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from longhouse to hidey-hole
from longhouse to hidey-hole
5-26-2006
Please note:
This post is going up late, because I had to deal with fundraising issues.
Our May Fundraiser was a complete and utter failure, which puts the sites and the work in great jeopardy.
Moreover, because this post is going up late, the NY Times article it references is no longer available free of charge -- you have to pay to view it.
I don't recommend you do that -- it's of very limited interest.
What I want to make clear is that when people don't donate, it not only hurts the sites, but disrupts my ability to get information to you in a timely fashion.
There are a number of posts which need to be written and go up -- and which are now very late and which will probably never appear.
That's your loss.
Here's "from longhouse to hidey-hole":
A man's home used to be his castle, his fortress, his redoubt against a hostile world.
And before there were castles, men had longhouses -- all-male spaces in which men and boys spent the majority of their time in tribal, warrior societies.
Nowadays, according to A Hideout of His Own , a little piece of journalistic fluff aka lifestyles reporting which appeared in the "House and Home" section of the NY Times, a man is lucky if he's able to claim just a few square feet of his home as his own.
I said according to the NY Times, but actually, a close or even not-so-close reading of the article reveals that it's based upon and no doubt draws heavily on a book by one -- and I'm not making this up folks -- "James B. Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida in Gainesville."
Professor Twitchell's book is titled "Where Men Hide," and he actually thinks it's positive that men have these hiding places.
I'm not sure why he thinks that but he does.
And he has his very own hiding place, which he calls his "hidey-hole."
Like I say, I'm not making this up.
Given that this is a Times' lifestyles piece, the article doesn't aspire to any sort of objectivity; but is essentially about some upper-middle-class men carving out *small* male niches for themselves in their wives' homes.
So again, this is fluff, but it's a little glimpse into the feminized upper-middle-class world of the early 21st century.
Notice the choice of terms: "hideout" and "hidey-hole."
The implication is that men, silly things, are hiding from their wives.
Like children.
Like little boys.
In addition to the feminist bias, and as usual with the Times, there's an enormous class bias.
As I say, these are upper-middle-class men.
Although there's a token retired parks worker at the end of the piece, there's no true discussion of what happens among working class guys.
What about guys who have workshops in their garages for example?
No mention.
The men the Times is reporting on, by contrast, have or are creating their own architecturally elaborate small spaces -- for big bucks.
For example: "Vince Jones, a 33-year-old real estate salesman in Rocklin, Calif., took on the challenge with gusto, turning a $10,000 prefab shed into his personal fight studio."
That's a very expensive shed -- especially given that he plans to fight in it.
Fight spaces, like fighters, tend to get beat up -- guys crash into walls, etc.
What's more, there's a photo of the "fight studio," and it's actually rather effete.
Nice enough for tea, but not what I would think of as a fight space.
Patrick's Grandmaster teaches out of his basement.
It's not a finished basement.
It's a basement.
Gritty.
But that Grandmaster's dojo is geared to serve inner-city kids.
Not rich suburbanites.
Here are some excerpts from the article, followed by a letter from one of our Kiwi Warriors:
By FINN-OLAF JONES
Published: May 18, 2006
"ALL those flowers and designs," said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington. It's no wonder men aren't comfortable at home, with the overdesigned, "feminized spaces that are being imposed on them" by the women in their lives, she said. "They're going to want to push back."
It may be an unpopular opinion, but Ms. Sommers, who is well known for her critiques of feminism, may have a point.
According to James B. Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida in Gainesville, men are increasingly creating small private domains in and around their houses -- in sheds, basements, attics and closets -- as a way of retreating from everyday life. Professor Twitchell, author of "Where Men Hide," published this month by Columbia University Press, does not agree that women are to blame for this phenomenon, or that it's a matter of blame at all. He sees it as a positive development, and has built a shed of his own. He uses it as an office and calls it his hidey-hole. It sits on a site near his summer house in Vermont once dedicated to an above-ground septic tank.
He has plenty of company. Although the Home Depot would not release sales figures, Kathryn Gallagher, a company spokeswoman, said there was a growing trend of men putting prefab sheds to various recreational uses in a quest for "a little place to get away." Haroula Battista, marketing manager for Summerwood Products, a shed manufacturer in Toronto that mainly sells to American customers, described "a tremendous upsurge in demand," in particular for the company's larger sheds. "They're turning them into everything from workout rooms to their personal bars," she said.
..
A century ago, instead of retreating into his shed alone, [a man] might have belonged to some kind of fraternal order, as one in three American men did, according to Professor Twitchell; 50 years ago he might have spent time socializing with other men at a barbershop, of which there were six times as many as there are today. It is the loss of these kinds of communal retreats -- which the Robert Bly-inspired vogue for men's encounter groups and drumming circles in the early 90's did little to stem -- that has left many men to their own devices when it comes to decompressing.
..
