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Meet the College Kids Making 'Positive Masculinity' TikToks to Counter the Manosphere (www.rollingstone.com)

submitted 1 week ago by alyaza to c/humanities

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(archive.is link)

At the helm of the project is Adam Howard, a Colby professor and chair of its education department. Howard’s recent research has focused on elite all-boys institutions which he became interested in after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court despite allegations of sexual assault; one of the things Howard found was that sex education was almost entirely lacking at these institutions. While working with student researchers, he asked what the best way to disseminate their research findings would be. “They said TikTok,” Howard says. “The videos are providing really valuable information in really accessible ways.” Among that information: how to prioritize female sexual pleasure, what to do if you test positive for a sexually transmitted disease, and the difference between coercion and consent.

Sex Ed for Guys offers alternate programming. “Guys could be scrolling through their TikTok and Andrew Tate will pop up but as they scroll, maybe Sex Ed for Guys will pop up and it’ll start having them think a little bit differently,” says Christopher Maichin, 20, a junior at Colby. “I think the greatest part of it is that they are getting education without even knowing it. They’re watching a funny video but they’re learning about consent.” Howard says that the logic of disseminating his research findings on TikTok is two-fold: First, that’s where young people are (research shows 55 percent of TikTok users are under the age of 30) and second, it’s a way of offering a counter-narrative to other popular content. “They are learning what it means to be a man from Joe Rogan and the manosphere,” Howard says. “How can we provide a counter-narrative to that? How can we provide something different?”

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[–] flora_explora 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Not a Fan of "positive masculinity", but at this point I'm happy about any dude that takes a little step in the right direction... Manhood ultimately will have to die though

[–] alyaza 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Manhood ultimately will have to die though

bizarre take; i don't see why this is true or necessary at all

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah really. What does that even mean?

[–] alyaza 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

i'm not exactly a fan of gender roles or the nature of "manhood" or "masculinity" or gender expression generally myself and am supportive of their total de-emphasis, so my presumption is that the case for this is something like "manhood as a concept is so toxic and so intrinsic to the worldview that creates patriarchy and men oppressing themselves and others that we cannot create a better form of it, we can only get rid of it."

the problem is that this is almost exclusively the purview of radical feminism, and this was not productive for them historically (mostly it just took them very weird places, the SCUM manifesto being the most infamous manifestation of this). to say nothing of the fact that most radical feminism--and radical feminists--suck and have bad politics and analysis on queer issues in large part because of how that space of politics developed

[–] ranandtoldthat 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I hear that.

For a concurring perspective, I'm not a fan of gender roles either. But I can't imagine the way to solve the problems gender roles create is to somehow remove a related gender identity. Trying to repress a gender has never worked well, and I don't think repressing a masculine gender would be any different. Gender identity has existed for all of recorded human history, and even seems to have taken some form in prehistoric times (fertility idols and such). I think the way forward is to let a thousand flowers bloom and let anyone who wants to explore or define their own gender to do so.

[–] sqgl 2 points 6 days ago

Some stereotypes are natural (let's be real) but to only cater to them makes it seem like everyone else is wrong.

A way around this is to perhaps present the video along the lines of "if you are the kind of person who feels X in situation Y, consider expressing it respectfully by doing A, B or C" (where X is a stereotype)