Evolving the MetaMasculine

[WillCameron]

In today’s culture we often hear messages about masculinity being toxic or positive, or even as oppressive, limiting men in all of these ways, but, in other ways, being the very force that liberates them. To be able to understand and make our way through the complex conversations around masculinity we need to understand how it actually develops over our lifespan.

In this essay I’m going to use the movie Boyhood (2014), which chronicles the life of Mason, as an example of how masculinity develops. I then offer the very powerful framework of the MetaMasculine, which will help you understand your own life narrative in regards to masculinity. If you haven’t watched the movie already you can still benefit greatly from this piece, but I do recommend going to watch the movie afterward because it’s amazing.

Two important features of masculinity that I think will help guide us are agency and sexuality, and how they often become incredibly tangled up as we develop through childhood. In fact, one of the key stereotypes that separate the genders is agency vs. communion1. Men, being agentic, are seen as being assertive, independent, and rational, whereas women, being communal, are seen as considerate, relational, and emotional. There is even neuroscientific evidence to suggest that these are not just roles given to us by some patriarchal society, but are instead a part of our nature as male and female animals.

Masculinity as Agency, Power, and Domination

Like each of us, Mason is taught from an early age to abide by these stereotypes. One of the first scenes that illustrate this takes place at a bowling alley with his dad and sister, Sam. Sam is celebrated by her father for her skills whereas Mason is lectured. An obvious explanation for why this happens is just that she’s better than him at bowling, and her victory won her celebration. However, I think if we can look a little deeper, it serves as good example of what I’m talking about.

She’s congratulated, she’s supported, she’s given care and consideration. Her father is treating her well and with relational warmth. Mason on the other hand, is immediately given a certain role to fill, be a man who takes responsibility for himself. When Mason asks for bumpers to help him bowl, his father teaches him that, “bumpers are for kids.” Even at the age of 6, he’s not allowed to be a kid. He has to take ownership of his ability to do better through his own actions.

Again, we can chalk this up to Sam doing well and Mason not, but this serves as a good visual example of how a difference in how their father relates to them can lead to two different strategies in how they approach life. In the context of an entire childhood of such messages, it makes sense that the stereotype of agency would develop. And what do we see once his dad’s back is turned? Sam supports Mason relationally. As a girl, she is considerate, kind, and compassionate. Thus, reinforcing that this is how she should behave as a girl. The difference was created by the father, but then maintained by the children themselves.

While Mason’s dad may teach him the difference between agency and communion, it’s his stepdad, Bill, who really drills that message in. When Mason is playing golf with his stepbrother, Randy, and his stepdad, he learns another very powerful message about agency. By definition, agency is about separating oneself from others, which means it often requires competition with others. Mason’s dad didn’t have him compete with his sister, he was competing with his own agency or lack thereof. Mason’s stepdad blatantly puts him in competition with his stepbrother, putting Randy down and explicitly telling him to look at how Mason is doing better.

Think about how this affects the stepbrothers’ relationship. Mason and Randy likely consider themselves brothers and friends. They spend most of their time being together, playing together, learning together, and growing up, together. Now, one of the most important role models in their lives is forcing them into a new role where they have to compare themselves relative to one another, and whoever comes out the victor will get more support.

When they play, they are going to be figuring out who does things better. What was once just a game to have fun, now becomes another avenue to see who is more deserving of this man’s love. This doesn’t merely paint their relationship with the colour of competition. It also feeds into their agency itself. Like I said, agency is separating oneself from others, and now we know that we do this by competing with them and being better than them…or else our father won’t love us.

To top all of this off, we then see the stepdad fail. A string of curses is ended with a violent attack on the ground, a demand for his children to get his things, and a drive to the liquor store. Unpacking this sequence of events, the boys learn that upon failure, a man should react with aggression. They’ve already learned that only doing well is acceptable, but now they’ve learned how to deal with their own inability to do well – get angry and take it out on something.

