#masculinity + manhood

[padawan-historian]

As we move deeper into this second wave of Jim + Jane Crow politics, we must turn our eyes and minds to the people within our communities: especially our men-folk.

In this "live podcast" program, we are discussing Black men and boys and how patriarchy not only displaces them from their ancestral bodies (i.e. history, memories, cultures, queerness, etc.) but also how they are stripped of their feelings, often at the hands of their parents (moms included), teachers, mentors, and peers. The characters and "content polluters" dancing across their blue screens reinforce these ideas and identities rooted in a dispossessed masculinity that leaves many men, women, and non-men emotionally illiterate.

Beyond providing recipes of self-love or ugly feminist models of policing the bodies and behaviors of men, we are stepping into the space as antiracist community members and decolonizers who want to rediscover and explore what we can all be if we only moved beyond the fog and fumes of white supremacy and patriarchy.

Come share space with us tomorrow at 6:00 PM (EST). Register and your seat here.

[trans-androgyne]

I’d just like to ask folks to have a little more sensitivity about the “Tampon Tim” stuff—the way Donald Trump and U.S. conservatives are making fun of the democratic vice presidential candidate for putting free tampons in boys’ bathrooms. My girlfriend broke the news to me as though I was supposed to laugh, and it wasn’t until she saw the look on my face that she realized how personal this was to me as someone who’s advocated for menstrual products in men’s restrooms at my school and lobbied for access in prisons in my state. This is about trans guys and I want people to remember that.

I remember seeing a Kaitlin Bennet video where she went around smugly asking people if they thought tampons should be in men’s restrooms, with the obvious intended answer being of course not. We’re a joke to them; being connected to menstruation and menstrual products is already considered embarrassing for women, but for men, it’s downright humiliating and disgusting. As people who need tampons, who can get pregnant, who have breasts, but claim to be men, we are considered a perversion of the sex-gender binary. We cannot exist, and they make that clear. When you leave trans men and mascs out of these conversations, such as by pivoting to jokes about fictional cis men, you are contributing to our erasure. Please just remember who is actually harmed by these sentiments, and listen to our perspectives on it. Thank you.

[genderqueerdykes]

the point of my masculinity and male positivity posts are to underline that masculinity and manhood are seen as a threat or in direct opposition to queerness, and that often times in order to be seen as queer you have to be partially or wholly feminine or gender neutral, or express your manhood in a feminine or gender neutral way in order to no longer be threatening, invasive, or a problem.

it is very difficult to exist in queer spaces as a hyper masculine person & a man. you're made to feel like you need to walk a tight rope feeling like you're inherently out of place, as if you existing and being masculine or a man in queer spaces makes others uncomfortable inherently.. just know that when i make positivity posts it is to remind us all that masculinity/manhood and queerness are not opposites and that you do not have to be a feminine man or masc person to be viewed/seen/heard as queer.

chasing men, masculine people, and masculinity out of queer spaces isn't helping anyone currently and won't help anyone down the line. please accept masc enbies, butches, bears, and masculine trans men with the same kindness, love, and passion that you do neutral and feminine people. that's the point when i make these kinds of posts. thank u

[annabelle--cane]

would jon actually go out and about in cool/gnc outfits? probably not, at least not when we know him, as he starts off horrifically insecure about being taken seriously in a way that doesn't lend itself to allowing one to wear cool outfits, and after that his clothing concerns likely become largely "what would present the least hindrance were I to get kidnapped while wearing it?" which, again, doesn't leave a lot of room for fun. what I do believe with my whole heart is that he inherited a certain amount of expensive jewelry and clothing from his mother and grandmother that he wouldn't have felt right getting rid of, and, every so often, if he's "bored," he will decide to "play a bit of dress up" "for fun" and end up feeling a profound ache so deep in his chest that he thinks he might need to take the entire next week off work just to process it. and then he pointedly pretends that never happened.

[hairychestloversblog]

What an absolutely superb specimen of hairy masculinity. 💜💜 I think I’m in Love 💜💜

[transvarmint]

"You're hated for being trans, not for being men"

Is so funny, cause like, imagine a transphobe saying:

"You're trans and that's disgusting. But it's OK that you're a man! I respect your manhood and masculinity entirely. But I hate you for being trans. You shouldn't have transitioned. I want to force you to detransition. I support your manhood though, because men aren't oppressed and therefore I can never target your manhood. But you're a disgusting trans freak and I'm going to hurt you."

[arielthedaydreamer]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but: If you're a man -whether you've been one all your life or just recently started to notice within yourself the need to become one- that's enough.

You don't have to pass a test, there is no quiz, you don't have to check a minimum amount of gender role boxes. No one can tell you HOW to be a man. It doesn't matter how you look or how your body looks, how you talk, how you act, how you behave, what your sexuality is. You don't even have to fit in with the other guys. If being a man feels right for you, you can say "This is me and I'm a man".

The gender police will never knock on your door. Your gender is your own business and no one else's. No one can tell you what a man can or can't do. There is no wrong way to be a man. Be the kind of man you want to be, the kind that sparks joy. You can do it, bro. I believe in you.

[batfamfucker]

Proud to admit I cried at the Barbie movie ending. The symbolism of creation, our place in the world and purpose, and deciding even if you don't know the answer you get to choose your own destiny got me. As did the themes of being girls, sisterhood, motherhood, and daughterhood.

What it means to be women. Through the perspective of women. Themes of how a woman created Barbie, how women create life and choose to fight so their daughters can have a better tomorrow.

The themes of humanity, the beauty of it.

