Hit It

January 13, 2025, 2:14 PMJanuary 13, 2025, 2:15 PM Chill Oof

Men of Reddit who have gotten in more than one physical fight, what are pros and cons about fighting?

A con is that it only takes one wrong punch or fall to kill you or someone else. It’s that easy. But I didn’t have much of a choice about fighting. I grew up in a violent place and was bullied constantly. As a result, I’ve been in 200+ fights serious enough where I was hurt or bleeding, or the other guy was. Of those I was an adult for maybe 10 of them. The rest happened in middle or high school.

The other con is that my nose is screwed up, I have scarring on the inside of my cheeks from getting hit so much, and all of it likely caused some cognitive damage too. A few other scars too but nothing major.

I suspect my infrequent migraines resulted from head hits, as they do not run in my family and I didn’t have them prior to getting struck in the head a lot, and hard.

So, yes, kids, avoid fights if you can. They result in nothing good, in the end. And if you can’t steer clear of them, get good at fighting. I was forced to the latter option by the bad luck of growing up in rural North Florida.

Meta Gut

January 13, 2025, 1:28 PM Chill Gutter Philosophy

That’s right. Philosophy is widely hated because it is the most foundational human pursuit of all. And also because it is difficult, if you are doing it usefully and correctly.

(Not surprisingly, embedding Mastodon taunts in WordPress does not work correctly.)

January 13, 2025, 1:13 PMJanuary 13, 2025, 1:17 PM Chill Quote

To say that straight men are heterosexual is only to say that they engage in sex (fucking exclusively with the other sex, i.e., women). All or almost all of that which pertains to love, most straight men reserve exclusively for other men. The people whom they admire, respect, adore, revere, honor, whom they imitate, idolize, and form profound attachments to, whom they are willing to teach and from whom they are willing to learn, and whose respect, admiration, recognition, honor, reverence and love they desire… those are, overwhelmingly, other men. In their relations with women, what passes for respect is kindness, generosity or paternalism; what passes for honor is removal to the pedestal. From women they want devotion, service and sex. Heterosexual male culture is homoerotic; it is man-loving¹.

–Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983)

I think this is largely still true. If you ask the average man to name a woman he admires or who he thinks is really awesome, he can’t think of a single one who is not his own mother. Which is insane because there are tons of amazing women out there, including my partner.