If the marketing folks at Gillette thought their customers wanted a condescending lecture about other men’s sins, they were badly mistaken.
For years, there has been a growing tendency in this culture to treat masculinity as a terrible thing. Some people would be a lot happier if all men were passive wimps. They don’t want us to be competitive. They don’t want us to have strong drives. They want us to be the losers who have become the butt of jokes in bad movies.
These culture warriors have taken the very worst possible behavior of certain men and conflated that with a form of masculinity. Lately, their campaign has started calling that sort of behavior “toxic masculinity” — as though masculinity had anything to do with it.
For those of us who have despised jerks and tried to stand up to them all our lives, this is insulting. A jerk or abuser might or might not be masculine. More emotionally healthy men might or might not be masculine. There is no connection between masculinity and toxic behavior.
Houston kindergarten kids required to learn: ‘Barack Obama is the man’
Looking at the stars makes me feel connected, not insignificant
At times, we have to just wait for the day when we’ll see the fruit
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone
Stop using children as pawns to promote adult political agendas
How could a stranger at sunset possibly know what I had to say?
Getting better at all I do is only way to fight ‘imposter syndrome’