Other Forms of Masculinity
June 15, 2026
Over the years I have noticed that, politically, I am not really a radical, or extremist. My main interest is actually being mainstream, but in rather an odd way: I do not wish to adopt the ideas of the mainstream, but vice-versa, I want those in the mainstream, polluted by bad thoughts and old, useless ideas, to partake of the insights I have had that might suggest something better instead. But, I do not want my ideas to be forced on anyone - the diffusion should come naturally from the worth of the ideas themselves, not from my status or power, both of which I have deliberately not cultivated.
In this regard it is necessary that my ideas be cogent, and that they not be directed towards forming a small, hard nucleus of agents of change, but rather that they have broad appeal across all humans. What this requires of a politics I wish to produce, then, is that it cannot leave anyone out: no one can be excluded from the circle of worth, or judged a sinner.
What I am talking about is the habit of so-called anti-racists to merely invert racism and turn it into a castigation of white people, or of feminists to castigate men and masculinity, but offer nothing in its place.
Regarding this latter subject, there is clearly a crisis of being for men, and young men especially, which is centered around their lack of an available identity that is not considered evil or worthless.
So let me take pity on young men, and try to imagine for them a better manner of existence than what is given to them. What I offer comes from myself, of course, but I am also only composed of available pieces, so nothing I suggest need be considered “mine”, or restricted to any particular identity you might assign me. It is also nice to use available pieces, since they are already prevalent, rather than make new ones which are unfamiliar and therefore hard to adopt or propagate.
To review in brief the current mire of male identity, I don’t really wish to confront, directly, much of the existing “manosphere” type of pec-jiggler, mostly because I’ve really avoided looking much in this direction and know little about it, so you won’t get a takedown of Andrew Tate or the like here. Mostly I think such things do not matter: bad ideas disappear quickly if better ones are on offer, and the problem is, rather, the lack of this alternative and not so much the particular ugliness that bad, denuded ideas have produced.
Nor will you find here much in the way of discussion of queer approaches to maleness: I wish to speak to the solid core of heterosexual maleness. But I don’t wish this to mean that queer ideas of maleness are to be excluded or ignored; of course queerness is wonderful and already undoes many of the problematic images of males I will discuss. But the vast majority of human life, sexuality and male identity occurs in the ambit of the family, and the outstanding problem for queerness in our generation, I think (though I am ill-equipped to opine on this matter) is that, to date, queerness excludes us from the biological family, and while the syncretic queer family is equally loving, the lack is often felt - so, I hope that queer readers may also appreciate the fundamental familial root of my criticism, even if it is not strictly for them.
But broadly, where men are is what the nationalist state demands of them. In the Old World there has always been an ancient demand on men, to surrender their bodies to the state and die in war. This is the primary determinent of masculine identity, and for this purpose misogyny was created: because men must be convinced that their duty is to die, unhappily, in a distant land, it is necessary to separate them from their source of happiness, viz., women.
For this reason men are taught that woman is a bitch, and must be hated and raped, rather than cherished and embraced, because to fall in love means to open yourself to the possibility of happiness, and instead men must hold themselves constantly in attendance of the specter of death, whose hand is always on the man’s shoulder.
In this image, the penis is a spear or a sword, which stabs and wounds the woman’s flesh, and takes what it wants without interest in a recpirocal pleasure.
This image, we may consider, bears little actual correspondence to the biological function of the penis, a rather sensitive organ, easily bruised and not much of a cutting appendage. Fortunately the priapic penis is not actually rock-hard, but like all flesh combines strength and softness in appropriate measure to bring about its true, miraculous function: mutual pleasure and the creation of life.
From this other, more true view of the penis, we may move away from the masculinity of violence, rape and death, which are unnatural demands placed upon us by a state that requires us to kill ourselves for the benefit of our masters.
This already can be enormously productive, and there are indeed many examples of such men in our stories, men who are saucy and ribald rather than violent, or of male gods that are lovers and not warriors.
