Music and books are key tools for me to processs my emotions
My wife and daughters get so much joy from Taylor's music. I'm grateful for her work and the joy it brings them. I'm not a Swiftie but I'm Swiftie adjacent 😎
So, I'm a woman who does not care for Taylor Swift at all; I do not find that her lyrics mean anything to me. But my husband (who does sometimes listen to Swift, and also Alanis Morrisette whom I also don't care for) and my two sons talked about your tweet at great length after you tweeted it. It made for very interesting household discussion. I would like to impinge on your hospitality in order to distill for you what we think: we think there is not *one* Taylor Swift for men because there are so many. I've personally been at many a punk show where men were screaming the lyrics along and apparently finding it very cathartic. But if you don't like punk, as a man, it might be Linkin Park for you or Wu-Tang or Creedence. There are also sports of all kinds and medieval swordfighting and battle re-enactment and Warhammer and Dune/LOTR, and various subcultures of car and motorbike racing: a cathartic hobby for every type of man. Men are not expected to be all the same and be easily summed up by one, and only one, mega artist to represent all of them. Men have a great surfeit of media and activities made for them, and women have a paucity, much of which is also made by men and from men's perspectives (e.g., boy band love songs). It's why we don't ask the question of why there isn't an equivalent to A Room of One's Own for men; such a book would not be necessary. As my husband is fond of saying, external validation is like money: it's easy to say you don't care about it when you already have enough of it.
All the male musicians I can think of are kind of out of the spotlight now: Bruce Springsteen, U2, Sting. Those guys articulated deep things that few of us blokes ever could. They perfectly embodied our constant seeking after that elusive something we couldn't even define, the constant fight against humiliation and despair that men face every day. Alas, these guys are now all in the rear-view mirror and there's not really anyone to replace them. Those who have tried to replace them are awful substitutes like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, the toxic patriarchal cultists who really don't understand the things that men long for and struggle with. It's pretty f%$#ing bleak out there for guys.
The Court TV docuseries OJ25 (2020) is the best and most truthful account of the trial.
2016 Vulture interview with juror Sheila Woods:
I guess maybe black people cheering was less about O.J. and more about the politics of the LAPD at the time, police brutality. A lot of their catharsis was bigger than O.J. I can understand that. But at the end of the day, two people were murdered.
I think most people thought we based our decision on race. Race never came up in the topic of our deliberation, or even how the LAPD treated black people.
Like, regarding Fuhrman, none of his comments really …
The thing with Fuhrman was once his credibility was shot, you really could discount anything he said. He was definitely a liar — he lied on the stand — and when he came back to the court, he took the fifth on everything. Why would you trust anything he said? He was the detective that found all this evidence: the blood on the Bronco, on the back fence, on the glove … all of that created reasonable doubt.
Was there a moment in particular during the trial that really swayed your decision towards reasonable doubt?
Yeah, when they started talking about the blood evidence. There was, like, a milliliter of blood they couldn’t account for. And they found blood on the back fence of Nicole’s condo, and that particular blood also had the additive in there. That additive is only found in [a test tube of blood], so why would the blood sample on that back fence contain that additive unless somebody took the blood from the test tube and placed it there?
Do you think O.J. was framed?
I don’t know if he was necessarily framed. I think O.J. may know something about what happened, but I just don’t think he did it. I think it was more than one person, just because of the way she was killed. I don’t know how he could have just left that bloody scene — because it was bloody — and got back into his Bronco and not have it filled with blood. And then go back home and go in the front door, up the stairs to his bedroom … That carpet was snow white in his house. He should have blood all over him or bruises because Ron Goldman was definitely fighting for his life. He had defensive cuts on his shoes and on his hands.
O.J. only had that little cut on his finger. If [Goldman] was kicking to death, you would think that the killer would have gotten some bruises on his body. They showed us photos of O.J. with just his underwear just two days after, and he had no bruises or anything on his body.
We (the men) don't have a voice for our communal inner emotional lives because we don't share our inner emotional lives and a lot of the time we do our best to bury our inner emotional lives.
The ones we are hiding our feelings from most are ourselves, and we are the ones policing ourselves. The boys and men who replied with "Men don’t look to others to find their purpose, we act on logic and independently of how others feel” etc. are fooling themselves but not the rest of us. I'm sure you got a fair dose of "I don't need anyone and I don't need emotional connection and I'm fine."
I have lived in that state (for many years) and escaped it, so what I am here to report from the other side is: the men who say that _really do believe it_. They're not saying it to you to help maintain a brave face against a truth that impedes on their lives. That truth is *completely buried*.
I think that's correct. This is a thing we (men) have done to ourselves, and it will get better when we change our own culture. It's not something that men need women to fix for us.
I do think women can be supportive by:
- Being patient with men who are trying to reconnect with themselves. It takes a lot of time and effort and isn't something you can learn in a day. There's a lot of unlearning to be done.
