Blog Post 4. Brains and Brawn

Intilligence is a factor in being a man. The logic for the racist sexist (all the suffixes) white master during the time of slavery  is something not dissimilar to this:
Real men have control over their sexual impulses
Black men do not have control over their sexual impulses
Therefore they are not real men. {END LOGIC}
Of course, the logic doesn't really end there because if they're not real men it follows that it is not unethical to treat them as animals (as they've conditioned them to believe). The masters superimpose sytnethic concoctions but one negative consequence of that is that everyone starts to takes that as truth (The philosophers can hash the meaning of that all day). That is how stereotypes are made. They don't prop up overnight like a starbucks, they have a long and dubious origin. Marable epmhasises that the perception of black males were that they were physically gifted (their volume and strenght) but were incapable of higher virtues. Part of this is because the slaves had been robbed of their history, taken from a continent they knew next to nothing about as the years progressed. What i am trying to say is the intilligence plays a role in mascalunity. I am saying that brawn doesn't verify one's manliness because if it did then the slaves of the past would have been considered men. Marable raises other topics that are interesting to say the least but i will stick to the point that i have made. Which is that brains is active in mascaluninity.

Link for revised Second draft

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jDjzEmprnaUfUrEpUKnc5FBZGmaMThND6L8a_gCTPbY/edit?hl=en#

Photograph analysis 1

  

No one is viewing you. But pictures existence, and it’s powers, directly defies definition. Words, words, words. So many people are so hung up on them. I belong on that category. This holds relevance to my overall argument. So, fine then, clean the slate and disregard. Now just raise the prospect of a wedding or a graduation or a funeral and it’s a given photographs are going to be involved in the proceedings. It’s recommended every once in a while men (and women) dress up (as if normally everyone dressed down) to capture them at their most presentable, their most groomed, their most optimal. Celebrations of a sort are the best opportunity. The focus of this paper will concentrate on how men’s conduct at regal affairs is supposed to be subdued, not too concerned with actively pursuing garrulous, i cannot stress that enough, impressions. What you see is what you get. No one is viewing you but yet they are. In dumber words, for that’s what I've been exhorted to utilize to eschew pretension, the conservative triumphs over flamboyancy in relation to being a man. I will expound in my closing paragraph.

Before you can assess his conveyance, or even a plausible setting, you must account somehow for the three piece suit and the reason for it’s presence. The social context is crucial, but a stranger would just see an outdated photo of a fresh faced young man, hispanic, clad in a drab hue of blue; definitely not connoting vacuous skies.  Regal shoulders straight for the most part. Hands fidgeting around the pockets, caught in a maladjusted position.  The shoes condition, crinkled and worn, dissonant to the ironed pieces of the lent clothes. A tie, wide and a very light blue. A belt of feasible quality. Legwear uncreased and ironed reasonably fitting. A white buttoned down shirt eclipsed by it’s surroundings. Young but mature, is what the clothes seem to say. Stable, not bright but not laid back or, worse, lazy. And it sure is convincing. No creases
    Now the features. I repeat, hispanic, young but not too young but a teen may still yet linger. The passage of a few years can dramatically change a stripped down countenance, and it seems the future for the man is prepping for that change. Hair that is not distractingly long nor blatantly omitted but, given the groovy era, quite safe and short if a little curly. Fresh faced. Not a follicle below the temple. Face neither narrow nor wide. Ditto for the nose. His face impassive, perhasps expressionless but something can be derived from this docile sternness. Not a big man, rather a thin one, and just distilled. Overall, a bland thin layer in a tome of shifting layers. Calm. Eyebrows monotonous. Distributing the bulk of his weight ever so slightly on his right foot. No facial creases.
    Below him, cracked cobblestones but presentable.  A night hour, thin trunks of unnameable trees lurking in the background. A row of retro motorcycles, frugal and if a little askew. The owners must be guests or party goers. One man cannot possibly govern these dangerous two wheeled vehicles. No Harley Davidson’s are they but their appeal is in it’s litheness, presumably. It’s a hospitable night. Something official has transpired during the taking of this inelastic pic.
I have made whole paragraphs from a picture i could have just dismissed as normal. But being a man is hardly a matter to be taken so flippantly. Disputes are insanely raised. Males are shot because they want something to prove; this coming from a personal experience. Crude male Insults projected are always, at their core, somehow questioning one’s virility, one’s chutzpah. But those are extreme examples. The male who lives securely and steadily is the man. Not exactly reticent, could be very colorful, but ultimately keeping a straight line in his insulated empire. What does the man need to prove other than his physical presence? Take what you get. Don’t amplify. Shut up. Be respectful. No one is viewing you.

