Competitive? or Just a Dick?

Competition

Penguin Toss is available for your
mobile device. Just don't be a dick.

I am competitive. If a board game has the slightest bit of skill involved, I spend the entire game focused on trying to win. I take the rules out of the box, try to exploit every loophole, and figure out how to come in first. When I'm riding my bicycle to work, being passed sends me into a huff of concentration to try to catch the passer, who fends me off with the exuberance of Lance Doping Armstrong. Once, I spent several hours playing an arcade game where a polar bear (North Pole) used a large fish to bat a penguin (Southern Hemisphere) until I beat the distance record. That's right, a polar-bear-hitting-a-penguin-with-a-fish distance record mattered enough to me to waste many hours, and many more dollars. Obviously, this is not healthy, but it is very masculine. All three of the dickheads of masculinity are shoved into this kind of competitiveness.

It's Not So Much About Winning, but Yes It Is

First off, I wanted to subjectify myself as the person who was in control of the polar bear fish batting penguin game. If I won, I won. It's pretty straight forward, but it also defeated the point of playing games, which was to hang out with other people at Dave and Busters, while having fun. I immediately thought of the other people around me batting their penguins as competition, in other words, thugs to be defeated. But the most important part of playing games and sports as a dick/masculine man, was that I got a consolation prize when I won. I may still have been beholden to extremely wealthy patriarchs for my basic food, housing, and healthcare needs, as they continued to fight any effort to clean up the environment while selling me stuff that I didn't need and made me less happy... But by golly, my polar bear sure hit that penguin a long way with that fish. If I just kept focusing on riding faster, winning more, and getting more of these consolation prizes, then I could forget about the true harm being perpetrated on the world by the patriarchal corporatocracy.

Competition is Fun for Everyone! Being a Dick is Fun Just for You.

I think most people have had healthy competition at some point. I used to love riding single track with my future partner. As we competed, we grew closer until eventually we decided to raise children together. When

These U.S. Sailors are playing kickball
with local kids.

competition is done correctly, it is fun, and it brings people closer together. But if you find that you need time before talking to other competitors after the game, maybe you should sign up for a nightlight boccie ball league, or a hard drinking kickball team. I hate to break it to you, but you may not be a liberated competitive person. You may just be a dick.

U.S. Marine Diaper Derby

At some point I realized that, amazingly, most of the women in my life were content to play a little, have fun, then stop. While playing ultimate Frisbee or soccer, some women may have been rubbish, but when it came to being happy and free, they had me soundly beat. So, I started answering Man Up, with Man Back, Dude. Man Back. Or, when the double entendre was appropriate, Man Down.

The prime example of manning back is racing a toddler. When you footrace a toddler, you win when you think it's good for the toddler, and you lose when you think it's good for the toddler. Here, you are playing the game for the human interaction. You aren't playing for the love of the game, because who the fuck cares if you love a stupid game? You are playing for the love of a person, and that's what counts.

"Stop Teaching Your Girls..." Entertainment Addiction

In Bronies -2, I Had Few Conversations About This Quote

" Stop teaching your girls about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and The Hunger Games in an effort to liberate them. "

Children don't recognize The Hunger Games
as social commentary, because of the
plethora of glorified battle sequences.

It is okay to read the Hunger Games. If your children tell you they want to see the Hunger Games, don't dismiss the idea out-of-hand. The franchise can be considered a critique of American militarism. The stories identify the line between physicality and violence, and deliberately cross that line. If violence is physicality with the intent of hurting another person, then clearly we in America have some forms of entertainment that are violent, and to the extent that we do, can we justify those entertainment forms? Did our constant justification of entertainment violence enable us to justify violent action in Iraq in March of 2003? Does our paranoia that leads to NSA spying, TSA craziness, and black lists arise from our constant playing out of destructive and violent narratives in popular culture? These are legitimate questions raised by The Hunger Games.

by Franc1NE, this image is represen
tative of the cosplay surrounding
The Hunger Games.

