The Productive Pessimist

International Men's Day. It's on the 19th November every year. Try and remember that, guys - it gets a little bit wearing for everyone  when you whinge on, all over posts for International  Women's Day (8th March) about " when's my  day, huh?!" (it's very much not  giving Alpha energy - it's giving three year old at their sibling's birthday party. But if that's the look you want...) What is the point of International Men's Day? As for International  Women's Day, International Men's Day both highlights challenges men face, discussing the root causes, and thus potential solutions, of those problems, and celebrates men's achievements. In contrast to International  Women's Day, this "highlight and celebrate" is considered... well...a bit awkward when it comes to International Men's Day - because when we say "men" in the UK, most peoples' minds default to "financially comfortable, able-bodied, men...

  I want  to start this post with the common rebuff from the trans community (of which I am a part); "Everybody has a gender!"  I can't , however, because that isn't true. Gender  isn't just the "polite" substitute for "sex-as-adjective".  Gender  is a psycho-emotional sense  of something that is true about oneself.  Truth is not  subjective, which is where the complexity of "gender" comes in - because "psycho-emotional sense" sounds very  subjective - it's "just peoples' feelings!"   Except it's not. What gives psycho-emotional sense its claim to being objective  truth is that it is made manifest in the way a person interacts with their society, and invites that society to interact with them.   Psycho-emotional sense may go through a period of flux - which, after all, is what puberty is for most people, and what menopause and andropause are for many people - but, in the end, after between 3-7 years, it...

  The recent controversy around Meta's whole process of moving away from fact-checking has become, understandably, centred on Mark Zuckerberg's statement that "we need more masculine energy in tech." In the UK and USA, "masculine" and "feminine" are loaded words, and heavily shackled to "men" and "women" respectively; people tend to hear "masculine energy" and jump to "men"...and, from there, jump to "That's misogyny!" But masculine and feminine are simply types of energy  that people bring to a space; they do not have to  correlate to expressed genders of "man" and "woman". Masculine Energy Masculine energy is the energy of determined, often single-minded and individualistic, focus.  It's the energy of direct, concise communication. It's the energy that says "Tell me if you have a problem, and I'll stop it being  a problem for you."  It's the energy...