Young US men are joining Russian churches promising 'absurd levels of manliness'
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30q5l8d4lroOpen linkView original on lemm.ee478
Comments143https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30q5l8d4lroOpen linkView original on lemm.ee
I feel bad for the men that get indoctrinated by this guy. Just like a lot of people that get taken in by religion, these people are looking for some understanding or change that really can only come from within but the church is promising that religion is the only way.
These men don’t understand that there is no black and white/ universal version of “manliness”. We all have to decide for ourselves what “being a man” means.
I go with a simple definition: as someone who was born a man and continues to identify as a man, my feeling is that, anything I do is “manly” because I am a man. Doesn’t matter if it’s sewing, hunting, or eating soup (which the preacher in the article seems to think is not manly)
Being a man is eating soup and being able to say "fuck you, I like soup."
And also being so confident, you don't need another man to tell you you're a big strong masculine man.
In college a woman remarked "I don't know many men manly enough to wear a pink shirt."
She hasn't seen rugby players in the south of France.
We need feminism but for men (which is a thing that kinda already exists but we need more)
In my opinion, as a man, feminism is for men. Feminism, at its core, is saying that strict gender roles are made up, and anyone is capable of being anyone. Men had a lot of freedom to do this already, though obviously a lot of things weren't allowed, like homosexuality, playing with other gendered clothing, or "queerness" in general as it used to be called.
A proper understanding of feminism I think would lead us all to recognizing we are free from the shackles of tradition, though the word makes a lot of people think it's only helping women, at the expense of men.
this is a nice way to look at it - but feminism isn't just a vague ideology, it's also a social movement that is designed for women and populated by women. men are at best allies in that space, and at worst viewed as the enemy, othered, and excluded.
i'll gladly id as a feminist ideologically but i'm not foolish enough to think i'd be welcomed with open arms at a feminist rally. tolerated? sure. but not part of the group.
I've been welcomed in feminist spaces. Don't try to take center stage or make it about you and you'll be fine in the vast majority of them.
if you truly believe that, it says more about your own social awareness than it does about the feminist movement.
I don't think you're correct, and I've felt welcomed around feminists (though I've never been in explicit feminist spaces). Even if you are though, it doesn't detract from my point. The goals of feminism help men too. If followed to completion, it removes gender roles from being strictly necessary. It allows people to be what they want.
Feminism is part of a larger movement, hence intersectional feminism. Even that though is part of a larger movement of liberalizing society to accept all people for who they are. Yes, there are also some groups who use feminism to exclude other people (TERFs, for example), but usually if people agree women should be allowed in roles normally reserved for men then gender norms aren't real and are necessarily oppressive, for everyone.
nothing that you've said here contradicts my point and you're demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of intersectionalism.
I don't know if I like soup. The only soup I ever had was cambells, and it was awful. But then everybody tells me that cambells is the bottom of the barrel scum of the soup world.
So maybe I just don't like cambells.
Campbell's classic chicken noodle hits different when you're recovering from a bout of norovirus.
But generally yes, canned soup is pretty bad. There's a ton of soups across most global cuisines, so many so that it's borderline unbelievable that you've never tried a single one.
Hey, you're like me. I HATED soup for decades. Can soup BS was disgusting. Soup on the side of my burger, gross.
Then I went to a real soup place. Like all they did was soup. Like professional level soup that's $8 a cup or $12 a bowl.
My god - it was incredible. I now understand the Soup Nazi bit of why anybody would tolerate that behavior.
I went from clean shaven anti-souper to a god damn soup coke fiend.
Pretty much how I see it. Being "a man" is being comfortable with who you are and not being scared about what others think. Putting a dress on and having "Tea" with your kids during playtime is just as manly as playing football. (And looks hilarious when you're a 6 ft tall biker looking dude with a beard and hairy legs like me.)
Reminds me of a scene in the Lone Wolf and Cub comic I read when I was younger.
I don't remember all the details, but there's a panel where the two most dangerous samurai in all of feudal Japan are camping out before a fight, and some rando is astonished that these high bred, noble, elite warriors are cooking their own rice. One of the two rips into him about self-sufficiency and how there aren't always servants to do your cooking for you, and what kind of warrior would just starve when he has no servants around?
