The role of a man...

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Fred in Skirts
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Fred in Skirts »

moonshadow wrote:Lots of good points in your post Darryl, thanks for writing it!

I'm going to work on re-centering myself. I think over the last little bit I've gotten away from my core to an extent.

I think I'm overdue for a walk in the mountain....
In the light of the full moon!
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Ray »

Moon,

You may be slight in stature but your openness, warmth, passion, bravery and possession of cast iron cojones makes you a relative giant in stature in my eyes.

Just saying.

Ray
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Darryl »

Fred in Skirts wrote:
moonshadow wrote:Lots of good points in your post Darryl, thanks for writing it!

I'm going to work on re-centering myself. I think over the last little bit I've gotten away from my core to an extent.

I think I'm overdue for a walk in the mountain....
In the light of the full moon!
And...dare we say it...skyclad....

:hide:
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by moonshadow »

Ray wrote:You may be slight in stature but your openness, warmth, passion, bravery and possession of cast iron cojones makes you a relative giant in stature in my eyes.
Thanks Ray, that means a lot!
Darryl wrote:
Fred in Skirts wrote:
moonshadow wrote:Lots of good points in your post Darryl, thanks for writing it!

I'm going to work on re-centering myself. I think over the last little bit I've gotten away from my core to an extent.

I think I'm overdue for a walk in the mountain....
In the light of the full moon!
And...dare we say it...skyclad....

:hide:
Heh-he.... you guys... :eye:
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Sinned
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Sinned »

Hey Moon, we all have feelings of worthlessness at times and just because I'm thousands of miles away doesn't mean that in my own way I don't care about you. I appreciate your intelligence, wit and understanding of issues that just never have occurred to me. I enjoy your posts and appreciate your excellent photography. You have an individual dress style.

If I can make a parallel example. My father, now deceased, was born just before the second world war in London and lived during the war just up the road from Hendon Airfield, a tactical airbase and now an Air Museum. Although North London didn't see the intensity of bombing he told me that he does remember playing among bomb craters. He was even evacuated for a time to Newcastle in North East England. He didn't have the opportunity to receive an advanced education or go to University but I've not known anybody that was as brilliant an Engineer as he was. He trained as a motor mechanic in the REME, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and through all my years of car ownership there has never be a question from me on cars that he wasn't able to answer. Through my years in school he kept up with me in Mathematics and the Sciences. He could put together coherent and intelligent discussions on any topic that interested me at the time, often playing Devil's Advocate just for the hell of it. No pun intended. I have seen him succeed in turning small businesses around. What I am getting at is that he, without the advantages that I had, was a success in life without needing advanced qualifications. He took what he had and through intelligence and hard work, succeeded. I loved him then, love him now and admire him greatly and am proud that he was my father and the man I looked up to, still do. Compared to him I feel a bit of a failure and have never fulfilled the potential that was in me. I understand where you come from, I do, because at times I have felt the same way. But I have a wife that, although at times she is a pain in the proverbial, loves me and I know it. I have children and grandchildren that do. I'm sure that I'm a pain to MOH too but we are one and couldn't live without each other. I get though such low times getting back to the simple things in life. Yes, I've spent time on anti-depressants and had time off with stress and depression but I've got through it all and you can too. The depression was so bad and decimated my self confidence. Whilst off work I was told to do something I had always wanted to and MOH wanted the bathroom remodelling. I took everything out and the tiler was due one morning. I had a piece of high-amp cable to go from a shower switch on the wall outside the bathroom go up the wall, through a hole and be there on the other side to connect up to a shower that would be installed after the tiling was done. It took me two hours to cut that cable because I didn't have the confidence in my measurements. The cable was thick and difficult to cut so I didn't want to have it too long only to have to cut it again or too short to have to replace it. That's an example of what depression does to you. So Moon you ain't as bad as that and hopefully never will be. Interestingly, as low as I got suicide just never entered into the equation.

On a lighter note I have a book that I'm dreading reading by Hannah Rosin called The End of Men. Just to cheer you up a bit more scientists are making breakthrough in cerating synthetic sperm. So how many years before men REALLY won't be needed?
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by kingfish »

Your initial post struck a chord with me strongly enough to break my usual pattern of lurking.

We may be "expendable" biologically speaking, but we're not worthless. The whole man/woman division of labor thing was (and still is to a far lesser extent) a matter of specialization to better accomplish the arduous task of survival. Take away the advent of the power tool and you'll see that division sharpen back up pretty quickly. Besides, in that environment you would still probably find yourself still keeping up with the bigger bruisers simply by using your head and innovating easier ways to do what they would just muscle through. Also, you would still have the secondary job of backup caregiver. The risk to human life that childbirth presents without immediate potential medical intervention on standby, is not insignificant. It was one of the top killers of women back when the average life expectancy was in the 40s.

