Masculine Weenieism

Why Weenies Think They're Manly, and Why it Matters

Weenie- 1: frankfurter, 2: penis, 3: nerd.

Wurst Wigs by Tup Wanders

Weenies solve problems with bluster and violence. Weenies believe that dressing up like a super hero is what makes a super hero. The modern American "tough guy" is a weenie, and I mourn true toughness.

How can I mourn toughness? I am a critic of masculinity. My blog is dedicated to the notion that masculinity is a rouse that compels men to alienate themselves in lives of violence while doing terrible things to the people they care for.

But true toughness has nothing to do with masculinity. Traditional masculinity is obsessed with looking tough at the expense of actually being tough.

True Toughness is a Virtue

Men and women who float below the condescending notice of traditional historians have spent millennia being tough. Whenever a traditional history book mentions the brave troops who died on the battlefield, it neglects the farmers who worked doggedly to make the food to feed the troops. Blacksmiths slaved in the heat to make weapons and cooking pots. Women cared for children everyday despite the weather or their own health. They cooked. They gardened and raised chickens. Trench diggers dug the roads. Stone cutters made the buildings. Millions of people showed the prosaic toughness requisite for a society to persevere.

Navy SEAL Training.
Photo by U.S. Navy.

One of feminism's great successes was in allowing women to adopt toughness without being outcasts. It brought women out of their gilded cage and down to the ground where they could have greater impact on the world. Before the movement, women who adapted to circumstance were lambasted as masculine, butch, or simply bitches. But adapting to circumstance is what makes people powerful.

Walking the line between adapting and stubbornly refusing to adapt is what makes people moral and yet consistent; strong and yet kind. It is the definition of toughness, and our modern view of "toughness" is strikingly lacking in it.

S.U.V.'s= Weenie-mobiles

Dodge Ram. Photo by Rojo.

What could be more "tough" than buying a huge tank-like S.U.V? Some people buy them because they want to be up above traffic. Some men want them to haul around stuff. Some men want to be able to go up dirt roads in the countryside. Contractors and farmers have legitimate needs for trucks. If your truck is completely filled and completely emptied two times a week or more, I have no gripe with you owning a truck. 

But if your truck goes through the car wash two times a week or more, you are a weenie. If you get to a steep muddy dirt road, and you opt to stay inside your car instead of hungrily hiking it, you are a weenie. If you drive a truck everyday of the year so that you can haul your fifth wheel to go camping, instead of camping in a tent and making do, you are a weenie. If you drive a truck because it's good in the snow, you are a weenie.

Doing without is what toughness is all about. Consuming and wasting less because we know that persisting through difficulty makes us stronger and happier is what toughness is all about. S.U.V.'s  and useless pickup trucks are about waste, decadence and squishiness. But somehow they have become aligned with modern masculine toughness, along with myriad other images of our weenie-tastic masculine culture.

Racing Bicycles

Hipsters and spandex-wearing lawyers on their day off have both taken to riding bicycles meant for racing. These bikes may be light, but they are not meant to be ridden on the roads.

A fixed-gear carbon-fiber track bike. Great on the track.
Weenie gear on the street. Photo by Escuela Virtual de Deportes

Carbon fiber, while strong, is brittle and shatters without any indication that it has developed a flaw, which is why bike racers always have two backup bikes in the cars behind them. Cleats are ridiculous, uncomfortable, and offer no benefit unless you train in them 30 hours a week or more. 

Fixed gear bicycles offer powerful, lightweight, friction-free drive trains, but they are not meant to stop or swerve safely, nor account for tired legs, or steep hills. Racing bikes are not adaptable. They cannot haul around a grocery bag safely, much less a child or two. Owning one and riding it on the weekend is fun. But riding one to work because it is lighter while carrying a backpack or messenger bag that weighs fifteen pounds is silly.

How are fixie-riding hipsters, and spandex-wearing lawyers weenies? Because both of these bikes are about looking durable, and adaptable, when in fact both of the bikes are far less durable and adaptable then your run-of-the-mill huffy from Walmart. Wearing the gear is about looking like a racer, looking tough, not being tough. If your goal is to look tough, and you sacrifice true toughness to get that look, you are as weenie-fabulous as Mitt Romney (p.s. Mitt Romney is a weenie).

Masculinity Makes Weenies of Men

Worksman Bikes make bikes that
are actually tough

Today's masculinity, like so much else in modern life, is about buying power. Masculinity has become a runway show of phallic power tools, cushy interiors, and ad-space-covered sporting goods. For eighty years, advertisers have been telling us that our gender can be bought, and we gratefully believe them.

Unfortunately, masculinity cannot be bought, and the more we buy to make us feel masculine, the more we realize that we are deficient. Masculinity is a myth, a chimera. It is unattainable and deeply unsatisfying. Soldiers and sports-figures who come close to it find themselves in lives of alienation and violence. But even they spend their lives attempting to prove their masculinity, because it can be lost in the blink of an eye. It is an infinite and driving motivator, which is why it is so useful to advertisers (and morality police).

Rivendell is another company that makes actually tough bikes.

The only way out is to reject the notion that masculinity can be attained at all. The only way to feel comfortable about your own toughness is to be tough, not buy tough. Take the parts of masculinity that are valuable, like true toughness, reject the parts that are damaging, like violence and looking tough, and be your own person. Be your own man. Be tough. Be free.