Constructing masculinity consciously and intentionally

In an article for Between the Lines Kelli Dunham wrote about masculinity, as in assigned female at birth, but wanting to be masculine. Dunham was the youngest in a large farm family so grew up in the midst of masculinity. “It drove tractors. It fixed things. It wore work boots…” It seemed like a club but no one said whether admission was possible or where they kept the application. In 2008 the Butch Voices conferences were founded. Dunham could now discuss what it means to be masculine.

Suddenly, masculinity wasn't just something I wanted access to; it was something we could examine together. What parts had we inherited? What parts had hurt us? What did we love about it? What kind of masculine people did we actually want to be? For the first time, I was having those conversations with other masculine-identified people instead of just quietly standing near the power tools hoping gender would somehow eventually explain itself.

All these years later Dunham is in a position to mentor young trans people.

Watching young trans men construct masculinity consciously and intentionally is almost like watching a painter create a watercolor landscape. They aren't starting with a blank page exactly — the colors are already there, handed down by family, culture, every man they've ever loved or feared or wanted to become. But they get to decide which ones to use, which ones to dilute, which ones to let bleed into each other and which ones absolutely do not belong in this particular painting.

Dunham’s brother is career military and the picture of masculinity. Yet, he cares deeply for his children.

I used to think healthy masculinity meant removing the bad parts: Don't suppress emotion, don't dominate, don't confuse anger with strength. But maybe that's only half the work. Maybe we should also notice what's already there.

Such as empathy and caring. EagleOfFreedom of the Daily Kos community wrote:

Climate Change has always been an anondyne phrase that does not offend. Maybe that was a good option when things were not dire as they are now. But just look out your window, if they haven’t been blown out by high winds, to know that a non-descript “change” is not what we are experiencing. What humans are doing to the planet is Climate Disruption. And what humans are experiencing right now is a rolling, widening Climate Catastrophe. ... Climate Disruption? This is something different. It evokes what happens when a supervolcano blows and suddenly disrupts the atmosphere and thus also the climate. It evokes what happens when an asteroid or comet impacts the planet and kicks up so much debris that it disrupts the climate, creating a global catastrophe. ... So I’m not going to call it Climate Change. That’s simply not enough.

Kos of Kos wrote that the United Nations voted 164-1 to, as Kos wrote, “encourage the use of world maps that more accurately represent the relative size of nations and continents, moving away from the familiar Mercator projection.” The frequently used Mercator projection shows far northern countries, such as Greenland and Russia to be much larger than they are in comparison to African countries. Greenland is seen as about the same size as Africa when Africa is actually 14 times larger. That single no vote? It wasn’t Russia, which benefits considerably from the Mercator projection yet approved the resolution. It was the US.

“While this initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions, the United States clearly sees it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to—as its most vocal and committed proponents plainly and openly state,” explained the U.S. mission to the U.N.

That “radical” ideological agenda is “cognitive justice” and refers to the way knowledge is produced and presented which can privilege some perspectives over others. That includes which projection is used to create a map as that influences how we perceive different regions of the world. The resolution endorsed the Equal Earth projection because it preserves the relative size of landmasses. The size of Africa is in proper proportion to the size of Russia. About the same time the nasty guy tweeted a map of North America showing everything from Nicaragua to northern Canada plus Greenland and Cuba under an American flag. Kos wrote:

So would Greenland hold quite the same fascination for Trump if the map he grew up looking at didn’t make it appear nearly as large as Africa? Would Canada? That’s the fascinating part of this entire controversy. The African nations pushing this resolution argue that distorted maps aren’t merely cartographic curiosities—that maps shape how people perceive the importance and power of different places. And here comes Trump, essentially volunteering as Exhibit A.

Of course, map geek that I am, I had to learn more about the Equal Earth projection. A page from Sakshi Education shows Mercator and Equal Earth side by side. It also covers the vote in the UN, then gets into the differences between the two projections. It also explains why the Mercator has been in use since it was created in 1569 – it is great for maritime navigation. I add the mathematics of converting from latitude and longitude are much simpler than many other projections. Sakshi notes what the UN passed is a recommendation. It is not mandatory. A page from Equal Earth explains the projection, compares it to a few others, and gives the mathematics. One could even download a map. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos and after a tweet of another nasty thing done by the nasty guy Raelerin wrote: “I sure wish I understood why no one is willing to tell him “NO!’” RandomNonviolence replied:

Some like what he is doing, some have been bought, some are afraid. Trump is a mob boss who has no empathy for others. He is willing to do anything to get his way and now that he controls the government, he has a lot of power to give people gigantic gifts, make or destroy careers, and physically hurt people. He shows us this every day with his grifting, the detentions and deportations, his attacks on Republican politicians, etc. There has always been a lot of grift, fraud, and corruption in our society and in Washington. Trump is a master at seeing that and using it for his own benefit. Trump is completely ignorant and incompetent at being a normal human being, but he is a genius at being a sociopathic mobster.

In the comments of today’s roundup exlrrp posted a tweet from GOP Ls:

Trump is now single handedly responsible for 27.7% of the national debt. This is dramatically more than any President in American history.

Politics in the Wild added:

Huge congratulations to President Donald J. Trump for achieving his 7th bankruptcy.

With the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Friday the nasty guy said he was at the World Trade Center and that “Two firemen, big strong guys, I’m not the smallest guy in the world, they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here,’ and they literally lifted me up.” No, he was a few miles away in his own tower. But the comment was great for meme creators. Several of their images are in these comments: Being guided out by state mental hospital orderlies. Being carried out by really buff firemen and giving them longing looks. Being carried out by Jeffrey Epstein. Being carried out by Hulk Hogan. A cartoon by Nick Anderson posted on Kos shows the triumphal arch the nasty guy is planning to build.

Woman: Triumph over what? Man: Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, common sense, taste...