And what does the article say? Eating soup isn't manly? WTF? I'd like to hear his rationale for that one, but I'd probably lose a couple of IQ points reading it.
Toxic masculinity is full of shaming men for random things that are arbitrarily defined as not manly. Nothing is more dangerous for a Man than not conforming to masculine gender norms
This kind of insecurity is intentionally cultivated for the purpose of being exploited. If you can make a man afraid of whatever kind of food you name by declaring it unmanly you can control him.
It's in the 12 commandments, along with though shaft not draw.liquid with a straw because it looketh like yon penis.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/house-republican-says-he-doesn-t-use-straws-that-s-what-the-women-in-my-house-do/ar-AA1Fsx5r
I think men are going to have to define foe themselves what secure masculinity looks like and how to achieve it.
Having women friends is generally a good vaccine against this nonsense
Pro tip: if you're worried about your manliness you should go to therapy not to church.
Church is (almost) free therapy though, problem is that some church leaders want to use believers for their own benefit
Most organized religion is psychological abuse
Probably would also talk hours with amazingly attractive women while in therapy too
I mean, there are ethical boundaries, but already more than a guy trying to find strength outside likely has
Watching gay porn is twice as manly as watching straight porn.
Nothing gayer than having sex with women.
I'm actually double straight because I was straight when I was supposedly a guy and now I'm a woman and still straight. checkmate, low T beta cucks bad to the bone guitar riff
sounds like a porno theme.
that's like 3 layers of scam: church, manliness and absurd levels
Oh no ... don't do that. Us lefties would hate if all our manly men left us to deal with these Haitians eating our dogs alone. That would trigger and own us so much.
Zero sympathy. Zero.
They're probably just hunting for a construct. I'm sure if anyone actually does move to Russia they'll just be given a gun and told to shoot ukrainians
I really wish Russia would get it's shit together. It's a beautiful country that just goes on forever. I've met Russians that are just awesome. I would love to go on vacation there, or even retire there one day. Buy a little dacha on a river next to some sleepy little village. But the politics, fucking Putin, fucking oligarchs....
The concerning part is the US is starting to look more and more like Russia in all the bad ways
I don't think it's starting, I think the mask is just slipping off. Russia used violence, America has been using financial violence...
Has there ever been a period in history where Russians haven't been oppressed by their government or the church?
1991-1993, 1906-1914
While the dissolution of the Soviet union was great for the world, you would not have wanted to be a citizen of Russia living in Russia at that point. I have family members who still live there and did then and it was utter chaos and also created local power vacuums that got filled with local mafia style gangs or local police who also just acted like local mafia style gangs.
But yeah, as far as the federal government not shitting in Russians, that would be a proper window of time
Well, now it's not utter chaos because one gang won.
Imagine being deranged enough to actually take that deal, damn
15 dumbasses in East Bumblefuck: *do something*
BBC: A NEW GLOBAL TREND?!?!
I wish these shitbricks were actually fleeing to Russia at the levels this article is trying to portray.
It's propaganda. We're trying to make it look like every man's reaction because they want to years argumentum ad popularum try and make it so
JFC if someone is this worried about their "manliness" or lack thereof, there's really no hope for them.
Are you talking about me? How do you know? It's pure rumors anyway! I'm extremely manly, OK? My car makes a lot of noise, so yeah. I'm heterosexual btw
And yet you're describing a wide percentage of young men
It's a vocal minority that is trying to appear bigger than they are with propaganda
That propaganda helped Trump win the Gen Z vote. I wouldn't say it's a minority when factoring only youth. Plus there are plenty of middle aged and older men that have fragile masculinity.
Only 75, per the article. No one writes articles like this about women getting into Wicca even though it's hundreds of times more common
What’s wrong with Wicca? The women I’ve met who were into that were very nice and a ton of fun and the “worst” of them were just delightfully odd. Unlike the strutting asshole men which the OP concerns who are all up in themselves and their supposed “masculinity”. FWIW, I was an athlete when I was young and met and defeated more than my share of these jackasses. Lost to few too. But that’s sport. And unlike those guys, I learned the right lessons from sport. They never will.
