Bill Weintraub

Re: Affirming masculinity

1-23-2008

Thank you Redd.

Another truly excellent post and a profound statement.

Guys, I used some of Redd's post, which was originally an email, to close my reply in AGOGE Reply III: The Longing for Masculinity.

Let me start by posting that, with the accompanying pix, here.

Redd:

I've always thought that homophobia reflects society's fear of the masculine, particularly masculine beauty, because somewhere in our collective subconscious we recall ancient cultures where men occupied public domain.

In those socieities, men's expressing their masculinity was holistic. A holistic identity didn't separate beauty from fighting, for instance. The masculine wasn't secretive; its masculinity in all its glory was public.

I think we today subconsciously know of this past where the masculine was validated and at once strong, honorable and beautiful. And since men occupied public domain, it was men who acknowledged and accepted masculinity. Such acknowledgement affirmed the masculine; hence, men affirmed masculinity because they acknowledged it (they looked at it, talked with it, fought with it, competed with it, touched it, etc.).

Today, we force masculinity to be secretive, which indicates that masculinity today is not holistic because on the public stage men act heterosexism's script. And social pressure demands men indicate a "sexual preference." "Metrosexual" and "homosexual" indicate a preference. Requiring a preference usually means that those preferences have identifiers. How do you know if a person is a metrosexual, for instance? Well, it's in the clothes he wears, his manicured nails, his stylish hair, etc. Of course, preferences have nothing to do with determining masculinity and further denies wholeness.

What our society has succeeded in doing is getting men to condemn men. As men in ancient cultures affirmed masculinity, men today condemn it.

I think feminists and gays are mostly responsible for leading this condemnation of masculinity. Both emasculate men: feminists want to control men and want power; gays realize their power is in effeminacy; the more they act like women the less they threaten feminists. Even preference terms are gay-focused: metrosexual and straight means non-gay.

In some way, condemnation unveils and/or hides the value in the condemned.

I think -- actually, I know -- Redd's right.

The question is, how to help you understand that he's right.

I wrote AGOGE Reply III: The Longing for Masculinity in part to try to help you understand the central idea which Redd is putting forth:

What our society has succeeded in doing is getting men to condemn men. As men in ancient cultures affirmed masculinity, men today condemn it.

That's a crucial point, and it's vital that you understand it.

But I'm concerned that because AGOGE Reply III: The Longing for Masculinity is long -- it was written over the course of a month primarily spent caregiving for Patrick, and it kept growing because I kept coming back to it --

I'm concerned therefore that because it's long -- you won't read it.

And it does no good for me to write it -- if you don't read it.

So -- let me suggest to you that AGOGE Reply III: The Longing for Masculinity is in three parts -- which are set out at the beginning of the post -- and that you read just one at a time.

The first part -- which is titled The Masculinity of Men -- is focused on the World War II memoirs of a guy named Douglas Allanbrook.

And it talks about how Allanbrook's failure to affirm the masculine in his own life by honoring the request of a fellow soldier that they share the same bed -- blighted the rest of his life;

And how that failure and that refusal to affirm masculinity left Allanbrook, despite a successful marriage, career, and children, in loneliness and despair for the rest of his days.

I want you to read that because I see that happening to too many of you.

That's to say, that unless you figure out a way to affirm the masculine in your own lives, you too will spend a lifetime in loneliness and regret.

So you need to read about Allanbrook.

And think about how you might avoid his fate.

Which brings us to Part II.

Which is titled Victory Songs, and in which we look more closely at a culture which did affirm masculinity.

By looking at the "epinikia," or Victory Songs, of the ancient Greek poet Pindar.

And at the ethos which inspired those songs.

At the ethos of Men, who, in the words of one scholar, fought "naked, unfettered by any element foreign to their own bodies, in order to obtain a purely moral victory."

That's a remarkable thing to have done.

And you can't understand the words "affirming masculinity" -- until you understand what those Men actually did.

So you need to read Victory Songs.

Because those songs elucidate a culture -- a way of life -- which constantly affirmed Masculinity.

A Masculinity which was, as Redd says, "at once strong, honorable and beautiful."

Or as Plato put it, the cultural ideal was of a boy, a youth, a Man -- who was "not less worthy of praise for his goodness than for his beauty"

And Redd's phrase -- "at once strong, honorable and beautiful" -- is really nice, is really felicitous in that regard.

It evokes Pindar, here singing of Alkimedon, winner in boys' wrestling at Olympia in 460 BC:

He was beautiful to behold, in action he did not discredit
his looks, and by winning in the wrestling match
he proclaimed long-oared Aigina as his fatherland ...

Or of Aristokleidas, winner in pankration, who was "fair, and performing deeds to match his form" ... "embarked on utmost deeds of manhood."