However, if viewers were truly interested in The Hunger Games as a social critique, the popularity of nonviolent protest against violence and militarism would have increased after the first film was released. Sadly, the only thing that has increased as a result of The Hunger Games, other than the bottom lines of multinational corporations, has been registration in archery classes to practice wielding violence (or at best provide a nonviolent outlet for violent urges with roots in the franchise). The Hunger Games is a franchise dedicated to entertainment violence weakly justified on the back of a critique of entertainment violence. If your child isn't able to grasp this irony, then they aren't ready to understand the Hunger Games as anything more than propaganda for the military industrial complex.

A Debate with a Welfare Libertarian (Mainstream Democrat from Gen X)

Gen X: I'm not going to censor my child's entertainment.

Me: It's not censorship. Censorship is when you remove something that you deem to be bad for society. Simply being conscious about the material that you procure for your child isn't censorship. It's citizenship.

Gen X: I don't decide for my child what he should read, watch, or listen to.

Me: If you don't, then multinational corporations will, and they've spent trillions of dollars over decades figuring out how to get your child to do exactly what they want him to do.

Gen X: Art is too important for me to foist my opinions on my child.

Me: When you procure The Hunger Games, or bondage child pornography for your child, you are indoctrinating them with your opinion of what is art by making an affirmative gesture to support it.

Gen X: Oh, calm down. It's just some fluffy entertainment. It's not bondage child pornography. It's The Hunger Games, a book written for children.

Me: But I'm arguing that justifying violence in our society is what leads to things like domestic abuse, rape, many assaults and murders, as well as inexcusable military actions and racist policing policies. The Hunger Games is an exercise in justifying violence, so it could be a root cause of these problems.

Gen X: So, you're saying I shouldn't let my child see The Hunger Games.

Me: No. I'm saying if your child isn't able to grasp the irony of violent entertainment as critique of violent entertainment, they aren't ready to understand the Hunger Games as anything more than propaganda for the military industrial complex.

Gen X: I'm not going to censor my children's entertainment.

Eye roll provided by Buster Keaton.

Addicted to Entertainment

Why is this so frustrating that I turn into Buster Keaton even thinking about it? Gen X never debates on the merits of the argument because they are too busy fighting the hypothetical. I am inclined to say that is because they know I'm right, but that would be unfair. They can't know that I'm right because they can't even get to the point where they are considering the idea that militaristic media contributes to social problems. The noteworthy thing is that their response is so remarkably similar to the response of addicts when they are confronted with facts that disrupt their addictions. It's kinda like the hysterical Portlandia sketch below.

Circular Arguments: Their arguments revolve around themselves and almost always start out where they began.

Unrecognized Contradictions: They argue that films are important pieces of art, but the very notion that films or sports they like may be making society worse leads them to spasms of "Calm down, it's just entertainment." Which is it? The same way that an addict can hold two contradictory reasons in their heads for why they take drugs (I am overworked and bored), Gen X has no problem arguing that The Hunger Games is an important social critique and a fluffy action film.

Denial: The whole point is to get social critics to stop criticizing the entertainment that Gen X enjoys. Sometimes, the braver welfare libertarian will debate the merits of media culture for a few sentences, but inevitably they revert back to the circular logic, contradictions, and tactics designed to shut the argument down. Several Gen Xers have admitted that they were not willing to come along with me on my critique, because they didn't want me to spoil the fun, which is hysterical because I find it more fun to critique the media than to passively experience it.

It's not just a river, it's De-Nile. Get it?

A friend introduced me to the idea that people are so resistant to these critiques because they are addicted to entertainment.  So, I read several versions of the mass entertainment addiction theory, which seems to have originated in Christian theology, but is now being adopted by social psychologists.

I haven't done enough reading yet, nor thought about it enough to conclude for certain that society is addicted to entertainment. However, with the availability of corporate commercialism at our fingertips 90% of the time on our computer/phones, and hundreds of cable channels beamed into our home at any given moment, it seems like the seeds of an opium-war-style societal addiction have been laid. If that is truly the case, it is more important than ever to be conscious about the entertainment that we provide for our children. And no, that is not censorship.