Remember, being a man is being an agent, and when they are commanded to get his things, they are given a message about how agency is exercised. I am a man, I am an agent, and I exert my power over those who are beneath me. You are submissive to me, so do as I say. We can see how, through agency and how we are taught to express it, masculinity becomes tied with competition with others, power over others, aggression, and an inability to accept personal failures. And finally, we end the day with alcohol.

To be clear, it isn’t necessarily the case that the children will learn to deal with their day, their problems, and their lives with alcohol. The fact that the stepfather is an alcoholic, and is later shown to be abusive, may actually be a reason for why they learn to be careful with alcohol. However, what children learn from an addict, is that they deal with problems not by dealing with them, but by escaping from them. The stepdad is a man, by his every action he is teaching them how to be men. The girls are going to learn how to deal with their problems from an addict, but the boys are also learning that masculinity itself is intimately woven with the very characteristics that are associated with being an addict.

I’m going to talk more about how this ties into addiction later, but the final stepdad lesson that I want to talk about is Mason’s haircut. This is such an important memory for Mason because it solidifies everything we’ve been discussing so far. Mason has long hair, and his stepdad forces him to buzz all of it off. During the haircut itself, the stepdad acts with his trademark lack of empathy and makes fun of Mason, who is very clearly upset. Again, this reinforces masculinity as agency, agency as power, as treating the submissive in a certain way. It’s not just that he’s taught to be powerful as a man, but that being powerful as a man means being an asshole. Being powerful means disregarding the emotions of others when you hurt them.

What’s more, being a man certainly means NOT being a woman and that’s precisely why he’s getting his hair cut. The stepdad tells him, “you’re going to look like a man instead of a little girl.” With that simple phrase, he’s given a vision of what a man is, which specifically includes not being a woman, and as such, women are seen as less than a man.

The reason women are seen as less is because Mason is given a vision of the ideal man, something he should aspire to be, and is then told that everything that is “woman” is something that doesn’t fit that ideal. Mason may begin to interpret anything that is associated with femininity as being worse than the ideal, and thus inferior. When he sees this behaviour in women or men, he will view that behaviour as inferior in some way. Even if he doesn’t agree that femininity is inferior, the fact that this association has been made means that it may become automatic. He will have to be conscious of the ways it might infect how he defines certain behaviours if those behaviours have been associated with femininity.

Again, he doesn’t even need to make the association clear by thinking, “oh that behaviour doesn’t fit the ideal, therefore it’s not masculine, therefore it’s feminine, therefore women are inferior.” He may simply see a woman perform that behaviour, and think that specific woman is less than him, without making all of those leaps. If women have been taught to perform that behaviour more than men, then he’ll simply be more likely to believe that certain women are inferior more often. The fact that this is all being defined by emotional pain makes it all the more powerful.

To give a specific example, think about what he’s learned from his stepdad. Men are agentic, powerful, and dominate others. When they make someone submit to them and that makes them angry and upset, their emotions are meant to be laughed at without empathy. What does all of that mean? If women are empathetic, emotionally vulnerable, and willing to listen, then they’ll be assumed to be weak because each of those things violate the definition of power and dominance he’s been given. If a woman displays any of those behaviours, he is far more likely to just roll his eyes or ignore her because these strategies are “ineffective.”

More will be posted tomorrow!

[QVx]

@WillCameron sorry Will, but can we get a TLDR on this please?

[WillCameron]

14 minutes ago, QVx said:

@WillCameron sorry Will, but can we get a TLDR on this please?

I appreciate your interest and definitely understand that this is a pretty big bite. It's difficult to offer a TLDR to an entire argument. In brief though, this article is about how definitions of masculinity get tied up with agency, dominance, power, and the conquest of women. Later parts of the essay that have yet to be posted go more in-depth on that and offer a framework that honours traditional definitions of masculinity while opening up the definition for update. 

You can find the full essay in video format here. I'm also on spotify.

[QVx]

12 minutes ago, WillCameron said:

I appreciate your interest and definitely understand that this is a pretty big bite. It's difficult to offer a TLDR to an entire argument. In brief though, this article is about how definitions of masculinity get tied up with agency, dominance, power, and the conquest of women. Later parts of the essay that have yet to be posted go more in-depth on that and offer a framework that honours traditional definitions of masculinity while opening up the definition for update. 

