political analysis as performative masculinity

why is knowledge about the day-to-day details of politics such valuable currency within certain male social circles?

i knew a lot about what was going on in the world toward the end of high school, but i wasn’t a news junky: i probably read the news once a week or so. senior year i mostly read novels while listening to emo music. most of my friends were girls and none of them yapped about the details of politics

let me be clear: of course several of these girls talked about politics! nothing i am saying here applies to everyone based upon gender identity! but still: i found that when girls talked politics, they spoke more in terms of the big ideas and values they supported or opposed. they talked about rights, activism, and the relief of suffering. what they did not do was relentlessly list the various facts they could produce about who was saying what while delivering speculative analyses about the future. yes, they knew who the big names in politics were, and they could describe these politicians’ general positions: but they were not trying to showcase how much detail they knew

while conversations with men about politics make me feel like i need to go learn more details about what’s specifically happening in the halls of congress, conversations with women about politics very often inspire me to think and feel in new ways. when i talk with a thoughtful and non-conservative woman about her political views, i often find that she expresses them from a place of emotion and values: this perspective stirs up something inside me, makes me think about politics from the perspective of compassion and care, makes me want a bit more empathy in our policies. i can name at least five women who have dramatically affected my perspective in this way. are all women like this? obviously not. it’s simply a pattern that shows up in my experience

but men. throughout college the basic social pattern stayed the same: most of my friends were girls. but i had significantly more boys as friends in college than i ever had before. i have only rarely known anything about sports throughout my life: the same goes for video games beyond a few staples: and these two conditions demanded some other conversation topic with which i could gain social currency about the boys

i gradually felt increasing pressure to know as many details as possible about exactly what was happening in the country and the world today, right now. in late college, i fell in with groups of (very intelligent) guys who stunned me with the sheer number of facts they knew about seemingly every individual member of congress, every candidate running to a seat in the middle of nowhere, every dictator in the world and what he had done to his country that year, every possible trajectory of american foreign policy for the next five years. i have continued to encounter these men throughout my life: in coffee shops yapping away with their facts, in the workplace at the water cooler talking about the news, on vacation in the common area of hostels. they are everywhere once you start to look for them. they give the impression they know everything, and their only fear is another man showing up who knows more

of course the guys i met in college did not actually know all these details: but they demonstrated that they might. they showed me with every conversation that they knew more than me, as if to assert social dominance or superiority somehow. and anything i said could be quickly discounted by some other fact. i felt as if i knew nothing, and i was incredibly motivated to learn. i began reading the news all the time, partly so that i could come prepared to male gatherings with my facts in-hand

now and then you come across a man who deploys this knowledge to advance great ideas. those can be exhilarating and inspirational conversations. but often i find that the men who hold these facts in their hands are more concerned with someone else: being seen as “rational”, “logical”, and “analytical.” certainly for these men the worst thing imaginable would be to think with their heart and not their brains. and as they attempt to check the bounds of their compassion in the name of being taken seriously, or in the name of being seen as unemotional, mature, and detached in their straightly factual analysis, these men end up deploying their facts in order to show how the grand visions of the “idealists” are unrealistic, as every “thinking” person knows

there is something about masculinity and seriousness that is just so intertwined: that is why the girly is childish, why bright expressive feminine accessories and clothing is not welcome in the corporate boardroom, why no woman constantly wearing pig tails could be elected president regardless of the content in her ideas. that is why “emotions” are feminine and those who express them in a feminine way are unfit for the highest office. god forbid we have a leader whose compassion for the suffering of ordinary people forms the philosophical foundation of their agenda

i had another friend in late college, a woman, who couldn’t have given two shits about the mechanical details of government. what she knew, what she felt, what she believed: every human being deserved health care (this was in 2009 when everyone in college was debating obamacare). many of the political junky men i knew could find a million reasons to complicate that valye. they could list a thousand “details” that my friend hadn’t considered. for them, this was “complicated.” but she never wavered, because she knew that these details do not matter from the perspective of an ordinary person. what matters are values: compassion, empathy, the relief of suffering. and it was women like her who inspired me to make compassion the basis for my own views

