Contemporary heterosexual masculinity is stuck between relinquished patriarchy and lingering privilege

Evidence

Nothing Was the Same is tangled up in all the confusions of a generation of men faced with contradictory imperatives — the post-feminist awareness that treating women like shit isn’t cool, together with the Burroughsian bombardment of always-available pornography. There’s no point moralising here, either for Drake or us. Drake’s at his weakest when he half-heartedly attempts some kitschy Hallmark card affirmation of lurve; he’s at his most painfully revelatory when he admits that these impasses, these binds, are just too much for him. He can’t escape these knots because the knots are what he is. His bewilderment about what a man is supposed to be now is the very hallmark of a contemporary heterosexual masculinity that realises that the patriarchal game is up, but which is too hooked on the pleasures and privileges to relinquish them yet (just one more click on the porn, then I’ll be Mr Sensitive forever). — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1325

Categorization

• SEED: The parenthetical ‘just one more click on the porn, then I’ll be Mr Sensitive forever’ is a perfect capsule line for an essay on millennial male ambivalence about masculinity.
• XREF: Connects to Fisher’s central theme of the blocked, arrested subject unable to break from melancholic attachment to outdated forms of desire and identity. — connects to: Contemporary heterosexual men know patriarchy is finished but cling to its pleasures — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1325; Heterosexual interdependence makes both sexes invested in sexist arrangements; Male freedom is incompatible with advocating the subjugation of women

Broader Connections

• Contemporary heterosexual men know patriarchy is finished but cling to its pleasures #corroborates (0.95) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1325
• Heterosexual interdependence makes both sexes invested in sexist arrangements #corroborates (0.75)
• Male freedom is incompatible with advocating the subjugation of women #contradicts (0.72)