Mizzou Strike Grows

After the bombshell dropped by Mizzou football a few days ago, a strike in solidarity with hunger striker Jonathan Butler, the immediate reaction of the most clever reporters was to count the number of people and immediately imagine possible conflict (e.g. "hmmmm I'm counting 29 players, all African American, the total roster is 58 with 43 African-American, that means 14 who aren't there.")

While that made me ill for numerous reasons, the least of which is his belief that he "knew" exactly how many "African-Americans" were on the team, the team answered this directly and immediately. The head coach of the University of Missouri, Coach Gary Pinkel, and his name does deserve a bit of notice here, tweeted this picture,

and said, 

Notice their locked arms, the physical intimacy - itself an act, both presenting and representing, solidarity.

They are under intense pressure, I'm sure, and the abuse they will receive is hardly insubstantial. 

Don't believe the lie. Men can touch in public.

Men touching other men in (ostensibly) non-sexual ways. We still see it in our day and age. When? Where? I have one answer here: in solidarity struggles, among black football players. Players on the Mizzou football team going on strike in solidarity with another Mizzou student who is on the sixth day of a hunger strike to protest racism on campus. Fascinating, tragic, inspiring.

For more information, look here - on the football strike itself, and on a tumultuous year at Mizzou.

turning male bodies into a national manhood

This is from communist era Czechoslovakia. I doubt you've seen a spectacle of masculinity quite like this. 

Foucault

Some interesting theories on power and sex by Foucault. I'm not sure how widely accepted this is.

http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/foucault_sexuality_24grammata.com_.pdf

https://www.facebook.com/facebook/videos/10154074866091729/

What is "male"?

The category "male," a biological and social construct, is determined differently across time and space. While the fluidity of gender, of "masculinity" is pretty easily seen, the fluidity of biology, of sex, is not always so evident. However, in the case of a small town in the Dominican Republic, guevadoces, the fluidity couldn't be clearer.

Guevadoces are people whose genitals don't fully develop until they are 12 years old. 

the Guavadoces . . . are deficient in an enzyme called 5-α-reductase, which normally converts testosterone into dihydro-testosterone. So they appear female when they are born, but around puberty, when they get another surge of testosterone, they sprout muscles, testes and a penis.

The article doesn't seem to understand the connection between sex, gender, and sexual preference. Nor does it speak with sensitivity about the issues of sex, identity, and biology. It does provide a unique case to ponder, however.

Clashing masculinities in the modern age

Man Cave vs. Study

when did men abandon one path for another?
or did they?