When we hear the term TOXIC MASCULINE we usually think of an angry man who is power hungry and has no regard for peoples emotions. They grunt through life, leaving chaos in their wake. Ah yes, the caveman that we now refer to as TOXIC MASCULINE.
I heard something yesterday that made me think, so I will quote him here: (@oneguysopinion TikTok)
“What does being a man mean? It means I am presumed the villain, that I am guilty of things other men have done that I’ve never done and that they have not done in front of me for me to be able to stop them. It means that at 18 I have to sign up for the service; to be sent off to a war that I may not agree with by a president I didn’t vote for. It means I’m supposed to provide, work long hours, work overtime, work in dangerous conditions and that my life is expendable. It means that I am supposed to protect and respect woman but I am told “that’s not enough” just to be a good guy. But in order to stop bad guys, that would require leadership, competitiveness and aggression. Things Im told are signs of TOXIC MASCULINITY. It means that I address women as “Ma’am” even though I am told by a woman in her 20’s or early 30’s that that’s insulting, that Im calling her old. Even though I call 4 year old girls Ma’am. It means I open doors for women and that I carry heavy object for them. But I’m told that’s being misogynistic, that I’m demeaning her as a woman and implying she can’t do it for herself. It means growing up I was taught almost nothing about raising children, and that even if I’m in my 30’s and 40’s and have children of my own my competency as a parent is questioned. That spending time with my own children is called babysitting. It means that kissing BooBoos and giving affection to my own child or checking for a dirty diaper could be misconstrued as sexual. It means, in divorce Im almost guaranteed to lose custody of my children and that my role as parent will be boiled down to providing part of my income. It means one of the main ways I am measured as a person is by how much I can earn, which can result in severe depression when I find myself unemployed or unable to earn enough. Depression and feelings that as a boy I was never taught to express. I was told to “Toughen up! Man up!” and that it was considered “girly” or “weak” to show those emotions. And despite all those hardships I am told that I benefit from a patriarchal society. A patriarchal society that I no more helped build than the person saying that to me. The examples I am given to show we live in a patriarchal society is that the 531 members of congress are majorly men, and that every president has been a man, or that the majority of billionaires are men. But all those men added up is less than 1000…and I’m not a billionaire and I’ve never been a member of congress. And those 1000 men have very little in common with the other 160 million men in this country. But most of all, what it means to be a man is that all the things that I was taught to be… strong, a leader, a protector are now referred to as TOXIC MASCULINITY by women. This confuses and troubles me greatly because everything I was taught as a young boy, of what it is to be a man, was taught to me by my mother. This was also true for my friends who were lucky enough to have a father in their life growing up, but they were raised by their mothers.”