Having once been a young man, there’s a period where one questions their role in the world and accordingly acts the fool before figuring it out. I had an upbringing with more than adequate parents and education that helped me through that period without me making an ass of myself often enough to be singled out as being an exceptional ass. I am lucky. Some people aren’t and they act out. And those that are exceptional asees act out and are really self important and noisy. Mostly just to hear themselves and drown out the voices of those who are telling them to stop being such an ass.
Yeah I don't really give a shit about their concept of the male gender. Apparently it involves fathering many children, so that Russia doesn't run out of soldiers for the hundred years of glorious holy war it will take to defeat NATO and save the world. If you really want to reach the ultimate heights of manliness, try wearing eye shadow, practicing embroidery, and watching Hello Kitty while remaining confidently masculine.
By the way, Ciril's deranged proclamations of "holy war" are ridiculous. Ukraine is also an Orthodox country.
Putin needs an army to meet his growing desires for power
If you have to be told how to be "manly" then you
probablydefinitely aren't whatever the fuck you even think "manly" is.Manliness has always been a scam.
Source: me having grown up in the Balkans where manliness tends to reign supreme as a life goal
Manliness is an ideal intentionally placed out of reach. An insecurity to be exploited
Only if your conception of masculinity is stupid. There are plenty of manly role models out there, we've just largely decided not to pay them much attention.
The manliest man I can think of: Norm Abram. His achievements:
Made a living wearing flannel shirts
Excellent beard
Distinguished service award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology
Built a sailboat
said "Not roman orgy, roman ogee" on national television and got away with it
If you step out of line with what is considered acceptable (and The most toxic insecure men incent things to be afraid of out of nowhere) you get harshly punished. Learned this the hard way growing up trans
Trans man or woman?
In my experience, transfemme although trans men have had interesting things to say on the topic
I guess you got off the hamster wheel at some point. I imagine trans men being faced with this stuff.. That's not to say there's no toxic stuff on the femme side of things.
Oh yeah we got problems on the girl's side bit at least women aren't afraid soybeans is gonna take away their masculinity
Word
It's stupid on so many levels.
First off, it implies there is some sort or series of social masculine trait(s) that are in some way desirable. It gets even more stupid when this turns into expectations, like "you're a man, you should X".
It's kind of sad but not unsurprising that there's an industry trying to capitalize on the resulting insecurities.
I think it was a positive aspect of the MGTOW idea to reject these expectations and do your own thing.
I think mgtow pretty quickly became an incel movement, at least from what I saw on reddit.
That doesn't seem surprising. They both are misogyny plus not getting laid
Well like the other commenter said, it was ostensibly about guys just focusing on themselves and breaking out of the toxic trait of defining yourself by whoever is on your arm. That in itself is fine, and hell, even helpful. The issue is that it naturally attracted incels trying to be the aloof sigma that's too cool to bother with silly women.
This is a good movie, if you don't mind the blood and gore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Northman
It follows the life story of a manly man... not something many would truly pursue for themselves even if they had the opportunity.
I was always told to be manly was to show up for those that you love. To be reliable and useful on a day to day basis. All this nonsense about dominance and "independence" is just ridiculous.
IF you can be shamed into going a Russian church to be manly, you are headed in the opposite direction from the path to manliness - you become a pussy who can only follow.
So then it's womanly to follow? Sounds sexist and lame to me.
I didn't come here for MORE toxic masculinity and gender shaming. Sort your shit out.
Why does random lemmy user care what you came here for?
I, for one, would like to congratulate whoever conceived this psy-op to get conservatives to move from Texas to Russia. Inspired stuff.
Always fun witnessing another round of people arguing over whose church is dumber.
It's a hoot. These Ultra Incels think the Orthodox Church is going to hand them a submissive woman. Sounds like their new church is a sausage fest up in there.
probably thier excuse to turn each other on.