But decompressing at home is not always easy, said David Halle, professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and author of "America's Working Man." Classically, "men hide from the 'honey-do' list" of demands made by their wives, he said, but now that men are spending more time at home, they may also have to contend with a sense of being unwelcome. "Women like alone time even more than men do," and they "don't necessarily want to share their space," Professor Halle said. Men are faced with "the problem of carving out a space in what has, for many of them, become foreign territory."
..
There are those who may wonder if all this time spent alone in sheds, closets and other cramped spaces is really healthy for the male psyche. Although Thoreau in his bucolic cabin runs deep in America's cultural consciousness, so too does another hermit in the woods, Theodore J. Kaczynski. And as Robert D. Putnam famously argued in his 2000 book, "Bowling Alone," Americans' withdrawal from social organizations in the last 40 years may have contributed to a severe sense of collective and individual anomie.
Professor Twitchell is more optimistic: hidey-holes, he argues, fulfill an intrinsic male need and are fundamentally gratifying places to spend time.
..
And not all of them are about isolation. Ralph Balzano, 67, a retired New York Department of Parks and Recreation worker, turned an uncle's old garage down the street from his home in Red Hook, Brooklyn, into a rough-and-ready gathering place for neighborhood men. On summer afternoons they gather around the open hood of Mr. Balzano's El Camino or Buick convertible. The walls are plastered with Coke ads and posters from gangster movies.
"Sometimes we just sit around and drink beer and barbecue," Mr. Balzano said. "It's my space. It's my therapy."
[Guys -- there's a picture of this "garage," and it's anything but "rough-and-ready."
It's been metrosexualed to within an inch of its life.]
"Everyone goes gaga over his space," [said his girlfriend.] "I have no idea why."
Ms. Sommers, the critic of feminism, says she is familiar with this enigma. "Women can't fully understand why men need to be alone and separate," she said. But out of "affection and respect for manliness," she added, "we tolerate it."
[emphasis mine]
"We tolerate it."
Kind of patronizing, isn't it?
Clearly, feminism reigns.
Even the so-called critic of feminism sounds like a feminist.
While the professor of English and advertising at the U of Florida is at pains to defend his "hidey-hole" as being not at all anti-feminist.
That's a dominant culture.
Contrast the Times' attitude with this letter from one of our Warrior brothers in New Zealand, which I just received:
Personally the [Alliance] site has reinforced a vague heretical idea I have been struggling to articulate. . that the primary relationship all men need is an M2M one. . . not M2F. Same gender relationships at least have similar mental, brain and hormonal structures as a basis for a connection. M2F, which unfortunately males often use to define their masculinity, is fundamentally about the meeting of differences that seems basically unsustainable as a life pattern. In my 60 years, the emotional costs I have watched str8 couples around me pay and, to an extent, I have paid, seem ridiculous. Even watching "happily" married couples. .. one of them is usually paying a price.
There are therapists who actually say M2F must regard their relationship as a commitment to a holy war!!! (Much enjoyed hearing about my brother's discovery of the effect on the power his girlfriend felt she had over him when he said now and again that he didn't want to fuck her!!) Some therapists (my Reichian man) go further and say that "soul state development" depends on the differences between M and F and that same gender relationships cannot change souls. ... that seen as the core goal of a life lived on this planet? Roland and Oliver, David and Jonathan, Gilgamesh and Enkidu etc. etc. are doing nothing significant? Very unlikely. (Incidentally have you come across Lawrence's book "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" about the WW1 Arabian Revolt against the Turks? At one point there is a story of an inseparable pair of Lawrences' Arab irregulars, Faraj and Daoud. .. beautiful. . Daoud is killed and Faraj, eventually, unable to cope, attacks in a frenzy and single handedly an impregnable Turkish position. . . in order to die.)
Robert Bly actually talks about M2M having a sort of honesty, directness or solidity that can't be matched by M2F. He describes the "witches" around him and his wife when they come together after a separation. These "witches" have to be laid to rest before he and his wife can be close again. . .why, why are they there at all?! ? Nancy Friday's book "Men in Love" describes the rage men feel at the disappointment of their sexual relationships with women. . . her subtitle puts a positive spin on the problem "men's sexual fantasies - the triumph of love over rage".
Right.
Whereas in my work on M2M, I talk of a passage THROUGH RAGE TO LOVE.
That's very different.
It's an honoring of male aggression.
That's also the meaning of cock combat and what Mart Finn refers to when he speaks of "the moment when fighting cocks become mating cocks."
On the other hand I can't believe that M2M relationships are by definition a faultlessly sustainable life pattern. I want a man brother bond that I can recognize in his eyes across a crowded room, to physically struggle with him, to hold, be held, to touch and be touched by him. .. . and it won't ever go wrong !? The stories on your website most often reveal external circumstances ripping things apart. . not internal (Beatific). So, have 50,000 years of group hunting forged M2M relationships that infrequently fail .. once formed in the heat of combat or a sexual connection (The Bond. . but what about Hugo and Peter?)? While F2F, developed in the society of the tribal home base, do not survive as frequently (bitchiness and the viciousness of school girls towards each other) because such relationships are not a matter of life and death?
