The Null Device

Things that have recently happened in the US:

• Wildfires blazed across the West Coast, burning several million acres and setting the sky a hellish orange; it emerged that one of the fires was started by a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device intended for a gender reveal party.
• Supporters of US President Donald Trump held a boat rally in his honour on a lake in Texas. Ostensibly, it was meant to be a flotilla of boats with pro-Trump/Blue Lives Matter/Qanon/related flags sailing in formation as a show of strength and support. For some reason, though, several boats started cranking up their motors and racing, swamping others in their wakes, and continued doing this as first responders arrived to rescue the occupants of sinking boats. The final toll was 13 vessels swamped or sunk and at least one person in intensive care with a broken back. Some commentators have since christened the rally “Dumbkirk”.
• In August, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a 10-day festival of biker culture, ran in South Dakota, with more than 400,000 participants packing into bars to watch bands like Smash Mouth; CCTV footage showed few participants wearing masks or maintaining social distancing. Now, a week after the first COVID-19 death, a study has confirmed that the rally was a superspreader event, linking it to more than 250,000 COVID-19 cases. The public health cost of cases linked to it has been estimated at $12.2 billion.

I can't help but think that there is a pattern that connects these three events: all three appear to be examples of the hubris of a hypermasculine, domination-oriented worldview exceeding, as it so often does, the limits of its competence.

The last two are fairly obvious: it's quite likely that many of those inclined to go to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally would have bought into a construct of tough-guy masculinity which, in its current climate, would hold that masks are for pussies, and Real Men are not afraid of a teeny tiny virus. Some would undoubtedly have had qualms, though the peer pressure to not be seen masking up like a soy-drinking cuck would have been strong, and the alcohol and camaraderie would have filled the gaps.

As for the Trump boat rally, that pretty much stands on its own: the complex of right-wing populism that Trump serves as the figurehead of is, in part, all about the right to not be civil, to assert dominance where one is capable of it. So it's hardly surprising that a boat parade organised in the name of the Trump movement would have wilfully disregarded boating etiquette as something also for cucks and beta-males. Real Men dominate, the reasoning goes, they sometimes come to blows, and if your boat sinks because my boat's wake swamped you, too fucking bad. You should have been tougher.

The gender reveal wildfires are slightly less directly an example of this, but it's in the nature of gender reveal parties themselves; these are not an ancient American/Christian/Republican/homeowner/heterosexual tradition, but rather a recent backlash against the acceptance of nontraditional gender roles and sexual identities; to hold one for an as yet unborn child is to plant one's flag in the culture wars, asserting that there are only two genders and that which genitalia a person has at birth determines which roles they may play in life. If your foetus has a penis, he is going to grow up to play football and like trucks, never cry in public, and eventually ogle bikini babes in Sports Illustrated; if not, she will like the color pink and looking pretty, and her play will be spent pretending to be a fairy princess ballerina and never. say, an astronaut or fire engine driver. Needless to say, the sorts of people who need to assert such a statement generally are compelled to do so forcefully, hence the use of explosives.

Of course, as we have seen, the sorts of people whose politics are about domination tend not to be the most subtle thinkers, and are more likely to barge in and wreck things. (See also: too many politicians, past and present, to name.) But from their point of view, that's OK, because only beta cucks care about things like externalities; eventually, someone else will be around to clean up.

¶ culture war dominance gender masculinity usa 1

The world moves one step closer to gender equality, with the announcement of a washing detergent specially formulated for fragile-masculinity sufferers. Named Frey, and packed in a tactical-black bottle reminiscent of engine oils, it allows those afflicted to do their own washing without feeling emasculated by the pastel-blue packaging or the sheer unmanliness of the activity of putting clothes into a washing machine like a little lady. It's also musk-scented, so, upon putting on the freshly-washed clothes*, one can smell like an alpha-masculine sexbeast, and not some domesticated house-husband.

Still, assuming that they have done their market research and there are people who would buy this sort of thing, one shouldn't laugh at those people; after all, they are suffering from a very real, and very debilitating, condition. Also, they might punch you.

* Presumably the target market would only be washing their own clothes, either because they live alone in a state of primal, untamed masculinity, or because their partner is understanding enough to accommodate their needs.

¶ gender marketing masculinity tactical wtf 0

The BBC has a new documentary series about the history of indie music, specifically in the UK; titled Music For Misfits, it follows the phenomenon, from the explosion of do-it-yourself creativity unleashed in the wake of punk, running throughout the 1980s like a subterranean river, largely out of sight of the high-gloss mainstream of Stock/Aitken/Waterman, Simply Red and Thatcherite wine-bar sophistipop, channelled through a shadow infrastructure of photocopied zines, mail-order labels selling small-run 7"s and reviews in NME and Melody Maker (which, it must be remembered, had countercultural credibility back then, and were run by people whose business cards didn't read "youth marketing professional"), surfacing in the 1990s into the new mainstream of Britpop (much in the way that its American counterpart, alternative music, had become a few years earlier with the grunge phenomenon), before finally coalescing into a low-energy state in the new millennium as the marketing phenomenon known as Indie, a hyper-stylised, conservatively retro-referential guitar rock sponsored by lager brands. Though by the third episode of this series (the 1990s one), the BBC seems to succumb to this very revisionism of the term "indie", and, as Emma Jackson of Kenickie points out, retroactively edits almost all women out of the story, presumably because otherwise it wouldn't jibe as neatly with what modern audiences understand "indie" to mean:

It wasn’t just the lack of voices but the choice of stories that were included. No mention was made of the Riot Grrrl movement. Including the story of Riot Grrrl would have easily linked up with the previous programme’s section on fanzines and C86. Riot Grrrl also complicates the idea that British indie was in a stand off with US music. Rather in this scene bodies, music and fanzines travelled across the Atlantic and influenced each other. Also, while in indie music ‘white is the norm’ as Sarah Sahim recently argued, the Riot Grrrl moment in the UK also included bands lead by people of colour such as The Voodoo Queens and Cornershop (who had a number one on the independent Wiija in 1997).

