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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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I think the crux of it lies in the fact that a society wide ritual of real consequence to mark the transition from boy to man has been effectively eliminated.

It's funny that you say that, as I'm from Hungary and one of the lame-ass online habits of local Boomers is complaining that young men today are useless wimpy manchildren, as opposed to the good old days, when mandatory army service toughened them up, turned them into real men supposedly, taught them how to act etc. This is, of course, objectively hasn't been true pretty much anywhere in the world, at least not in the Cold War era, but was definitely untrue in the case of the Hungarian army, which was the lowest-quality, least efficient army in every aspect in the entire Warsaw Pact. So it's easy to laugh at these angry Boomers, and point out how they're mistaken and dumb, but I think their sentiment is valid and understandable. Service in the conscript army wasn't exactly a manhood initiation ritual in a real sense, but in a post-patriarchal, atomized society, there's no other established manhood inititation ritual available, at least not on a country-wide level, and it's a normal human sentiment to want one to be in place.

It's funny that you say that, as I'm from Hungary

Really? All this time I thought you were French! My apologies.

No worries. It sounds like an odd assumption though.

It is and I have no idea where it’s from. That said, I thought Critical_Duty was an Indian American man for years before he corrected me, so I take the blame for my sometimes random ideas around who people are.

My understanding is that a non-trivial number of men in shitty corrupt second-/third-world militaries literally get raped. Probably happens in Western militaries too, but probably not as much. And a much larger number of men don't get raped, but they do learn to take orders from idiots and corrupt thieving sociopaths who would be useless as leaders in any real war. So I'm not sure that it is any more useful for developing masculinity than going to prison would be.

Of course it isn't useful. But it's still obviously different from prison in the sense that nominally all men are eligible on a state/national level, and that it's not only legal but mandatory, so it acts as a fake and useless, but still sole existing imitation of a society-wide male initiation ritual. So I find it understandable that many Boomers see it as necessary in retrospect (mostly in retrospect actually, which is no surprise), because it's normal sentiment to want to have male initiation rituals in your society.

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