It's more like we're going to get the buy girls because they won't want to date these guys
So, all these "manly" men need a fluffer to make them more "manly"?
I find the obsession with being super manly that some types have to be highly suspicious. Seems they are either very insecure or seeking manliness out of a closeted gay urge. Because it's just not the kind of thing you need to go get help with. Performant manliness is still a performance.
So fragile, so scared. They are so terrified of being perceived as lesser men that they resort to this crap. It's just that you could only feel sorry for them... if they didn't suck, that is.
Irons can burn in hell. Either steamer or dryer, but ironing legitimately sucks. It somehow makes my shirt more wrinkly than I started.
Sounds like you're too manly for your iron. Try being a bit gayer next time.
Try fucking your shirt. Nothing manlier than a man manhandling a piece of rag.
It's also Russian for bonus points. Masculinity is defined as being the oppressor class and thus can never attain stability
The army needs to look good?
While all of you meme and joke and minimize the threat, a rising wave of disaffected boys has grown up under the most toxic of social environments and still NONE of you take this seriously.
When you see the world in ten years time you will kick yourselves for doing nothing to stop it now in its infancy
Stop what? Stop it how? Suddenly make every parent in the US loving, compassionate, and effective at raising their children? Or maybe we could just fix the economy? One of those is bound to work, easy!
There is no easy solution and the fact your dismissive and snarky reply is so upvoted is kind of proof that there is no fixing the situation anymore
The hard solution is to first deplatform their demagogues but since they make their media platforms ridiculous money, it isn't changing
There's also a significant possibility we simply won't be having real elections in America anymore so the chance to get progressive people in office to curb this is over
If deplatforming and political action by the ruling class are the main methods to stop this crisis, then none of us had any power to do anything in the first place
It's no wonder no one takes this seriously: the epidemic of disaffected young men is only a symptom of greater societal issues and can't effectively be addressed on its own. That's also what I was getting at with my comment
You got all mad for people posting no real solution and when given the chance, offered no real solution
I literally gave the solution in the comment you replied to
I'm sure you think you did
But how can I deplatform the demagogues? It seems impossible. What you proposed sounds nearly as unattainable as the snarky "Suddenly make every parent in the US loving, compassionate, and effective at raising their children".
I'm not in charge of the demagogues platforms. The platforms have no need to respond to social protests since the demagogues make them money. The majority of moderate people will not ever care enough to stop using a platform that supports evil. Tons of people still use facebook even when they KNOW about all those scandals, because they feel like it's just not a big problem, and ultimately because they just like using facebook.
Your proposed solution just feels a lot like the how to draw an owl meme.
The answer is violence and guns.
I have no counter argument to this
At this point, anything start rolling, it's already too late to stop it. Nothing we can do but brace for the worst.
His Grindr nickname is probably "FatherBottom."
it's funny how I'm the boogeyman for all these supposedly manly men.
He looks like he would be handy on a trip through Ravenholm.
Says the man in the nun outfit
Can't judge by that - Rasputin wore the same outfit and he was a legendary horndog.
Can you really say you're the manliest men if you're not comfortable wearing women's clothing?
Yeah, a lot of this "manliness" sure sounds a lot like just having a great deal of things to worry about emasculating you.
Nothing more manly and confident than having to constantly validate your manlyness
I know at least few Russian-speaking people where I live (Kraków) who tried to convert me to their church. One Uber (or Bolt idk) driver, when I told him that I am interested in practicing Russian and Ukrainian wanted me to come to some church to read a Bible or something, and other time one friend of mine wanted me to come to (I think) Orthodox church to meet some women or something like that.
I think I make an error, when I tell people I am agnostic, it's like a sign for other people to try convert me, and I don't really want to argue with them.
"Convert Theodore" looks a hell lot like the hat-tipping M'lady mister
Welp, that alone says a lot.
Hahahaha, no. The only normal is humans wanting to form groups with like-minded people and, sometimes, making that group appear very different from another group, aka schismogenesis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schismogenesis
Eeehh, given that the orthodox christians are likely closer to the root christianity than the western christians, that is not "too wrong" to assume, I guess. Then again, the orthodox did hunt down several "heretical" christians, some of which likely were "more christian" than them.