Tribal structure across the world never seem to try to make M2F a life long, deeply intimate, exclusive relationship that we model as ideal in the European tradition. This seems to be a legacy from the "civilizing" force of the troubadours and the concept of ideal romantic love from the 12 & 13th C. These ideas seem to have quite a bit to answer for. Reading the story of Tristan and Iseult is quite mad.
In contrast, at the risk of gross over simplification, in the tribal world across the globe.. . a husband visits his wife rather than lives with his wife as it were. Doing the 24 x 7 thing I did for 8 out of 12 years of my last relationship is not how it was done for 95% of the time humanity has been tribal on the planet. Your primary relationships are with your own gender. ...
[emphases mine]
Right.
In the past, men's primary relationships were with their own gender.
Men spent most of their time with other men, usually in some variation of the longhouse, an all-male space.
I'll be posting this entire letter soon.
But what we can see is the difference between the Times' very timid peek at a feminized world in which men must seek hidey-holes, and our Kiwi Warrior's evocation of the historical and cross-cultural past, when men, who certainly did not need permission to do so, simply spent most of their time with other men.
© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
6-27-2006
Interesting subject Bill. I have noticed this about some of my friends. Their homes are obviously very feminized and the males in the home are lucky if they even have a 3x5 space for themselves. It is obvious that the home is NOT the man's home but is the wife's home. And, yes, I've seen the males go and hide in their little spaces like little boys trying to hide from Mommy! Pretty disgusting I think!! Of course I'm one of the MUTT PEOPLE so their wives hate to see me coming up the driveway. Oh well too fucking bad!!
"Divide and Conquer" is the concept that has been employed against men by the feminists I think and they've succeeded rather well unfortunately. They have, to a great extent, divided the natural brotherhood that exists between men so that a man becomes alone and lost. Historically, a males primary relationships have been with other males but this has now be interrupted thanks to all the homophobic talk, comments, and taunts. Some people are so homophobic that seeing a man come naked out of the shower even warrants a homophobic taunt or comment! I've seen men touch each other in brotherly ways, hug each other, etc. and I've heard the homophobic comments made against them for simply expressing NATURAL male bonding and relationships! Many men are now afraid to touch each other or to be compassionate or even brotherly towards each other for fear of being the brunt of someone's homophobia. Divide and Conquer! It has worked to a large extent!!
A man's home USED to be his Castle but now it's his wife's palace. It is now the males prison! Home used to be a place of refuge for many men but now it's a place they can hardly wait to leave so they can get out with the boys. It's almost like some of them have to plan their ESCAPE as they sneak around their wives. I know many men who have NO space of their own in their homes and they are miserable and unhappy because their wives rule over them. They are not husbands. They are slaves and psychological male eunuchs. They are like little boys who must ask Mommy (ie: wife) and get her permission before they even wipe their butts. Somewhere on this forum Bill commented about how many men are just BOYS. They are mentally still boys yet in men's bodies. I think that is very sad but factual unfortunately. When will such boys become MEN? When will MEN conquer their castles again? When will MEN no longer be afraid to establish primary relationships with other MEN and to hell with all the HOMOPHOBIA? Answer: At the rate males are going today the answer is NEVER!!
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
5-28-2006
Thank you Robert.
This is another very important post from Robert.
Sometimes I get concerned because there's so much on the board which is important and I don't know if guys can keep up with it all.
And right now I've got a number of posts which I'm working on and which need to go up -- and I'm way behind.
Again, when I have to deal with fundraising, it slows me down.
Guys, if you would just donate, unprompted -- that would help enormously.
Because ultimately, this work exists for your liberation.
And when posts don't get up and articles aren't written -- YOU suffer.
Anways, it's important to read and re-read the posts on this board.
Greg Milliken and Robert just had an important exchange under the title "Can't handle it."
Plus David posted, and Oscar posted.
Read their posts guys.
Cause they're all important.
In this post, Robert is talking about how homophobia destroys natural masculine brotherhood:
Historically, a male's primary relationships have been with other males but this has now be interrupted thanks to all the homophobic talk, comments, and taunts. Some people are so homophobic that seeing a man come naked out of the shower even warrants a homophobic taunt or comment! I've seen men touch each other in brotherly ways, hug each other, etc. and I've heard the homophobic comments made against them for simply expressing NATURAL male bonding and relationships! Many men are now afraid to touch each other or to be compassionate or even brotherly towards each other for fear of being the brunt of someone's homophobia.
Right.
"Some people are so homophobic that seeing a man come naked out of the shower even warrants a homophobic taunt or comment!"
There's a whole phenomenon now of high school athletes refusing to shower together after practice or a game.
They're afraid that an errant erection might get them labeled gay.
So they shower at home -- alone.
And I'm told that many public schools are building locker rooms with shower stalls instead of open, communal showers.
This is a huge problem.
Men need to be around other men.
Men need to be nude around other men.
And I'm not talking gay cruising areas.
Ordinary men need to be with and see other men naked.