At once strong, honorable, and beautiful.

Those are the Men of Pindar's Victory Songs.

And then in Part III, which is titled In Service to a Cold Path, we return to Allanbrook.

And all the men like him.

By looking first and at length at the destruction of what is often called "paganism" -- and with it the ancient Olympic Games -- by the Christian Church.

"A cold path" is Pindar's phrase for "exclusive heterosexuality."

Imagine how amazed Pindar would be to learn that in the future, the Men not just of great nations but of entire civilizations would live our their whole lives, like Allanbrook, utterly and completely in service to that cold path.

Lives of quiet despair and silent suffering.

I want you to read In Service to a Cold Path because I want you to understand that 2500 years ago there lived a Man named Pindar who very well understood that to condemn Masculinity -- is to condemn Men.

To condemn them to lives spent "in service to an utterly cold path."

Now, let's get back to Redd.

He says

I've always thought that homophobia reflects society's fear of the masculine, particularly masculine beauty, because somewhere in our collective subconscious we recall ancient cultures where men occupied public domain.

That's right and it's astute.

The affirmation of masculinity is part of our collective male unconscious.

In which men occupy public domain:

Redd:

In those societies, men's expressing their masculinity was holistic. A holistic identity didn't separate beauty from fighting, for instance. The masculine wasn't secretive; its masculinity in all its glory was public.

"The masculine wasn't secretive; its masculinity in all its glory was public."

Right.

Today, we force masculinity to be secretive, which indicates that masculinity today is not holistic because on the public stage men act heterosexism's script.

Right.

Heterosexism's script is exclusive heterosexuality -- a real man doesn't show affection for, is not intimate with, doesn't have sex with, and can never love, another man.

Yet without the Love of another Man -- NO Man can truly and completely affirm his Masculinity.

And social pressure demands men indicate a "sexual preference." "Metrosexual" and "homosexual" indicate a preference. Requiring a preference usually means that those preferences have identifiers. How do you know if a person is a metrosexual, for instance? Well, it's in the clothes he wears, his manicured nails, his stylish hair, etc. Of course, preferences have nothing to do with determining masculinity and further denies wholeness.

Right.

Preferences deny wholeness.

We no longer have whole and complete men.

Instead we have "gay men"; and "straight men"; "homosexuals" and "metrosexuals" -- and of course trannies -- men who aren't men at all.

What our society has succeeded in doing is getting men to condemn men. As men in ancient cultures affirmed masculinity, men today condemn it.

I think feminists and gays are mostly responsible for leading this condemnation of masculinity. Both emasculate men: feminists want to control men and want power; gays realize their power is in effeminacy; the more they act like women the less they threaten feminists. Even preference terms are gay-focused: metrosexual and straight means non-gay.

Right.

So as my foreign friend says, gays -- or more specifically, effeminized, anally-receptive males -- are among the greatest beneficiaries and therefore supporters of heterosexualization.

For without heterosexualization, there would be no homosexuals -- and no heterosexuals either:

The heterosexual society cares only for women. It sees men only as a problematic group that comes in the way of what is called women's rights.

Gay men are one of the most ardent supporters of heterosexualisation. They represent the dust bin created by the heterosexualised society to contain the mutilated / negativised remnants of male-male sex that survives after the intense oppression of them in the mainstream...

Gay men (when I say gay men I mean feminine identified males who like men) derive immense power from the heterosexual society. In fact they owe the heterosexual society their existence.

My foreign friend: "gay men" ... "owe the heterosexual society their existence."

Redd: "gays realize their power is in effeminacy; the more they act like women the less they threaten feminists."

That's right.

Redd:

I think my female friend's point was well taken. In some way, condemnation unveils and/or hides the value in the condemned. Americans are paradoxical, condemning what they actually value.

Yes.

"Americans are paradoxical, condemning what they actually value."

I would say that while many elements of American society -- certainly not all -- still value Masculinity, they're conflicted about Masculinity and don't understand what Masculinity actually is.

Their understanding of Masculinity is cultural -- that is to say, what they think of as masculinity is pseudo-masculinity -- rather than Natural -- and that mis-understanding of the basic truths about Natural Masculinity confuses them even further.

So it comes back to Redd's phrase "th[e] past where the masculine was validated and at once strong, honorable and beautiful."

Many people today might indeed think of "masculinity" as "strong" -- the way football players are "strong."

But what about honorable?

Aren't they all on steroids?

And beautiful?

Real men aren't beautiful -- only women are beautiful.

So folks are confused.

Another way, perhaps, of thinking about this is by looking at the two different elements or strains in American culture.

All the while remembering that heterosexualization is not unique to America.

Rather, it's a worldwide phenomenon.