What's more manly than never letting your dick touch a woman's estrogen filled vagina? Nothing, except maybe letting another man inject his testosterone into your anus with his dick.
Very interesting, but also very lazy reporting. They didn't ask Ukrainian-American Orthodox for example what they think. Ciril's "holy war" screetches are insane, when Ukraine is also an Orthodox country.
There are thousands upon thousands of Orthodox Christians in the US, yet the only non-Russian-aligned perspective in the whole article is this:
(RIP Elissa's inbox btw)
It's annoying to see the crazies monopolize the report. This is also American Orthodoxy:
So manly that they'll get deep inside you
With a manly helping hand, they beat each other's hard problems.
Georgetown Texas. No wonder
Texas, you say
I hope they are all dumb enough to move there for it.
Don't dump your toxic waste there, they will just end on the battlefield being a headache for ukrainians. But if you do, the US could make that up with loads of depleted uranium rounds for ukraine - that doubles the amount of waste you can get rid of, and since the russians increasingly send their troops out with old ladas instead of tanks and body armor, the DU ammo is more useful.
A younger brother of mine just baptized into an Orthodox church nearby. Is this the same thing?
The Russian Orthodox are in schism from most other Orthodox. You'll need to get more information to get an answer to that question.
Russian Orthodoxy was established from it's foundation as a fake religion that exists to keep political power in Moscow. This is very different from other Orthodox.
Sort if like Chruch of England schism
The roots were more substantial. The political leadership in Moscow took offense when their religious leaders in Kiev (Kiev was the religious capital of their brand of Orthodoxy) went to the Council of Florence and agreed to union with the Catholic Church. Corrupt secular leadership in Moscow feared accountability to anyone so they deposed the Metropolitan (a type of bishop) of Kiev and then ordered the bishops of Moscow to elect their own patriarch. That's how it got started. And the Russian Orthodox are insane. Many go so far as to say that the Catholic Church has no valid sacraments at all. They frequently get in the way of restoration of union between Rome and other Eastern Orthodox but I feel like we've hit a break point where others in the east have had enough. It is time to say "NO" to Moscow. Your political organization masquerading as a religion has done enough harm. Go to the pits of hell where you belong.
Not really. That was primarily because the king of England at the time (Henry VIII) wanted the freedom to divorce his wives and take new ones repeatedly - he literally asked the pope to annul his marriage and the pope told him no.
Well, he took that personally.
There's several. I don't know if the Greek Orthodox are doing the same machoism, but they're related
If your younger brother watches a lot of right wing rabbithole type content it's entirely possible that he's on the same pipeline, yes.
No
I've heard that Russian Orthodox churches in the USA are not what they are in Russia, and are actually fine because of being removed from the hierarchy and kinda marginal, but, eh, manliness is anyway not what Christianity is generally about.
And "traditions" are no more ancient than in a Catholic church they can find or an Assyrian or an Armenian one.
Anyway, those stereotypes. Russians are very masculine to be a country whose economy mainly consists of selling oil and gas and other resources, some tech sector due to remnants of Soviet education and building nuclear stations. With prison population rivaling that of the USA. That's an "/s".
EDIT: And the article author knows about Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox being different things, but misses the clue and thinks they are variations of the same. Eastern Orthodox and Catholic are united by being, as it's sometimes called, Chalcedonean Christianity. Oriental Orthodox is all that split at that point, but not earlier.
I originally thought
gymjim and protein but...So, slavery and rape?
I assume jebus is somehow involved?
Jesus was known for being a man
Still the same 2 dudes, I deliberately misleading you with that phrase and was referring to bicep circumference.
Ivan bros?
c/dumbesttimeline
Better use Jesus as a rolemodel than Andrew Tate
I think Jesus's teachings are hard to accept for some so instead they twist it around to support their views.
"Jesus wants Muslims to die"
ABSURDLY MANLY YOU SAY?
https://youtu.be/ojyz2GPjlTg