Okay, so you don't have what it takes to be an offensive tackle for the Tennessee Titans. You ain't stoopid. Being smart has worth. You think things through better than the next jock. Field service work of any kind, including restaurant equipment, involves observational, physical, and problem solving talents that are a lot less common than you might think. You aren't digging post holes for a living. There are a lot of people who look at a busted dishwasher and throw money at it instead of asking "what does it need?".

Said another way, smart also holds a certain sex appeal.

And I haven't even touched on the creative energy and courage it takes to go against the herd mentality, breaking gender norms.
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by crfriend »

Kingfish said wrote something quite profound there, and any guy worth his salt ought to take heed of it. Even in a culture when men are treated by the legal system as sperm-donors, wallets, and prisoners-to-be, they have actual value and worth -- not just to their partners, but to society as well.

The observation that intelligence can frequently trump brawn should not be lost. The smart guy can usually run rings around the gorilla so long as he can keep his distance -- and that applies to the working world in addition to the "law of the jungle". Smart guys tend to be adaptable guys, and the ability to adapt to new situations (and stressors) is one of the keys to survival.

Yes, it's very easy to start feeling glum when things seem to be crashing down around you; use the brain to change your surroundings to make them better.
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Gusto10 »

Sinned wrote:Hey Moon, we all have feelings of worthlessness at times and just because I'm thousands of miles away doesn't mean that in my own way I don't care about you. I appreciate your intelligence, wit and understanding of issues that just never have occurred to me. I enjoy your posts and appreciate your excellent photography. You have an individual dress style.

If I can make a parallel example. My father, now deceased, was born just before the second world war in London and lived during the war just up the road from Hendon Airfield, a tactical airbase and now an Air Museum. Although North London didn't see the intensity of bombing he told me that he does remember playing among bomb craters. He was even evacuated for a time to Newcastle in North East England. He didn't have the opportunity to receive an advanced education or go to University but I've not known anybody that was as brilliant an Engineer as he was. He trained as a motor mechanic in the REME, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and through all my years of car ownership there has never be a question from me on cars that he wasn't able to answer. Through my years in school he kept up with me in Mathematics and the Sciences. He could put together coherent and intelligent discussions on any topic that interested me at the time, often playing Devil's Advocate just for the hell of it. No pun intended. I have seen him succeed in turning small businesses around. What I am getting at is that he, without the advantages that I had, was a success in life without needing advanced qualifications. He took what he had and through intelligence and hard work, succeeded. I loved him then, love him now and admire him greatly and am proud that he was my father and the man I looked up to, still do. Compared to him I feel a bit of a failure and have never fulfilled the potential that was in me. I understand where you come from, I do, because at times I have felt the same way. But I have a wife that, although at times she is a pain in the proverbial, loves me and I know it. I have children and grandchildren that do. I'm sure that I'm a pain to MOH too but we are one and couldn't live without each other. I get though such low times getting back to the simple things in life. Yes, I've spent time on anti-depressants and had time off with stress and depression but I've got through it all and you can too. The depression was so bad and decimated my self confidence. Whilst off work I was told to do something I had always wanted to and MOH wanted the bathroom remodelling. I took everything out and the tiler was due one morning. I had a piece of high-amp cable to go from a shower switch on the wall outside the bathroom go up the wall, through a hole and be there on the other side to connect up to a shower that would be installed after the tiling was done. It took me two hours to cut that cable because I didn't have the confidence in my measurements. The cable was thick and difficult to cut so I didn't want to have it too long only to have to cut it again or too short to have to replace it. That's an example of what depression does to you. So Moon you ain't as bad as that and hopefully never will be. Interestingly, as low as I got suicide just never entered into the equation.

On a lighter note I have a book that I'm dreading reading by Hannah Rosin called The End of Men. Just to cheer you up a bit more scientists are making breakthrough in cerating synthetic sperm. So how many years before men REALLY won't be needed?
John Gray mentioned is the book as follow up to Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships, that only one man to ten women would be needed to sustain the race.
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Sinned »

I am looking at a double page article about the police painting their nails in the fight against slavery and wearing high heels to highlight domestic violence. What on earth is this all about :?: It makes us skirt wearers seem like pioneers in the fashion stakes. Which we are of course.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nails.html
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Fred in Skirts »

Sinned wrote:I am looking at a double page article about the police painting their nails in the fight against slavery and wearing high heels to highlight domestic violence. What on earth is this all about :?: It makes us skirt wearers seem like pioneers in the fashion stakes. Which we are of course.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nails.html
I don't see where they are doing anything to actually stop the problems the British are facing with the crime rate climbing as it seems to be. Where are they when you need them? They are getting their nails done or are sitting in some costume shop trying on bears heads. They are learning to walk in high heels.