Nerd Culture and Bronies- 2

What is a Brony?

Ummm... How does one make
a pony in a racist caricature?
Ask the MLP zebra and she may
answer in fake gibberish Swahili.

Bronies are young men who are fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (MLP). Their female counterparts are called pegasisters. It is important to understand that there are several My Little Pony series, but most bronies and pegasisters are fans of Friendship is Magic only. It is also important to note that the show is not very good. The scenarios are unoriginal, the show is mildly racist (think African incantations in pseudo-Swahili), and the lessons learned are taught in exactly the wrong order for young children.

Studies show that children don't learn good behavior when T.V. characters do something wrong and then learn the error of their ways thereafter. In fact, in a study of children who watched Arthur the Aardvark and then played with one another, children were far more likely to engage in the modeled bad behavior from the beginning of the show than the corrected good behavior from the end.

MLP at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
The photographer, Bart Evans, called
MLP "strangely compelling."

Please note that my own 3-year-old is a huge fan (which explains my begrudging knowledge of MLP Geography including Ponyville, Manehatten, and Canterlot). But my real reason for writing about bronies is the intense reactions they inspire. People find bronies ridiculous, creepy, and/or weird, and deride them as though they were stalkers. Whenever a person feels strongly about something so innocuous as which television show someone else enjoys watching, there's clearly something going on.

WAR ON PINK

Many people say they dislike MLP because it is too "pink" (btw- pink is my favorite color because it is imaginary). Pink is not the problem. Pink being used to push powerlessness and objectification on girls who are expected to have particular body-types... that's the problem. Pink used to shame girls into being princesses instead of queens... that's the problem. Pink as a cue for "girls should do this," and it's corollary, "Boys should not do it..." that's the problem.

Pony cosplay just looks
healthier and more fun.
Photo by Mooshu.

MLP is pink, but it avoids, and even fights many of the problems associated with pinkness. The MLP kingdom is run by women; princesses that really serve as queens. The heroes are all young female ponies, and they're not promoting any particular body type because they're HORSES, and horses don't exactly conform to modern American beauty standards.

Too often, well-meaning parents try to compensate for gender normalizing by introducing violence to girls, which is supposed to help them be more boyish. It doesn't work. Violence is emotionally handicapped and cowardly. When you teach your girls about violent problem-solving, you are teaching them to approach violence from a place of callous madness. Stop teaching your girls about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and The Hunger Games in an effort to liberate them. Good parents hope that their children will never assault another person, so why would we encourage them to pretend to do exactly that? You're not liberating girls, just making them into sociopaths like way too many men.

More importantly, boys are not innately violent. Please stop teaching your girls that we are. We all understand that a superhero is one who is capable of wielding violence. Superheroes are often affiliated with the military or paramilitary, but nonviolent resistance superheroes are relegated to obscurity with the classification "alternative." Alternative to programming girls and boys to reward violent behavior in potential friends, role models, and lovers. Let's try teaching children that being a boy means being healthy, happy, and powerful. I am boy. Watch me genuinely love.

In the worlds of comic books, this drawing from Badger is
standard fare. Photo from Mr. Digressius' blog.

But the ponies in MLP don't use violence to solve their problems, so they are not taken seriously by a society that is so militaristic that people are comfortable showing war movies to 3-year-olds. Stop fighting a war on pink. Start fighting against America's militarism (including superhero worship), which is the true culprit keeping women (and men) oppressed.

MLP TEACHES E.Q.