They need to be able to see each other's cocks and balls.
That's part of being male.
Men should be at ease with each other's nudity and nakedness.
Not tense and uncomfortable.
The sight of another man's genitals should be AFFIRMING:
This is something we as MEN share.
That's something I was taught as a boy.
It's also something which the ancient Greeks well understood:
that masculine nudity is affirming.
The idea that ordinary guys can no longer be nude with each other -- is frightening.
And it is, as Robert says, the result of feminism -- in the form of analism -- gone berserk.
What's happened in our own culture is that as societal awareness of analism has increased, men have become afraid to be labeled "gay."
While it's understandable that men don't want to be seen as being into anal, promiscuity, and effeminacy --
in this instance, the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.
And the really important part of "gay" -- which is actually just part of being a MAN --
the capacity of one MAN to LOVE ANOTHER --
MEN LOVING MEN -- is being cast aside too.
No good.
I often say that MEN have sex with MEN.
Always have, always will.
But just as important -- if not more so -- is that MEN LOVE MEN and need to be WITH MEN.
MEN BOND.
As Robert keeps saying, when a society acts to destroy NATURAL male bonding and relationships -- that society is committing suicide.
When a society repeatedly and unrelentingly attacks men and masculinity -- that society is on a deathwatch.
What we're trying to do here is get out the message that it's NATURAL and NORMAL for MEN TO LOVE MEN.
And that there's a NATURAL way for a MAN to be SEXUAL with another MAN which AFFIRMS and EXALTS the MUTUAL MASCULINITY and MANHOOD of both.
The analist model does not work and will never work.
Because it destroys men and masculinity.
Our model -- the PHALLIC model -- does work.
Because it affirms the masculinity and manhood of MEN.
MAN2MAN.
Our work is about MEN.
Guys, I'm going to close with a quote from Robert's other post today.
Again, everyone who posts is important.
And it's important that you read every post.
Because something that David or Greg or Oscar says may really resonate for you.
So again, please read the posts and re-read them.
This is from Robert's other post today, his reply to Greg's "Can't handle it":
Many men have been beaten down and feminized today and of that there is NO DOUBT. The natural brotherhood that is suppose to exist between MEN has been RIPPED APART and thrown into the garbage! Males have been taught that there NATURAL aggressiveness and competiveness is somehow wrong and sinful. Society has taken what is natural and turned it into unnatural. Society has taken the unnatural and twisted it into being "natural" even though IT IS NOT.
MALES have been made to feel guilty for anything and everything! They've been made to feel guilty simply for having been born a dude with a set of balls instead of a vagina between their legs. This LEARNED GUILT needs to be UNLEARNED! This learned guilt has lead to DEPRESSION and feelings of UNWORTHINESS not only of LOVE but of everything else. This learned guilt has caused alcoholism and drug addiction among males to skyrocket. It has contributed, too, to the growing male crime rate! Yet, everyone is surprised? When you beat ANY person down what do you expect??? Mr. Nice Guy and perfect Citizen? Beat someone down and what you eventually get is a person close to being a rabid dog boiling with ANGER and RESENTMENT!! Daaahh...............
Males need to once again take PRIDE in themselves! They need to once again be PROUD that they were born MALE! They need to once again feel WORTHY of LOVE and of SELF LOVE! They need to STAND UP and FIGHT BACK and STOP being little boys who act as if they were just spanked by big bad Mommy! That requires telling some concepts and elements and other people in our society to GO GET FUCKED!!
The FACT is that YOU ARE worthy of LOVE! And the FACT is that there is NOTHING wrong about you being a MALE! Unload the fucking GUILT and BE A MAN...BE A WARRIOR because THAT is what is being CALLED FOR today and that call is going out to ALL males!
If males do not gain some measure of self love and start standing up and fighting back to correct the UNNATURAL and WRONG in our society then we as a society are going to lose EVERYTHING including not just our MASCULINITY but our COUNTRY! Today our nation is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are trying to fight in a PC ("politically correct" which really means "Political Corruption") womanly, nice guy manner. It is NOT working! It's NOT going to work either! Don't think for a moment that our enemies don't see through all of our beat down, self hating, guilt ridden, feminized males! They DO see right through them and they laugh and mock the American Male today! They perceive us as being WEAK and, sadly, in many males minds we ARE weak!! The guilt has got to go! All the PC garbage has got to go back to the SEWAR where it crawled out of! MEN have got to be MASCULINE MEN and WARRIORS again! Otherwise Osama is going to be knocking down our doors! This PC feminized, nice guy war is NOT working and it's not going to!!
LOVE YOURSELF!
LOVE YOUR MANHOOD!
LOVE YOUR MASCULINITY AND HONOR IT INSTEAD OF DISHONORING IT!
BE A MAN AND NOT A BOY!
FIGHT BACK!!
FIGHT BACK is right.
Thank you Robert.
© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
5-29-2006
Great Posts guys!
