On Masculinity, Part Three: The Difference Between Being Strong and Being Mean

A few months ago I was thinking of buying my oldest daughter a Cricket Rifle. For those that don't know, Cricket Rifles are rifles designed explicitly for youth shooting. They're single shot rifles that have multiple safety mechanisms that prevent negligent discharges. I went on YouTube to see reviews of the rifle, and it led me down a rabbit hole of young girls shooting guns. There was one video where a teenage girl was doing an awesome job of hitting targets in a two gun competition. I would link it if I remembered the video, but this was around six months ago, so I don't. However, I do remember one of the smart-ass comments saying something to the effect of, "Where's all the feminists at on this one?"

I replied to that comment. "Feminist dad right here. What now?"

The guy that wrote the OC didn't respond, but hoo-boy, were there many others who did. One of the more laughable ones was some rando that said something to the effect of, "You're a male feminist. That's the weakest thing a man can be." I really don't remember the exact wording. It was something like that. Calling me some "weak pussy" because I have this weird idea that men and women should be treated equally.

I responded to that comment. Once again I'm paraphrasing, but said something to the effect of, "I think it's funny that you're saying I'm weak, when you think the height of masculinity is to insult someone from a keyboard. There's nothing brave or manly about what you're doing. There's nothing manly about insulting someone when you don't have to risk getting your jaw broken. So once again I ask, 'Feminist dad right here. What now?'"

A few weeks ago I wrote an unintended sequel to my post On Masculinity The first post talked about a need for the left to start having a conversation about masculinity. What it means to be a man without the "toxic masculinity". The sequel was just me ranting, more or less, because I found the right's champions of masculinity to be pretty lacking. I didn't plan on making that post. I just did because I saw all of these weak right-wing males having discussions on masculinity when they have no business calling themselves men. These "men" confuse being mean for being strong.

I probably wouldn't have written the sequel if it weren't for that YouTube discussion. All these right-wing champions of masculinity, and they're nothing but boys pretending to be men.

It's no wonder that Trump is their king. Trump will insult grown men all day on Twitter, but to their faces he kisses their ass. Just look at how he is with Kim Jung Un. Loved to insult the man on Twitter all day. When Trump met him, he was as nice as Mr. Rogers. Trump couldn't say to Un's face what he said to him all the time online. And the right thinks that's manly and strong, since they also think the height of strength is to insult people on social media where they don't have to face real world consequences for their actions.

Since writing my first post, I've done my best to research what masculinity means without "toxic masculinity", and I've come up with the conclusion that wholesome masculinity is broken down into two separate groups:

1. Strength
2. Things that are culturally "guy things"

Now before anyone tears me apart on mentioning this, let me tell you that I'm not saying that any of this is exclusive to men. Like I said in my first post on masculinity, this isn't about rigid gender roles. Wholesome masculinity is about how we can express ourselves as men without toxicity. I personally know professional strongwomen who can outlift me. My karate instructor is a woman with a fifth degree black belt that I wouldn't fuck with on my best day. I know that there are plenty of women that are into culturally "guy things" such as sports, guns, cars, and such. While these aren't exclusive to men, they are things that we men love to use to express our masculinity in a wholesome manner.

Let's go over those two groups.

The first one is strength. The right equates strength with meanness. And that's really sad, because being mean is far from being strong. Sure, you can be strong and mean, but you can also be strong and kind. You can bench press 500 pounds and tell people that equal rights is bullshit, that the poor are just lazy, or you can bench press 500 pounds and be a supporter of equal rights and the working class.

Wholesome masculinity says that we use our strength to protect. We are strong men, and we use our strength to protect people weaker than us. I lift weights. I do martial arts. I shoot guns. I use my strength to protect people, and there's nothing that makes me feel more manly than that.

The second is things that are culturally "guy things". Yes, women can also like these things, but we men like to use them to express our masculinity. Things like cars, sports, and such.

Truth is, I don't care much for team sports. I'll root for my local sports team when they make the playoffs and have a decent chance at winning the championship. Otherwise, I don't care much. I never got into cars. I like combat sports like the UFC, but that's about it.

But I have incredibly strong opinions on grills. INCREDIBLY STRONG OPINIONS ON GRILLS.

I could post several rants on gas vs. charcoal grills. Even typing that fills me with a sort of rage. The rage that a man understands. Gas grills are the tool of the bourgeoisie. Real men know how to light up that charcoal. We'll set them coals on fire, wait until the white appears in them, and then cook our meat to perfection! We don't need propane! Hank Hill can fuck all the way off! Fuck you and your "propane and propane accessories", Hank!

Like I said, incredibly strong opinions on grills. Probably sounds unreasonable to a lot of people, but I will die on that hill.

