“Toxic masculinity” is an idea that lives in the anxious minds of social justice maniacs and really nowhere else.
The New York Times on Friday ran a truly pathetic op-ed by author Teddy Wayne who professed that when his wife got pregnant, he hoped the baby would be a girl, in part, so that he might not be faced with the challenge of “raising a nontoxic man.”
Huh. What about just doing what any normal parent would do and aspire to raise a decent human, regardless of gender?
“If he gets hurt, physically or emotionally, what amount of crying is appropriate?” wondered Wayne. “If someone relentlessly bullies him, is he ever justified in fighting back? How vulnerably nontoxic should he make himself in a world that preys on the undefended — but whose opposite is the grotesque alpha-male caricature?”
Reading about someone having these thoughts is exhausting. I can’t imagine what actually having them feels like.
Toxic masculinity is yet another concept born of the sick social justice ideology infecting every part of American culture, serving as yet one more way to reinforce the spread of victimhood, grievance, and oppression.
A separate article in the Times last year attempted to define toxic masculinity as “what can come of teaching boys that they can’t express emotion openly; that they have to be ‘tough all the time’; that anything other than that makes them ‘feminine’ or weak.”
That’s all fine and good, but as with all things social justice, a perhaps harmless idea is then weaponized to take down those deemed by the movement to benefit from unearned “privilege” (a term really reserved for anyone who doesn’t submit to the social justice scheme).
That fact and evidence that toxic masculinity exists solely as a scary fiction was best captured in a New Yorker article back in October 2018 by liberal visual artist Richard Moose. Accompanying the article was a video created by Moose portraying “white-male rage,” which he said reflected much about, who else, President Trump, as well as the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.
“I feel that the performance of masculinity (not the individuals themselves, who must be understood as actors) depicted in this simple video resonates with Kavanaugh’s entitled, defensive rage, as well as that of the angry Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee who also lashed out,” wrote Moose. “I hope the video gives viewers pause to consider how, sometimes, the toxic forms of masculinity that are fostered in élite school systems are not simply allowed to exist at the highest levels of government but seem almost required.”
Yes, Moose compared Kavanaugh’s “entitled, defensive rage” (Quick reminder: He was accused of rape), not to any other real life event, but to a video of a bunch of actors who literally did nothing more but scream into a camera.
It’s a social justice fantasy that we’re forever told is real by people such as Moose and Teddy Wayne, with a helpful assist from the national media.
Clap, if you believe.
