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'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

latimes.com

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Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you like it or not, people of both genders will be competitive. Ultimately, this is why socialism fails. The incentive to compete essentially disappears. If everyone is forced to be paid the same, why try harder than anyone else? The goal then becomes to game the system as much as possible, where the ruling class accumulates wealth. However, the mere accumulation of wealth is not itself a productive endeavor.…

Competition isn't bad, but harming yourself in service of competition is. You can compete without endangering yourself and harming others. You can be the best without having to play the "I'm manlier than you" game.

>>You can compete without endangering yourself and harming others. You can be the best without having to play the "I'm manlier than you" game.

Play without keeping a score so the loser is not "hurt" emotionally?

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#52
post #3

Not sure why this is on HN, since psycology isn’t a science in its current form: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/13/news/la-ol-blowback-... > Why can we definitively say that? Because psychology often does not meet the five basic requirements for a field to be considered scientifically rigorous: clearly defined terminology, quantifiability, highly controlled experimental conditions, reproducibility and, finally,…

I don't really get why comments like this continue to pop up on HN. There are many non-science topics that make their way to the front page of HN regularly. Per the guidelines, on-topic submissions do not need to strictly be about programming, startups, or in this case, science.

Its usually always people who have been here for like 10 minutes.

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#53
post #49
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what is the question here.

Asked for a gender neutral way to label gender roles.

You might want to specify this in your first message : I did not really understand your propositions in context before this message

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#54
post #27

"achievement" So encouraging men to achieve success in life is harmful?

They're saying that men end up constraining themselves. Men could achieve a lot more without the constraints of masculine social mores.

Like what? Let's say men are now compelled by social mores to be (more) aggressive risk takers, drive themselves to compete, achieve more and take leadership positions. Leaving aside how incredibly wrong such generalization is, let's assume it's exactly correct. And let's consider a hypothetical where men aren't compelled to do any of that - what would allow such men to "achieve a lot more" while avoiding taking risks, rejecting stoic values of perseverance and hard work, despising leadership and drive to succeed (whatever their definition of success would be), what would be the mechanism of it?

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#55
post #46
post #29

This is sexism. People should avoid labels such as "masculine" or "feminine". How would we react if they said, for example, "traditional jewishness" (is considered harmful)? I think feminist movement is actively hurting itself by adopting divisive labels such as "toxic masculinity", "patriarchy" or even "feminism". We have gender neutral way of talking about these phenomena, there is no need to invoke gender.

If the labels describe an interesting pattern then we shouldn’t fear them.

I disagree. Mainly because I don't think patterns based on someone gender are very interesting, I think they lead to bias and ultimately divide people. Again, consider how it would look like if the pattern was based on race.

We simply don't want to pattern people like that. You can judge by behavior, but you shouldn't judge by gender.

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#56

> “traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful. This really sounds like an attack on masculinity. One must never forget, the age of information with all it's flaws and good was brought upon the back of a structure who's main building block atleast in terms of values were masculine values which I think is independent of gender/sex

> This really sounds like an attack on masculinity

Does it? Or are you looking for a reason to be offended?

From the article:

> The APA also encouraged men to embrace the positive aspects of traditional masculinity, like leadership and courage.

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#57
post #49
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what is the question here.

Asked for a gender neutral way to label gender roles.

You just used the gender neutral way - "gender role".

I am not sure why you need to talk specifically about male or female roles, unless you are sexist? For example. In India, there was a caste system. Why would you in a modern society, need to talk about traditional role for a member of a caste?

You can talk about discrimination, for example, this and this person was denied to be employed as such and such, and it is discriminatory. But whatever the "traditional role" was, it doesn't actually matter at all. It doesn't matter why the racist thinks that someone is inferior.

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#58

> You have to have strong women in order to deal with masculine men. That's why masculinity is constantly being eroded, and diminished and dissolved [..] because it allows women to be weak. If you have weak men, then you can have weak women. And that's what we have. - Camille Paglia

YES. This is why it’s so important for men & especially women to learn how to communicate and defend boundaries. I’ve observed the wonderfully healthy communities you can build when men & women are strong together.

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#59
post #55
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the labels describe an interesting pattern then we shouldn’t fear them.

I disagree. Mainly because I don't think patterns based on someone gender are very interesting, I think they lead to bias and ultimately divide people. Again, consider how it would look like if the pattern was based on race. We simply don't want to pattern people like that. You can judge by behavior, but you shouldn't judge by gender.

I think feminine & masculine, yin & yang are extremely fascinating and practically useful. When I run into a problem where the yang approach isn’t working I try switching to yin.

Meditation & psychedelics have me utterly convinced that yin & yang, chaos & order are fundamental to conscious experience. But, who knows.

Re: 'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc

#60
post #46
post #29

This is sexism. People should avoid labels such as "masculine" or "feminine". How would we react if they said, for example, "traditional jewishness" (is considered harmful)? I think feminist movement is actively hurting itself by adopting divisive labels such as "toxic masculinity", "patriarchy" or even "feminism". We have gender neutral way of talking about these phenomena, there is no need to invoke gender.

If the labels describe an interesting pattern then we shouldn’t fear them.

the formula for small "c" conservative language-policing among post-critical folk seems to be:

1) identify a criticism of some traditional power structure (masculinity)

2) hijack the critical language and turn it on itself into a contradiction (anti-sexism is itself sexist)

it's the same formula for everything from "atheism is itself a religion" to "anti-racism is racism against white people".

to me it just seems like a very childish defense mechanism, like if nobody is allowed to talk about the problem then the problem will just go away.

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