'Masculinity Is More Than a Mask'

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2014-01-13 18:00

Article here. Excerpt:

'Are school shooters and mass murderers born out of an aggressive emphasis on masculinity in our society? The trailer for filmmaker and feminist activist Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new documentary, “The Mask You Live In,” would have us think so.

The recently released trailer has attracted 1 million views on YouTube. It argues that American boys are captive to a rigid and harmful social code of masculinity. From the earliest age, they are told to “Be a Man!” “Don’t Cry!” “Stop with the emotion!” and “Man up!” This “guy code” suppresses their humanity, excites their drive for dominance, and renders many of them dangerous. The trailer features adolescent men describing their isolation, despair, and thoughts of suicide, artfully interspersed with terrifying images of school shooters and mass murderers.

I admire Newsom for using her considerable talent to advocate for boys. But I worry that she is less concerned with helping boys than with re-engineering their masculinity according to specifications from some out-of-date gender studies textbook. The trailer is suffused with “males-are-toxic” ideology but shows little appreciation for how boys’ nature can be distinctively good. “The Mask You Live In” is scheduled to be released later this year. Let’s hope there is still time for edits.'

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Comments

Rather than destroying gender sterotypes - Feminism "enforces" them by driving a wedge between the sexes. It indoctrinates young women to fear and question/second guess their male friends motivations, intent and actions. Similarly, young men - as this article alludes to - are taught a "white-knight" version of hyper-masculinity by their single mothers without any moderating male role model in their homes or social institutions (education, organized sport and religious institutions falling out of favour in our increasingly divided and secular society).

When confronted with challenging and difficult social situations - everyone falls back to on learned stereotype's as a proxy on how to cope with the fallout.

Feminists stereotypes predominate.

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Submitted by fathers4fairness on Tue, 2014-01-14 16:34