Having read the entire article I wonder if the Bobbies are even happy with the way things are going. It seems that the Chief Constable's are not up from the ranks but are college grads and have never even seen the inside of a precinct house in their lives nor ever had to solve a crime.

With this kind of leadership crime will continue to rise and while the constable's will be getting their nails done.
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by stevelous »

The Police endured a lot of negative publicity over the painted nails, but as their Chief said we are at least talking about it and the problem of modern slavery.

Due to the cutbacks in public spending to fund tax cuts for the better off, little if any trickles down, we see less Police on our streets, and more undetected crime. Moral is low and getting worse. Phone 999 to report a crime and NOTHING happens. Well they might make an appointment to see you in a few days if you are lucky then it is often too late.

Not the fault of the rank and file Bobby, or his superiors but of the Home Office demanding ever more cuts to numbers, better detection of crime so they choose easy options for so called low level crime. Not that any crime is low level to the victim!
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Sinned »

stevelous, not exactly right. If people are talking it will not be about slavery or domestic violence it will be about how ridiculous that stunts were with the painted nails, high heels and masks. Not exactly the same thing. How can painting your nails relate to slavery, anyway, or wearing heels bring to mind domestic violence :?:

You are right about police presence on the streets. I can go for weeks without seeing a plod, even a PCSO, although I do see plenty of vans tootling around.
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by webboy42 »

I've always wondered why women are placed upon a pedestal and held sacred by society. It never occurred to me before that the reproductive potential might be the reason, but it makes more sense when the human population is low and mortality is high. However, I think the anti-man discrimination we see today is more a product of an over zealous feminist movement than differences of reproductive potential between men and women. The feminist movement has done a masterful job at raising the woman's pedestal higher through the vilification of men.
moonshadow wrote:If I find another job, naturally I'd search one that was progressive in LGBT issues... but why? I'm not LGB or T. Simply because even in these types of companies, you just can't be "a man in a skirt", no, you have to be a trans-woman.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

The conservatives and traditionalist want me to stop all this foolishness and "act like a man".

The liberals and progressives will only let me sit at their table if I claim to be a "woman"....

I'm not allowed to just be me.... (but women are)

It really sucks!
The feeling that the LGBT movement and some progressives are intolerant of those who don't fit in their little boxes is something I resonate with for a reason other than skirt wearing, which I won't go into here. It's easy to feel like the world is against you when most of what you see are people who aren't like you. Forums like this, and those for other minority groups, are helpful to those of us who don't fit into the widely and publicly accepted boxes provided by our local communities.
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by Daryl »

moonshadow wrote:Hi, I put this in "Off Topic", despite it maybe being more of a "Personal Story", because frankly, I want the discussion Googleable and open.

I've been doing some hard thinking lately, combined with a little research on the matter on why things are the way they are with regards to the role of men in society. I made a comment in this thread (hyper-linked), that I will quote here, that really got me to wondering... why this is?
I hear you Moonshadow, and I think you are hitting so many nails on their heads the only question left is how to respond.

It's called "male disposability" and it's just the way humanity is, for mostly evolutionary reasons. It's why feminism gets to portray women as victims while men suffer 95% of all workplace deaths and serious injuries, and why men are given far more punitive sentences for exactly identical crimes, and why men are actually victims of violence at a much higher rates than women even discounting war yet no one calls that an epidemic or a crisis. The exact inverse of "the patriarchy" is the actual case, but men are both hard-wired and conditioned to deny or downplay their own suffering and to respond to female suffering (or claims of it), with self-sacrifice if necessary.

Every so often a man will wake up and see this for what it is, whether on his own or by being "red pilled", then realise how massive it is and become despondent. Men in custody battles, which are uphill fights against pro-female bias to begin with, have committed suicide over this, but most do not. I won't belabour this too much more here. My own awakening came partly because the child-custody issue made one man I am familiar with homeless. It has affected a great many men very badly. The consequences are trauma, mental illness, suicide, homelessness, and so on, and this is all fine with society, or at least it seems. In actual fact, society is just very slow to change its own biases and blind spots, which means none of us should feel too bad over the fact that change may not be tomorrow.

You have relieved us of the worry that you might actually be contemplating suicide, but I know what you mean when you say now you understand how someone could be there. I myself have trouble empathising with people who have self-worth issues, because I cannot relate to them from experience, but I try. I think this is important for all of us to do, just to realise that we are connected and not alone...that the universe hasn't singled us out for special punishment. Also important is to sometimes realise that even other men who seem "okay" or even very satisfied with life carry around the exact same set of burdens, only so well-submerged they don't even acknowledge them. ALL men are afraid to do anything "feminine" but most avoid even thinking about it, or find ways to accomodate it. That fear and the general social constraints operate on all of us and they can actually make us unsympathetic to each other if we're not careful.

