Toxic Masculinity

[ismnotwasm]

Last edited Wed Mar 13, 2013, 04:07 PM - Edit history (1)

The U.N. is in the midst of its 57th Commission on the Status of Women, this year focusing on gendered violence, a global pandemic made all the more urgent by growing evidence that social change leads to increased violence against women. Why? Because destabilizing established social order—even in the interest of what we might agree is progress—can leave people feeling vulnerable. And when men feel vulnerable, toxic masculinity teaches them the way to reassert their power is by dominating women. There’s a pall hanging over the proceedings, a real risk that this year’s commission may wind up like last year’s, failing to come to any policy agreements thanks to the obstructionism of a handful of patriarchal countries who claim that their traditional and religious customs would be infringed upon if they had to take action to end gendered violence in their countries. You can bet that any customs that require impunity for violence against women are built on toxic masculinity

It’s time for a serious intervention in masculinity. It’s not enough to not be a rapist. You don’t get a cookie or a Nobel Peace Prize for that. If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men who are willing to do the hard work required to unpack and interrogate the ideas of masculinity they were raised with, and to create and model new masculinities that don’t enable misogyny. Masculinities built not on power over women, but on power with women.

Toxic masculinity is damaging to men, too, positing them as stoic sex-and-violence machines with allergies to tenderness, playfulness, and vulnerability. A reinvented masculinity will surely give men more room to express and explore themselves without shame or fear.
This is going to take real work, which is why so many men resist it. It requires destabilizing your own identity, and giving up attitudes and behaviors from which you’re used to deriving power, likely before you learn how to derive power from other, more just and productive places. There are real risks for men who challenge toxic masculinity, from social shaming to actual “don’t’ be a fag” violence—punishments that won’t ease until many, many men take the plunge. But there are great rewards to be had, too, beyond stopping rape.


http://prospect.org/article/toxic-masculinity

[redqueen]

1. That statement about cultural and religious traditions reminded me of this quote:

"When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's a tradition." Bernadette Mosala


(Also one of those paragraphs is in there twice.)

[ismnotwasm]

2. Thanks

I hit copy twice and had a hell of a time fixing it. I wanted to post from the meat of the article instead of the beginning.

[DURHAM D]

3. I thought this was an OP about the new Pope, same as the old Popes.

Thanks for posting.

[ismnotwasm]

4. LOL

Same thing.

I should edit; I'm agnostic/atheist, a kind of Schrödinger's cat atheist, if you will. I see where a lot of patriarchy evolved from the not just the Abrahamic religions but almost all religion. Still, they exist and again, the like the proverbial cat they are all the same to me.

[seabeyond]

5. "We don't raise boys to be men. We raise them not to be women, or gay men."

This rape is like most in that it was enabled by a deeply entrenched, toxic masculinity. It’s a masculinity that defines itself not only in opposition to female-ness, but as inherently superior, drawing its strength from dominance over women’s “weakness,” and creating men who are happy to deliberately undermine women’s power; it is only in opposition to female vulnerability that it can be strong. Or, as former NFL quarterback and newly-minted feminist Don McPherson recently put it, "We don't raise boys to be men. We raise them not to be women, or gay men." This starts in childhood for many boys, who are taught young that they’ll be punished for doing anything “girly,” from playing with dolls to crying, or even preferring to read over “rougHhousing” outside.

this is what happens on du. that so many of us women recognize, easily see. it is not rape. not kinda sorta a little rape. that is clearly what i am saying. BUT... it is the same thing but a much lower level of acquiring power.

drawing its strength from dominance over women’s “weakness,” and creating men who are happy to deliberately undermine women’s power; it is only in opposition to female vulnerability that it can be strong.

when using demeaning and degrading language, when using picture to then demean and degrade the women on du, that is what the men on du are doing. so while they are thinking they are all cute, too many of us in this community know exactly what they are doing. and it comes off as the opposite of "superior"

[seabeyond]

6. very good article ism.

This is going to take real work, which is why so many men resist it. It requires destabilizing your own identity, and giving up attitudes and behaviors from which you’re used to deriving power, likely before you learn how to derive power from other, more just and productive places. There are real risks for men who challenge toxic masculinity, from social shaming to actual “don’t’ be a fag” violence—punishments that won’t ease until many, many men take the plunge. But there are great rewards to be had, too, beyond stopping rape. Toxic masculinity is damaging to men, too, positing them as stoic sex-and-violence machines with allergies to tenderness, playfulness, and vulnerability. A reinvented masculinity will surely give men more room to express and explore themselves without shame or fear. (It will also, not incidentally, reduce rape against men as well, because many rapes of men are committed by other men with the intention of “feminizing”—that is, humiliating through dominance—their victim.)

These interventions start with a “feminine” activity: introspection. What did you learn about “being a man,” from whom? How are those lessons working out for you, and for the people you love and your communities? Taking action can be as simple as men publicly owning their preference for “female” coded things, whether that’s child-rearing, nonviolence, feminism, or anything else—and being willing to suffer the social consequences. It can be more formal, working with established organizations like Men Stopping Violence. As more men take responsibility for the work, it will surely also take on forms no one has yet envisioned.