#masculinity research

[offsidenewsco]

Have you ever seen someone in online hockey communities say that Vancouver Canucks defenceman Quinn Hughes has “eldest daughter syndrome?” Or heard people call Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mitch Marner “the first male victim of misogyny?”

In this 3-part series, Avery Beaumont unpacks masculinity in #NHL hockey, how it's developed over the past decade, and how that has changed hockey fanbases forever.

Read Part I here.

[altamira-a]

I was reading Lou Sullivan's 'Information for the Female to Male, crossdresser and transexual' (Which is a very interesting look into the 80's trans space and mindset, I highly recommend. Though be warned it is of the times and uses now outdated terms.)

But every so often he would include little blurbs about historical transmascs/crossdressers, (depending on the story the line is blurred) and this is definitely my favourite. I'd pay to hear these stories.

[geosaurus]

sinner, you better get ready

[not-gray-politics]

Trans women. I'm grabbing you by the shoulders and yelling. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE SKINNY TO BE FEMININE AND PRETTY AND CUTE. PLEASE STOP MAKING DIETS PART OF YOUR TRANSITION GOALS. WEIGHT LOSS IS A SCAM. I LOVE YOU. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES. YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL.

[reality-detective]

Inside of every human there is knowledge that has to be remembered. 🤔

[incorrect-koh-posts]

"[...] narrative interest in Kingdom of Heaven focuses not on the outcome of the conflict between the Crusader Kingdom and Saladin but on the way it was fought, on means rather than ends, performance rather than goals. In the end, how the hero performs is more important than the fact that he lost the battle and surrendered the city. [...]

"Scott perhaps best encapsulates the anxieties that surround hard-bodied masculinity and the mourning for its loss in his uncanny image of Baldwin, the leper king of Jerusalem, whose death precipitates the destruction of the Crusader Kingdom. Rather than focusing the audience's attention on the ravages of the disease of leprosy (at least until after his death), Scott depicts him in a funereal image of a male body swathed in white robes and veils, his face hidden by a beautiful but lifeless silver mask. Baldwin is beautiful but inanimate on the outside - a hard-bodied shell - living but hideous on the inside. His voice detached from his body, Baldwin becomes a ghostly acousmatic, despite his physical presence onscreen. His voice seems to issue from an inanimate shell, cut off from its origin in a human body. He is his own - and his kingdom's - funeral effigy. In this figure the hard-bodied masculinity of the crusaders in Kingdom of Heaven is exposed as a performance, a disguise that hides the rottenness within the kingdom beneath its beautiful but dead veneer. The image allows not only the crusaders but Scott's audience to mourn lost glories."

- Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, Cinematic Illuminations: The Middle Ages on Film, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, pp. 231f.

[gingermintpepper]

hi I love your tags so so much! they were so sweet and so interesting and creative and the whole Aphrodite type of beauty thing sounds really interesting do you have any articles and recommendations to read further into it??

-hogoflight

Hello my fine feathered (I am assuming possession of feathers if you are, indeed, capable of flight) @hogoflight! I'm always always happy to hear that people appreciate my frenzied rambling in the tags :D! I have a lot of articles and recommendations :D!! Ancient Greek notions of beauty and representations of it in their art and sculptures is a pretty well studied topic! There isn't any way for us now to know definitively what the beauty standard was (it varied widely from region to region and culture to culture after all) but here are a couple of my favourite reads about Aphrodite and what her representations tell us about idealised beauty!

Probably the most empirically extensive one I can list is Krönström's thesis which compares statues of Aphrodite and literary text referring to both the goddess and mortal women to determine physical ideals for women in five specific eras of Grecian antiquity. Including measurements of the statues there are many descriptions of Aphrodite as 'curvy' with a 'voluptuous figure' and with 'ample buttocks and bosom'.

"When the beauty traits are described in the texts, they are never extreme or anything that could not be found in normal people just that they are more beautiful in every aspect. Furthermore, the sculptures’ physical forms look healthy, they are tall and have distinct curves. Great examples of this are the Knida sculpture and de Milo (the Melian) sculpture."

Of course, these images are still idealised, and there was still a concept such as 'too fat' or 'too skinny' found in written records (and this thesis even includes analysis of pornographic writings and descriptions of the fashion and stylings of pubic hair of women from different regions!!) but from an interpretational standpoint? There is absolutely no reason why these can't refer to a fuller figure. Height was also a very important factor after all and over the course of many eras, it seems like being well proportioned in addition to the length and appearance of one's hair were the most important factors (and, like Apollo, greater beauty was given to those with curlier hair)

Mireille M. Lee's 'Other Ways of Seeing' essay which talks about the forgotten female viewers of Knidian Aphrodite which is also extremely illuminating on how Aphroditic sexuality and sensuality was perceived totally differently from the well documented male voyeuristic gaze (which was overly preoccupied with the statue's nakedness and therefore over-sensationalised the statue's physical appearance) vs women's perspective on the statue which is more centered on the beauty of simplicity in Aphrodite's garment and decoration and in her power and ability to captivate both in her finery and without it. I think it's especially useful in exploring the importance of finery, jewellry and adornment in representations of Aphroditic beauty.

"Some of the small-scale copies are heavily jeweled, especially those from the eastern Mediterranean, for example the Hellenistic gilded terracotta statuette in the Çanakkale Museum (Fig. 5) in which the goddess wears, in addition to the armband on her (right) arm, the following: a necklace with multiple pendants; cross-bands extending over both shoulders and hips, with a cascading pendant in the center; a coiled snake armband on the left arm and another snake on her left thigh, and a twisted anklet on her right leg. (The left leg has been restored, and might also have featured an anklet.)"