Grilling and barbecuing is one of the ways that I like to express my masculinity. Since learning how to cook a few years back, I bought a couple of charcoal grills. There's something about firing up that charcoal, tossing on a set of baby back ribs, or some burgers, or hell, even hot dogs, that makes me feel manly af. After barbecuing a rack of ribs, I feel like Ozymandias. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

I really think that most of the "men" on the right are a bunch of tryhards that are desperately seeking to compensate for their lack of masculinity. We on the left have a bit of an advantage there, because we're secure enough in our manhood to not be scared of doing or feeling things that might be perceived as feminine. As men, we're human beings, and there are times that we feel vulnerable. We get sad and depressed. We need help sometimes. Sometimes we like things that aren't considered masculine. It's okay to admit that. We on the left have the advantage of being able to admit that.

For example, my love for barbecuing is built out of my love for cooking. Cooking in the kitchen. You know, that thing that's traditionally considered "women's work". Well, my wife is a middle school teacher so she usually gets home late. So when she sees a new recipe she likes, she'll usually show it to me and I'll just tell her, "Just send the recipe to me on messenger. I'll try it out." She does, and I do.

I spent most of my twenties in the military, where we were taught that masculinity meant suppressing our emotions. Now that I'm damn near forty, being able to express my emotions, even the sad, cry-baby ones, feels fucking liberating. I'm a strong man who lifts weights, shoots guns, does martial arts, and can barbecue the fuck out of a rack of ribs. I'm also secure enough in my masculinity to take pride in my abilities as a chef, to admit when I'm not strong enough on my own, and brave enough to admit when I feel weak and need help.

The right doesn't know the difference between being strong and being mean. Between having wholesome masculinity and toxic masculinity. We on the left need to seize the opportunity to teach the difference. We know how to be strong without being mean. We know how to be men without being toxic. And we need to start teaching it.

My New Workout Plan, and Some Criticism of Starting Strength

Well, let me start this entry off by saying that I thought I was supposed to go into work tonight. Turns out that wasn't the case, so after I drove my ass home, I decided I'd get to work on a post about my new workout plan.

You'll probably notice that I haven't written much about fitness lately, and there's a reason for that. A few months ago, I broke one of my big toes in a stress fracture. I could barely walk without intense pain because of it, so I wasn't hitting the gym. I wasn't doing much of anything. Just laying around, waiting for my broken toe to heal up so I could be active again.

Some of you might laugh and say, "Oh, you broke your big toe? How tragic!" Yeah, you can fuck off. I'm not 17 anymore, and I don't heal from a broken toe after a few days. Hell, it still hasn't healed fully and I'm hitting the gym anyway.

Anyway, after sitting on my ass for two months I finally decided to hit the gym again. I also started doing karate again before the injury, so I started going back to the dojo, too. I went back on my old reliable Starting Strength routine to create a baseline for strength before I ended up on my current workout, which I had planned on starting long before my injury.

After about six weeks of being on Starting Strength, I felt like I was starting to max out on the plan well below my previous best lifts. I'm not entirely sure why that happened. I'm guessing that it's because I'm getting older. After being about thirty pounds below each of my best lifts, I started to plateau. Instead of being stubborn and trying to push through until I reached maybe another ten pounds on each lift, I cut my losses and began the new workout routine.

Enter Functional Fitness!

I had heard about functional fitness about two years ago, when Alan Thrall, a YouTube strongman, thoroughly had his ass kicked while trying to do one of those types of workouts with a gym called Real World Tactical. Here's the video on that:

The title says it all. The workout nearly killed him.

So I had wanted to do a functional fitness workout for a while after seeing that, and after doing some searches on The Google, I found this one to be the most gym friendly. It has four days of full body workouts, but the goal is different on each one. The first day is strength, the second is hypertrophy, the third is power, and the fourth is speed.

On week one, I finished day one without much difficulty. The strength workout sort of mirrors what you'd do in Starting Strength. Mostly sets of five reps, although more sets than the average Starting Strength routine. I was sore as fuck afterward, but not more than usual after a good workout.

It was after that that I saw the Hypertrophy plan and said to myself, "Dear God, what have I done?"

I know that screenshot is posting a little light, so if you're having trouble seeing it, hit the link above (it's hyperlinked as "this one") and look at Day Two.

I posted that screenshot to Facebook and my friends were pretty much a big collective of "lol, nope!" on that routine. I don't blame them. I was dreading it myself.

Still, I managed to finish it against all odds, and finished the rest of the workouts during the rest of the week.

I'm now on the fourth week of the program. The program is supposed to last ten weeks. So here's the results so far:

As far as strength goes, I'm not certain as to whether or not that's improved. Because I knew I'd be lifting more reps than the Starting Strength plan, I started off lifting fairly light. I started doing 185 pound squats and 185 pound Romanian deadlifts. I'm now up to 205 on each, even though I've squatted 235 and deadlifted 265 before I began the program.

The biggest results I've seen so far are in my muscular endurance. I've written very briefly on muscular endurance in my post Achieving Greatness (on a Budget). Basically, muscular endurance is your body's ability to take a beating and drive on. On that note, I've improved greatly.