You can find the full essay in video format here. I'm also on spotify.

Looking forward to seeing them posted. I would offer the challenge of taking your argument and presenting it in a meaningful and accessible way.

No doubt you’ve clearly spent time on this, however it has initially read, so to speak, as you’re tripping over your own feet.

[WillCameron]

13 minutes ago, QVx said:

Looking forward to seeing them posted. I would offer the challenge of taking your argument and presenting it in a meaningful and accessible way.

No doubt you’ve clearly spent time on this, however it has initially read, so to speak, as you’re tripping over your own feet.

I appreciate the criticism. Could you please explain a little more about what you mean by that. 

[QVx]

3 minutes ago, WillCameron said:

I appreciate the criticism. Could you please explain a little more about what you mean by that. 

The more layers which you add to your argument, the further you get from the truth.

I would suggest that you take your initial post and cut it into a third. Will you lose some critical points and contextualisation? Of course, however I think you’ll find you’ll be closer to the mark than you are now.

It’s also hard to critique with specific examples without adding to the confusion already present.

Hope that makes sense?

Edited September 1 by QVx

[WillCameron]

Just now, QVx said:

The more layers which you add to your argument, the further you get from the truth.

I would the suggestion that you take your initial post and cut it into a third. Will you lose some critical points and contextualisation? Of course, however I think you’ll find you’ll be closer to the mark than you are now.

It’s hard to critique without adding to the confusion already present.

Hope that makes sense?

What I understand you to be saying is that the argument is getting lost in layers of unnecessary complexity, but I'm not exactly sure how that prevents the point from being made. Perhaps you could point out specifically what is confusing or what you disagree with.

[QVx]

2 hours ago, WillCameron said:

What I understand you to be saying is that the argument is getting lost in layers of unnecessary complexity, but I'm not exactly sure how that prevents the point from being made. Perhaps you could point out specifically what is confusing or what you disagree with.

It prevents the point being made by losing the audience in waffle.

If you can’t articulate it clearly, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

[WillCameron]

45 minutes ago, QVx said:

It prevents the point being made by losing the audience in waffle.

If you can’t articulate it clearly, then you need to go back to the drawing board.

That's fair enough. Not everyone will enjoy everyone's work. Thanks for your engagement.

Edit - just to add. In the future, it's better to provide a substantive critique. I can't really go on anything you've said here, so your criticism is more a vague allusion to disagreement or lack of understanding. That doesn't qualify is legitimate critique. I don't know how to say that without sounding combative, but I honestly do I appreciate your attempt to help. Like I said though, this just seems like you didn't like the piece rather than that your criticism has merit. Perhaps your criticism does, but I can only go by the substantive critiques people give, and elsewhere, others have said it is well-written, along with other similar positive statements. Perhaps the source of the confusion is because this was merely a third of the final essay. I've shared a link to the full essay so you can go there if you're curious enough to engage with the entire piece. As I said at the end of the original post, more of the essay will be posted here tomorrow. 

Edited September 1 by WillCameron

[QVx]

1 hour ago, WillCameron said:

That's fair enough. Not everyone will enjoy everyone's work. Thanks for your engagement.

Edit - just to add. In the future, it's better to provide a substantive critique. I can't really go on anything you've said here, so your criticism is more a vague allusion to disagreement or lack of understanding. That doesn't qualify is legitimate critique. I don't know how to say that without sounding combative, but I honestly do I appreciate your attempt to help. Like I said though, this just seems like you didn't like the piece rather than that your criticism has merit. Perhaps your criticism does, but I can only go by the substantive critiques people give, and elsewhere, others have said it is well-written, along with other similar positive statements. Perhaps the source of the confusion is because this was merely a third of the final essay. I've shared a link to the full essay so you can go there if you're curious enough to engage with the entire piece. As I said at the end of the original post, more of the essay will be posted here tomorrow. 

I have provided substantial critique, unfortunately you don’t have the capacity to understand what is being said; which is fine.