While young children cannot, bronies and pegasisters are in the perfect position to learn from MLP, and they do. There are dozens of iterations of the Brony Code created by fans. As one prepubescent voice says over his YouTube sketch about the Brony Code, "Laughter is a pride feeling, so you can laugh with a brony, but not at him." Bronies and pegasisters are consciously developing their own code of ethics based on the "elements of harmony." These elements are the most powerful weapon in MLP. Think about that. Instead of guns, webs, swords, lasers, bombs, or fists, bronies have harmony which is made of honesty, kindness, laughter, generosity, loyalty, and friendship.

Hasbro selling some crap.
Photo by Mooshu.

How often do teenagers and young men spend time thinking and expounding on the difference between generosity and sacrifice? Thinking about these things is exactly what leads to higher E.Q. Creating these codes and attempting to live according to them prepares children and young adults to be good people.

While it is true that Hasbro just wants to sell ponies, I am okay with that. Doug and Melissa just wants to sell toys that teach children how to build, add, and read. By acting out the scenarios in the television show, bronies are learning the lessons of MLP, and they are lessons that boys don't often get. MLP is a part of the nerd lexicon that does not have superheroes defined by a capacity for wielding violence. It teaches a forward-thinking ethic based on nonviolence.

WHY ARE PEOPLE SO PISSED OFF?

Calm down. They're just kids.
Photo of Brony Meetup by Smitty.

Bronies and Pegasisters are so damn scary, raising their E.Q.s, solving problems through non-violence, and enjoying a *GASP* television show created for girls. Calm down everypony. Hold your... well, horses.

There are two main reasons why people react so strongly to the brony phenomenon. The first is simple, and this is the reason that some poor brony in North Carolina had his car vandalized and was subject to homophobic slurs when his neighbors found out he liked MLP. If MLP is not masculine, but there are males who like MLP, then masculinity is not concomitant with having a penis. Too many men, terrified of losing their place in the hierarchy of violence, and therefore an object of violent subjectification, strike out with anger and fear at being struck themselves. It is the same reason that men inside the hierarchy of violence lash out against gay men and transgendered women.

The other reason is more complex. Many feminists have failed to recognize that some parts of the traditionally feminine schema are as valuable as, or more valuable than some things that women were and are unfairly denied. Children love prettiness because it's pretty, not because they're girls. Working in the realm prettiness makes artists great, chefs desirable, and politicians legend. But more than that, the ability to solve problems as a group, in harmony with people who may be rivals, with courtesy and gentleness is the foundation of democracy. In real life, kindness, laughter, and generosity are far more effective than the tool belts of superheroes even if the former are associated with girly plastic ponies.

Viva My Little Pony! Long live bronies and pegasisters!

Nerd Culture and Bronies- 1

Nerd Oppressors

I'm certainly not the first to point out that sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book culture has elements of patriarchy. Just last week, MovieBob Chipman authored a post called "On Geek Privilege" that is worth a read for anyone who has ever enjoyed an episode of Babylon 5. A touching and personal comic about the sexism in Cosplay can be found here by a woman named Paige whose work can be seen at thumbsart.

But with my analysis of masculinity, it becomes clear that all three dickheads of male oppression are on view in parts of nerd culture.

Warriors and Thugs; or DC and Marvel?

Boys will (wield violence) be
boys. Photo by Juppo Kelin.

The warrior/thug dichotomy drives most comic book stories, with so-called superheroes who almost always resort to violence to solve problems. None of these heroes ever seem to realize that violence only ever leads to more violence, so they are always shocked when some thug from their past comes back looking for revenge. If it weren't so terrifyingly realistic, it could almost be excused as naive. But most of the stories just turn out being horrific recreations of the excuses we Americans give ourselves every time we march off to battle in another country populated by people of color.

My Mint Condition is Better than Your Mint Condition
The second dickhead of male oppression, subjectification is a form of privilege. MovieBob gets at this point in the blog mentioned above. But by understanding subjectification, we start to understand how this privilege works. In order to become friends with a nerd, it helps to know about The Weeping Angels, Seven of Nine, and Merlot's. If some of that last sentence didn't make sense, you're not a real nerd (poser). When you take into account that most of the attendees of nerd conventions are young white men, it starts to seem like nerd culture has become a useful marker for privilege, just like the neighborhood where one lives, or one's knowledge of sports. Given how media conglomerates swoon over the comic, fantasy and sci-fi hoards, combined with the fact that silicon valley is having billionaire children like they are on Hobby Lobby's birth control plan (rhythm method), it's clear that nerd culture is now a proxy for class.

