9 things I'm doing to teach my teenage son about 'toxic masculinity'

Article here. Excerpt:

'2. I don’t allow (or use) disrespectful language - Last month, my son asked me if it was ok to call a woman a bitch, even if it wasn’t to their face. No stars for guessing what my response was. However, the fact he asked suggests he knew it was wrong (he was probably testing boundaries, too), so I calmly explained why it was a degrading term, even as a joke. I’ve also become aware of the language I use about men and myself. A casual ‘dickhead’ remark if a driver cuts me up could be perceived as negative by my son, as can calling myself a ‘stupid cow’ if I’ve dropped the milk. If I’m saying these thing about others and myself, what’s that telling him?
...
8. I avoid the term ‘toxic masculinity’ - I found that when I used the term 'toxic masculinity', my son became defensive and rightly so, I referenced it at first, so my son knew what I was talking about, and then moved away from it. Phil agrees, 'Parents need to focus less on masculinity being a problem and more on masculinity being a healthy and natural expression in many boys and young men.'

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Paris 2024: Men's exclusion from artistic swimming raises questions on 'gender-equal Olympics'

Article here. Excerpt:

'No men will compete in synchronised swimming at the Olympics, despite Paris 2024 vowing to be the first gender-equal edition in the history of the Games.

The 96 athletes picked by 18 different nations for the Olympics were all women.

In 2022, World Aquatics changed the rules, allowing up to two men to be selected in an eight-athlete synchronised swimming squad.

"World Aquatics is very disappointed that no male artistic swimmers have been selected for Paris 2024" they told Euronews in a statement.

"This should have been a landmark moment for the sport. We understand that it would always be a challenge for men to earn a spot on a team in time for Paris 2024, considering that their eligibility was only confirmed 18 months ago, but we were still hopeful that some would succeed."

Neither World Aquatics nor the International Olympic Committee have a say on the picks, as they are always decided by the individual national federations.'

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UK: Influencers driving extreme misogyny, say police

Article here. Excerpt:

'Deputy Chief Constable Maggie Blyth said officers who focused on violence against women and girls were now working with counter-terrorism teams to look at the risk of young men being radicalised.
...
Speaking about harmful content online, she said: "We know that some of this is also linked to radicalisation of young people online, we know the influencers, Andrew Tate, the element of influencing of particularly boys, is quite terrifying and that's something that both the leads for counterterrorism in the country and ourselves from a VAWG [violence against women and girls] perspective are discussing."'

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Tackling misogyny in UK schools could take up to 20 years, says Jess Phillips

Article here. Excerpt:

'Plans to tackle misogyny in schools could take up to 20 years to have an impact on society, the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, has said as she outlined measures to protect women and girls.

Phillips spoke the day after the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) estimated that 2 million women were victims of violence perpetrated by men each year in an epidemic so serious it amounts to a “national emergency”.

One of Labour’s five missions is to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, by targeting perpetrators and addressing the root causes of abuse and violence.

The minister for violence against women and girls said “Raneem’s law” was already in the works, and would ensure police forces provide protection to victims of domestic abuse. But evidence that some of the government’s policies are working – such as addressing misogyny among schoolchildren – could take years to emerge.'

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Do women make better leaders?

Article here. Excerpt:

'The surprising thing is not that a sitting president decided to abandon his reelection campaign. Or that his party’s leading candidate to replace him is a woman.

No, the astonisher is that America has never had a female commander in chief.

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Not Just Dead White Men: Boston’s “Un-Monument” Project Sets Out To Undo Centuries of Bias

Article here. Excerpt:

'In an audit of national monuments, the Monument Lab found that most monuments commemorate — surprise! — white men.

Who from history gets cast in bronze — and who doesn’t — reflects a legacy of racism and sexism in America’s public spaces. Now, a project from the city of Boston is taking aim at the landscape of monuments across the city.

It’s called Un-Monument, short for “Un-monument | Re-monument | De-Monument: Transforming Boston.” There’s a playful, experimental spirit to the initiative, which consists of free temporary monuments, partnerships with arts and cultural organizations across the city and free public programming.'

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Michael Kimmel to present ‘Angry White Men’ at Monadnock Summer Lyceum

Article here. Excerpt:

'On Sunday, July 28, at 11 a.m. Michael Kimmel will present “Angry White Men: Masculinity on the Extreme Right” for the Monadnock Summer Lyceum at Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church, 25 Main St.

Kimmel will reference his book “Angry White Men” and other research data to look at anger’s causes and explore more-positive possibilities.

Kimmel earned his BA from Vassar, a Master of Arts from Brown, and his doctorate from UC Berkeley. He taught at Bryant College, UC Berkeley, the State University of New York and Rutgers. He is founder and editor of the academic journal Men and Masculinities and a national spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.'

