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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 23, 2024

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In drinker‘s defense, he‘s a film critic, not a political analyst, and sometimes you don‘t like a character. You can think that an irritating, sniveling, weak man is responsible for his wife‘s infidelity and his family‘s downfall without making it about all men.

I‘d go further: as a film critic, you have to go along with the world presented in the film, especially if it conforms to reality: and the husband would indeed be expected to be the protector of the family. It‘s not drinker‘s role to go MRA SJW and rant against the ways of the world.

Additionally, he notes that the assertiveness the husband lacks has been ‚bred out‘ of men – imo he is more highlighting the contradictory demands society places on men, than blaming them for their failure to fulfill them.

You can think that an irritating, sniveling, weak man is responsible for his wife‘s infidelity and his family‘s downfall without making it about all men. ... you have to go along with the world presented in the film, especially if it conforms to reality: and the husband would indeed be expected to be the protector of the family.

This is true, but his critiques have an unambiguously political angle to them, and he also makes it very clear here that his selective assignation of responsibility is not just because of the submissiveness of the man in question, it's also due to his evaluation of the man as responsible for the protection of the family - his gripe is that they are no longer taught to be masculine, and are as a result derelict on that front since they can no longer be a bulwark for their families and societies at large. Further, he often makes it quite clear within his analyses of films that the perceived erosion of the male gender role is a disaster, and upholding it is certainly an element of his own personal philosophy.

Additionally, he notes that the assertiveness the husband lacks has been ‚bred out‘ of men – imo he is more highlighting the contradictory demands society places on men, than blaming them for their failure to fulfill them.

I do think Drinker's critique is meant primarily as a systemic one, and he certainly places a large portion of the blame on society's attempts to undermine these norms and not on the individual man. Still, the fact remains that this is a male gender role he's decided should be enforced. Hell, I do appreciate and agree with some of his points - such as the acknowledgement that traditional masculinity was in fact a social good, but I do hugely disagree with the seemingly unilateral upholding of these gender roles, wherein no role will be enforced upon women at all. I kind of understand why people don’t express these sentiments - the Overton window has shifted such that enforcing a complementary role on women would be political suicide - but it’s still cowardice.

In general, my view is that both mainstream conservatives and feminists are quite similar in this regard (men should protect and provide for women in various ways, without receiving many of the traditional benefits that made that role palatable to them). Conservatives are just moderately better because they enforce that role on men while allowing them to gain a modicum of token respect through it, feminists have only vilification to offer them with the utterly condescending title of "ally" as the carrot on the stick to make them comply.

From an extreme minority position like Men‘s rights, which I think you and I share, I am wary of declaring anyone an enemy who has not made his position crystal clear. For example, naive, ill-informed feminists who think feminism just means equality. It‘s only after they‘ve understood the tension, the tradeoff between academic feminism and fairness for men, that they can be separated into our opponents and our allies.

The defining feature of feminism is its inability to blame women for anything, even 1% of what they blame men for. It‘s 0%, always. Husband cheats: it‘s because he‘s an asshole. Wife cheats: it‘s because he‘s an asshole. Etc. Drinker does sometimes criticize female behaviour, female characters, like the admiral holdo video. So he at least avoids the worst in female hypoagency (hyper-hypoagency?).

I don‘t think there is enough evidence to say he supports the unilateral upholding of gender roles. Despite being critical of gender roles, especially the way they are performed now, I‘m quite fond of masculinity myself, and I sometimes criticize men for their lack of courage in gendered terms. But then I also criticize women. Frankly, much more.