Why are so many of the
women in cosplay photos
skinny?
Poitr Konieczny took this
one.

Patriarchy = Subjectification + Warrior/Thug
Hierarchy is such an important part of masculinity that when I say, "Mine is bigger than yours," people know what I'm talking about (if you don't, ask your parents). To be successful in the hierarchy means being the most subjectified. This concept is introduced on the playground. Boys prove their masculinity by wielding violence. We all learned that "sissies hit girls." But what is the corollary? It's not that it is unmasculine to use force, because it is masculine as hell to hit just about anything EXCEPT girls, meaning other boys mostly. So "man up" by not letting him "disrespect" us, "don't be a chicken," "fight back," "show him what you're made of," and the most popular line in fiction of almost any kind, "get 'im." The hierarchy of boys, like the hierarchy of so many men before us, is a hierarchy of violence. Boys are either ass kickers or their asses are kicked, and we all know what those terms mean.

That is to say that my place in the hierarchy is directly related to a very real likelihood of getting my ass kicked. To paraphrase Catherine McKinnnon, "to be able to assault, a position that is social not biological, defines what a man is." Rich men are able to use their private (and sometimes taxpayer funded) armies to assault whomever they wish, while poor men are inordinately the objects of police violence. Eventually, most men use proxies instead of violence, like video games, knowledge of Stan Lee plot lines, or yellow-snow contests (don't ask). These proxies are the class markers that we call privilege.

So, nerd culture has protected ourselves from a threat of violence, not by liberating ourselves from the despicably archaic equation of extremist masculinity, but by creating a new equation that is almost as despicable while playing on similarly archaic themes incorporating lots of violence.

Whoa, that got heady. With all these sticks being swung, we need a carrot to keep us going.

This photo by Poitr Konieczny illustrates the
consolation prize. Fun, isn't it? Until you see
the face of the girl just behind Cat Woman.

Let's Go To Comiccon and Check out the Costumes and their Wearers.
The consolation prize is easy to identify. This third pivot on the oppressor dickhead triad makes sure that men want to be men. Men alienate ourselves from our communities in order to protect ourselves from the hierarchy of violence, so community where we can find it is one heck of a consolation prize. The community available at Comiccon, combined with the availability of fictional and cosplay sex targets, and awesome toys and entertainment create a wonderful carrot to keep young white men from liberation.

But one group of nerdy cohorts are fighting back in rainbow colors, with unicorn horns, pegasus wings, and a desire to solve problems through emotional intelligence instead of violence. Next week will be in acknowledgement (defense) of Bronies. Dude, you'll want to read this one (and it won't be nearly so heavy, I promise).

Super Bowl Complex

Since 2007, I have written on the Super Bowl and the complex relationship between extremist masculinity and sports. This year, I was an undercover brother in the fraternity of war-painted football fans who careened drunkenly through a Disneyfied Times Square in search of a few moments in proximity of well-known sports' figures. Need proof? Here's a video of the friendly Super Bowl crowds near the Tiffany Trophy.

Yup. I went to New York City for the Super Bowl. In the extremist masculinity hierarchy, that ranks somewhere between pissing in the woods and growing a mustache at 13. In New York, I proved that I know the difference between warriors and thugs. The Broncos were the warriors riding the Charge of the Light Brigade at the evil Sea Hawks. Also, by going I gave myself authority, subjectifying myself through useless knowledge of bizarrely esoteric skills. But mostly, I got my consolation prize. I may spend my average day at the mercy of powerful (moneyed) interests, but "we" went to the Super Bowl. By joining in, I gave myself a stake in the dickish system that is extreme masculinity.

