In Praise of Heroic Masculinity

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2023-08-30 15:55

Article here. Excerpt:

'The phrase toxic masculinity was coined in the 1980s by a psychologist named Shepherd Bliss. He was a central figure in what he named the “mythopoetic” manhood movement. Bliss had grown up in a punishing military household with a domineering father, and he meant the new term to connote “behavior that diminishes women, children, other men,” a way “to describe that part of the male psyche that is abusive.”
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The opposite of toxic masculinity is heroic masculinity. It’s all around us; you depend on it for your safety, as I do. It is almost entirely taken for granted, even reviled, until trouble comes and it is ungratefully demanded by the very people who usually decry it.'

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I don't care who coined the term, what they suggested its meaning was, who uses it or how hard they argue about it. Its contemporary use is hate speech, one of the favorite memes used by feminist authors attempting to appropriate dialogues about masculinity and infest it with superlative negatives.

The term is offensive to many men and boys and has been used to belittle, demonise and control men, by suggesting that masculinity can be toxic or healthy, and only feminists, or others, can educate men and boys in "acceptable" "healthy" masculinity.

Use of the term "toxic masculinity" shows a disregard for men and boys who are offended, a callous disregard that not only attempts to own and define masculinity, but to do so without involving the men and boys experiencing masculinity. Any dialogue about OUR masculinity must be on our terms, without the unnecessary hateful terminology of feminist academics and ideologues.

The behaviours that feminists in particular attribute to "toxic masculinity" are the same attributes exhibited by those feminists. The controlling, the burdening of non-conforming men and boys with guilt, the emasculating of men and boys who dare to live their own experience of masculinity without censure.

Whoever Shepherd Bliss was, the personal demons he grew up with and that shaped his discourse on masculinity, are not all men's to endure or abide.

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Submitted by rabel111 on Thu, 2023-08-31 22:34