Tag manliness

This Morning

Dusty Leave a comment

This morning I am thinking about being positive.

I’ve been as critical as I can  be, the last few posts; I think I should try to come up with some positive solutions to the problems I’ve been describing. After all, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Okay, actually, that’s the first thing. No more either/or thinking. No more win or lose, no more all or nothing. (Okay, maybe a little bit of all or nothing. I don’t want to be definitively black and white about this.) It is entirely possible to be both part of the solution AND part of the problem; I  think most of us are like that at least some of the time. It says something positive about you if you have enough self-awareness to recognize that you are part of the problem, and if it is a serious enough, complex enough, intransigent enough problem, then the effort, the incremental steps towards being part of the solution, are good enough. Working is enough. Trying is enough. There are also those who are only part of the solution, not part of the problem, and they will be the ones moving things forward; if those of us who are still stuck with one foot in the muck can just ooze out of their way, that will be enough.

Example? Sure. I do a lot of things right as a teacher. I focus on the actual material and the skills that students can gain from it. I am open and willing to take student input on what we will do in class, how long we will work on it, and so on, so I give them agency in their own education and also some ability to make their education more useful and appropriate. I care about them, but I do not mother them. I know and love my subject, and I model that love and that knowledge for them, as often as I can. So with the problem of, say, adults who don’t treat teenagers with respect but expect both respect and unending effort (and humility) from teenagers, I’m not part of the problem, only the solution. With the problem of education being detached from utility and from interest — the sort of education that stops at “The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell” — I am part of the solution and not part of the problem.

But when it comes to argument, I still tend to want to win, and to show myself as smarter and more right than my opponent, and I am all too willing to see my students as my opponents. I overwhelm them and cow them, and make them feel like they’ve been defeated, rather than like they’ve been taught. I do this in all of my arguments. I am aware of it; I am trying to fix it. I am trying to stop myself from taking up arguments in class; two years ago I inserted myself into a class assignment on writing argumentative essays, and I wrote essays in response to my students’ arguments; I don’t do that any more. So I’m learning. But it’s difficult, because I run a discussion-based class, and I want my students to offer attempts and theories, but I also want to challenge them to go further and explain better what their point is. Too often that challenging discussion can slip right into an argument.

So I’m working on it. Still not there yet. If someone else could come in and fix that for me, it would be great, thanks.

But that’s not the positive solution I wanted to offer today. (It’s part of it.) The issue I wanted to talk about today is the one from yesterday, the way that teenaged boys suck. I feel like I’ve got some connection to this problem, though not as much as someone who is actually raising a boy, so I can at least offer some suggestions.

The first one is the most obvious: toxic masculinity has to end. Not the competitive indoctrination, which is a separate issue; but the idea that men must be manly, must be strong and especially silent, must enjoy and appreciate only manly things: all that has to stop. The training in violence that comes with this also has to stop, for more reasons than just for the sake of the boys who our society makes into brutes. So if we can continue to work on the problems of bullying and emotional isolation and gender specific activities and traits and strengths, that would help enormously; I think those things would help all of us be less douchey, not just teenaged boys.

But yes: the thing that I believe will make the most difference with teenaged boys is the constant shouting in their faces that they must be competitive, and they must always strive to win. Sports is the first and most obvious issue here. Sports, especially little league sports, have to be changed entirely and immediately. We need to stop keeping score. We need to stop talking about winning and losing, and about doing whatever it takes to be the one on top.

That probably has to start with how adults consume sports. I was listening to NPR yesterday, and the news host was  talking about the Tampa Bay Lightning, a hockey team who just got eliminated from the playoffs in the first round by a team they were supposed to beat. And though part of me questions whether that is even news outside of Tampa Bay (or Columbus, the team that beat them), the larger issue was the tone of the story: the host actually asked a Tampa sports reporter if the people of Tampa felt angry and betrayed by the loss, in addition to being shocked and disappointed. And the Tampa reporter said: Yes.

Look: if your year, or even your day, is ruined by a game lost by a team that happens to share a zip code with you, you have bad priorities. I will die on this hill.

I am fully aware of the arguments for team spirit, how it brings people together and gives them something to cheer for and to bond over; but there is too much evidence that losing hurts more than winning, and that our time and money would be better spent on almost any other activity rather than watching professional sports (Just look at how “winning” a professional franchise affects a city) to sustain that argument. We’d be better off treating sports as something fun to watch sometimes, and more fun to play, if we’re not too hardcore about winning. That’s how sports should be treated with young boys.

