25 Sleeps to Go
Toxic, petro or otherwise, masculinity needs tempering.
A confluence of things got me to thinking about masculinity not the least of which is the sorry state of affairs all around the planet.
Friends that are pregnant with future male heirs, gun-wielding unregulated domestic terrorists - misclassified or misidentified as militias - letting their temper tantrums get the best of the them at public protests, the new release of Wonder Woman, the success of women leaders from Ford Motor Company’s CEO, to the WNBA, to heads of state.
I was reading about petro masculinity which I will get to in a minute and it lead me to a description of the Proud Boys’ initiation rites. The article I read identified the criteria to become a Proud Boy and, if you have more solid information please feel free to correct me.
First and foremost, you need to publicly declare yourself a ‘Proud Boy’ and embrace western chauvinism which is merely a clever means of reframing white supremacy. Just as alt-right was a clever way of reframing white nationalist or Ku Klux Klan. I also have to wonder if these knuckleheads are unfamiliar with the fact that chauvinism isn’t exactly a word or behavior to be proud of or emulated.
At least it wasn’t when I was growing up feeling proud and being male and all.
Chauvinism, excessive and unreasonable patriotism, similar to jingoism. The word is derived from the name of Nicolas Chauvin, a French soldier who, satisfied with the reward of military honours and a small pension, retained a simpleminded devotion to Napoleon. Chauvin came to typify the cult of the glorification of all things military that was popular after 1815 among the veterans of Napoleon’s armies. Later, chauvinism came to mean any kind of ultranationalism and was used generally to connote an undue partiality or attachment to a group or place to which one belongs. The term chauvinism also may describe an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex, as in male chauvinism. Some animal-rights advocates have used the term to indicate a similar attitude on the part of human beings toward other species, as in “species chauvinism.”
It’s eerily frightening, fitting and I’m convinced a cosmic coincidence the law enforcement officer, who was caught on video aggressively kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for over 8 minutes until he suffocated, last name was Chauvin. The universe can be darkly comic in that way sometimes.
Secondly, to become a Proud Boy, you are surrounded by a circle of male peers who good-naturedly punch you below the neck while you try to recall breakfast cereals from your childhood. (I still can’t get over the fact some sad male somewhere in the universe felt the need to create the facile vacuum within which these simpletons congregate and call themselves proud to be boys as if they have been unduly maligned by western civilization. It ranks right up there with the war on Christmas - which is over, for this year, in case you were not aware of the ceasefire.) Or in the instance of these guys, it probably isn’t all that hard to recall sugary cereals because they represent what they eat morning, noon and night unless, by chance, they are still living with their parents.
I’ve read about this dumbass ritual more than once, and I’ve seen one or two videos and, I have to say, I still doubt its authenticity. It just seems too juvenile even for males who make Archie Bunker look like an astrophysicist.
The third Proud Boy requirement is a vow to not masturbate more than once a month. Apparently, they are of the belief that masturbation emasculates you. This thought prompts me to put out this public service announcement that, for the sake of mankind, if this is true, please encourage your male children to masturbate more often. The world needs more emasculated men. Like billions more.
Fourth, they are required to get a Proud Boy tattoo which most likely originates from someone having watched Sons of Anarchy. (Which, I enjoyed, but I would not recommend for the squeamish.)
And fifth they’re supposed to get in an altercation with an anti-fascist which I am sure the breakfast cereal beating ritual has prepared them for and because it makes perfect sense that pea-brained, sexually misguided patriots would want to fight those who oppose an ideology that is anathema to the American Dream and cultural diversity. But the Proud Boys are just the most obvious example of the spectacular failure of our educational system and the rate at which our culture is calcifying due to males who are unduly fearful of losing preeminence.
Petro-masculinity refers to the doubling down on climate change denial and the reverential embrace of all things fossil fuel-related - bigger and bigger vehicles, drilling in the Arctic (recall the Republican chant “Drill, baby, drill!” before they got caught up in the “Lock Her Up” and “Send Them Back” chants), making fun of the Sunrise Movement along with Greta Thunberg and glorifying all things coal.
The stereotype of the noble coal miner, risking his life in the mines to provide for his family; the oil baron who becomes the noble patriarch of a wealthy dynasty; the coal-rolling truck driver blowing smoke at Prius drivers-- these are all different expressions of the same sort of petro-masculinity.
Virginia Tech’s Dr. Cara Daggett wrote a paper on petro-masculinity titled Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire. Part of the abstract reads:
The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Moreover, through a psycho-political reading of authoritarianism, I show how fossil fuel use can function as a violent compensatory practice in reaction to gender and climate trouble.
I can understand how fossil fuel companies struggle with the idea of leaving trillions and trillions of dollars of value in the ground but, what I can’t understand, is why they didn’t get out front and lead in developing alternative sources of energy - when they had the chance. They’ve known for a very long time about the implications of allowing “human nature to take its course”. They knew the planet would warm. They knew the difficulties it would cause.
If they had taken the lead in the ‘50s, instead of electing to burying and obfuscating the evidence and then leading the charge to deny the existence of something they saw coming back in the middle of the last century, those same fossil fuel companies could be profiting immensely from alternative energies. I realize there is a ‘delicate balance’. We need fossil fuels for extractive industries and a myriad of other things. We can’t just ‘flip a switch’ and live solely on the power of the sun. But the denial of the evidence and the dearth of substantive society-wide alternatives is befuddling.
Unless it’s due to unbridled masculinity:
Never admitting you’re wrong.
Reluctance to accept help.
Not asking for directions, or only asking for directions after you are already lost.
Difficulty listening to other’s ideas, feelings and suggestions.
Talking over others. Clamming up when the going gets tough.
And - yes - ludicrous initiation ceremonies involving breakfast cereals.
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Thanks to my alert ass reader and loyal patron, my sister, Pam, here’s a hopeful reminder that the tone coming out of the White House is soon to change. Hallelujah!
Also, a story in the New York Times Magazine, sent to me by alert ass reader and loyal patron, Nancy Enz Lill, which is tangentially related to my tiny rant today.
Happy Boxing Day! - JLM