful, empathetic people. I'll take their life advice over anyone's.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#8These are called tropes. Prepare to loose hours: https://tvtropes.org/
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#9> I hate it more than I can say when I read books or listen to talks and performances by men who tell and ‘interpret’ women’s stories, and who are kind enough then to suggest to us ways in which our lives as women might be improved. I’ve never wanted to do the same to them What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combinati…
> What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combination of labels is so radically different from everybody else's that we can't possibly learn anything from anybody else.
This is called "intersectionality", a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s but some of the key concepts date back to the work of bell hooks in the 1970s. It's a generally accepted pillar of modern feminism.
Something bubbled up on StalkedIn a couple days back: it had images of King Charles III and Ozzy Osbourne, and it said both were white, male, British, born in 1948, married twice, and on and so forth. And it said "A customer is not their demographics. A customer is their individual goals and needs" or something like that. Which, while still laden with business-speak, was something of a contrarian take in today's DEI-mediated world. You gotta be careful with this intersectionality stuff. The endgame of intersectionality is -- gasp -- considering people as individuals.
Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales
#10> I hate it more than I can say when I read books or listen to talks and performances by men who tell and ‘interpret’ women’s stories, and who are kind enough then to suggest to us ways in which our lives as women might be improved. I’ve never wanted to do the same to them What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combinati…
As a heterosexual immigrant woman, the two people in the world who understand me best are men. And also not immigrants. Indeed, our personal experiences have rather little overlap, but they understand me best because their thought processes are similar to mine and because they are thoughtful, empathetic people. I'll take their life advice over anyone's.
Great, I am heterosexual too! But as an aquarius I would need your zodiac sign to know if I can truly relate to you.