You’re also entitled to be combative, I certainly won’t be offended. Open, honest, and difficult discussions are the pathway to truth. 

I am positive that many people resonate with what you’ve said, it just doesn’t for me.

Still looking forward to your additional posts and other people’s feedback. 

[WillCameron]

Agency and Power Expressed Through Sexuality

What’s very interesting about the haircutting experience is that one person completely changes his perspective. A girl approves of his haircut. Here everything we’ve discussed so far is recontextualized by how it becomes tied to approval from women. However the lessons of manhood were shaped by the pain of that haircut, they are now also tied to how good it feels to have a cute girl in your class tell you that you look cool. Having short hair is an expression of masculinity as agency, power, and dominance, and a girl has now approved of that masculinity.

Here we finally come to how masculinity defines and is defined by sexuality. Up to this point in the movie, we have been given hints of how Mason is developing sexually. From lingerie magazines to suggestions of explicit material on a computer screen, what’s clear is that this is something to be hidden. When his sisters enter the room, the laptop is quickly shut. Why exactly do they do that? From early on we learn that sex is something taboo. Whether it’s hiding our body parts, or not being allowed to talk about it, or knowing adults are trying to keep it a secret, the thread that connects all of these things is that there is something about sex that is inappropriate and that’s not acceptable...it is simply something shameful.

Okay…so we have something that is shameful, but also something that becomes a direct means through which we exercise our masculinity. At one point Mason is in the bathroom and two boys start bullying him, pushing him around and calling him gay. Notice how his agency is being challenged, once again calling forth its association with competition, power, and submission. Notice also how it is all now being associated with his sexuality, once again calling forth a vision of the ideal man.

The ideal man is agentic, powerful, competitive, and exerts his power in the hierarchy through his sexual prowess with women. His masculinity is implicitly tied to women because his masculinity is defined by how he is attracted to women. It’s not stated outright, again, it’s implicit or connected indirectly. This implicit lesson is that if he’s not attracted to women he is immediately placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. Again, this connects his sexuality and how it’s expressed with shame, with not being enough, and with needing to climb a hierarchy in order to become enough.

We see this same weaponization of sexuality when Mason is hanging out with some other boys, some of which are older than him. Because of their age the older boys are automatically higher up the hierarchy, and so the younger boys are naturally going to look up to them. Throughout this scene everything we’ve talked about already is reinforced. The younger boys are called pussies if they engage in certain behaviour, which connects these behaviours with femininity, which is again connected with inferiority.

Additionally, not only is being gay inferior, but now the sexual conquest of women is explicitly, outrightly, tied with masculinity. The boy’s position in the hierarchy is defined by how many women they’ve slept with, but only when the woman hasn’t slept with anyone else. One of the boys is belittled for getting sloppy seconds. In other words, she’ll increase your social status, but by less if she’s also slept around.

Fnally, agency over women is also reinforced with the statement, “it’s not what they want, it’s what you want.” We are agentic men who gain status through the sexual conquest of chaste women who must submit to us, and if we don’t operate effectively enough, we are shameful at the bottom of the hierarchy. All of this takes place within a backdrop of violence. They bond as they break things, connecting masculine camaraderie with aggression, power, and sexual competition.

These demands of sexual competition are further reinforced by his first girlfriend, Sheena. While they’re still in High School, she leaves Mason for a guy from college. She forced him into competition with an older, better male and he lost. Mason’s biological father reinforces this message by telling him that women are never satisfied, they’re always looking to trade up. However, no one is responsible for you…but you! A man’s agency is tied back into this competition, and of course, once you exercise your agency, you will be surprised by how many women will line up.

We have now finished the loop that started back at the little girl who approved of Mason’s haircut. Your agency and power as a man are defined by how well you compete with other men for the attention and approval of women you conquer and who must submit to your agency and power…unless of course you fail, in which case you must deal with the shame of being inadequate as a man. Within this framework one finds little room for genuine fulfillment or love.

