Many Ways to Be a Girl, but One Way to Be a Boy: The New Gender Rules - Sensationalist Headlines

I feel much more comfortable talking about how I'm gender-nonconforming (GNC) with women than men. Any glimpse into my GNC choices with men gets met with "aw, dude, what the fuck? Ahahaha wow, why" while women it's usually "Oh, cool. Anyway..." There's been only one typical "dude" that I've felt comfortable admitting that kind of stuff too, and that was after he had the courage to admit to me that he likes to wear women's clothing, the courage he got from those glimpses into my GNC lifestyle. Have I encountered women who go "eugh, I don't like short guys?" Yeah, of course. And the like. But in my experiences, I've become more afraid of being vulnerable to men than non-men.

I never really expected Facepunch to have a "get off my lawn" poster. I guess it was inevitable, the community's been around for so long now. I really wish toxic masculinity had a better name. It's way too easy to misinterpret it as "masculinity is inherently toxic," which, hell, I thought was the idea behind it for quite a while.

I think Terry Crews is proof enough that masculinity isn't inherently toxic. It's just that people are set in their ways that masculinity is all that can exist. Otherwise you're gay and that's icky. That and people confuse stoicism with a lack of goddamn compassion.

I agree. I have a few conservative friends that I’d talk/debate with a lot about this issues. One thing that i noticed was this, that they believed the term toxic masculinity meant that maleness itself was toxic.

To be fair, I feel like quite a few on the left side do too.

I think feminism can also be toxic, that's not a problem exclusive to masculinity. TERFs imo are an example of that.

TERFs are a prime example of what we could call toxic femininity. They actually tend to have an extremely narrow and restrictive view of what femininity is. Just like toxic masculinity asserts that you cannot be masculine if you cry or display emotion, TERFs assert that you cannot be feminine if you don't have the correct chromosomes or uterus or childhood memories. And just like toxic masculinity, it results in a type of person that is very bitter and hateful towards anybody they don't share many similarities with.

Stoic and strong inevitably turns you into an asshole because the stocism almost requires bottling up everything. And you pointed as well the limitation on crying so at that point how does a stoic man vent? In anger and rage.

Well, given that the vast majority of modern society you live in right now is trying to increase the very equality you're arguing against, and has been doing so for decades - according to your own argument, you're a failure.

"Go along with your society's ideals no matter what" -Cigarettes, 2018

There are, and it’s why this misconception of what Toxic Masculinity is, is much more of a general issue for everyone. It’s also why I don’t like using that term nor Toxic Femininity. That general confusion over somewhat blanket-terms honestly just causes a lot of unnecessary trouble. So I just specify by saying “the toxic parts of masculinity” & “the toxic parts of femininity” so that people know exactly what I’m trying to talk about.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't need a better name just because people are idiots about it. I find it kind of fascinating that when you say, for instance, 'toxic waste', everyone knows that you're talking about a specific kind of waste that's toxic but when you mention 'toxic masculinity', all the fucking monkeys come out the woodwork.

That's an interesting way to think about it. I think there's some truth to what you say. Well the term isn't going to radically change at this point so I guess we're better off just rolling with it and clearing up misconceptions.

In part, its a failure of education. Many of the terms in feminist theory that get bandied about in normal conversation about women's issues are words whose definitions require at least 3 different books to fully understand and comprehend. And at least a third of the American population can't read past the 8th grade level. There are people who are trying to explain these important concepts(that I fundamentally disagree with but I'd rather have a debate and exchange rather than a screaming match), to the grander populace. So what ends up happening is the simplified and extreme version is the one bandied about.

While i would find that great, my objective when discussing my ideas with people is to make sure they understand, which is why I think its ok to not play a game of semantics with the other person. I'll use the language that I know will be very clear to the other person

I feel like splitting these issues of oppression and alienation into gender, race, sexaulity etc etc is a way of basically preventing good progressive change. Getting people to war against each other rather than those who benefit from the status quo. I'm not saying that we should ignore LGBT issues or racial issues, more that we should group together straight or gay, black or white, man or women and blame those in power and not other people in different "camps" just trying to get along.

What even is metrosexuality? Does it mean people want to fuck subway trains?

You could just call it internalized misandry. From it's usage it seems to be pretty much the exact same concept as internalized misogyny, just applied to men, so it seems like it would make sense to just call it it's inverse. I also dislike the term because it seems like people have started to use it for any issue that negatively impacts men, which as previously mentioned kind of pushes the narrative that all of those problems just come from men hating themselves and not from anywhere else.

It was a fairly short lived stage where straight men started dressing up fashionably in a way that was considered gay. The biggest supporters of it were Queer Eye for the Straight Guy which is what helped it explode. It kinda fell apart when people realized how stupid it was.

Internalized xandry is a pretty separate issue though.

tearing down and calling men who choose to be stoic and may not want to cry "assholes" is not the greatest way to go about it. crying isn't necessarily the only non-anger way to vent.

Tbh that's more a failure on their part of being uninformed and reactionary than failure on the academics who coined the concept. Men are incentivised to blame women for the fact they constantly feel like crap, not the political elite that benefit from being able to split people into easily manipulatable categories and groups. Because it's a more immediately visible scapegoat.

I agree but Swilly has a point. Suppressing emotions turns sour at some point. Could be immediate, could manifest itself a long time down the road. But it'll affect you badly, and people around you as well.

Is it? Again maybe I'm misunderstanding but when I see the term toxic masculinity used it seems to be describing pretty much the same idea, i.e. people enforcing harmful expectations upon themselves and others of the same gender because they've internalized their society's idea of what their gender is supposed to be like.

It was dumb not because of the concept, but because it was expressly created to sell shit. And outside of those who enjoy it, the entire thing was insulting to men because it posited that we needed to be 'fixed up'.

I think you have a point. They're more interrelated than I immediately thought. I still think it's a bit clearer to leave the terms separate, though. Okay, I can totally see that. I just try to avoid calling movements 'dumb' because, well, somebody had a good time with it.

Is there anything about the human experience that neoliberalism hasn't fucking ruined?

stoicism isn't suppressing your emotions and calling it a day, it is not letting your emotions interfere with your actions which is essential when it comes to tough circumstances. whether it is a firefighter diving into a building to rescue someone suppressing their fear or a student suppressing their anxiety before a test, suppression of emotion serves an important purpose. i agree that expression of emotion is important, but there is a time and place for it. having the ability to suppress emotion that might overcome you in the face of hardship is a critical ability.

But I'm not talking about men who approach it in a healthy manner. The conversation was about toxic masculinity and when you push every man toward that sort of build it becomes inherently dangerous because not everyone is designed for it. You're correct but off topic in regards to my point.

I don't think that's the type of stoicism we're discussing, really.