So why are "we" different in that we invite more of that pain and anxiety? Why can't we just choose to remain in the matrix, oblivious but relatively happy? The people who judge you for being different see you as choosing to be that way, and think you can and should just stop. But we know it's not that simple, and we also know that it shouldn't be this way. No moral or metaphysical answer to "why me God" is forthcoming. So as I said at the outset, the only question is how to respond to it.

And this is where I apologise for playing wise old grey haired guy lecturing the youngins...

Firstly, we need to do something that goes against male nature. We yield. We stop fighting, even in our minds. We stop lamenting the injustice. We make the compromises needed to have satisfying social and economic lives, then cooly determine exactly how far we are willing to rage against the machine. We perform cost-benefit analysis.

Secondly, we appreciate what rebellion we can manage fully, in the moment, rather than always seeing it as not enough. All human beings are drawn to the forbidden and unknown, just not the same forbiddens and unknowns. This is ours, so let's just enjoy what we can of it when we can.

The third thing goes with the second thing: forgive the world, yourself included. That doesn't mean pretending the injustice is not there, but knowing that bitter blame and judgement are not productive. Resolve is stronger when it's not poisoned by hate and anger.

The fourth thing is to do what we can to promote change, mindful of the first three things. We are doing some of this here, just by being open about ourselves and sharing our experience and knowledge and personal perspectives. We can also support others whose interests intersect with ours even if we don't fully identify or agree with them. For example, we can try to be in solidarity with the M2F trans community or the MRM (men's rights movement). We can also just get people used to seeing us in public and deliberately do more of it (within our personal bounds). The list of "what we can do to promote change" could be very large.

Fifth, and last in my list, is to support each other, not in that vacant automatic way that people so often indulge online, but in a more authentic way. If all you hear from a peer is words of approval and support, that peer may be more concerned with making themselves feel good than with helping you navigate tricky waters. Be to your brothers as you would really have them be to you.

I can't call that list comprehensive but I'd bet that if you aren't doing at least some of those things, you won't be very happy regardless of what garment is covering your ass at the moment.
Daryl...
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Re: The role of a man...

Post by moonshadow »

Excellent responses all! Particularly Daryl who it many points dead on.

The advice dispensed I have found is pretty close to what I do when I have to "re-center" myself from time to time.

You see, that's what I have trouble getting across to many people, it's not skirts, it's not the prospect of great success, it's not making good money and living a comfortable life. For me, it all comes down to what I'm expected to do and be simply because I have a penis. Further, it's the prejudices laid upon me for the same.

My general outlook and mood has stabilized. I wouldn't go so far as to say I have a revived faith in humanity, no quite not. But I realize I'm going about my life trying to prove myself over and over again, realizing I'll never touch the bar. Well, it's complicated and my brain is about fried on the whole thing to be quite candid about it.

Perhaps the better title for this thread shouldn't have been "the role of a man", instead perhaps "the role of Moon Shadow", because that's what I contemplate. My role. Perhaps the solution is simpler that I imagined. Perhaps my role is to not have a role. Perhaps my purpose is just to exist and be who I am, and what ever comes down the tube will be. Some will approve, some will not. Opportunities will be lost, and others will surface. Struggles and triumphs will be had in probable equal measure. Friends come and go, family goes for good it seems, but it is what it is.

I can yield on minor matters, but at the end of the day, I have to be who I am. I really can be nobody else. I can drop the skirts, dresses, eclectic spiritual views, nix the bleeding heart political rants, etc etc, but I'm still going to be me, and those characteristics that make me who I am are just going to dam up inside until it eventually spills over.

I can provide for myself. I have a wife and daughter who's company I enjoy very much. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm happy I laugh, when I'm sad I cry. Though many object, and consider me weird, I continue on my path.

Where I get into trouble is when I endeavor to seek the acceptance of society. There is a bit of poetry attributed to one of my favorite authors on Paganism, Doreen Valiente, who writes "If that what you seek, you find not within, you will never find it without." What a pearl of wisdom... thus, it can be concluded, that if one can not accept himself, how can he expect anyone else to? If one can not respect himself, how can he expect anyone else to? If one can not love himself, how can he expect anyone else to.

And finally, if one can not value himself, how can he expect anyone else to find value in him.

Procreation be damned. We do have souls, and though there are many out there who like to pretend we don't, it doesn't change the fact. There is more to us than our sperm count, or the strength of our backs. If they can't see that, then that's their loss.
-Andrea
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