"Jewelry is especially associated with Aphrodite in Greek literature. As seen above, in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess adorns herself with gold jewelry, dress-pins, and earrings in the shape of flowers (162–3)..."

Finally, and to me, the most important one in the argument for an interpretation of Hyacinthus as fat, beautiful and fundamentally Aphroditic comes from Brilmayer's brilliant brilliant thesis done on Aphrodite's work and influence in Archaic Greek Poetry which does away with all of that masculine preoccupation with physical proportion, measurement and bodily ideals for a focus on a Sapphic Aphroditic ideal centered in clothing, ornamentation and, most importantly cunning as symbols of Aphrodite and ultimately a feminine idealised form of beauty. This paper also discusses Pandora and Helen in these terms and it is just kind of a wonderful read tbh.

"Combining Homeric and Hesiodic elements with her own ideas, she [Sappho] alters the way female beauty is viewed. For example, the Homeric war chariot – a symbol of male, military prowess - comes to symbolise the totality of Aphrodite’s power uniting in itself male and female qualities. Having addressed the concept of beauty directly, Sappho then concludes that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. With the help of Helen of Troy and her beloved Anaktoria, Sappho sets out to reinvent the concept of female beauty as a godlike, subjective quality that may be expressed in many ways, yet remains inspired by Aphrodite."

The conclusion to all of this of course is that Aphroditic ideal beauty is much more fluid compared to its stricter Apolline masculine standard. The nuances and understandings of both are of course, constantly being studied, analysed and scrutinised but really, if Dionysus who was both bearded and clean shorn, effeminate, birthed and rebirthed (and twice gestated!) and strongly associated with vegetation can be popularly portrayed as fat and handsome, why can't Hyacinthus?!

[the-daily-male]

Today's daily male is Trait from 1 Trait Danger!

for @maggotfagg0t

[fishfingersandscarves]

choosing my hebrew names like..transing my gender in a whole new way!!

[queeringclassiclit]

Edmund Pevensie

from The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis

[hiya-im-mary]

HEYYYY NSR FANS!!! HELLO HI!!!!!

Sooooo…I’m working on some theory stuff on NSR’s lore!! Spesifically on something that happened in it’s history…The Kewan War!!

I’m doing my research on what it could’ve possibly been about. Searching why it was even called that and such!! I’m learning quite a bit honestly!!!!! IT’S WONDERFUL!!!!!!!

Though while I am doing my research…I also would like some help from fellow No Straight Roads fans who could be more knowledgable on the lore than I am!! I’d love any help I can get!! I WELCOME RESEARCH AND SPECULATION!!!!! :D

So come on down and help me out if you wanna!! Let’s get WORLDBUILDING!!!!!! :D

(I also left some Kliffnotes [Pun Intended] in the tags for more info!!)

[1o1percentmilk]

contemplating making youtube tutorials for security topics? AUGHH NO GET AWAY FROM ME THE THIRD YEAR CS MAJORS BECOMING YOUTUBERS STEREOTYPE IS TOO REAL

[all-seeing-ifer]

Found a new thing that bothers me about a hole in the world this time which is that they try and do this thing where Fred's insisting she can fight back against her infection and find a solution and she's determined not to be the "damsel in distress" (her words not mine). Which hypothetically I think is actually kind of an interesting character beat like the idea of a character who is so determined to fight and be a survivor and beat this thing bc they've always been able to pull themself through shit before but ends up succumbing to what essentially amounts to a terminal illness they have no way to fight is compelling and emotionally charged. But it just ends up ringing sooooo hollow bc Fred was pretty much always the damsel in distress anyway she never got to be active and solve problems and be a hero in her own right outside of occasional moments like the jasmine arc and other than that she mostly got reduced to a plot device for other people's character arcs.

Like I know I'm being a little hater about it all but I do think there is actually a version of this episode that works as a genuine and compelling tragedy but it would require the show to a) write Fred a lot better before this point and b) imo to develop fred and wesley's relationship outside of them being part of several annoying love triangles and wes being sad bc he thinks fred doesn't like him back. And idk. it's a shame that we couldn't get that

[yoongischopsticks]

just saw a post being like “you say my idols look like girls and here’s why you’re wrong” and it was a compilation of male kpop stars (stray kids members specifically) lifting weights. no hate to the editor but real talk real quick:

1. why is weight lifting proof of masculinity

no matter the gender people can be strong and lift insane amounts of weight. just because it’s “traditionally masculine” doesn’t mean we have to continue contributing to that problematic societal norm by feeding into it

2. literally what is wrong with them looking like women.

I absolutely adore when idols express their gender counter to what is expected of them or straight up attempting to be androgynous (ex: Felix of Stray Kids has been recently quoted saying he’s striving intentionally for an androgynous image).

also uh. why is looking like a woman bad?? and what does “looking like a woman” even mean?? (I’m not saying never use gendered terms ever, but let’s examine our use of them!)

TLDR; before you try and “check the haters” make sure you aren’t also contributing to the same vicious cycle of misogyny that they are, it’s not eating like you want it to

(note again this is meant to be more food for thought than an attack <3)

[smilesrobotlover]

Ok so after a lot of stupid analysis while playing tp I’ve decided that Uli is taller than Rusl

[rabbithaver]

man im so close to starting my transition... just thinking about it makes me so excited