Some major players were also missing. You have to go some lengths to tell the story of Britpop and not mention Elastica, but that’s what happened in the programme. There was a very short clip of them that flashed by. Or Sleeper. They were huge. Or PJ Harvey. Or Lush. Or Echobelly. Or Shampoo.

The equation of indie with retro probably didn't help. The seeds were sown in the underground 1980s, along with the rejection of the glossy commercial pop of the decade (which was partly a practical matter, with the kinds of high-tech studios the Pete Watermans of this world used to craft their chart-toppers costing millions, while electric guitars and Boss pedals were cheap), though became codified in the Britpop era, when journalist after lazy journalist equated the bold new age of British Guitar Rock with that last imperial phase of UK pop culture, the Swinging Sixties. Soon this became a self-fulfilling prophecy; things which didn't fit the narrative were pushed to the side, vintage Lambretta scooters and Mod roundels started showing up everywhere, and the Gallagher brothers, gazing down red-eyed from the heights of Snow Mountain, announced themselves to be the second coming of John Lennon, returned to bring proper rock'n'roll back to the people. Somewhere along the way, this retro rockism absorbed some of the retro sexism of the post-ironic lad mags of the time, marinated in the reactionary miasma inherent in the idea of a lost "golden age" (one before all this modern nonsense, when music came on vinyl and dollybirds knew their place was hanging on a geezer's arm, and so on), and so was born the New Lad Rock, whose name, in time, was lazily shortened just to "indie"; in its moribund terminal state, the Yorkie bar of music, right down to the "Not For Girls" label on it.

(Of course, the problem with looking backwards is often also the fact that those inclined to look backwards tend to fixate on forms rather than the processes that they emerged from (as the forms are the obvious thing to grasp, especially if one is not analytically inclined) and draw reactionary conclusions. For example, the fetishisation of the two-stroke motorscooter, a symbol of teenage freedom in the 1960s (it's probably no exaggeration to say that the Vespa was the MySpace Facebook Snapchat of its age), but a dirty, cranky, inefficient antique these days. Or, indeed, the actual careers of the cultural heroes. So, while the Beatles experimented with musique concrète and Mick Jagger subverted (to an extent) the meaning of masculinity, none of this is evident in the plodding, workmanlike homages to "proper rock" of their self-announced modern-day followers.)

The equation of stylised "indie" rock with a retrograde "lad"/"geezer" masculinity seems to be firmly embedded in the culture of this day; only recently the radio station Xfm, which originated back in the day with an indie-music format, was rebranded, explicitly, as a blokey-guitar-rock station, without too much loss of cultural continuity. The next logical step would be would be to introduce a musical segment into the upcoming reboot of men-and-motors TV show Top Gear (which, of course, is already to be fronted by a Britpop-era radio DJ), where, between the high-octane stunts, a band of lads with guitars and Mod haircuts take to the screen and play something that sounds like a stodgily conservative take on the Beatles/Kinks/Clash/Pistols/Stone Roses.

(via Sarah_Records) ¶ bbc carling-indie culture gender indie masculinity music revisionism rock'n'roll 0

Apparently today is Steak and BJ Day, an attempt to set right a crucial imbalance in intersexual relations:

You know the drill. Every 14th of February you get the chance to display your fondness for a significant other by showering her with gifts, flowers, dinner, shows and any other baubles that women find romantic. Every Valentines day you rack your brains for that one special, unique gift that will show your wife or girlfriend that you really do care for them more than any other. Now ladies, I'll let you in on a little secret; guys really don't enjoy this that much. Sure seeing that smile on your face when we get it right is priceless, but that smile is the result of weeks of blood, sweat and consideration. Another secret; guys feel left out. That's right, there's no special holiday for the ladies to show their appreciation for the men in their life. Men as a whole are either too proud or too embarrassed to admit it.

Which is why a new holiday has been created.

March 14th is now officially "Steak and Blowjob Day". Simple, effective and self explanatory, this holiday has been created so you ladies finally have a day to show your man how much you care for him.

(via trayce) ¶ masculinity meat sex 0

A Cornell University study has demonstrated that men who feel their masculinity threatened overcompensate by adopting hypermasculine stances such as homophobia, support for the Iraq war, and a desire to buy a SUV:

Willer administered a gender identity survey to a sample of male and female Cornell undergraduates in the fall of 2004. Participants were randomly assigned to receive feedback that their responses indicated either a masculine or a feminine identity. While women's responses were unchanged regardless of the feedback they received, men's reactions "were strongly affected by this feedback," Willer said.

He questioned subjects about their political attitudes, including how they felt about a same-sex marriage ban and their support for President Bush's handling of the Iraq War. "I created composites from subjects' answers to these and other questions," he said. "I also gave subjects a car-buying vignette, presented as part of a study of purchasing a new car."

Meanwhile the researchers in question next intend to measure respondents' testosterone levels and also test their attitudes to violence against women.

(via 1.0) ¶ advertising aggression bigotry machismo marketing masculinity psychology 5