I too have seen virtually all my married friends fall into this behavior. It is almost pathetic to see "grown" men have to sneak off to get away from "the women". To huddle together until the inevitable phone call or shout from their "mommy/wife" sends them running home. Worried if they left the seat up, or made a mess somewhere.
Our modern culture seems to be trying to show that women can and should be the ones running everything. That men are really just stupid and irresponsible,helpless,brutish or at best just foolish, "like children" Hence if you are a man you should become more like a women .
On the subject about being ashamed to be a man. I've also seen this in action. A friend of 25 years once told that he was ashamed to be a man. That men were the cause of most of what's wrong in the world. This man is not a stupid person, or uneducated , far from it, but somehow he's been convinced that simply because of his gender he has something to be ashamed of. Reminds me of the concept of "original sin" that simply by being born you are sinful.
Bill G
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
5-30-2006
You've got to be joking!! High school athletes refusing to shower together after a sports event? Showering, instead, at home, alone, for fear of being labeled "gay" when they get a errant erection? Shower stalls in public schools instead of communal showers? What the hell is running through the minds of the overlords? Men DO, as Bill points out, need to be around other NUDE men! Men DO need to be at ease with their own nudity and with the nudity of other males! It IS affirming as Bill says! Masculine nudity is AFFIRMING and is not and should not be something that causes tension and shame!!
When I was growing up all P.E. showers and locker rooms were communal. Guys were naked together all the time and no one thought anything about it. Oh you'd have the OCCASIONAL guy who was uncomfortable with it all and it was HE that was the one labeled as being strange and/or homo. Now it's the other way around?? Ah! How far have you fallen Lucifer!!
When I was growing up I did a lot of swimming. In school after every swim we all showered in a communal shower in the locker room. No one was aloud to go back into their classes without showering. Outside of school I would swim at the community pool. The rules were that EVERYONE had to shower BEFORE they got into the pool and AFTER they were done swimming. The pool had two communal showers. One for girls and women and the other for boys and men. I remember showering before and after swimming among crowds of other boys and grown men all NAKED in the communal shower! I never thought anything about it and neither did anyone else. No one was ashamed or afraid of being molested in the showers because it didn't happen (people actually still had morals and respect back then). I remember seeing grown muscular men strip off their clothes and go naked into the showers with their big hairy cocks swinging all the way. It was not something of fear or shame. It was AFFIRMING to ME as a boy that was becoming a man myself!! There was nothing sexual about it. It was about males being nude together and it was all considered normal and OK. It was nothing traumatic that would ruin my little ego or offend anyone's weak feelings. It was men being men, men of all ages JUST like in ANCIENT GREECE and it was GREAT! I knew that I would grow up to be like those men in the showers and it all boosted my own boyish sense of manhood, masculinity, and pride!! Well I guess today we'd all be called a bunch of fags and child molesters or some insane crap like that!! BTW for all of us boys who were in the showers seeing a nude grown man REAFFIRMED our own boyish sense of MASCULINITY and made us PROUD we had a cock between our legs. It did NOT make us feel ashamed or embarrased!!
Once again this is all yet one MORE example of how modern society has taken what is NATURALLY MALE and RIGHT and turned it into something UNnatural and wrong! Suddenly it is wrong for males to be nude together. Suddenly having an errant erection in the showers is wrong. What CRAP!! Just how fucking INSANE is all this going to get? No wonder there are so many feminized young males today! No wonder they cut of their body hair so they can look as much like women as possible! No wonder they tuck their cocks so far between their legs that they don't have a natural soft bulge in their pants but, instead are only straight as if they have no cock! This is all PC and modesty carried to the extreme. It's all INSANITY but I expect NOTHING different as I watch our society march further into the abyss of SOCIETAL PSYCHOSIS!! And it's a psychosis that is leading to societal SUICIDE just look at all the victims around you.
The really FUNNY and IRONIC thing about it all is that when I was growing up and doing all that swimming and showering in the communal NUDE most of American society was Christian. No one, no Christian, at the time thought it wrong for boys and men or boys and boys to shower NUDE together! No one thought anything about it. It was all considered NORMAL. YES Christian America thought it normal and ok for boys to shower with boys and for boys to shower with grown men in public!! But, I'm sure that it's not ok today as far as "Christian" America is concerned. Oh how much FALSE DOCTRINE has REALLY taken over the Church?? False doctrines spouted by DEMONS from the pulpit, false teachers, and false prophets who have no clue about NORMALACY or MASCULINITY!!
And as for "original sin"....well....many Christians today need to read up on Church history a bit. The concept and doctrine of Original Sin did NOT come to be accepted by the Church until the time of St Augustine which was CENTURIES after Jesus. Prior to the time of St Augustine the majority of Christians believed in REINCARNATION. An EMPEROR ordered the Church to stop teaching the Doctrine of Reincarnation and the Church had to find some other explanation for why bad things happen to good people. Whaaalaaa....they found the substitute doctrine in the writings and thoughts of St Augustine who contrived the (false?) Doctrine of Original Sin!! BTW "sin" means "error" and "mistake" so IF we are all sinful just by being born then that is saying that our very births are MISTAKES! Sorry but I DON'T believe that GARBAGE!! (No I'm not sorry really either)
All I can say is that I had no idea male nudity and masculinity was being attacked to such a degree as Bill describes above. What SAD times we live in men! So, how much longer will the WARRIORS continue to allow all this to happen? WHEN will the WARRIORS stand up, fight back, and start to put society BACK on the course of NORMALCY and PRIDE instead of turning the other cheek as it slides down into the PIT of SELF DESTRUCTION? Afterall, if YOU the WARRIORS don't get upset and fight back then NO ONE will.