That’s how everything should be treated with young boys. And with grown men. There are serious things that need to be taken seriously: the problems with the world, and the causes of suffering. That’s where we should be aggressive, and take no prisoners and never retreat and never surrender: getting clean water into Flint, Michigan. Ending the spread of AIDS. Peace in the Middle East. You want to teach your kids to fight? Teach them to fight those things. Fight to make this world a better place.

Otherwise, maybe we should teach our kids to just have fun. And we should mean it.

(To be continued.)

Book Review: Jack London and Captain! David! Grief!

Dusty Leave a comment

On the back is a closeup of that grimacing face.

 

The Adventures of Captain David Grief

by Jack London

 

I saw this one, by Jack London, with that unbelievable cover, and I just had to buy it.

Took me a while to get around to reading it, though. Because I don’t know how I actually feel about a character named Captain Grief. I mean, really? Captain Grief? Now, if he was a pirate, that would make sense; but he’s not. He’s a capitalist. A man’s man, taming the South China Sea with grit and pluck and stick-to-it-iveness, and sheer manneosity. Is that a word? Should be. Because with Captain David Grief, the manneosity never ends.

But I did finally read it, and it was totally worth the wait, and the $3.95 I paid for it. Because, for one thing, Jack London really was a hell of a writer. I like the way he characterizes, and the descriptions of the South China Sea are detailed and interesting. He does action very well, particularly suspense and the kind of moment where you suddenly plunge into a much more serious danger than you thought was going to happen, like wading into the ocean and suddenly hitting a dropoff and you’re over your head and sinking. It’s a short book, and it was fun to read.

It ain’t all wine and roses, though. It’s thoroughly racist, for one thing. David Grief – bearer of the White Man’s Burden – is a millionaire entrepreneur who “tames” the “wild” islands of the South China Sea, Indonesia and Polynesia and Melanesia and Micronesia (Can’t believe there’s not a Griefanesia – but there will be soon, by God!) and forces them to turn a profit. He befriends the natives – described by color, dress, and essential level of savagery in comparison to the Mighty Grief – and convinces them, through a mixture of trade, bribery, and violence, to allow him to build plantations on their islands, which he then works for MIGHTY, MANLY PROFITS. Inasmuch as money is interesting, this aspect of the book is; I admit I dreamed of being a man tearing a living from the jungle through the strength of my arms and the quickness of my wit. And being rich sounds nice, too, which Captain Grief is. So, cool.

But that’s not the main attraction here. The main attraction is the way Grief is fearless and capable in all things. The way he sails his ships better than anyone else, navigates better than anyone else, reads the seas and the skies better than anyone else (Actually, the sailing parts were really interesting. London knew a ton about ships, and sailed to Hawaii and elsewhere in this part of the world, and that knowledge shows. I liked it.). The way he assesses the value of pearls better than anyone else, and grows coconuts better than anyone else. The way he reads more books, knows more languages, and has been more places than anyone else. The way he always acts as a consummate gentleman, and gives a gentlemanly thrashing through whatever means are at hand for administering lessons, be it bare-knuckle fisticuffs, or bundles of dynamite, should that be called for – and in one case, it is – to anyone who doesn’t act as gentlemanly as he does. In one story, he beats a guy in a sailing race; in another, he beats a guy at cards; in my favorite, he just beats the guy with his fists, and then makes him spend days on end cleaning an old rusted chain until the guy knows what it is to be a man. A man who can hold his liquor, dammit. (The guy Grief beats is an alcoholic. Grief is, too, judging by the amount of drinking that goes on in the stories – but Grief, like a man, never gets drunk.) Of course it goes without saying that this sort of thing is only for the other white men; the savage islanders don’t get treated with the same respect. No thrashings for them. Grief trades them liquor and cigars and talks to them in pidgin, before sailing off with some exclusive trading contract back to the white-only country club resort island.

I was stunned that there was no torrid affair, no woman he could seduce and then sail off, leaving her pining for him on a tropical beach under the Pacific sun.

The book was goofy in a lot of ways, most definitely. But it was fun, too.

And here’s the really funny thing (Other than the cover – and London’s original title for these stories, which was “Sun of the Son.”): they made a TV show out of this.

If you like cheese and pulp and a dash of pirate, and the tropics, then I definitely recommend this.