- Not reinforce our existing (crappy) norms by policing male emotional behavior. We lock ourselves down out of *fear* and for heterosexual men, "fear of humiliation by women who I want to be attractive to" looms large.
There are men talking about this. I liked this TED talk:
because the "male emotional funnel" (e.g. how all things are transmuted into anger) kind of jams a wedge into the door of men's emotional lives so it can't be slammed shut completely, and could perhaps be pried open bit by bit.
I think that (in general!) most women are patient with their spouses, buy books on how to connect with them, read content on how to connect with them, etc. But it comes down to men also making the effort, and many unfortunately don't.
Like a few others have mentioned, Bruce Springsteen and Bono give voice to the interior lives of men. Born to Run, for example, evokes the longing for escape that so many men feel. It’s funny, I’ve often wondered who can take up the mantle of Springsteen for a younger generation, and I can’t think of anyone. We need a talented songwriter who can speak honestly of the challenges that men face.
“Let’s not be naive. It will also always be a part of pop culture because we live in a racist, white supremacist society. White America thinks that it is fine that they murder black people all day every day and get away with it. But this is the first high profile case we ever really saw where a black person (allegedly) murdered a white person and got away with it.
Make no mistake. They don’t give a flying fµck about Nicole Brown and neither do I. White women like her get abused and murdered every day by their own people. Nobody would still be talking about this case with such fervour if the racial element didn’t exist. Maybe when they care this much about black people getting murdered, I will have some fucks to give.”
“I don’t want to hear about all the mistakes the prosecution made. I want to know how he killed two people without a bruise, scratch or cut on his body.
How did he managed to rush home in his bronco and only have two drops of blood in/on the car?
How did he manage to have a cut on his hand but not on the glove?
Lastly, how did he managed to do all that stabbing and not manage any cuts to the glove?
Oh and manage to pull all of this off, and catch a flight. How?
This would better help me understand the “miscarriage of justice” everyone purports to have occurred.”
My personal (gay 26M) Taylor is Twenty One Pilots, and also K.Flay (who is a woman) ❤️🧡💛🤍🖤💜
They say so many of my feelings and thoughts in their music
U2 all my life
The band called "Typhoon"
Early Dave Matthews
Glenn Hansard
Music and books are key tools for me to processs my emotions
My wife and daughters get so much joy from Taylor's music. I'm grateful for her work and the joy it brings them. I'm not a Swiftie but I'm Swiftie adjacent 😎
So, I'm a woman who does not care for Taylor Swift at all; I do not find that her lyrics mean anything to me. But my husband (who does sometimes listen to Swift, and also Alanis Morrisette whom I also don't care for) and my two sons talked about your tweet at great length after you tweeted it. It made for very interesting household discussion. I would like to impinge on your hospitality in order to distill for you what we think: we think there is not *one* Taylor Swift for men because there are so many. I've personally been at many a punk show where men were screaming the lyrics along and apparently finding it very cathartic. But if you don't like punk, as a man, it might be Linkin Park for you or Wu-Tang or Creedence. There are also sports of all kinds and medieval swordfighting and battle re-enactment and Warhammer and Dune/LOTR, and various subcultures of car and motorbike racing: a cathartic hobby for every type of man. Men are not expected to be all the same and be easily summed up by one, and only one, mega artist to represent all of them. Men have a great surfeit of media and activities made for them, and women have a paucity, much of which is also made by men and from men's perspectives (e.g., boy band love songs). It's why we don't ask the question of why there isn't an equivalent to A Room of One's Own for men; such a book would not be necessary. As my husband is fond of saying, external validation is like money: it's easy to say you don't care about it when you already have enough of it.
Been waiting for this post, Emily 🫶🏻
i hope you enjoyed it!
All the male musicians I can think of are kind of out of the spotlight now: Bruce Springsteen, U2, Sting. Those guys articulated deep things that few of us blokes ever could. They perfectly embodied our constant seeking after that elusive something we couldn't even define, the constant fight against humiliation and despair that men face every day. Alas, these guys are now all in the rear-view mirror and there's not really anyone to replace them. Those who have tried to replace them are awful substitutes like Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson, the toxic patriarchal cultists who really don't understand the things that men long for and struggle with. It's pretty f%$#ing bleak out there for guys.
The Court TV docuseries OJ25 (2020) is the best and most truthful account of the trial.
2016 Vulture interview with juror Sheila Woods:
I guess maybe black people cheering was less about O.J. and more about the politics of the LAPD at the time, police brutality. A lot of their catharsis was bigger than O.J. I can understand that. But at the end of the day, two people were murdered.
I think most people thought we based our decision on race. Race never came up in the topic of our deliberation, or even how the LAPD treated black people.