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
6-30-2006
Great postings! Thanks.
Each of you has said so succinctly what I've felt about the attack on men's need for men. You said it well, that our society fears masculinity; hence, they demonize it. As with all oppression, the oppressed has to buy in to the oppressors' beliefs for oppression to work, and feminism and feminized men and analists help oppress men and masculinity. Great point, men!
What I see in men who've been married for five years or more is a craving for male company. They want to do guy things, but they can't. I hear a lot of "I love my family but." Then silent sulking ensures from perhaps painful thoughts of what they've missed.
There's an aura in the presence of men that men recognize and respond to. They need other men to respond to though. As a single man, married men come to me often to talk or just for company. I think they see me as freedom because they can be themselves with me. I suppose I'm a safehaven from the weight of polictically correct man-hating they face.
Excellent postings! Thanks again
Redd
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
7-3-2006
Thanks guys -- great posts!
Redd:
There's an aura in the presence of men that men recognize and respond to. They need other men to respond to though.
That's a need which starts in childhood and is lifelong.
When I was a little boy -- about five years old -- I was in the bathroom with my father while he was taking a piss.
I could see his penis.
And he said to me, "It's okay Bill, because we're both men."
That was one of the most important things he ever told me.
It was incredibly affirming.
He told me that I was a man like he was, and that's why it was okay for me to see his penis.
I've hesitated over the years to tell this story, for fear my poor father would be labeled a child molester for having had his dick out in front of his son.
When actually that was one of the best things he ever did for me.
Just urinate in front of me and assure me that it was okay for guys to do that.
Now, I can guarantee you that some buttboy will read this and say that I was an abused child.
NO.
My father was simply a typical man of his era.
And I don't think he intended to deliver a life lesson.
I think he just needed to pee.
But deliver a life lesson he did.
Growing up, I was in the same situation as Robert, where all the showers in public school and at the JCC -- the Jewish equivalent of the Y -- were communal.
And that continued all the way through college.
And without question it was affirming and validating.
It was just, Hey we're all men and this is what we do.
The first time I encountered shower stalls in what should have been a communal space was in a fairly up-scale gym in 2001.
This gym had male and female members, and I suspect the shower stalls had been installed on both sides of the locker rooms just as a matter of course.
But there were two huge problems with those stalls.
First off, they were clearly less hygienic than a large open space.
They were relatively small, and had lots of nooks and crannies that would have to be thoroughly cleaned daily to prevent mold and bacteria from taking hold.
In addition, those stalls induced paranoia.
Because you were given the distinct sense that it was wrong for a man to see another man naked.
So when you were in the stall, you saw that guys tried very hard to avoid looking at the guys in the neighboring stalls.
Which was difficult and not at all necessary.
Who cares after all if one man sees another naked?
Ironically, the only place I felt you could relax in there and just be a man was in front of the row of sinks where guys shaved and combed their hair etc.
Those sinks were communal -- so you could stand in front of the sink drying your hair with your towel off and it wasn't a big deal.
But clearly it matters how we structure these public spaces.
Communal showers and open dressing rooms encourage guys to relax and just be guys.
Since it's impossible not to see a guy's dick in that situation, it's easier just to relax and not worry about it.
If everyone's naked -- then clearly it's okay.
Stalls, like I said, make people paranoid.
Now the guys have to worry about Will I be accused of looking at another man's equipment?
Which is actually a completely natural male activity.
But you see the problem.
What father is going to stand up at a meeting of the school board and demand communal showers for his son?
He'll be accused of being a pervert -- and his son too.
Robert:
The really FUNNY and IRONIC thing about it all is that when I was growing up and doing all that swimming and showering in the communal NUDE most of American society was Christian. No one, no Christian, at the time thought it wrong for boys and men or boys and boys to shower NUDE together! No one thought anything about it. It was all considered NORMAL. YES Christian America thought it normal and ok for boys to shower with boys and for boys to shower with grown men in public!! But, I'm sure that it's not ok today as far as "Christian" America is concerned. Oh how much FALSE DOCTRINE has REALLY taken over the Church?? False doctrines spouted by DEMONS from the pulpit, false teachers, and false prophets who have no clue about NORMALACY or MASCULINITY!!
Robert's speaking the truth.
Christians of that era saw nothing wrong with men and boys showering nude together.
In my hometown, there were only four public high schools, and they were sexually segregated -- two all male, and two all female.