And that’s the issue. Within this framework, we seem trapped within sexual competition where we’re constantly fighting with other men, preventing us from truly connecting with them, and constantly looking for approval from women to prove just how masculine we really are, when all we really want is to live a good life with someone who will love us as much as we love them. Does it make anyone wonder why so many men seem to be checking out of sex, romance, and life altogether?

Whether it’s through the use of adult videos and escorts, or through celibacy and asceticism, this lack of healthy masculine camaraderie and authentic, fulfilling love, simply leads many into the pathologies of sexual addiction or sexual anorexia. With our sexuality tied so tightly with shame, we either try desperately to numb ourselves to that shame with addiction, or desperately try to escape from that shame by cutting our sexuality away completely. This trap raises the important question about whether or not this definition of masculinity is really about agency and all its many expressions.

Notice how this definition of masculinity creates a hierarchy in which men must compete with each other in order to secure their agency. In other words, you have to submit yourself to the rules of someone else’s game in order to be successful enough to have your own agency and power. But…how can we have agency when we are submitting ourselves to someone else’s definition of success?

This is the paradox of our masculinity. We play at agency, at power, and at dominance, all the while ignoring that someone else has defined the terms of that agency, power, and dominance. Then, when we find ourselves overcome by the stress of constant competition and beat ourselves up when we fail, we act surprised when we run to the liquor store or type in an adult website we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go to anymore. We’ve been locked in a game given to us by our forbears and been taught that the only means of escape is addiction or asceticism.

I don’t think I need to tell you that addiction is not a real means of escape, and asceticism often simply becomes a never-ending self-imprisonment fuelled by self-hatred. Instead, we must learn to deconstruct and then reconstruct our masculinity and all the elements we’ve discussed.

Look out for the last part tomorrow!

Edited September 2 by WillCameron

[WillCameron]

Evolving the MetaMasculine

To accomplish this goal I want to introduce a very powerful framework I have found for understanding masculinity, but also just life and reality in general. When applied to masculinity I call this framework the MetaMasculine. To begin understanding what that actually means we first have to look at the word “meta”, which, according to Jonathon Rowson, has at least three meanings.

The first meaning is “with,” which means that no matter what we do as men we will always be with our masculinity. Masculinity is the way in which men see themselves, engage in the world, and are seen, in turn, by that world. Even if I were to wear a dress and makeup there are people who would literally take that as a challenge to continue to treat me as a man. So, as someone who is a man, I will always be with masculinity whether I want to be or not. There are games being played and so we must play them, change them for the better, but play them nonetheless. As such, I must take ownership of my masculinity so that I can improve it for myself and others.

Secondly, we have meta as “beyond,” which means going beyond or above masculinity. To be able to change our masculinity for the better we have to be able to look at the elements we want to change and how they actually relate with one another, which of course, requires us to be able to see it from the outside. This is what I’ve done throughout this essay. I’ve taken a bird’s eye view of how masculinity developed in Mason’s life.

We’ve learned that masculinity is about how we as men exercise our agency through the employment of power over ourselves and others, through competition with others to prove that we are worthy of love and positive attention, and through sexual conquest of women who are seen as inferior because they aren’t masculine. As such, this requires that we reject anything feminine within ourselves and use shame any time we are unable to effectively play the games of masculinity. From the vantage point we gain through the use of meta, we can begin challenging these narratives and changing them toward something better for ourselves and others

Finally, we have meta as, “after,” which situates masculinity in a historical context, both personally and culturally. Again, I have done this throughout the essay by going over how masculinity developed for Mason personally. Your story may be different, although the general themes may be the same because of how masculinity has been defined for us culturally. This is where we get into how masculinity has been defined by the wider culture around us and how it has changed over the years based on the environmental pressures placed upon it.

We have to understand that Modern masculinity isn’t the same as what was masculine 1000 years ago or even 100 years ago. The challenges that today’s men face are different and so the ideal vision of masculinity is going to be different. As men we need to be able to define for ourselves what vision of masculinity will actually be able to handle the complexity of our age so that we can create positive change for, you guessed it, ourselves and others.

