those positivity posts for men that like, reassure them they’re still Manly™ if they have certain qualities/do certain things traditionally seen as Womanly™ really skate over the surface of some complex gender role shit without ever really challenging it.
i’m not talking about gender affirming posts for trans guys designed to offset actual dysphoria. i’m talking about the more general ones like “you’re still Manly if you have depression” or “taking care of your health/asking for consent/cooking/etc is actually Super Masculine because xyz”
it’s the same phenomenon as people reassuring straight men that Physical Affection Isn’t Gay, like yes you’ve identified the symptoms of the problem, that men won’t discuss or do certain things bc they are terrified of not seeming Manly Enough™ but it isn’t getting to the root of the problem
which in this case is that patriarchy draws a line around women and anything associated with women and calls it tainted, lesser, weak, foolish, crazy, worthless. And so men don’t want to be associated with those terrible Womanly things because maybe that would mean that they were just as tainted, lesser, weak, foolish, crazy, or worthless as women are.
and insisting that some of these ‘tainted’ things are actually Manly After All doesn’t solve the root problem. even if you succeed there will always be other important things men are cutting themselves off from because they don’t want to be tainted by the association with women.
so like even if your only priority is men being whole and healthy people, even if you don’t give a shit about women, if your goal is to make it okay for men to cry and be vulnerable and seek help and live full and happy lives as complete human beings who aren’t constantly dividing and subsuming and destroying vital pieces of themselves they don’t think are Manly enough –
if you want to let men just live without the pressure to constantly prove themselves Manly Enough –
targeting misogyny is just the only viable way to do that.
hegemonic masculinity requires a ‘lesser’ thing to set itself up in opposition to, something that’s hated and despised and demeaned that men have to be trained to try to not be like. Without misogyny the whole thing collapses. There’s no pressure to be Manly™ if there’s no shame in not being a man.
so instead of pacifying men’s egos by reassuring them they really ARE manly and untainted by Women’s Things, maybe let’s start challenging each other to think critically about why these things feel so forbidden and shameful, and start actually engaging with the root cause of so much of this stigma.