Well, maybe it's more complex than that.

The Super Bowl is not entirely as evil as it is often made out to be. Human trafficking and sex slavery does go up during the Super Bowl, but not any more so than at any other major event, sporting or otherwise. Also, domestic violence does not raise substantially when the home team loses. Counter intuitively, it seems that domestic violence upticks slightly when the home team wins. When we think about this fact, it makes sense. When we win, we are more confident in our masculinity, and that means we are more likely to forgive ourselves a little of that extreme masculinity aggression and violence. Hey, I just confirmed that I am an awesome dominant manly dude. What do you mean you don't agree? Didn't you see the Super Bowl?

Nevertheless, football itself, and even the masculinity parade that is the Super Bowl is not the problem. Sports and athleticism are important in daily life, and if anything American men are too lazy in their gigantic houses with their haze-inducing glorified minivans (i.e. S.U.V.'s and 4 door pickup trucks). If they only took sports more seriously maybe we would be able to put an end to America's terrifyingly high obesity, heart disease, and cancer rates. Yet, somehow sports feel excessively masculine.

Because they are masculine, often excessively.

Teddy Roosevelt said football would toughen us up, big words coming from the man who named the teddy bear. The New York Knicks are better known than the New York Liberty only because they are men. Men are more likely to be sports' viewers. People have been desperate to tie sports to masculinity for decades, but the women's movement refused to accept that sports were inherently male, and in doing so they showed that the relationship between sports and masculinity was as forced and false as the relationship between Rand Paul and reality.


Title IX is so successful because it takes sports out of traditional masculinity and makes them accessible to girls, and the women those girls become. Girls who join sports teams through Title IX are more successful on and off the field/court. They are healthier, better students, and less likely to suffer from emotional handicaps. Without a doubt, sports can be a positive influence on women as well as men. It is a part of the traditionally masculine platter that women picked up and said, "Yeah, we like that."

And that is exactly the point of men's liberation. Men too, should be able to pick up what they like from femininity and say, "Yeah, we like that." And as significantly, men should be able to put down those parts of masculinity that are dickish.

The trite thoughtless response to that goal is, "why can't men do that now?" If you've been reading this blog you probably already have some ideas, but the short answer is that most men don't even know that they want it. Just as many women in the fifties honestly told themselves that they didn't want to leave the home and join the work force, many men today honestly don't want to learn how to maintain a house, raise a child, or engage in meaningful healthy relationships. And the task of convincing men that using only what they want from masculinity will make them happy is harder than the task of convincing women because the consolation prize for men is so much better ($1.22 on every dollar that a woman earns, for example).


But the consolation prize is looking more hollow after the Great Recession. The successful job, the stability, and all of the toys were never more than a chimera, but now they are completely out of reach to a younger generation of men. We are looking at the two big platters of masculinity and femininity, and thinking, "I'd like a little bit of this, and some of that, and maybe a pinch or two from over here."

The Super Bowl, like most things including suburban living, S.U.V.'s and even the military, is a complex of the terrific alongside the terrible. Some things, like the community that I felt wandering Times Square with hundreds of thousands of other football fans, are great. Some things, like the suicide rates of pro football players after suffering head traumas, are tragic. Liberation isn't necessarily about doing things differently. Liberation is having the wisdom to know what parts of our lives make us happier, and the courage to dump the rest of the bull shit in the face of people who lack the aforementioned wisdom.

Everyday Man: Pancakes (Mancakes?)

photo by Alan Walker

Masculinity often focuses on the once in a lifetime stuff. Great men are presidents, generals who win decisive battles, thought leaders who come up with one amazing theory, and athletes who win the big game and set the big record. While we admit that nobody says on their death bed that they wish they'd spent more time at work, somehow all that gets lost in the everyday as even those who have enough accept more money to take on the harder job and spend more time working.




