I really enjoyed reading this. Like Violet says, it has synthesised a couple of trends we have seen recently around masculinity and climate denial in a very helpful way.
It also makes a positive start in trying to point out how narrow the capitalist patriarchy's vision is for what it means to be a man. As someone aiming to develop their capacity for direct action in the climate and activism space, I realise I need to reflect more on how my full male self can be best deployed. How quickly can masculinity be reclaimed from the forces that have unfairly painted it as only dominating, selfish and unaccountable?
As someone from a rural area of north-east England, farming and mining have been part of the fabric of my upbringing. It would be simplistic to say that farmers now and miners then had a single conception of fossil fuels and the logic of extracting or using them. But many farmers are trapped in Big Agriculture's petrochemical headlock, and the mining communities were abandoned by neoliberalism. The patriarchal propaganda machine ploughs on, and tragically it is those swimming in economic precarity who have the least luxury of expanding their conceptions of manhood.
James Rebanks in his book 'English Pastoral' presents the best examination of systems and masculinity in farming I have read recently and would recommend it to those seeking examples of men unsticking themselves from the zero-sum-game lies.
I really enjoyed this article, perhaps most because it offered me a name for the very thing I have long recognised and despised but had no idea what to refer to it as. So thank you to the author and to Cara Daggett for coining such an appropriate name.
I totally agree with most of it, but there is no such thing as "clean" or "renewable" energy when you look into it and consider the massive amount of mining needed to source the metals and other minerals and all the fossil fuels required to mine and manufacture and transport the equipment, plus even if it was truly clean and green, it's industrial civilisation which is causing overshoot on multiple levels (not only climate) that is the problem, powering that with a different form of energy would make little difference. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/there-is-no-next-economy?publication_id=1498475&post_id=192873022&isFreemail=true&r=6kope&triedRedirect=true
Agree agree agree except that the "power from heaven not hell" argument rubs me the wrong way... It subtly villainizes the earth all over again and continues to propagate the notion that earth and all her materiality is evil. Maybe this is addressed deeper in that literature, but as someone directly involved, maybe you can explain it, Andrew. All that said, that was the only thing that stood out to me as potentially regressive, lol, but I do love the ethos here and firmly believe that a stronger man is one who protects others, not just himself, and that ecomasculinity offers that in spades.
There’s a real problem when the people trying to define masculinity are all women. I believe every person cited in that article was female. Even the threats were female focused “men killing pregnant women” instead of the much more common problem of men killing themselves. This isn’t to say that the problems of certain forms of masculinity don’t affect women, but that it is centering women in a conversation about men.
Feminism needs to make space for men to lead on some questions of gender, which means it will need to elevate some male voices. That is a place it hasn’t gone before. This author is a fair start, but if Ms Plank and others want to have positive masculinity, they’re going to need to provide young men role models.
In any event, thanks for sharing and I’m glad that this conversation is under way.
Where are these young men role models and why is it still up to women to provide them? Also, the main author of this article is a man, does he not count? The us vs them is what's killing us.
It wasn’t an us vs them, but an appeal to what we on the left have been saying for a while - perspective and representation matters. Surely it must work here, too?
There quite a few role models if you’re willing to look. And they mostly keep their heads down because they’re often told to.
As an example, I’m a male climate voice that talks about masculinity, but your response was to dismiss my point.
It's always interesting to me to see how the media targets men in campaigns. The concept of he-coding climate change to involve more men is hilarious to me.
I really enjoyed reading this. Like Violet says, it has synthesised a couple of trends we have seen recently around masculinity and climate denial in a very helpful way.
It also makes a positive start in trying to point out how narrow the capitalist patriarchy's vision is for what it means to be a man. As someone aiming to develop their capacity for direct action in the climate and activism space, I realise I need to reflect more on how my full male self can be best deployed. How quickly can masculinity be reclaimed from the forces that have unfairly painted it as only dominating, selfish and unaccountable?
As someone from a rural area of north-east England, farming and mining have been part of the fabric of my upbringing. It would be simplistic to say that farmers now and miners then had a single conception of fossil fuels and the logic of extracting or using them. But many farmers are trapped in Big Agriculture's petrochemical headlock, and the mining communities were abandoned by neoliberalism. The patriarchal propaganda machine ploughs on, and tragically it is those swimming in economic precarity who have the least luxury of expanding their conceptions of manhood.
James Rebanks in his book 'English Pastoral' presents the best examination of systems and masculinity in farming I have read recently and would recommend it to those seeking examples of men unsticking themselves from the zero-sum-game lies.
This is so great, thank you!
I really enjoyed this article, perhaps most because it offered me a name for the very thing I have long recognised and despised but had no idea what to refer to it as. So thank you to the author and to Cara Daggett for coining such an appropriate name.
I just discovered the "rolling coal" is actually illegal! https://legalclarity.org/is-it-illegal-to-roll-coal-what-the-law-says/
I totally agree with most of it, but there is no such thing as "clean" or "renewable" energy when you look into it and consider the massive amount of mining needed to source the metals and other minerals and all the fossil fuels required to mine and manufacture and transport the equipment, plus even if it was truly clean and green, it's industrial civilisation which is causing overshoot on multiple levels (not only climate) that is the problem, powering that with a different form of energy would make little difference. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/there-is-no-next-economy?publication_id=1498475&post_id=192873022&isFreemail=true&r=6kope&triedRedirect=true
Agree agree agree except that the "power from heaven not hell" argument rubs me the wrong way... It subtly villainizes the earth all over again and continues to propagate the notion that earth and all her materiality is evil. Maybe this is addressed deeper in that literature, but as someone directly involved, maybe you can explain it, Andrew. All that said, that was the only thing that stood out to me as potentially regressive, lol, but I do love the ethos here and firmly believe that a stronger man is one who protects others, not just himself, and that ecomasculinity offers that in spades.
There’s a real problem when the people trying to define masculinity are all women. I believe every person cited in that article was female. Even the threats were female focused “men killing pregnant women” instead of the much more common problem of men killing themselves. This isn’t to say that the problems of certain forms of masculinity don’t affect women, but that it is centering women in a conversation about men.
Feminism needs to make space for men to lead on some questions of gender, which means it will need to elevate some male voices. That is a place it hasn’t gone before. This author is a fair start, but if Ms Plank and others want to have positive masculinity, they’re going to need to provide young men role models.
In any event, thanks for sharing and I’m glad that this conversation is under way.
Where are these young men role models and why is it still up to women to provide them? Also, the main author of this article is a man, does he not count? The us vs them is what's killing us.
It wasn’t an us vs them, but an appeal to what we on the left have been saying for a while - perspective and representation matters. Surely it must work here, too?
There quite a few role models if you’re willing to look. And they mostly keep their heads down because they’re often told to.
As an example, I’m a male climate voice that talks about masculinity, but your response was to dismiss my point.
If you’d like to hear my thoughts on it, I was interviewed about just this subject.
https://substack.com/@climatemike/note/c-218656476?r=qlgp7&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
It's always interesting to me to see how the media targets men in campaigns. The concept of he-coding climate change to involve more men is hilarious to me.