Blog 2: Toxicity within masculinity.

Gender roles have almost always been a thing. In past, men would almost always have more power and rights than women, for example; it wasn’t until 1918 that women in Canada had the rights to vote, of course with certain restrictions. As time went on, we, as a society, have realized how wrong it was to treat women in this manner, however, in certain countries, this ideology of men being “better”, and the superior gender is still present. Though still present in a minority of areas, toxic masculinity is still taught to young men and boys, causing a lot of wrongful behaviors affection those around them, whether it be of the same gender or the opposite.

I’m sure you’ve heard it a few times, but “gay” has often been used as an insult between friends, more often between guys. When an action is in the slightest way possibly feminine, they would point it out calling one another gay. In Michael S. Kimmel’s “Masculinity as Homophobia”, we read about the struggles men and young boys must go through to not be seen as gay, even though they aren’t. Saying “The fear of being seen as a sissy dominates the cultural definitions of manhood.” Unfortunately, Kimmel’s statement is still true to the real world. Boys are so scared of being seen as gay, that it turns into homophobia. From working out to have a strong figure; to strong actions to prove their manliness, the number of things they will do to prove their manhood is scary. I’ve seen situations where a boy tried fighting a large sum of other boys to prove his masculinity or even committing crimes, for that same reason. To prevent any signs of femininity, men act carefully and never show any vulnerability because that makes them weak. This generation of boys are still very intoxicated with this mentality of masculinity, making sure their every action is manly to prove their “superiority”.

Toxic masculinity is often seen as sexism; however, their ideology can also turn into racism. As displayed in the YouTube video watched in class: “Charlottesville: Race and Terror”, this type of toxic masculinity, I feel, is a lot less talked about, even though it is very dangerous to not only women, but men as well. The protest, led by a white supremacist male, wanting to keep the Robert E. Lee statue up in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned into an absolute chaos when people started protesting him. Christopher Cantwell, the leader to this protest, strongly believes that the immigrants ruin their country. Screaming racial slurs and chanting horrid things, while still believing that he is completely right. That day led to casualties on the other party and a lot of injuries as a car drove straight into the crowd of people. However, Cantwell saw no issue with it, saying that they deserved it or provoked it. His unbelievably tragic way of thinking really shows you how toxic his “manliness” is. In conclusion, men have installed incredibly horrible homophobic and sometimes racist ideas into their masculine way of thinking. Things such as behaving in a certain manner or thinking a certain way. It’s heartbreaking but still very present as people are still teaching their kids to think this way. We need to work together and put an end to this