Other than “the condition of being male,” what would you propose?
If you come up with a set of traits and label them masculine, how should a man who doesn’t have some or all of those traits feels about being adjudged by implication “not masculine” or “feminine”? Or how should a woman who has some or all of those traits feel about being adjudged by implication “masculine” or “not feminine”?
Because you are making the argument that the benevolent sexism claim that women are weak and need to be protected is a fundamental of nature without evidence and while claiming it is non-exploitative which is not true.
while it is complicated to break out the implications of kindness, tradition, and benevolent sexism.
You are asserting that a women’s “weaknesses” requires that men fulfill the protector-and-provider role. Which is generally considered to be benevolent sexism, yet you are asserting I am to accept that without question?
You are not describing non-exploitative relationships between the sexes, you are justifying the maintenance of social codes that assume that all women are weak with zero evidence that is true at the level of the individual or that physical strength is a good predictor of ability to even offer protection.
There’s a great book called Buffalo for the Broken Heart, by a guy who decides to turn his cattle ranch into a buffalo ranch, which I would recommend to virtually anyone. In it there is a scene (before he tries out the buffalo) where he spends some months off the ranch leaving it to be managed by a local, telling him very specifically not to let the cattle overgraze the pastures. When he comes back, it’s horribly overgrazed, pasture is ruined, and he’s just standing there with his mouth open and the local comes out looking worried and sheepish, and the author without saying a word just slugs him in fury. He slugs him a few more times for good measure, and then helps him up, they go have a beer together. There was nothing to be done, and nothing needed to be said.
I will frankly tell you that women never do that, in my experience.
Maybe this is cultural, and it obviously doesn’t have infinite application, but to me it was an example of an extremely masculine but perfectly appropriate response. On both sides.
Should point out that this interchange had nothing to do with women.
Side note: I think there is such a thing as masculinity, and femininity. Both have good and bad aspects, especially in their extremes. Men and women, as individuals, each have both masculine and feminine traits, and men nearly always have more masculine ones and vice versa. No men have no feminine traits, and vice versa.
They don’t have to feel anything in particular, and if they do, it’s just because our society is so freaked out about other people’s identification or non-identification with gender roles.
Our society has a lot of fuzzy categories. “Tall” and “short” for instance. How should someone who’s five foot seven feel about the category “short”? Can they identify with it? Are they going to feel bad about that category existing? How does someone who adores big parties but only if they don’t have to talk to anyone feel about the category “extrovert”? And so on.
Having the category isn’t a problem. The problem is socially punishing people when they’re not where you expect them to be.
Now, I would say that hitting people is toxic, not “appropriate” at all. In fact, it’s a crime and also gives rise to civil claims.
I’m not arguing that you are wrong in your observation that power tools are “blokey” things. I’m arguing that making any assumptions or decisions based on that observation is in fact an act of upholding “toxic masculinity”.
Or to put it another way, any time you say “well, men are just like X,” you are promoting a paradigm that accepts that men cannot help but be inclined to act in certain ways because of their biology.
Still pretty toxic in some circumstances I’m afraid. If you’re not physically stronger than women, by that definition, you can’t be a gentleman. No muscle? Not a real man.
I’m at the upper end of the bell curve regarding female strength, not especially due to effort, just genetics. Sure, most guys the same size and age as me are stronger, but since I was a teen, I’ve regularly encountered men physically weaker than me. I’ve had a lovely view of exactly how toxic considering physical strength to be an essential component of masculinity can be.
I get a bit of it directly; if being strong is masculine, then women who are stronger get called butch, are assumed to be lesbian (which probably annoys lesbians as much as straight women) and generally get sniggered at. It was really no fun in my teens, when I was a head taller than most guys my age as well, now it’s mostly just irritating. The effect the attitude has on guys can be far worse though. I’ve got a good friend and former workmate who, due to a collection of health conditions, is really thin and has a lot of trouble putting on muscle mass. Working together, we’d get ‘jokes’ like ‘Hey, Filbert, shake him upside down, see if he’s got [missing item] in his pockets!’ and ‘Just chuck him over here would you?’
He got so sensitive about it, if there was anything needed doing like moving something heavy, he’d jump to do it before me, clearly desperate to prove his strength. In the worst case, he insisted on moving a table for me, even when I could lift it with one hand and he could barely move the thing, because he’d just got out of hospital the night before after being on an intravenous drip for a week. But hey, got to be strong or you’re not a man.
They should feel neutral. Nothing wrong with being a feminine man or a masculine woman.
Masculine and feminine aren’t necessarily only biological. Characteristics that are purely sociological that are associated more with one gender than the other in 2019 are still gendered. A tomboy is a girl or woman that has more masculine traits than the average woman in the US. Nothing wrong with that.
Non toxic masculinity looks like Steve Irwin or Mister Rogers.
Positive and negative masculine traits can very well be the same thing. Some women will adore, want and expect their partner to act all protective at all times. Others will hate this paternalistic jerk and the way he constantly infantilises them, for instance. And people can’t really change their attitude by 180° depending on who they’re involved with. So, some masculine attitudes will be highly sought after by some while being classified as “toxic masculinity” by others.