So yeah, my muscular endurance has improved, so where's my criticism of Starting Strength?

Starting Strength has its name for a reason. It's not called "Starting Endurance" or "Starting Speed" for a reason. It's not meant to improve any of those. It's meant to improve your strength.

And for that reason, I'm thankful for the program. Without it, my lifts would all still be in the high 100s and not the 200s or even the 300s (like my best squat and deadlift). I found new strength because of this program.

But as I did that program, I noticed that the other parts of my fitness began to wane. I wasn't able to run as fast I used to. I certainly didn't have the endurance that I once had. I was able to lift more weight in five rep sets, but that was about the only physical improvement I felt.

Starting Strength is called "Starting Strength" for a reason. It's a beginner program, meant to get you to a certain level of strength that you didn't know you were capable of, before you move onto better things. It will make you damn strong. Like, really strong. Stronger than you'd be able to do with your average bodybuilding or weightlifting plan. But it's not good for building any other type of athleticism.

So if you're new or relatively new to the weightlifting game, Starting Strength is fantastic. Once you plateau on that, you'll want to decide where you want your fitness journey to go.

On Masculinity, Part 2

In my last post about masculinity, I warned about the left's reluctance to have a conversation on masculinity, saying:

 This needs to be said, because the right is having this conversation, and if I, a 37 year old feminist man is wondering what it means to be a man without toxic masculinity, I can guarantee that there's 17 year old boys that are asking themselves that. And if Roosh V, Jordan Peterson, and the Proud Boys are the only ones willing to have this conversation, we're going to have another generation of misogynistic, angry, and mentally unhealthy men to contend with.

I said that nearly a year ago, and since then, I've seen the right all too willing to have that conversation. Except, something has changed in that time. And I'm downright mad about it.

A little over a week ago, this pic of a right-wing nutjob by the name of Jacob Wohl started making the rounds on Leftbook:

I think a certain part of me snapped while reading that. Here I am, a 38 year old veteran of two wars, a past member of the United States Army, a man who lifts weights and shoots guns on the regular, who can pound back any liquor that you put in front of him, and this 90 pound pipsqueak has the fucking nerve to lecture me on masculinity?!

Hello, all of the right! Is this your champion? Come pick up your kid from the Wal-Mart service desk!

I did some research on Wohl, and it turns out that he just turned 21 this year. That means that he was just 11 years old in 2009 when I just started facing the Great Recession, and only 8 years old when I returned from Iraq. This fucking child is going to try to lecture me on manliness? LOL!

I know I posted an entry on the need for the left to start talking about masculinity or the right will, but so far the right's champions are fucking lacking in masculinity. I'm mad as hell about this, so I'm going to drag a few of the right's leaders on the subject.

This leads me to the right's next two heroes of masculinity, Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. Let's start with the first guy.

Are you kidding me? This is the guy that became famous because he was scared of transgender people, who wrote a book telling boys how to act like men, and he sounds like Ned fucking Flanders when he speaks:

I don't need to take lessons on masculinity from Ned Flanders.

Recently, it became revealed that Peterson had started a diet in which he only eats meat to prove his manliness. For most of us, we know that that's just compensating. Really masculine guys don't need to say that we only eat meat (we don't, vegetables are plenty healthy). Those that claim to do so, we know that they're just scared of us seeing them for the lack of masculinity that they have.

That leaves us with this last asshole. Ben fucking Shapiro.

Look, if I'm ever going to take lessons on masculinity from someone, it's not going to be from someone that argues for a living, and then cries when someone tries to get physical with them. Ben Shapiro wrote an article in 2017 on masculinity in which he said:

But in their effort to eradicate the destructive male tendency, the Left has pushed emasculation as a solution. While they champion the notion that women can do anything they set their minds to (true!), they simultaneously castigate men as the barriers to progress and masculinity as a condition to be avoided. The goal of the Left, therefore, becomes to train boys not to become men. Instead, boys should be feminized; they should never be encouraged to “be a man.” That’s too pressure-filled, too nasty, too mean.

We really haven't. Seriously. I'm a male strong af feminist. AMA, and I'll tell you that I don't push emasculation on anyone.

But Ben Shapiro really isn't someone that should be pushing the ideas of masculinity on anyone. He's a tiny, weak man who writes articles and gives arguments instead of providing examples of what a masculine man would look like. He can't do it because he's a tiny candy ass that doesn't lift. I bet he doesn't even know how to use a charcoal grill. He's not a man. He's a boy in his 30s.

I will write another article on masculinity eventually in which I talk about wholesome masculinity; what it means to be a strong "manly man" without having to be an asshole. But for now, I just really had to call this bullshit out. I'm damn tired of the right raising up as their champions of masculinity those that I can rip apart like paper. If I can tear you in two, I sure as fuck don't want to hear your definitions on masculinity and manliness. Join a gym, assholes.