8 ms·
Male archetypes in fairy tales
- 082349872349872 2y agoThinking of bellatores, oratores, and laboratores yields the Knight-errant, the Trickster, and the Apprentice.
- BlackFly 2y ago> 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.
- joshhansen 2y ago"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.
- BlackFly 2y agoWell, 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.
- wwwwwwwwwww 2y agoI think this just as big of a problem among women. The loudest voices talking about both women's issues and men's issues tend to be quite sexist and obnoxious. Feminism has a misandry problem just as much as the men's rights movement has a misogyny problem. In both cases, it deters non-hateful people from participating, and that contributes further to the problem.
- mcphage 2y ago> But the potential charge of misogyny is felt to carry too heavy a risk for most men nowadays. Is it, actually, a risk? Or do we instead see misogynist men in many high positions?
- BlackFly 2y agoThis is a pretty good example actually of what makes entering these conversations so difficult. It can logically be both and I would personally say it is both but your reply demands polarization. It is either one or the other because people like Harvey Weinstein exist. Don't get me wrong, it took way too long for Harvey to see justice and arguably he never did. But here now I don't want to talk about Harvey Weinstein, I want to talk about male archetypes in fairy tales, yet here we are. Of course that isn't entirely true, since actually I was mentioning the meta-difficulty faced by people like Robert Bly and the controversy of the father's rights movement. So yeah, your comment is fair but a good example of the drive towards polarization faced by anyone trying to discuss being male and using that as a lens. Life has nuance and most of us want to express nuanced views but don't want to post manifestos.
- hnbad 2y agoI'd put it differently: the proper response to women's mistreatment in the past and present is not to teach women how to avoid being mistreated but to teach men not to mistreat. Alas, we only teach them not to mistreat but not what mistreatment is and what to do instead. This has gone so far men will hear "toxic masculinity" and just think they're being condemned for their identity and stop listening because all we have in mainstream media is the negativity of what is bad without the positivity of what to do instead and because it's all left to women (and Buzzfeed) to fill in the gaps, it all ends up being preachy and offputting because it only comes from a place of upset rather than healing. Thus, articles about manspreading. Men need positive role models. Slowly but surely I'm seeing content creators and public figures actually provide positive representation for men but at the moment they're still drowned out by the likes of Andrew Tate and other dipshits trying to make a buck off insecurities about inadequacy powered by romanticized ideals about bygone modes of masculinity (e.g. yearning for a "tradwife" while at the same time not wanting the unfulfilling responsibility and sacrifice that comes with the model of masculinity that enabled that). Ironically some of the best positive examples I've seen are trans men - possibly because they were forced to think about their ideas of maculinity more than any man afforded their "man card" by assignment at birth. Speaking of positive examples, here are two YouTube channels worth checking out for that: https://www.youtube.com/@FinntasticMrFox https://www.youtube.com/@FinntasticMrFox https://www.youtube.com/@ThatDangDad https://www.youtube.com/@ThatDangDad
- dazzawazza 2y agoI just don't understand the controversy around this book (although I know nothing of the movement people often speak about). For me the book gave me great insight in to becoming a man. Something I and most men do by accident and not by design. Crucially I learned how I as an older man have a responsibility to guide younger men when they are a bit lost.
- david-gpu 2y ago> 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.
- RoyalHenOil 2y agoAs 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.
- blueflow 2y agoThese are called tropes. Prepare to loose hours: https://tvtropes.org/ https://tvtropes.org/
- blueflow 2y agoKeep in mind that masculinity and femininity are constructed - they only exist because some properties associated with each other. Because of its construction, its an opinion, not a fact. What one considers masculine or feminine is basically arbitrary and random and everyone is free to disagree. An evil spirit could claim that none of the mentioned archetypes is gender-specific at all and they would not be provable wrong.
- DarkNova6 2y agoHow could it be a construct of our modern times if their themes are consistent throughout history of humankind? Delving into mythology and legends which explore the nature of our kind, the description of male and female is fairly consistent. You might as well say "everything is subjective, there is no truth".
- blueflow 2y agoThat something is widely popular for millenia does not prove its truthfulness. Mythology and legends are still fiction. > You might as well say "everything is subjective, there is no truth". Strawman. I'm criticising this specific kind of thing as fiction, not everything in general.
- DarkNova6 2y agoFictional on a surface level. A depiction of fundamental human archetypes if you see beyond it. And it can't be a strawman as I misrepresented nobody.
- blueflow 2y agoIf you want to find out what the human archetypes are, you have to measure real people for specific properties and look if there are patterns. Myers & Briggs did that in 1944, their ideas got popular but are not uncontroversial. "Seeing behind fiction" is a bad excuse, the only thing you will get is your own imagination.
- 2y ago
- scotty79 2y agoWhy are people so fixated on gender? We all mostly want the same things, feel the same things and do the same things, both good and bad. Individual variety overwhelms slight difference in averages between the groups. When it comes to anything except children, "I'm a man" is no more meaningful than "I'm a Libra". Objectively meaningless, subjectively can screw you up but only if you believe in zodiac.
- hk__2 2y ago> We all mostly want the same things, feel the same things and do the same things, both good and bad The irony is that it’s clear from this affirmation that you are a man, because any woman knows how false this is. This is the same for pretty much any situation where some group dominates another: the dominants think everything is fine because they don’t experience any discrimination and don’t understand why the dominated complain and are "so fixated on gender" (or race, etc).
- d-z-m 2y ago> because any woman knows how false this is. In what way is the statement you quoted false?
- hk__2 2y ago> In what way is the statement you quoted false? "We all mostly want the same things, feel the same things and do the same things" is contradicted by any studies on consumer behavior that takes gender into account. Of course deep inside we’re all mostly the same, but as a society we constructed a gender polarization that has very real effects on what we want, how we feel and what we do. If I tell you that my friend likes to wear high heels and a red skirt you can hardly pretend the probability they are a woman is only 50%.
- scotty79 2y agoGood marketing strategy is to associate your product with identity assumed by significant number of customers. Studies of consumer behavior show mostly this. That gender based marketing works successfully. However regardless of gender customers want some food, clothing, shelter, mobility, entertainment. > If I tell you that my friend likes to wear high heels and a red skirt you can hardly pretend the probability they are a woman is only 50%. If you tell me that your friend wears a pendant with Libra zodiac sign I'd estimate probability of her being a Libra higher than 50% too. It doesn't mean identifying as a Libra is something natural, innate or objectively meaningful or indicative of the qualities you value.
- d-z-m 2y ago> [...]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 This is of a piece with a disturbing trend in the world of fiction where writing about anything that "you aren't" is considered inauthentic, or wrong. If I read a story about a man written by a woman that resonates with me deeply, it's just as real and true as it would be if a man had written it. Maybe even a little more so.
- williamcotton 2y agoThere’s a word for the idea that only the self can be known: solipsism. You get there by hitting the gas pedal as you approach narcissism.