The mistake, in my opinion, is the assumption that there’s some ideal way of “being a man” that would be an objective improvement and satisfying for all women. That’s this erroneous idea that leads many women to accuse feminism of actively trying to “castrate” men. They want their males in version 1.1 and resent being told that they’re internalizing paternalism by not wanting the new 2.3 version.
The wording of the OP, who assumes the existence of specifically masculine characteristics (she thinks that a “feminine inspired” culture would be strikingly different) that she perceives as non just desirable but needed leads me to believe that she belongs to this category of women who aspire to differentiated (and somewhat traditional) gender roles.
It would be ample time in my opinion, in an era where divergences from the norm are more and more considered as acceptable, that people stop assuming that their personal preferences (on this subject like on many others) should naturally be everybody else’s preference too and that anybody disagreeing must be flawed in some way. There’s no “ideal masculinity” and there will never be.
By the way, I noticed that many people asked : “but why would this peculiar trait be considered specifically masculine?” . There’s an unfounded assumption here too, IMO. Which is that most traits (including masculine traits in this case) are determined by culture and would just change if only the culture evolved. This idea being driven as much by current trendy beliefs about the omnipotence of culture as by traditional beliefs about free will. But as I wrote recently, we have no fucking idea of what is determined by biology and what is determined by environment, and to which extent. We know pretty much nothing about the human brain, and most statements made about this topic aren’t even hypothesis but wild guesses based mostly on the person expressing them’s idea of how things should ideally be, and in support of their preferred narrative. It is totally possible that some traits, even some extremely specific ones, considered as “masculine” are indeed driven by biology and will be “naturally” present in most men. It’s not at all a given that gender roles are purely cultural constructs.
What if they don’t like being considered a feminine man or a masculine woman?
Yes, that’s the premise of any conversation about masculinity or femininity.
Ask Filbert’s friend whether there was anything wrong with being treated as a girly-man.
Are you saying that though because you don’t agree that there are such things are traits or preferences very much more often expressed in one sex than the other, or because you’re concerned about our society’s predilection for pushing people into assigned gender boxes that they don’t fit in?
If it’s the former, I disagree with you - if the latter then I agree that this is a problem, but I don’t think that “lets not define things as masculine” is the solution to it.
Lets take aggression. Men are, on average, more aggressive than women. I actually think that’s true, statistically. Aggression can be toxic - when it’s used to dominate people - but it can be channeled into useful directions like jobs with lots of physical activity - firefighters, carpenters, mountain rescuers - or where to be successful you need to win against opposition (trial lawyers). It would be useful if we had a term like “aggression” that encompassed these not-necessarily-toxic aspects of the trait - the determination to fuckin-well-WIN at whatever cost - while leaving behind the definitely toxic aspects of it (not caring whose bodies you tread on on the way up)
So then when somebody - probably a male somebody - notices ‘wow, I have a shit-ton of aggression in me’, instead of saying ‘Be less aggressive! Aggression is part of toxic masculinity!’ we can be saying ‘Here’s the template for non-toxic masculinity. This aggress-ish kind of behaviour that still has all the useful determined-to-win stuff, but misses out on the toxic bullying stuff’. If you label that as ‘a part of masculinity’ then you increase the chance that guys are willing to go down that path. Being “masculine” is actually important to some guys. I don’t particularly identify with how that feels personally - being feminine is exceedingly UNimportant to me - but I see that it is so. I think it’s easier to define a “non-toxic masculinity” that’s actually attractive to people who find masculinity important, rather than to totally stamp out the concept of masculinity altogether - because people who find masculinity important will resist that.
All this, combined with a healthy dose of “letting people do their own thing” rather than whacking them over the head with gender roles that they actually don’t care particularly about. I support having the concept of masculinity as an option that people can choose, not as a compulsory straightjacket associated with having a penis.
Women and men tend to be good at different things. If you disagree, please stop reading now as you might be offended. Some things women seem to be better at, other things men. Together we make a great team!
For whatever reason men have shaped the world the way it is. Religion, Science, Math, Music, Art, ect… Given this is factual, but not without some exceptions, being born male gave the world something femininity doesn’t traditionally have.
It’s been my experience that outside of stuff like “producing sperm”, when men tend to be better at something than women it’s just because the culture has been pushing men towards the thing and women away from it. As a result of that, calling such things “masculine” seems like a lie. For example, it’s my understanding that math and science tend to be male-dominated fields. Calling math and science masculine is a lie.
I believe that something is called privilege.
While it doesn’t quite fit with Shodan’s definition, I think that’s not necessarily true, and a pretty small tweak allows the weak to be chivalrous.
It’s not necessary to be stronger than an innocent/weak party to defend them chivalrously. It’s simply necessary for their assailant to be stronger.
Non-toxic masculinity is embracing the fact that when the ship goes down, you get the women and children onto lifeboats first. You don’t have to be a physically strong man to do that. You just have to stand down. You don’t have to be stronger than the ocean to save people from it.
“Have a dick, but don’t be a dick.”
You can argue 1+1 = 3, and water doesn’t start to boil at 212 degrees Fahrenheit if you wish. Nothing I wrote was false. Blaming culture which has changed over the years just doesn’t wash.
I would argue that non-toxic masculinity doesn’t conflate women with children.
Then that’s unfortunate.
What?
What?