Edit: I am currently balding folks, it's happening right now. It's still not misandry if someone makes fun of me, even if it's not very nice and hurts my feelings

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[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 72 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

No it’s not misandry, and I don’t know if ridiculing bald people should qualify as “sexual harassment” per se… but it does kinda feel like making fun of bald people is sort of socially acceptable when it shouldn’t be. It’s something that negatively affects the self image of a lot of men and woman quite badly. I worked with a guy who was going bald and another coworker would frequently give him shit about it, and I could see how it hurt him.

Fwiw I have actually used male pattern baldness as a way to try and explain gender dysphoria to a couple dudes IRL and they actually connected with it.

Edit: I should clarify that I used MPB to help some guys I know empathize with gender dysphoria more than try to explain it, if that makes sense.

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 41 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The other day I went to some family celebration, and my one aunt, who had cancer way back when, she was there with her kids. And she noticed that I was very conspicuously wearing a beanie indoors, and she asked me, "Is it a beanie day today?" — and I said, "Yup."

And she asked me, "Is every day a beanie day?" — and I said, "Yup."

And she said, "Yeah, I know what that's like." — and thus ended that brief exchange.

It was on the on the one hand "nice" to get a remark on my hair loss that came from a place of empathy, and didn't emphasize the hair loss as anything "masculine"; on the other hand dealing with hair loss feels like a bit of a catch-22 as long as I'm closeted, like no matter what I do, even the most empathetic acknowledgement of my hair loss is going to sting a little and make me feel silly and pathetic regardless.

Other people can much better explain the exact deal with baldness and how it interacts with gender in multifaceted ways, or explain how "the fruiting body is not the whole mushroom" wrt the things that people might point to and call "misandry" — I guess I just wanted to chime in and say that shit sucks, and making fun of literally anyone for experiencing (or how they choose to deal with) hair loss, shouldn't fly.

But being against body shaming shouldn't be a controversial stance, anyways.

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Other people can much better explain the exact deal with baldness and how it interacts with gender in multifaceted ways

I think I've realized recently that my receding hairline is... gender affirming for me? That's not a way I'm used to thinking about things tbh, cishet dude that I am, but I sometimes catch myself in the mirror and it's like "oh that's how it is huh? I've seen older guys like this and I'm actually pretty cool withtending up like that"

If this is the wrong time/place to drop this comment just say so, I don't mean it at all as questioning your experience but an expansion on that one point.

[–] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey if you enjoy it I'm only happy for you

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Wouldn't wish it on anyone who doesn't want it, all the best to you rat-salute-2

And now I've got the concept of "sin eater but for baldness" in my head, that's gonna be rattling around for the rest of the day lol

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 28 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean i guess? Male pattern baldness is highly gendered and baldness is to some extent treated as shameful in society. If you're bullying some guy over hairloss then yeah, that's gendered harassment.

[–] AcidSmiley@hexbear.net 51 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

Trans women are also affected by baldness and as somebody who's close friends with several who suffer massively from that particular fact, it's kinda gross to have to read this. Cis women who suffer from alopecia will also be treated very differently than a bald man.

What we're talking about here is body shaming. It's not ok, it's particularly not appropriate "workplace banter", but we already have a term for it and it's definitely not gender-based harassment. Gender-based harassment relies on a gendered power hierarchy. Gendered power hierarchies in our society place men above women, cis people above trans people, binary people over nonbinary people, endo people over inter people and gender conforming people over gender nonconforming people. A trans woman being bullied for wearing a wig counts as gender-based harassment when we use that term to encompass transphobia, because people are actively using the characteristic of baldness to invalidate her gender identity and enforce a hierarchy that places trans people below cis people. A cis man being made fun of for being bald is not that. It's still cruel and not ok, it is way too accepted socially and if it happens in a workplace environment, it's perfectly appropriate when his coworkers get sanctioned for it because it's just shitty behavior. But it's not the same thing as the experiences of women in the workplace in a patriarchal society.

[–] Kuori@hexbear.net 12 points 3 weeks ago

fucking thank you

[–] PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS@hexbear.net 11 points 3 weeks ago

this

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I've got a whole effort post which is mostly just paraphrasing bell hooks, but I still need to chew on it, but I want to restate something real quick

so-called Male Pattern Baldness, which is properly called (I just looked this up) androgenetic alopecia, is highly gendered in the sense that society perceives it as a problem that primarily effects men. pattern baldness is not in any way exclusive to cis men, but that is how it is largely perceived by society and discussed within our culture.