Like, regarding Fuhrman, none of his comments really …
The thing with Fuhrman was once his credibility was shot, you really could discount anything he said. He was definitely a liar — he lied on the stand — and when he came back to the court, he took the fifth on everything. Why would you trust anything he said? He was the detective that found all this evidence: the blood on the Bronco, on the back fence, on the glove … all of that created reasonable doubt.
Was there a moment in particular during the trial that really swayed your decision towards reasonable doubt?
Yeah, when they started talking about the blood evidence. There was, like, a milliliter of blood they couldn’t account for. And they found blood on the back fence of Nicole’s condo, and that particular blood also had the additive in there. That additive is only found in [a test tube of blood], so why would the blood sample on that back fence contain that additive unless somebody took the blood from the test tube and placed it there?
Do you think O.J. was framed?
I don’t know if he was necessarily framed. I think O.J. may know something about what happened, but I just don’t think he did it. I think it was more than one person, just because of the way she was killed. I don’t know how he could have just left that bloody scene — because it was bloody — and got back into his Bronco and not have it filled with blood. And then go back home and go in the front door, up the stairs to his bedroom … That carpet was snow white in his house. He should have blood all over him or bruises because Ron Goldman was definitely fighting for his life. He had defensive cuts on his shoes and on his hands.
O.J. only had that little cut on his finger. If [Goldman] was kicking to death, you would think that the killer would have gotten some bruises on his body. They showed us photos of O.J. with just his underwear just two days after, and he had no bruises or anything on his body.
We (the men) don't have a voice for our communal inner emotional lives because we don't share our inner emotional lives and a lot of the time we do our best to bury our inner emotional lives.
The ones we are hiding our feelings from most are ourselves, and we are the ones policing ourselves. The boys and men who replied with "Men don’t look to others to find their purpose, we act on logic and independently of how others feel” etc. are fooling themselves but not the rest of us. I'm sure you got a fair dose of "I don't need anyone and I don't need emotional connection and I'm fine."
I have lived in that state (for many years) and escaped it, so what I am here to report from the other side is: the men who say that _really do believe it_. They're not saying it to you to help maintain a brave face against a truth that impedes on their lives. That truth is *completely buried*.
It's a real bummer tbh, and it doesn't sound like there's much women can do to fix it on an individual level.
I think that's correct. This is a thing we (men) have done to ourselves, and it will get better when we change our own culture. It's not something that men need women to fix for us.
I do think women can be supportive by:
- Being patient with men who are trying to reconnect with themselves. It takes a lot of time and effort and isn't something you can learn in a day. There's a lot of unlearning to be done.
- Not reinforce our existing (crappy) norms by policing male emotional behavior. We lock ourselves down out of *fear* and for heterosexual men, "fear of humiliation by women who I want to be attractive to" looms large.
There are men talking about this. I liked this TED talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdnjqEoiXA
because the "male emotional funnel" (e.g. how all things are transmuted into anger) kind of jams a wedge into the door of men's emotional lives so it can't be slammed shut completely, and could perhaps be pried open bit by bit.
I think that (in general!) most women are patient with their spouses, buy books on how to connect with them, read content on how to connect with them, etc. But it comes down to men also making the effort, and many unfortunately don't.
Like a few others have mentioned, Bruce Springsteen and Bono give voice to the interior lives of men. Born to Run, for example, evokes the longing for escape that so many men feel. It’s funny, I’ve often wondered who can take up the mantle of Springsteen for a younger generation, and I can’t think of anyone. We need a talented songwriter who can speak honestly of the challenges that men face.
M
To. ,-dq
You should be shot in the balls for this
juice wlrd
Comments from an African American forum:
“Let’s not be naive. It will also always be a part of pop culture because we live in a racist, white supremacist society. White America thinks that it is fine that they murder black people all day every day and get away with it. But this is the first high profile case we ever really saw where a black person (allegedly) murdered a white person and got away with it.
Make no mistake. They don’t give a flying fµck about Nicole Brown and neither do I. White women like her get abused and murdered every day by their own people. Nobody would still be talking about this case with such fervour if the racial element didn’t exist. Maybe when they care this much about black people getting murdered, I will have some fucks to give.”
“I don’t want to hear about all the mistakes the prosecution made. I want to know how he killed two people without a bruise, scratch or cut on his body.
How did he managed to rush home in his bronco and only have two drops of blood in/on the car?
How did he manage to have a cut on his hand but not on the glove?
Lastly, how did he managed to do all that stabbing and not manage any cuts to the glove?
Oh and manage to pull all of this off, and catch a flight. How?
This would better help me understand the “miscarriage of justice” everyone purports to have occurred.”
https://open.spotify.com/track/47VRu0REA5kKiSGTgm3Pcb?si=ki2M2kkmTe-leaxGUs2dMA
Sting. But as you point out he is also not of the current music scene.
okay i love this comment! i did think that sports was the best answer, but you gave it even more context.