Although I identify as straight white and cis male, and have never felt any need to question that, I have long felt that traditional male stereotypes and behaviour, as far as I understood them, were problematic. For many years I could not articulate why; I just didn't get them. Didn't like the things men are 'supposed' to like. That's not unusual, but it does make life just that bit more difficult, even as someone who comes from the dominant social group and has no identity issues that garner oppression.
Gender norms affect everyone, but they clearly affect some people even more. Women for example have a unique and depressing experience at the hands of toxic masculinity that is still brushed under the carpet. It is difficult to understand these things and I am by no means an expert in gender theory nor feminism. However I have come to recognise that capitalism props up - and in turn is propped up by - what is often called patriarchy. Trying to question its values is one of the most socially difficult and necessary things we have to do right now.
What has always surprised me is just how strong these norms are. Even something as trivial as not being a sports fan, specifically a footie fan, marks you out in the eyes of some who seem genuinely to think you are in some way deficient. It's assumed that you support X team, or at the very least you like a sport of some (acceptable) kind (i.e., not curling or synchronized swimming). So often these norms are taken for granted and the stereotype of the 'jock' and the 'nerd', from American school culture, is very real. If you like 'nerdy' stuff then you are lower in the social hierarchy; you aren't an alpha male. As if being one, in our society, matters a jot. I'm not fighting the other apes for prime feeding territory, I'm filling a basket in Tesco ffs.
The response of the moment, when oppression rears its ugly head, is to deflect and deny. Hashtags variously claim all lives as being equal (they aren't, that's the problem) and that not all men (or whoever) are the problem. These are trite and cynical attempts at avoiding the issue. Of course not all men are rapists, but the ones that are don't identify themselves as such. They don't wear horns and cloven feet. So there is a collective responsibility on us, as men in this case, to question the culture that is presumed upon us. We have to start rejecting it otherwise it will be all men. Patriarchy isn't just toxic for women either, though undoubtedly they suffer the most. Fans of toxic masculinity, fancying themselves as intellectual, will try to argue that, for example, men suffer. They point to the dreadful phenomena of male suicide, but only serve to defeat their argument. Why are men endive to suicide if not because they feel so catastrophically inadequate in our patriarchal culture? Gender norms must be justified otherwise they must be rejected, and it's clear, as our understanding of identity and the freedom people have (relatively speaking) to express their identity broadens, that toxic masculinity has to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
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