With this tripartite understanding we are afforded the best grasp of masculinity that we can currently muster. The MetaMasculine then, is not so much a definition of masculinity as such, but is a definition of a certain kind of relationship with masculinity.

In that spirit then, we must be able to take what’s called a transperspectival view of masculinity. This has nothing to do with transgender, but is simply understanding that masculinity can be seen from various perspectives, whether traditional, Red Pill, feminist, biological, developmental, etc. This is important because we run into problem when we become too attached to any one lens and assume that all the answers can be found when we take that single lens as gospel and reject every other lens.

For example, viewing masculinity through a feminist lens can help us see the ways in which patriarchal power has oppressed not just women, but also men. However…viewing it exclusively through the feminist lens would have us see masculinity as an oppressive force that must be deconstructed so that we can come to that utopian female future we’ve all heard so much about. The same can also be said of Red Pill that would have us liberated in many ways and yet in many ways simply reinforces the games of false agency, competition with other men, and the conquest of women.

It is through challenging our own perspectives and properly integrating the perspectives of others that we are able to come to that transperspectival understanding. We’re able to go beyond our current understanding of masculinity in order to create something that can come after everything that masculinity has been up to this point, all the while being with our masculinity as men. Finally free, we are no longer forced to look for escape in addiction or asceticism, but can face ourselves and our lives with the strength, wisdom, and compassion of the MetaMasculine.

Either way, that is enough for today. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Please consider following my account for more essays and conversations that go very deeply into masculinity, psychological development, and the cultivation of a meaningful personal mythology. Thanks again, and all the best to you.

[Buck Edwards]

I think a woman's Femininity is also tied to how men perceive them. And you perceive and measure our femininity on a regular basis. 

 

Why should it be different for men? Kinda biased from a female perspective. Just my perspective. Don't take it offensively. 

 

[WillCameron]

17 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

I think a woman's Femininity is also tied to how men perceive them. And you perceive and measure our femininity on a regular basis. 

 

Why should it be different for men? Kinda biased from a female perspective. Just my perspective. Don't take it offensively. 

 

I welcome criticism that is specific and constructive, which is what you have provided, so thank you.

I actually agree with what you're saying, as I stated here, "Masculinity is the way in which men see themselves, engage in the world, and are seen, in turn, by that world." I would include femininity in "world". Is this what you meant or am I missing something?

Thanks again for engaging with my essay. I appreciate that very much.

[Buck Edwards]

10 hours ago, WillCameron said:

I welcome criticism that is specific and constructive, which is what you have provided, so thank you.

I actually agree with what you're saying, as I stated here, "Masculinity is the way in which men see themselves, engage in the world, and are seen, in turn, by that world." I would include femininity in "world". Is this what you meant or am I missing something?

Thanks again for engaging with my essay. I appreciate that very much.

Women are attracted to more masculine men. I'm myself find masculine men more attractive over feminine men. Just like men are attracted to feminine women. And this is biological instinct. There's nothing  progressive or regressive about it. It's simple biological fact. Go ask women on the street. Some women like feminine men. Most women don't. You can't change much about it. Although nobody denies your personal self expression as a man but don't conflate it with attraction theory. 

Edited September 5 by Buck Edwards

[WillCameron]

13 hours ago, Buck Edwards said:

Women are attracted to more masculine men. I'm myself find masculine men more attractive over feminine men. Just like men are attracted to feminine women. And this is biological instinct. There's nothing  progressive or regressive about it. It's simple biological fact. Go ask women on the street. Some women like feminine men. Most women don't. You can't change much about it. Although nobody denies your personal self expression as a man but don't conflate it with attraction theory. 

Yeah I would agree with that. I don't think that masculinity or attraction are purely socially constructed, and biology definitely matter. As I said in the third paragraph of the essay, there is evidence of biological causes for psychological sex differences and the final section on transperspectivalism also states that. However biological the definition of masculinity may be it is not purely biological, nor are our attractions. Sure there are biological constraints and affordances on what we might find attractive, but again, we can't reduce to the biological. Our attractions are the effect of a complex system of causes that can be described by Integral Theory's quadrants.

Edited September 5 by WillCameron