Nevertheless, it's probably safe to say that the way heterosexualization plays out in any one culture depends upon, to some degree, the elements of that culture.

So: There are two principal elements, or strains, in American culture.

The first, which we can think of as secularist and humanist, comes out of the Founding Fathers, who were 18th-century, Enlightenment, gentlemen, with a good and thorough knowledge of classical culture.

Translation: most of those Men were, to some degree, fans of ancient Greece and Rome.

In fact, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published in 1776 -- the same year as the American Revolution.

And it was very popular.

So: because the only previous democracies and republics had existed in the ancient world, the Founding Fathers looked to the ancient world for models of governance.

Our constitution is modeled, after all, on the Roman constitution.

Which, arguably, was modeled on the Spartan constitution.

The Founding Fathers were also very wary of the role of religion in public life.

Which is why both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are determinedly non-sectarian, with no mention of Jesus Christ or God in the Constitution, and only a few references to an absolutely non-denominational Deity -- called "Nature's God," "Creator," "Divine Providence," and "Supreme Judge of the World" -- in the Declaration.

And the Deity after all, referred to in those terms, could just as easily be Zeus or Jupiter as any other God.

The Founding Fathers also envisioned a republic made up of small, independent farmers -- which is what the bulk of the Greek city-states had been.

So their models were Greco-Roman.

These were models which extolled Men and a communal, civicly-oriented Masculinity.

That's also why so much of our public architecture is borrowed from Greece and Rome.

The Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, even the Washington Monument, which is just a big obelisk -- all would have looked completely at home in most Greek or Roman cities.

Those architectural models were used, rather than, let's say, models based upon European palaces or cathedrals, to emphasize the link between the new American secular republic, and the ancient republics of Greece and Rome.

So one strand of American culture descends rather directly from Greece and Rome.

But there is unfortunately another strand, and that's the strand which comes out of the religious dissenters who made up many of the early colonists.

Many of those dissenters were Puritans -- and they were, and remain, as Robert Loring has said, PSYCHOTIC about sex.

That strand of the culture is an enormous problem, and since the 1970s has been working very hard to destroy the secular society created by the Founding Fathers, and replace it with an intolerant and fundamentalist Christian States of America.

We can see these two strands in interaction when we look at the way in which first the colonists, and then 19th-century America, dealt with the American Indian.

When Ben Franklin was our ambassador to France, he was shown a famous statue of Apollo.

Upon seeing the statue, Franklin exclaimed, "He looks like an Iroquois brave!"

Now of course Franklin was a very astute diplomat, and he was certainly aware, in making that remark, that it would play well to a European audience which wanted to see, in America and Americans, a land of "Noble Savages."

Yet there was a truth, beyond the physical resemblance of Indian Braves and Greek Warriors, in Franklin's remark, and that was that the Iroquois, and Warrior Cultures like theirs, came closest, in America and in certain ways, to realizing the communal ideals of the Greeks, and therefore -- of the nascent American Republic.

So there's a paradox -- and I'm indebted to Frances for pointing this out -- that the Americans, who had drafted and ratified a secularist constitution based on the democratic and republican ideals of the Warrior states of the ancient world, were busily exterminating the one group of people in the new world who came closest to themselves expressing that ideal.

Thus it was that while talking bravely of the Blessings of Liberty, the American republic began its existence embroiled in two terrible crimes: the enslavement of Africans, and the extermination of native Americans.

And in that sense, Americans have long been involved, as Redd says, in "condemning what they actually value."

Let's, in closing, hear Redd's thoughts again, because his ideas are important:

I've always thought that homophobia reflects society's fear of the masculine, particularly masculine beauty, because somewhere in our collective subconscious we recall ancient cultures where men occupied public domain.

In those societies, men's expressing their masculinity was holistic. A holistic identity didn't separate beauty from fighting, for instance. The masculine wasn't secretive; its masculinity in all its glory was public.

I think we today subconsciously know of this past where the masculine was validated and at once strong, honorable and beautiful. And since men occupied public domain, it was men who acknowledged and accepted masculinity. Such acknowledgement affirmed the masculine; hence, men affirmed masculinity because they acknowledged it (they looked at it, talked with it, fought with it, competed with it, touched it, etc.).

Today, we force masculinity to be secretive, which indicates that masculinity today is not holistic because on the public stage men act heterosexism's script. And social pressure demands men indicate a "sexual preference." "Metrosexual" and "homosexual" indicate a preference. Requiring a preference usually means that those preferences have identifiers. How do you know if a person is a metrosexual, for instance? Well, it's in the clothes he wears, his manicured nails, his stylish hair, etc. Of course, preferences have nothing to do with determining masculinity and further deny wholeness.