[uncanny-tranny]

The absolute biggest thing I've learned as a trans guy: there is nothing more masculine and manly than not caring about looking or acting masculine or manly. Growing your masculinity or manhood takes time and care - you have no obligation to let the world water your garden when you can do that just fine (and you can, even if it doesn't feel like you can!)

[inked-up-gentleman]

The biggest lie that men get told is that it's okay to be weak

[padawan-historian]

“. . . .again and again a man would tell me about early childhood feelings of emotional exuberance, of unrepressed joy, of feeling connected to life and to other people, and then a rupture happened, a disconnect, and that feeling of being loved, of being embraced, was gone. Somehow the test of manhood, men told me, was the willingness to accept this loss, to not speak it even in private grief. Sadly, tragically, these men in great numbers were remembering a primal moment of heartbreak and heartache: the moment that they were compelled to give up their right to feel, to love, in order to take their place as patriarchal men.”

~ bell hooks, The Will to Change (pg. 15)

[agressivieandrophilia]

Be a man! Man up! I heard this from my father for a long time. Hearing this is like hearing "be brave." Hearing be a man is like hearing "be strong." Being courageous and strong are necessities for a man to face life's challenges. The path of man is tortuous, it is not easy on his feet, it hurts, it causes pain. True virility resides in the objective that man has in building his strength, his muscles, his morale. This is necessary precisely because of the pain needed to be overcome. Be a man, be strong, be brave. Fight, work hard, be tough, smell your testosterone in the sweat that exudes from your body. Battle, face your enemies, face yourself, defeat your fragility and your weakness. Man up!

Seja homem! Ouvi isso do meu pai por muito tempo. Ouvir isso é como ouvir "seja corajoso". Ouvir seja homem é como ouvir "seja forte". Ser corajoso e forte são necessidades para um homem para enfrentar os desafios da vida. O caminho do homem é tortuoso, não é fácil para seus pés, machuca, causa dor. A verdadeira virilidade reside no objetivo que o homem tem em construir sua força, sua musculatura, sua moral. Isso é preciso justamente pela dor necessária para ser superada. Seja homem, seja forte, seja corajoso. Lute, trabalhe duro, seja durão, sinta o cheiro de sua testosterona no suor que exala de seu corpo. Batalhe, enfrente seus inimigos, enfrente a si mesmo, derrote sua fragilidade e sua fraqueza. Seja homem!

[silverwhittlingknife]

hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?

GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE

Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.

I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:

Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?

We're gonna go in chronological order!

Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:

Aww. Such a cute elephant!

Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!

Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:

SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.

(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)

Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:

Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.

Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.

Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:

Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:

... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.

Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.

For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.

Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?

In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.

Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.

Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?

tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later

Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!

The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.

(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)

Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.

By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.

So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)

Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do

Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.

(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)

The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.

Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."

But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.

Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)

Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!

(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)

Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.

Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?

tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.

Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.

So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.

And look, here we are:

Aww.

Whew - that's everything I could find!

Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3

[hairychestloversblog]

Freshly out of the shower 🚿 with his slightly damp, lovely thick and long chest hairs clinging to his broad chest. 💜💜💜💜 Time for bed? 🛌 🤗😈

[indigenous-gender]

Nah cuz I been clockin the hatred of men as anti-Black anti-Indigenous and transphobic from day one. I’m HORRIFIED by the beliefs/attitudes and mistreatment of (trans, queer, third and cultural gender) men of color that I witness from radfems and TERFs, AND everyday (predominantly yt) queer ppl. Queer men of color and third gender men have been subjected to this abusive treatment for so long that we have become ashamed to be queer ashamed to be proud as men who are attracted to men. I shouldn’t have to hide the fact that I’m attracted to men. I shouldn’t have to feel shame for the fact that I’m attracted to men, have relationships with men, and love being with and identifying as a man. being a man of color is beautiful. Being a man does not make you evil, an abuser, or a bad person. Being a man does not have to be restricted to colonial gender binaries and constructs. We can build our own cultural, traditional masculinities and manhoods that are liberating, not oppressive. claiming that manhood and masculinity are inherently violent is race and gender essentialism.

[lesbianredhoodedmercenary]

happy father's day i'm thinking about this outis line again

I always thought it was a bit out of pocket considering this isn't too long after the events of Canto III, even with how Outis was being harsher this Canto.

But I then I remembered that Outis' son is the same age as Sinclair.

Her son, who thinks that she died in the Smoke War (the in universe equivalent to the Trojan War as depicted in the Iliad and the Odyssey) because she hasn't been home in years. Her son who cannot cry out to her. And her son, who is currently in much the same position as Sinclair regarding his self-perception and ability to fight, as Telemachus refers to himself as "a weakling knowing nothing of valor" (Book 2 of the Odyssey, line number and exact wording depend on translation).

I think this line reflects more on Outis and her anxieties about her family thinking that she's dead, as well as a reference to Telemachus experiencing his own journey to manhood, much like Sinclair.

I think there's also things to be said for the parallels between Sinclair and Telemachus, even just the ones imagined by Outis. Hell's Chicken had her showing a very paternal worry over his diet (raise your hand if your dad has ever said you'll be short forever if you don't eat right). Overall, even though Sinclair and Telemachus only share the bones of a coming of age narrative, Outis is seeing connections there because she misses her family.

As with this one. Again, she's showing her hand more than she means to. Though she's talking to Dongrang, I think she's also talking to herself. Trying to reassure herself that home will always be waiting. Dongrang, however, decides not to return, but to pursue glory no matter who he hurts in the process. The Odyssey also contrasts the pursuit of glory with the desire to return home. Odysseus has to choose humility in order to return.

Outis has been keeping up a careful persona around us, but it's slipping. Her desire to return home is seeping through even as she tries to assert herself by clinging to the glory from a war that's long since ended.