But we may go further when we consider that men, through misogyny, are denied their role in the greatest source of happiness they have available, which is this: the penis creates life. The fertile act produces miraculous joy, and it is not only the woman’s body that does this, but the coming together of male and female in a joyful moment that produces a laughing, smiling baby, a new person!
Here we might perceive a recpirocal misandry, which requires the woman to be the only parent. This, too, is the product of the same force: the man cannot be a parent, for to be a father is to be present, whereas the soldier must be absent on campaign, and then forever lost in the grave, and the woman must be able to carry on in his stead.
Let us then celebrate this image, of the god Enlil, watering the fields with his semen, bountiful and the very source of life itself, a heavenly father whose image all men share in. The beard is a downy blanket on which the sleeping babe may rest while the father adores it, and masculine strength is not there to be a rod of discipline, administering beatings, but, like an oak branch, to form a sheltering bower for both mother and child.
But this is not the only demand on men by the state, for the nature of power has changed, and dominance is no longer to be found in vast armies of soldiers, which are easily cut to ribbons by machine weapons. Instead, power comes from the same manufacture of those machines, primarily the machine implements of war, and men are required again to be separated from their happiness in order to produce these tools of power.
So men are taught that their virtue lies in their identity as workers. In this identity men are at least allowed the life of a father, but only that of an absent provider, where men are not able to partake directly in the joys and sighs of their children and families, but only to observe them from a distance. Here, love is an act of self-abnegation, and the man is worthy because he denies himself joy and makes his labor subject to the master on behalf of his family.
Thus, again, men must brutalize themselves, this time crushing their spirits and denying themselves joy, often numbing themselves with the help of alcohol and drugs to prevent the pangs of their heart, at being continually separated from those they love.
This kind of man, as industrial worker, is present in the family as a figure of love, but only a distant star, from whom, when we are children, love is a cold light that cannot truly warm us, because it cannot touch us. Because of this, men as workers, just like men as soldiers, must hold themselves at an emotional distance from the family, and indeed from everyone other than those they must labor alongside.
For this image of man, where the only path to love and happiness is by exchange of labor, the worst fate is not death, but unemployment, which renders the man useless to the family and therefore unable to express or receive love.
This requirement produces a different kind of misogyny, where men must hoard valorous work, and women must be excluded from the workplace and kept at home, because for women to labor is to, then, rob men of their role and therefore their only avenue to happiness.
However, this image is actually easy to invert, for many reasons: foremost, no one actually wants to work, we’re just forced into it, and there is much to enjoy about being “unemployed” - contrary to being an un-valorous failure, a stupid lie taught to us by our masters to bring us to sell our labor, idleness is a kind of freedom, and men should feel happy to partake in it.
Besides, the work of the home, we may now realize, is enormous and perfectly valorous; the men of my generation have spent their lives noticing, marveling and lauding their wives for performing this work, contrary to our fathers’ time, and many men have been happy to take on these roles themselves and perform the work of the home while their wives perform valorous labor outside the house.
To invert this image we must realize that men are perfectly capable of nurturing work, and in fact this is the very meaning of the ancient word “husband”. So let us celebrate our husbandry, which, after the rather short period requiring specialized organs like a uterus and breasts for the care of the infant, is equally available to men and women. Here we may realize that in fact, there is an ancient image of men as builders and teachers, roles they make take on in the home and community without confusing their male identity with a female one.
We may also free ourselves from the misogynistic urge to keep women from valorous labor by remembering that this work is actually often pitiless and totally lacking in valor, and women, by increasingly taking on these roles in the place of men, are likewise expressing their love for us by allowing us both a measure of idleness, independence and, most blessed, emotional and physical distance from the hated master.
These are just a few of the kinds of wonderful alternative masculinities available to us, which I have tried to practice in my adult life to, I think, great success, which give us males that are peaceful, bountiful, and happy, rather than violent, destructive and bitter. The exchange should be easy, don’t you think?
-- graft