Part of what women perfected over the course of eons was living for today. That didn't mean going bungee jumping, or checking things off their bucket list. After all, the bucket list is simply another way of living for the future by saying, "these are the things I want to do before I die." Living for today means making pancakes for breakfast, not because it's a special occasion, but because when we make pancakes we take care of ourselves and the people we love.

After several years of making pancakes at least one hundred times a year, I have learned from my fore mothers and put together a delicious, healthy, everyday pancake recipe that you can make in 20 minutes for a family of four. The ingredients are listed below.

food production as women's work

Putting together these pancakes is more than just providing a substantive meal for my family, it is a meditation in the things that so many boys never get to learn. It's been called "learned helplessness," but it's more than the fact that college kids don't know how to arrange their lives in a healthy and organized manner. It is the forgetting of feminine knowledge. In a few short generations, we have handed over much of our women's work, like preparing food, hosting friends and family, and repairing our clothes to agribusiness, the internet, and the garment industry. When we do this, we trade satisfying tasks considered feminine, for masculine tasks that are repetitive, abusive and undervalued. This lost knowledge is taking its toll on our diets, our environment, our pocket books, and our mental and emotional health. One major flaw with "Lean In"-style feminism is the failure to recognize the value of traditionally women's work, like making pancakes.

food production as masculine labor

As I briefly mentioned in the last blog, pay equity is a very masculine way of looking at gender equality. It is an important index, but other indices, such as time spent with one's children, health of one's domestic sphere, and closeness and number of friendships are harder to calculate, and have not been the focus of modern feminists. It is no accident that pancakes have not been the primary worry of feminists. But when feminists emphasize equality in the spheres of politics and labor to the exclusion of traditionally feminine areas, they allow extreme masculinity to dictate the terms of the movement. By contrast, the basic tenant of masculine liberation is that feminine knowledge is inherently valuable as it is, not because the masculine marketplace acknowledges its value monetarily, but because things like domestic labor and deep loving friendships are valuable in themselves for both men and women.

So, regardless of whether you are a man, a woman, or neither, take a few moments to liberate yourself a little by connecting with your friends and family over a delicious homemade (not from a box) pancake breakfast. It will be worth it.

Gather all of your implements and ingredients before you start cooking. Put your griddle over the stove at the low end of medium. You'll have to figure out the temperature yourself, but because the structure of this particular pancake batter is so robust, you have quite a lot of room for error. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and sugar, then use the whisk to mix together the applesauce, milk, eggs, and oil in a separate bowl. Mix the liquid into the dry ingredients with a fork or spatula at first, but finish mixing with the whisk. Add milk one tablespoon at a time until the batter oozes through the whisk. See the video below to see a good consistency.

If you want to add ingredients, like chopped up apples and cinnamon, or dried cherries, add them at the end. Use your 1/2 cup measuring cup to pour the batter onto the griddle and flip after about three minutes. If you want, you can keep them warm in an oven at 180 for up to 30 minutes. Eat up and enjoy often.

Using the applesauce and white whole wheat flour makes these pancakes low calorie, moist, fluffy, and delicious, but you can trade up the applesauce and milk for buttermilk, and the flour for all-purpose if you want them fluffier for a special occasion.

When you buy pancake mix, you are paying factories money to mix the dry ingredients together, and maybe add some powdered egg, milk, and preservatives. It is less healthy, but more importantly, it is outsourcing the everyday stuff of life that makes us all happier. Enjoy your pancakes. Taste the liberation.

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 tablespoons of sugar
8 ounces of applesauce
10 ounces of milk
2 eggs
1 tablespoon of canola oil

tools needed:
a stove top or hot plate
a plate to put the dirty implements on
1 .5 cup measuring cup
1 tablespoon
2 mixing bowls
1 whisk
1 stirring spoon or spatula
1 cast iron pan or griddle, or any non-stick pan
1 large spatula to flip the pancakes

Magic Daddy Kisses: Epigenetics

Did you know that daddy kisses really are magic? My three-year-old is more right than anyone thought possible.

