Letters to the Editor
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"Maddox": the opposite of a manly man.
The fact that Salon gave this pasty, goateed, self-nicknamed, gold chain-wearing loser exposure is a sad statement. My husband, who has been in mountain rescue and firefighting for ten years (as opposed to crocheting his ass to an office chair, writing code and presuming to embody "manly"), has always railed at our culture for portraying men as inept fuckwits. And I couldn't agree more.
Think of it: as noted by previous commenters, you see the 'loser-man' glorified everywhere - from sitcoms and movies to ads and magazines. Forever the frat-boy, growing more doughy and less appealing with every year spent guzzling Bud and reading Maxim.
My husband is not stupid. He's not threatened by smart or achieving women. He doesn't need to talk about how manly he is (the very act of doing so would make him a complete idiot). He's as sick of I am of 'men don't as for directions' and 'men always leave the toilet seat up' jokes. He's not the only one out there: a truly competant, intelligent, secure-in-himself, non-pontificating, quietly confident man.
Why the opposite image persists I'll never know. Because what woman or man with two brain cells to rub together would desire it?
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Re: the Joke's on You
YES, Niall Lynch, exactly. As a woman, I totally admit that I will poke fun at men based on cultural stereotypes in a way that I would never do for other groups of people. Men and women make fun of each other...isn't this the basis for every sitcom on television? maddox just happens to be more un-PC about it...and a hell of a lot funnier.
After reading these letters, I have become convinced that everyone writing in has never actually read anything Maddox has written but is merely commenting on this interview, which is a shame.
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How ironic that this guy says he hates trendiness...
... when man=obnoxious is the trendiest thing around. Whaaaaaaaazzzup, the Man Show, etc.
I hate what our culture is doing to men, particularly white men, but to all men. This whole "men are idiot, dirty, overly-aggressive jerks, isn't that cool" thing is really annoying, and makes them look like incompetent morons. I'm not sure why the media is hyping this sort of image, or what it is they are trying to make us think about men, exactly. I'm really unclear as to why making men look like losers is good and empowering for them. It's like the media -wants- us to hate men.
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If you think Maddox is funny you've got a very low standard for yourself
I get so tired of people thumping their fists on the table shouting, "Would you lighten up, this stuff is just a joke, it's hilarious." Polish jokes are hilarious. Blonde jokes are hilarious. Black jokes are hysterical. But why do we stammer and apologize the second we get called out by someone, or discover that there was a black guy in the room? Because these jokes are cruel, they are degrading. People who participate in them are participating in the perpetuation of a world where insecure women are really whores, where disenfranchised men are really stupid, and where it's okay to go around secretly thinking all sorts of trash as long as you "don’t really mean it." I’ve read Maddox’s site. His writing falls into the same category as Eminem and Andrew Dice Clay. Bigotry that is so thorough and pervasive as to be indistinguishable from the real thing. I don’t care if Maddox says he doesn’t mean it, because in the next breath he defends it with comments about bra burning, or why it’s okay to cut on women but not black people. It shows that he’s not just ignorant, but that he’s an ass.
Want me to lighten up? Stop defending this tripe as a harmless pleasure and admit that it just reinforces your own secret, guilty beliefs that exactly what Maddox is saying is what you believe.
I'm sorry, but the satire card doesn't cut it when you get buried in the joke. The Colbert Report is satire front and center. It's self-conscious, it's target is explicit, and you will never catch Stephen Colbert sticking up for Bill O'reilly's vitriol the way Maddox defends the very real misogyny and bigotry of "real men."
Finally, the debate over the decline of the real man goes back to Romans and earlier when Caesar was implementing programs to get Romans back to earth, and out of their spoiled dungeons. Chaucer made jokes about foppish merchants, Shakespeare contrasted this many times, Twain made no end of fun of modern Pilots with their charts and pacified Mississippi. Kafka and Dostoyevsky wrote voluminous collections of work describing the struggles of the neutered man lost in a world of absurd bureaucracy with no tools to extract themselves. The character and cliché is as old as art, and probably as old as civilization. Maddox talking about the lost “man” and using his insane father as an example (no, biting out fish guts with your teeth is not manly, it’s stupid, macho BS) is as absurd as his passing judgment on women that burnt their bras in public while he makes “satire” about “whores.”
Maddox's style of rehashing the age-old dilemma of Real Man vs. girly urban man is tired and banal. It does not provide enlightenment, education, nor does it give us a way to elevate ourselves. It appeals to the basest instincts in all of us; The part that really do think this of men and women. The part that encourages more people to act like asses. It makes people feel that their worst traits are noble instincts born of the true savage within, rather than cultural sores that are finally in the process of being eradicated.
Personally I hold myself to a higher standard.
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Ladies and gentlemen...
Please conform to variable's personal standards for humor. It is time to comport yourselves properly.
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Real Men Eat Meat?
I confess that I've never ripped open a fish's belly with my teeth, and I don't eat live bugs (at least, not since they let me out of the Institution). In fact, I don't eat animal flesh of any kind. Yet somehow, I still identify as a male. I suppose the fact that I can use power tools and know how to fight helps, but heck, even without all that, there's some physical evidence which gives the game away: indeed, I am a man.
What amuses me about all the "real men eat meat" propaganda is that underneath it all lies an obvious insecurity about one's masculinity. After all, being a vegetarian is often associated with being kind to animals, and being kind is what women do, right? Real guys kick puppies in the ribs, and women nurse them back to health. Yep, now I get it.
Beavis and Butt-Head, indeed.