somewhat recently i was sitting around a fire at night with two of my friends having a nice conversation about clothes, identity, gender, relationships, and fun activities. then suddenly a man came and sat with us: the conversation quickly turned to politics, and i mean the details of politics. the only woman among us went to bed

he talked about the pros and cons of various vice presidential and presidential picks if biden were to withdraw. and these pros and cons had very little to do with each person’s values or ideas. these pros and cons were based on this random man’s analysis of which candidates he concluded had the “best shot” at winning the election. he listed off various characteristics which he believed to be true about voters in various states and described some of the campaign challenges democrats would face if they replaced biden. he was up late into the night listening to podcasts about extremely specific political details in kentucky (we were nowhere near kentucky). as he talked, i just sat there staring into the fire thinking, “can we go smoke some weed now? like wtf?” when i told him i hadn’t really read the news in months, he looked at me with total disbelief. but the discussion lasted forty-five minutes. at the end, he mentioned a “report” he had seen on twitter earlier that evening. the “report” was a leak of some gossip from some dc insiders. “i still haven’t had a chance to look,” he said, and off he went, presumably to have his hands on the latest dc leaks

i understand why these conversations are addicting, especially in an environment where trump is lurking out there, but seriously: what’s the point? what is achieved by being an ordinary person who knows all these minute details about politics? yes, i understand that some people genuinely are passionate about analyzing the details of government, and this is wonderful for them! but among so many men, there prevails a deep obsession with demonstrating political knowledge and insight, all of it essentially speculation about the future with no bearing on our actions or values today.

i think it’s clear what knowing all this information achieves: knowing all this enables men to perform, although if they are unreflective they may not know this is what they are doing. they may simply think they are “smart serious people.”

anyway, the junky culture sucked me in. i thought reading the news and knowing all this stuff was making me smarter. but the truth is that knowing all that shit was just a tool for me to appear smarter to other men (i believed i was a man) so i could be included as a “serious” and “thoughtful” and “knowledgable” participant in the detailed discussions these “smart guys” were having. i couldn’t have them acting shocked that i didn’t know who the undersecretary of state for some random world region was

i think these kinds of conversational patterns are an extension of the ways in which many men discuss other topics, notably sports. how do men discuss sports? they argue about which players and teams are best. i remember teaching high school: guys would start literally screaming at each other while arguing about which basketball player was best. there is a class of men that likes to gamble on sports because these men like to feel like they know about sports: knowing about sports helps them feel more like men: showing up to male gatherings without their sports facts in their back pockets is like social suicide. because what else are they going to talk about? their feelings? their clothes? olivia rodrigo? no, they must demonstrate their masculinity by deploying sports facts. they are certainly not talking about their aesthetic admiration for the various parts of these athlete’s bodies (at least not directly)

and what about music? when i think about music, i think about how the art makes me feel inside. i dwell upon the personal relationship i have with certain songs, lyrics, and instrumentals. i like to feel like some part of my soul is reflected back at me in the music i listen to: i see music as a guardian angel, guiding me in my personal development. i don’t evaluate music based on the “objectively best” music, nor do i have any sense that such a thing exists. but i often cannot help but feel when i am with certain groups of men that they all like the same handfuls of classic rock bands, often cock rock bands. for them music is a way to signal and perform their masculinity: and of course what men select as “highest quality” is… the objective best. and don’t be mistaken: these men do believe there is such a thing

when i talk with women about music, we talk about how the music makes us feel. we talk about the themes and how we connect with them. we discuss the emotions which that music awakens inside us. we message each other our favorite lyrics and talk about what those mean to us. that is music to me. but when a man who identifies me as a man walks into the room and i am listening to over-the-top girly music, i can see the concern in his eyes: and it’s not just a concern for my suspected femininity. he sees me as a child, he sees me as a teenager, he sees me as unserious: because i am girly

i have left those masculine conversational patterns behind. it’s amazing: the moment when we recognize all the ways in which we have been performing. i started coming at politics with feelings. i don’t need to know the day-to-day details about the election: i know my values, i am in touch with my compassion for other beings, and i will leave the sorting of political detail to those who actually have something to do with those details. for me, it’s better to ground myself in my emotions and use love as my guide. i’m done stuffing my pocket with facts just so i can prove that i’m a serious person

(photo my own)

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