Theroux's deliberatley inflammatory--unsound--method of being manly

Theroux's technique is to be provactive. To embody chutzpah. His adriot, if long winded, precis is inserted to contrast his conclusion's observation on how the writer's "real life" is attached to their sex. Beekeeper? Peace corp? Arguing with missionaries (which is a little too A-hole for my taste), Too friendly?  It's subversive. It's slovenly and not at all effective--his argument is just trying too hard to assert his drawn out neurotiscm on an issue that is labyrthine e.g. "I had thought of sports as wasteful and humiliating, and the idea of manliness as a bore" or "It is normal in America for a man to be dismissive or even somewhat apolgetic about being a writer" (The problem is that it could he exclusively his sole complaint or it's all just moot). I disagree with him. Sports trigger a host of problems but who'se to say that the problem's affecting the future fugitives isn't a pre existing condition; that sports may simply just exacerbate the compulsion of outlaw behavior. His critisism on the manliness of writers fixates on a couple of particularly famous writers (Hemingway, Mailer, Didion) which would make his argument more effective if writers were to be limited to half a dozen or so people in a isolated century. He pretty much eschews that one of the first novels was about a deluded old man who believed in fantasies and failed to live up to his artificial predescessors. There's nothing manly about a comedy. There are more writers. His argument is kinda limp but it raises interesting quandries.

Blog Post # 2. On Lorber's perspective.

From the starting gate, Lorber stresses the ambivalence the consensus projects on the whole gender role debacle. For example, my sister, sauntering to the fridge from a nap, and me, gazing at a screen, having been in this class for a mere iota of time, and feeling facetious so i start inquiring her about how when she was a kid our mother would dress her up for her birthdays. 'She always did that' She said, among other things, just another sedated afternoon, dispirited banter.

'And how did that make you feel?' I asked, but monotone, like a kid playing video games while warding off questions of homework, and feeling like a hack shrink or a hack analyzer.

'I don't know, i felt it was normal i guess.'

A few seconds later.

'oh your doing gender roles right?' Desert dry inoculation, to graduate herself in a few months. 'why is it that men do that and women are posed as this and...' etcetera. The crux of her mumbling refutation basically non-chalant on the whole analysis scheme. Her positing sound. It got me thinking. Over-thinking is the flaw of handling the whole gender roles. It's shrill, overbearing, even to a independent women as my sister, to rail against men in the gender role topic. The thing is that people, without ever knowing it, allow their intelligence, their ego, their reason, their persona to overpower the way for a concrete solution. Fausto-Sterling, for all her knowledge, comes off as a petulant feminist, lambasting men for their arrogance when she engages in identical smugness. Informative but off-putting. Lorber is a little more open-minded. Acknowledging the futility of of being unbiased. Herself admitting to mistaking genders from time to time. My whole argument revolves around being less of a retentive analyzer, a woody allen female variant, and being more active. Active by pushing for maturity. For people to rise above the handicaps through--hate to say it-- love. This is something that took me a long time to learn. It's easy to point fingers. It's the same thing with race. Prejudice exists. Sexism exists. Let's not kid ourselves. Everyone has the capability of being the people we hate the most. But instead of solely addressing the problem, discoursing on descriptions to death (we know that's what philosophy majors love to do--sorry, i'm taking potshots because at this other class there a few opinionated blokes who have sabotaged the whole manner of there being God or not) why don't we take simple acts to just transgress? instead of letting our egos raze the future? I'm already tired of analyzing. Get's old quick
An expansion of men's role in our society.An expansion of men's role in our society.An expansion of men's role in our society.

Blog Post # 1 -- Are men born are made?

I'm going to cop out. My way of attenuating the nebulous conondrums of the quasi-feminist question stated above. A feeble argument. Provincial. Lazy. Shallow. Ok: What constitutes a man depends on a variety of factors. Culture, religios, class, race, language, etc. If you live in San Franscico, for example, the article would be read with fervid vehemence, where they--you already know-- would hash out the nuances of Sterling's argument. The fault of Sterling's argument, however, is that it can be--although erudite and accurate in many respects-- applied to skewer both sides. She negates herself. One of her points is to critisize the egotistical bravado of a man governed instutition (Hospital decisions) but she fails, like most critics, to provide a proper solution. Her conclusion feels unemphatic, as if her findings were supposed to justify her argument. She ends it open ended, essentially, whereas it would have been prudent to offer something.