And in my high school, there was a huge swimming pool, swimming was a PE requirement, and we all swam nude.
Which made sense.
Because there were 3000 kids in that school.
How was the school going to deal with 3000 wet bathing suits?
It was a lot easier just to tell the kids to swim nude.
And no one objected.
Further, because that high school took kids from all over the city, it was racially integrated -- which was unusual in the Baltimore of that era.
So you had all these Black and white teenaged boys swimming nude together.
And again, this was in an era when many white people would not have and actually feared any physical contact with Black people.
Instead, not only did they inevitably have contact, but they were buck naked when it happened.
Which instantly destroyed the White Supremacist notion that contact with Black people was in some way damaging.
No one was damaged.
We were just kids having fun.
So the effect of these big nude swimming classes was very democratic.
I don't think that was the intent of the school authorities.
I think they just arranged the swimming classes to be convenient for themselves.
But again, the effect was democratic.
It was a big male melting pot, and it was a very positive experience.
And that's not surprising.
The Greeks invented democracy.
And the Greeks exercised, wrestled, competed in athletics, and even went to war, nude.
Michael Grant: Greek art reflects "the dominant role of naked males in Greek daily life."
Somehow we need to get back there.
Because where we are now, as Robert and Redd keep pointing out, is not good.
Redd:
our society fears masculinity; hence, they demonize it. As with all oppression, the oppressed has to buy in to the oppressors' beliefs for oppression to work, and feminism and feminized men and analists help oppress men and masculinity.
Right.
The buying into the oppressors' beliefs is vital.
We need to counter that with a simple message -- this one from Naked Wrestler:
MAN IS GOOD.
The whole formulation from NakedWrestler is:
Fighting is Man. Man is Good.
Why does the fighting matter?
Because it's male aggression specifically which is attacked.
When men experience that aggression as fun -- and a blast and a high -- and when they feel that intense affection for their fellow fighters which every man who's gone to fight school knows -- it demonstrates the truth:
That aggression is not bad.
That Fighting is Man.
And MAN is Good.
Remember what Redd said in holding and being held:
Men fight, yes, but fighting isn't violence. Boxers, martial artists, wrestlers are not enacting violence; theirs is a practiced, skilled discipline. Violence isn't. Violence is promiscuity, and violence kills unnecessarily, and violence is lke a mindless person who is out of control. The violent never embraces his victim at the end of a bout.
Right.
And here are those pictures again:
One of bashers -- mindlessly violent killers;
and one of some UFC-style mixed martial artists.
There's an enormous difference.
We need to allow men to be men -- together -- again.
© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
7-4-2006
Gentlemen,
I've noticed that some cultures make room for public nudity. Spas are plentiful in South Korea, for example. When I visited SK, my Korean host told me that spas were apart of Korean society, that going to a spa is Korean. I was visiting for a month and finally decided near the end of my stay to defy my Victorian reservations and go to a spa.
No one is allowed in the spa area clothed. You're given a towel and there are lockers for your belongings. Showers outline the spa for persons to shower before entering the saunas and jacuzzis.
The atmosphere was relaxed. The spas are not co-ed, but small children (girls and boys) accompanied their dads. I witnessed a business meeting, a friend washing his friend's back, men sleeping, a lot of laughter, and the best part for me was the exfoliation. No one in the spa had a "private" so shower stalls weren't needed. No one covered himself.
I was told that no Westerner had ever patroned this particular spa located in a rural area in southern SK. The space for the exfoiation was behind a curtain and two leather couches for two attendants/exfoliators. I thought only one attendant, who was wearing shorts, was working when I went for the exfoliation, and he was busy with another customer.
Suddenly, the other attendant appeared, nude, and directed me to lay on the other couch. By this time, I had lost my reservation. He poured warm water over me, mitted his hand with a sponge, scraped me from neck to toe, front and back, rinsed me, bathed me, and rinsed me.
My, I felt renewed--not only from the exfoliation but from my body's connecting with the sun and waterfall (there was an outside area), and from being nude (which was so natural) and being surrounded by nudity. The paranoia about sex that plagues the USA was not apart of this scene.
One reason the experience was liberating was its democratizing effect. No suits or fancy shoes to distinguish the business man from the shopkeeper--just nudity, everyone wearing a similar uniform. No one was wrapped in a towel to suggest his suspicion. The body was respected in its natural condition. I felt connected, that I belonged, that I had nothing to hide. The atmosphere was truly stress-free.
In fact, while in SK, I read an interview of a Korean business man in a English/Korean newspaper. He said he pays for and encourages his employees to attend spas weekly to relieve stress. He noted that the health benefits spas provided for his employees was equally beneficial for his business.
Question: Has promiscuity among gay men who stalk gyms forced nudity into the closet of shower stalls and wrap around towels?
Promiscuity objectifies the body which is disrespectful. Its admiration is lust.
Peace
Redd
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
7-5-2006
Thank you Redd
I've just started a correspondence with a man who works on masculinity issues in another Asian country.