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US women’s rights campaigner accused of sexual harassment

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Maryland Commission for Men's Health Report on Domestic Violence (2010)

Article here. Excerpt:

'I wrote this report when I was the vice-chair of the Maryland Commission for Men’s Health 2008-2010. This was one of three reports that The Maryland Department of Health tried to deep six. It took us a year to track down what they had done and the reports finally made their way to the legislators. (The story of this event was a chapter in Janice Fiamengo’s excellent book Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say.) They really didn’t want this to get out and they succeeded since it was a year late. It was written with the idea of giving legislators a good sense of the bigoted path the domestic violence industry had taken in Maryland. It continues to be a good summary of how the feminists have built a lethal anti-male industry. It is amazing and shocking how little has changed since that time. Sad too.

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Challenging new Title IX rules, legal group says women in STEM award discriminates against real men

Article here. Excerpt:

'On July 10, the Equal Protection Project (EPP) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation filed a civil rights complaint against the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) that alleges that the eligibility criteria of RIT’s Women in STEM Award discriminates against biological males who identify as males.

The Women in STEM Award at RIT is a scholarship valued at $76,000 designed to support outstanding high school students with a demonstrated interest in areas like science, computing, robotics, and math.

However, the award is exclusively open to “outstanding female, female-identifying, or non-binary student[s]” – effectively excluding males who identify as males, according to EPP. The civil rights organization alleges that this exclusion violates Title IX as interpreted by the Biden administration’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and RIT’s nondiscrimination policies.'

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This is the first airline where women can request not to sit next to men

Article here. Gee, is there a version that allows ppl to pick the ethnicity of their seat-mates? Oh, but that'd be racist. This isn't sexist at all! Excerpt:

'But now, one airline is making it easier to calm anxieties when it comes to flying, becoming the first to allow women to request not to be seated next to a man.

A low-cost airline based in India, IndiGo, has announced a pioneering new policy allowing women to view the gender of the passengers sitting around them before booking.

They’ll be able to choose to sit next to a woman if they’d prefer, which they’ll be able to do by viewing the seat plan ahead of flying.

Where women are booked on, their seats will flash pink – yes, somewhat of a cliché but the policy itself is a watershed moment when it comes to passenger safety.
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Critically, men will not be privy to this information when booking, so they won’t be able to use it to deliberately position themselves next to a woman.

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Toxic masculinity? The rise of male influencers and the manosphere

Article here. Excerpt:

'UK police chiefs have warned that young men are being radicalised into extreme misogyny online by influencers such as Andrew Tate. Speaking as the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) published a report into violence against women and girls, which it is calling a “national emergency’’, senior police officer Maggie Blyth has said that Tate and others like him are radicalising boys into extreme misogyny in a way that is “quite terrifying”.

The report estimates that at least one in every 12 women will be a victim of violence every year: around two million women. Nearly 3,000 crimes of violence against women are recorded each day, though police chiefs are calling it the “tip of the iceberg” because the figures do not include unreported crimes.'

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On political poles and toxic femininity

Whatifalthist discusses political poles and the influence of toxic femininity in history on them, though this isn't his main point. YouTube video here.

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Feminism’s Patriarchs: An Ideological Response to the Failures of Men

Article here. Excerpt:

'It is easy to identify many of the prominent feminist women throughout history—Mary Wollstonecraft, Betty Friedan, and Judith Butler—yet it is men, beginning with Charles Fourier, who have directed many of feminism’s key developments. Indeed, what is often called “feminism” cannot be separated from ideologically driven men who saw an opportunity to take advantage of or to cultivate detached and vulnerable women ripe for redirection toward their own social and political goals.
...
Over time, a movement that claimed to strive for equality between men and women unmasked itself as a movement that sought to make women like men, and even deny the reality of meaningful biological differences altogether. While this is obvious in second-wave and third-wave feminism, these beliefs were present from the beginning of first-wave feminism, too.'

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UK: Feminist professor to lead shake-up of national curriculum

Article here. Excerpt:

'A feminist professor will lead a shake-up of the national curriculum for schools in England, the Government has announced.

Prof Becky Francis, the chief executive of learning charity the Education Endowment Foundation, will chair a wholesale review of the school syllabus “to breathe new life into our outdated curriculum”, the Education Secretary said on Friday.

The review will scrutinise all aspects of teaching material for pupils aged five to 18 and will “look closely at the key challenges to attainment for young people,” the Department for Education (DfE) said.'

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Australia: Teachers warn of sexual harassment, sexism, misogyny in classrooms

Article here. Excerpt:

'Teaching has remained a predominantly female profession.

The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority said seven out of every 10 teachers identified as female, a number that increased to more than eight out of every 10 in primary school ranks.

There have been ongoing concerns about the rise of misogyny in Australian classrooms, led by online influencers such as Andrew Tate.
...
From having a 16-year-old female student tell a male classmate that, "Miss wants to f*ck you", to Year 9 students projecting pornography on a whiteboard behind her while she took the roll, Ms Duffus said she had seen it all.

She said at times it made her feel like an emotional prostitute.

"I was accepting large sums of money to be the teenagers’ punching bag for the day," she said in an essay on her experience.

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