🧵 The TV show Adolescence is fundamentally misconceived because it has the same blind spot as wider culture: it doesn't really know what masculinity is. A work can't interrogate 'toxic' masculinity if it can't take an honest look at masculinity. 1/ - ThreadSky

ljamberfantasy.com • 2 days ago

🧵 The TV show Adolescence is fundamentally misconceived because it has the same blind spot as wider culture: it doesn't really know what masculinity is. A work can't interrogate 'toxic' masculinity if it can't take an honest look at masculinity. 1/

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ljamberfantasy.com•2 days ago

Lots of discourse has been said about how the show either shines a light on juvenile radicalisation by far right men or deemphasizes the suffering of victims to paint a sympathetic portrayal of their abusers.

I feel all of that misses the point that we culturally don't want to acknowledge. 2/

ljamberfantasy.com•2 days ago

Here's where I upset people. I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable.

Masculinity doesn't naturally exist. Femininity doesn't naturally exist. Everything our culture says about them is a false dichotomy. 3/

ljamberfantasy.com•2 days ago

The construction of gender divides people into two classes, and gives status to the masculine at expense of the feminine. To be masculine is to be allowed to wield power (the "active" gender) and to be feminine is to be born to submit (the "passive" gender). 4/

ljamberfantasy.com•2 days ago

This division is codified with norms of behaviour that aren't to be transgressed. Men are expected to be 'rational' and dispassionate, emotionally repressed (and so pitiless wielders of power beyond all challenge). Men who are emotional are unmasculine, effeminate, 'faggots.' 5/

ljamberfantasy.com•2 days ago

Meanwhile women who adopt 'masculine' behaviours of emotional coldness and assertiveness are 'bitches' and 'dykes.'

These statements are incontrovertibly true. Different people define the boundaries of behaviour as harsher or gentler, but the shape of the boundaries is always the same. 6/

ljamberfantasy.com•2 days ago

Along with mandated behaviour come aesthetics that signal conformance to gender roles. Women are to be performatively childlike in aesthetic style (signalling vulnerability, emphasising prepubescent smoothness), and compose themselves with men's desires in mind. Men? Rugged strength. 7/

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