This is something he said to me:
Also my experiences of working with young men for the past 10 years + my experiences of living in a traditional society shows that male sexual desire for men cannot be tied down to a minority group. Rather it is a universal male phenomenon, especially strong amongst masculine gendered men --- unlike what the west propagates. It also seems that the male phobia against such bonds in America is mostly socially engineered and partly a media hype.
I think male sexual bonds are an important part of masculinity that must be made available to all men (and not just a specific group) --- especially in their youth --- and with suiting masculine pride. Depriving men of this amounts to robbing them of their true natural masculinity.
That's an amazing statement.
Now: Redd asked, "Has promiscuity among gay men who stalk gyms forced nudity into the closet of shower stalls and wrap around towels?"
In my view, yes, because that very aggressive gay male promiscuity, which objectifies its lust-ojects, poisons the well for all Men.
As Redd said: "Promiscuity objectifies the body which is disrespectful. Its admiration is lust."
When straight-identified men began joining the Alliance, some of the gay men in here at the time started to become very predatory towards them.
And that's a typical and very common gay male / analist attitude -- that all men can be "had," but the biggest "prize" is a straight guy.
Needless to say, men do not want to be hunted.
So basically I had to toss some of the gay guys out.
And I wrote a post -- About Promiscuity, Str8 guys, Boytoys, and Men Who Love Men -- in which I said, "The old culture of predatory promiscuity and treating str8 men like trophies is tired and out of date, and it has no place in the lives of men who love men.
"I'm determined that there will be sites on the internet and a world-wide political and cultural movement for M2M men who are masculine, martial, and monogamous, who honor phallus, and who express their love for each other cock2cock and dick2dick."
That movement is being born.
Here, and I now know, in other countries.
It's going to take time because it's such a radical departure from the dominant paradigm.
But again, it will go faster if you guys help.
I thank everyone who's posted in this thread.
True Warriors All.
© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.
Re: from longhouse to hidey-hole
1-14-2008
The comments about boys swimming together nude, showering together after gym class, and a son seeing his father's penis brought up all sorts of memories for me, all good I might add. My own experiences as a young boy being around other naked males never struck me as unusual or negative, just a normal part of growing up. However, it seems from what I've read on this and other web sites and learned from other guys with whom I've discussed these subjects, many men have grown up in a much more repressed atmosphere than I. Perhaps my experiences are influenced by the era in which they mostly occurred, the 1950s, when one would think the attitudes toward the body would have been much more conservative. Oddly, it seems that the more open we are about sexuality today, the more reluctant younger men are to be naked in the presence of other men.
To begin, my father had absolutely no hang-ups about nudity around the house. Maybe he would have behaved differently had there been daughters, but my mother only gave birth to boys. While my mother never was undressed in front of my brother and me, my father on the other hand wouldn't hesitate to get up in the morning and walk to the bathroom, wearing only a pajama top (he never wore the bottoms). I'd see him urinate all the time. He told me that when he was in the army, there was no privacy among the men, and I should get used to it because I would often find myself in situations where nudity around other males would be unavoidable. And he was right.
When I was four, he took me to the local municipal pool to teach me how to swim. To get from the men's lockers to the pool, everyone had to go through the shower room to take the required shower, and the reverse held true when one was finished and went to get dressed. I saw nude men of all ages, shapes, and sizes, who seemed to have no problem being in a communal area with other nude men. Sometimes my dad would get home early enough during the week from the office to take me swimming late in the afternoon, and when the pool would close, we would be among the last to shower and dress. At that time, the lifeguards would clean up the locker room, and the guys, who looked really old to me when I was little but were probably high school or college students, would strip off their red trunks before they hosed the place down. They'd often get into playful fights or wrestling and no one would think anything of it. I never saw anyone sexually aroused.
When I was around nine or ten, a friend of mine belonged to the local YMCA, and we'd go swimming there. I don't know if they still do this, but then it was the general policy at all Y's to have nude swimming. I shouldn't have to remind everyone that the "C" in YMCA stands for Christian, and I wonder now how conservative Christians today feel about the idea that men swimming nude together was expected. Again, it was a perfectly innocent experience. And the boys would play the usual games that kids play in a pool from tossing a water polo ball around to tag, and bodies would unavoidably bump into each other. We never gave it a second thought. Another of my friend's family belonged to a beach club, and the locker room had a large communal shower which you had to use if you wanted to get the sand off before getting into your street clothes. Again, no one seemed to hesitate to use it. And men didn't wrap towels around their waist when walking from the lockers to the shower.
Maybe it was of time of naivete, but I believe I am the healthier for it. I wasn't instilled with shame about my body or my masculinity. Being naked around other men is a perfectly comfortable thing for me, and it's sad that for all too many others it apparently is a threat of some sort. It's sad that there is such rampant homophobia that high school boys don't want to be seen showering after gym.
I wonder how many others had fathers like mine, men who weren't afraid to have their sons seem then naked. Over the years, a number of men have told me that they never saw their fathers undressed, which really surprised me. Am I in the minority?
Robweho
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