[–] Frank@hexbear.net 9 points 3 weeks ago

Well, I wanted to link the whole text of The Will to Change since why try to paraphrase bell instead of putting her forward in her own words, but some dorkasses are DDOSing the internet archive right now. : (

https://archive.org/details/the-will-to-change-men-masculinity-and-love-by-bell-hooks-z-lib.org.epub/page/n1/mode/2up

But I highly recommend The Will to Change. bell analyzes her experience in the feminist movement in the 70s, 80s, and 90s to better understand how Patriarchy works as a holistic system of violence. Based on her experiences she examines how in order for patriarchy to perpetuate itself it must use violence against men to force them to conform to patriarchy and force them to act as soldiers of patriarchy. It puts forward the argument that to end patriarchy the means by which patriarchy uses violence against men to coerce men in to enforcing patriarchy must be understand as an integral part of the system and that the liberation of women necessarily requires the liberation of men; To destroy patriarchy me must disrupt the cycle by which it recruits boys in to the patriarchy and makes them in to violent men, and doing so is an integral and necessary part of the struggle against the entire system of patriarchy.

While bell is very much making a compassionate appeal to understand the ways in which boys and men are themselves victims of patriarchal violence, there's also a purely cold-blooded and pragmatic analysis; To defeat an army one must deprive it of soldiers.

I believe bell's theory relates to this article as baldness in men is part of a very complicated way that men build hierarchies among themselves using intra-masculine violence. A young balding man is shamed, an older balding man may be respected. Balding in middle age is treated as a shameful failure of masculinity. Women participate in this aspect of violence by enforcing masculine beauty norms while men use it to harm each other in order to establish hierarchies of dominance. As part of those intra-masculine systems of dominance men harm women in order to assert their masculinity both to themselves, to other men, and to women around them. All of it becomes part of a holistic system of violence that enforces gender norms and constantly re-creates and re-produces gender violence in society.

Understanding how men use patriarchal violence against other men to enforce and maintain patriarchy is necessary to bringing about the ultimate defeat of patriarchy. A theory that does not exactingly analyze this phenomena cannot be complete.

[–] Tom742@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

chefs-kiss

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 27 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

glad I went bald in my 20s, back when everything felt like a personal attack on me so it was lost in the noise. I've been bald most of my life at this point, so bald jokes amuse me.

I see these guys losing it in their 40s who feel like it's their mortality and connection to youth, vitality, etc that is fading and it's so cringey. the ones with a few bucks get taken to the cleaners for the latest surgeries and snake oil, none of which reconnect them to youth or vitality.

Everytime I look at my freshly shaved head, I feel like I have teleported from 1000 years in the future, ready to fuck shit up.

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[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I mean, it's body-shaming regardless right? Don't do that.

edit: commented before reading the thread i gotcha 👍

[–] Tom742@hexbear.net 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Oh, I didn’t realize that baldness is male coded, guess I’ll let all the women struggling with hair thinning and balding know that.

[–] REgon@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

I most social groups mocking a woman for being bald is perceived as a bad thing because it is understood to be something she is probably sensitive about. This courtesy is rarely extended to bald men.

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[–] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

How can you make in fun of baldies when Captain Picard is so smexy? picard-excited

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 8 points 3 weeks ago

Are we forgetting about a very important bald chad in history?

lenin-shining

[–] rhubarb@hexbear.net 20 points 3 weeks ago

lmao "experience baldness"

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 20 points 3 weeks ago

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 weeks ago

2 Kings 2:23-24

[–] Andrzej3K@hexbear.net 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's not misandry because that isn't really a thing, and I get that 'bald' is sort of a political shorthand in some corners of the internet, but I started going bald in my teens and in my experience not only is verbal abuse completely accepted in normal society, but many people feel entitled to slap your head, hard, and then act like you're the one who's out of line when you tell them to fuck off. And I'm talking about young adults here, not just teens.

[–] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

'bald' is sort of a political shorthand in some corners of the internet

I've... never heard about that, is it about skinheads or something?

[–] Outdoor_Catgirl@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago

"mald" is a portmanteau of mad and bald

[–] Andrzej3K@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago

It was a thing on UK Left Twitter, particularly during the Corbyn years and their aftermath. I think it was just supposed to describe a certain stuffy, fragile male ego typical to serious centrist media types. It was that and calling everyone 'nonce'. Incredibly stupid cultural moment in hindsight.

[–] Diuretic_Materialism@hexbear.net 12 points 3 weeks ago

lenin-sure : "I agree"

[–] Cherufe@hexbear.net 12 points 3 weeks ago

Baldness is the n1 worry of my male friends regardless of age or amount of hair :(

[–] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 12 points 3 weeks ago

Fuck, I'm liking this misandry discourse. Whether accidental or not, it's actually being used to address some issues affecting men in a productive manner.

[–] Eldritch@hexbear.net 11 points 3 weeks ago

As someone who is assigned bald at birth I give everyone here the pass

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 10 points 3 weeks ago

One can be balding without being malding.

[–] StalinStan@hexbear.net 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I started shaving my head when I had a full head of hair. there will be no difference when I bald. No one will ever know. Like how Bruce Willis looked the same for decades. It is one of the few honorable paths

[–] ComradeMonotreme@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I’m the opposite I started taking finasteride when I had a full head of hair.

[–] StalinStan@hexbear.net 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

That could be the move.

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