The epigenome is the stuff in which the genome sits. EpiDNA tags DNA, highlighting and activating certain parts of the genome, and shutting down other parts. Two studies involving rodents show how epiDNA works.

The first was about how multi-generational PTSD can be handed down through mice. A group of female mice were trained to fear a certain smell. The stress altered the epiDNA near the DNA linked to that particular scent. The effect was not only that the mice had a stress response to that smell, but they're ability to smell it was heightened. The off-spring had the same reaction as their mothers, even when they had never been introduced to that smell in the presence of their mothers. In other words, the memory of being scared of something can be passed down without actually telling your children to be afraid of that thing. I guess that explains why I hate caves...

The second study showed how PTSD can be treated through affectionate physical contact. In this study, rat pups were better able to handle stress when they were licked and cuddled in their youth. Once a mother had cuddled and licked her pup, that pup was more likely to cuddle her pup and so on, breaking the stress cycle completely. That is until they encountered the cuddle monster, and then they were all messed up forever.

In humans, this epigenetic impact has been shown to be more complicated than a simple transfer of stress, but the research has indicated that most serious stressors (think holocaust survivors) require about three generations to find their way out of the epigenetic stress bog. Not only do epigenetics cause PTSD-type reactions, epigenetic garbage increases the likelihood of many diseases, including cancer. But oxytocin is here to save the day again!

If you don't know much about oxytocin, just think about it as the child hormone. This is the hormone that is released every time you touch your child. It is the hormone that launches childbirth (pitocin is a synthetic version). It helps mom's make milk. It is present in copious amounts when adults get together to make children (or avoid making children but still enjoy themselves). Oxytocin is the gene of physical contact, and it has the side effect of cleaning off your epigenetic material. So, the research seems to imply that when we cuddle our children, we are not only helping them cope with stress now, but also helping them cope with stress in adulthood, and helping them prevent cancer. Talk about magic kisses.

Photo by Lies Thru a Lens

All of this is very cool, but why mention it on a blog devoted to liberation of men from extremist masculinity?

First of all, Dr. Elliot documents several studies in her book, "Pink Brain, Blue Brain," that show that babies who are identified as male receive less physical contact than babies whose sex is unknown or who are identified as girls (remember, that's why we didn't want to tell anyone the sex of our babies). That same book documents the fact that boys touch and are touched less throughout childhood, depriving them of the epigenetic benefits at the times in their lives when they need it most. It goes on into adulthood. I remember being single and not touching another human being except for the occasional handshake for months. Which is why, in my late 20's, I became a hugger. A bro-hugger.

Photo by Sage Ross of Ben Huh.

One of the first things I did to liberate myself was adopt and revel in the bro-hug. It's great because once you get them in a handshake, you can just pull them in and clean that epiDNA (I love cleaning my epigenome with another man ;). I don't know who invented the bro-hug, but it's hard to imagine anything that has been better for men's liberation. Thank you, bro-hug dude. We love you (imagine me bro-hugging the bro-hug inventor right now).

And on top of saving my kids from cancer, and helping me keep my emotional health, bro-hugging and daddy kisses help us break cycles of abuse.  According to multiple studies, most abusers come from abusive homes, and (in line with our epigenetic science) an abnormal number of abusers are raised in institutional settings where they are not often touched. But when children of abusers are given loving physical contact from adoptive parents, those children are far less likely to become abusers themselves. So, men who are raised with more touching are less likely to be abusers. When we think that somewhere around 90% of spouse abusers are men, it is obvious that feminism will never succeed until men can break the glass ceiling of cuddling (a task that sounds more dangerous than it is).

The Chicago Tribune posted an article mocking men's liberation as a bunch of whining from men who are making more money than women. But income inequality is not the only index of equality, it is just the overly simplistic way that Ward Cleaver would judge equality. In other words, it is the most masculine way of judging equality.

As for me, I quit my job three and a half years ago because part of gender equality is how many kisses my kids get from their parents, and how many I give to them.