els peixos a l'aigua i els amos al clot

Caucasus — Svaneti, Georgia

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).

Shit used to be wild, and this is just what I could find that had decent sources, I've heard a lot more horror stories.

Photos and short video showing the Dance of the Eagles and Hairy Saint John (Ball de les àguiles i Sant Joan Pelós) parading in Pollença, Mallorca (Balearic Islands).

The most characteristic element in Pollença's procession for the festivity of Corpus Sunday is this dance. The procession walks the streets and squares of the town which inhabitants decorate with palm and pine leafs, and is met with flower petals that the inhabitants throw from the windows and balconies.

What does the dance represent?

There are three characters. First, Hairy Saint John. He's a barefoot man with long hair wearing the Saint John costume, a wooden mask, with red lines drawn on his feet and legs to represent sandals, and carrying a wooden cross and a shepherd's bag with a lamb inside it. He represents Saint John the Baptist, a preacher who lived an austere life and lead the ritual of baptism in Jesus's times. He dances for the whole time the procession lasts.

He is followed by the eagles: two girls who have the figure of an eagle attached to their waist. The girls are selected to look as similar to each other as possible, with twins being preferred. They perform a very simple dance while playing the castanets (they will perform a more complex dance in the church and in the houses of important people of the town).

These girls wear a dress with many embroidered jewels on the head, torso, and hands. These jewels are given by people from Pollença as offerings some days before Corpus when the girls go house by house performing a dance. The jewels then are embroidered on the clothes and will be returned to their owners after the holiday. As a result of these jewels, the clothes the girls wear weight up to 5 kg.

Why so many jewels?

This has to do with the origin of this dance. Originally, this dance used to be performed on the festivity of Saint John (Midsummer) instead of Corpus. Around the Catalan Countries, it used to be common to lay coins and other gold objects under the sun on the festivity of Saint John, which was said to propitiate the wealth to multiply. It's thought that the eagles wear all these golden jewels because of this.

Fountains decorated for the ou com balla tradition in Barcelona, Catalonia. Photos from Cultura Popular Barcelona.

On the festivity of Corpus, some towns and cities in Catalonia have a curious tradition. Fountains are decorated with flowers and cherries, and then an empty egg is placed on top of the water source to make it spin. In the Catalan language, this tradition is called l'ou com balla ("the dancing egg").

It's unknown how this tradition got started, we only know for sure that it started in Barcelona. The oldest written proof of it is a document from the year 1636 where the Barcelona cathedral buys eggs for the Corpus festivity. Some historians claim another source from 1440 could also be talking about it but it's unsure.

There are three theories on what it could mean. Take into account that the Feast of Corpus Christi is one of the most important Catholic religious holidays, celebrated in May or June (moves according to the moon calendar) to celebrate Christ's presence in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a part of the religious service where believers eat a bread and drink a wine that is believed to be Christ's body and blood, respectively. Here are the three theories:

The most widespread interpretation is that the egg represents the sacramental bread and the fountain with water represents the cup with Christ's blood. The cherries and other fruit that decorate it would be Christ's blood.

Others believe it's a representation of the fullness of spring, because the egg, the water and the abundance of flowers and fruits are a symbol of the fecundity and regeneration that takes place in spring.

Abandoned Ming dynasty rural graveyard, Zhejiang.

i’m not talking about gender affirming posts for trans guys designed to offset actual dysphoria. i’m talking about the more general ones like “you’re still Manly if you have depression” or “taking care of your health/asking for consent/cooking/etc is actually Super Masculine because xyz”

it’s the same phenomenon as people reassuring straight men that Physical Affection Isn’t Gay, like yes you’ve identified the symptoms of the problem, that men won’t discuss or do certain things bc they are terrified of not seeming Manly Enough™ but it isn’t getting to the root of the problem

which in this case is that patriarchy draws a line around women and anything associated with women and calls it tainted, lesser, weak, foolish, crazy, worthless. And so men don’t want to be associated with those terrible Womanly things because maybe that would mean that they were just as tainted, lesser, weak, foolish, crazy, or worthless as women are.

and insisting that some of these ‘tainted’ things are actually Manly After All doesn’t solve the root problem. even if you succeed there will always be other important things men are cutting themselves off from because they don’t want to be tainted by the association with women.

so like even if your only priority is men being whole and healthy people, even if you don’t give a shit about women, if your goal is to make it okay for men to cry and be vulnerable and seek help and live full and happy lives as complete human beings who aren’t constantly dividing and subsuming and destroying vital pieces of themselves they don’t think are Manly enough –

if you want to let men just live without the pressure to constantly prove themselves Manly Enough –

targeting misogyny is just the only viable way to do that.

hegemonic masculinity requires a ‘lesser’ thing to set itself up in opposition to, something that’s hated and despised and demeaned that men have to be trained to try to not be like. Without misogyny the whole thing collapses. There’s no pressure to be Manly™ if there’s no shame in not being a man.

That seems fairly pointless from a liberation standpoint; it challenges nothing, and adds very little. Men in this perspective are still entitled to power over women, but the things they must do to maintain that power are slightly different and perhaps a little less violent.

The idea that men are and must be masculine, the concept of gendering certain traits as Manly and others as Womanly, is inherently a patriarchal construction and any attempt to expand these categories or salvage some kind of healthy way to use them is doomed.

Courage, integrity, kindness, all these things people are currently championing as “healthy masculinity” - these traits can and do exist in people of all genders. When we urge men to be good people, it’s ultimately counterproductive to appeal to their desire to identify with hegemonic masculinity, because we’re still, in that case, working with and upholding the gender hierarchy.

Men are capable of doing good without being rewarded with the power that comes with a higher station in the gender hierarchy, and it is both unnecessary and counterproductive to promise this reward by identifying good behaviours as “masculine”.

It is unnecessary and counterproductive to gender the traits required to engage with others in a prosocial way. And it’s ultimately more useful to think of ourselves as human beings trying to live our values, instead of trying to redefine divisive and hierarchical gender roles into something healthy and progressive.