What our society has succeeded in doing is getting men to condemn men. As men in ancient cultures affirmed masculinity, men today condemn it.

And we have to think that Men -- and many Women -- are not happy in that condemnation.

Thank you Redd.

A terrific post from a true Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

January 23, 2008

© All material Copyright 2008 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Robert Loring

Re: Affirming the masculine

2-7-2008

Redd your insights reflected in "Affirming the Masculine" are, once again, genius and I think you've hit it right on the head. Today society does, in fact, force masculinity to be secretive and it is not holistic as it was in past cultures in which masculinity was valued and praised. I fully agree with you that what our society has succeeded in doing is getting men to condemn men. Ancient cultures, as you point out, valued masculinity while today our society condemns it. In forcing masculinity into the secretive and by getting men to condemn men what has been played out is the old "divide and conquer" strategy and it appears to have worked amazingly well in modern males. Your writing and insights only further confirm to me that manhood, maleness, masculinity, and the innate brotherhood between men are under attack by elements in our society who harbor an intense and even psychotic hatred for anything male and for anything natural.

In your closing sentence you state, "Americans are paradoxical, condemning what they actually value." This is yet another trait of what a hypocritical society we live in today. Far too often we hear people say one thing but do another. Their words do not match their actions or behavior. Their words are often deceiving. The fact that we condemn what we actually value should come as no great surprise in light of the kind of society that we live in today. It is a society turned upside down through the eyes of history and tradition. It is a society made up of people who have become enslaved to the "me, me, me, wondrous me" mentality or insanity. A society blinded by selfishness and egotism. Ours is a society bent on hypocrisy as we run to and fro saying one thing but doing the complete opposite because no one has balls enough to put their actions behind their mouths and words.

The attacks by feminism and mainstream gays along with all the hypocrisy in our society have served to destroy natural manhood and the natural affection and brotherhood that was meant to exist between men from the beginning of time. Once masculinity was prized and valued and today it is shamed. Once pride was associated with masculinity but today shame and embarrassment are associated with it. Right has been turned into wrong, and wrong into right. The natural has been turned into the unnatural, and the unnatural has been made into the natural. In short, humanity has tried to defy not only nature but what is natural inside of human beings and like a twisted rubber band soon the tension will become so great that the rubber band will snap and all hell, literally, will break loose. It's just a matter of time as an unnatural society never lasts for long.

Not only do men condemn men but many a man condemns his own self and this too is a result of the upside down values we have in society. A man condemns himself for his own innate masculinity because society says natural masculinity is to be shamed not prized. Self condemnation is the gateway to Hell and that Hell exists in our own minds. Self condemnation leads to a whole host of ills including addictions, suicide, and psychotic murderous rage. There is nothing worse than a man who has condemned his own self publicly or secretively. For, such a man has chosen to defy his own nature and stand in the ranks of the unnatural. That is what many males have done as they have locked themselves into the dis-ease of heterosexism.

In this DIS-EASE a male excludes a natural part of himself. A part of himself which innately knows and wants to love other males. He excludes affection for his brethren at a cost to his own self value.

Growing numbers of males are unhappy today. Growing numbers are locked into vicious and even deadly cycles of addictions to sex, alcohol, drugs, et. al. There is a dis-ease spreading like wildfire among males today and that dis-ease is SELF CONDEMNATION aka SELF REJECTION. They are rejecting what is natural to all males and the cost is loss of joy, wholeness, and loneliness. I don't think there has ever been a time in human history in which the world has been so full of angry men and men bent on rage.

Men who condemn their own selves are men who are defeated within their own minds. They are men who are rejecting the natural within themselves. They are men who have listened to the LIES of our society and men who have simply accepted the GREATEST LIE EVER TOLD, that is, "Masculine man is bad, bad, bad." That is why I say that the "Way of the Warrior IS the WAY to SALVATION!" For, it is through the Way of the Warrior that self condemned men can RECLAIM their nature and reclaim their innate masculinity. It is the way in which such men can recapture their joy and purpose in this life.

We have had homophobia rammed down our throats to the point that even a glance of one man towards another can be taken as "homo." Society has reached the realms of societal psychosis. Homophobia has served to separate man from man and to keep us separated out of fear. At some point our homophobic and unnatural society will break down and rip apart. It is only a matter of time. It will be the end result of this DIS-EASE we have created and suffer from. A dis-ease born of rejecting the natural and embracing the unnatural. In the process, self condemned men will self destruct and I find that the saddest of all because I wonder just how many great men are we losing in that self destruction. In truth, this is ALREADY happening on a grander and grander scale with each passing day. This is one reason why I think it so important that masculine men...WARRIORS...reach out to other men and show them the Way of the Warrior because you never know who you might be helping to save.

Robert