Thank you for writing the finest, most nuanced piece I’ve ever read on the complexities of gender in a patriarchal society. Because the problem is *rooted* (which doesn’t mean that’s the only source of trouble by now) in a toxic-masculinity-worshipping culture, it can be too easy to assume that all masculinity is toxic, or that masculinity is the cause and the only cause of suffering that has resulted. It isn’t, and it isn’t.

Because one of the things which happens when toxic masculinity is a cultural idol is that people resent it and take it out on all men, because that’s whom they perceive as enforcing that worship. That backlash includes those who suffer under the worship of a form of masculinity they never felt represented them nor wished to have represent them. These men are women’s brothers; we share suffering from the same cause. But it can be hard to see that when we confuse toxic masculinity with simple manhood, and feel threatened by the latter because we’re expecting the former.

Another thing that happens when toxic masculinity is a cultural idol is that the whole question of what somebody is, or wants to be, becomes loaded from several different directions. It’s not possible for someone born into boyhood to become a woman, or someone born into girlhood to become a man, without facing scrutiny at best, or violence at worst… from any and all of a huge range of people with a huge range of reasons for feeling they have a right to influence who gets to be a man or a woman and what behaviors are required in order to pass in the land of men/women. Nobody appointed any of them, but they have their opinions anyway… piercingly.

And lots of people become afraid of each other. And lots of people become angry with each other. And lots of people resent each other’s easy comforts, without bothering to seek or understand the others’ pain. And lots of people blame each other… sometimes with valid reason and sometimes as pure scapegoat. And lots of people speak broadly when their experience is narrow. And lots of people believe they know what each other means, when the other isn’t sure they do (or is sure they don’t). And lots of people become suspicious of each other’s motives… they stand at the gate to their own identity, whatever that may be, ready to defend it if necessary, and not at all certain they’re willing to let other people pass.

All of this is possible for ciswomen, transwomen, cismen, transmen, and everything in between or something else entirely. Because humans are like that. I’m not exempt, but I try to listen when someone tells me I’m hurting them… no matter who says it or why. It may leave me open to manipulation, although I am usually pretty good by now at spotting when it’s headed down that path.

If I’ve picked up any wisdom in 46 years on the planet, it lies in this: we do not, in most cases, have to make hasty judgments about ourselves, each other, or our world. We think better in “slow brain” mode than fast (read Daniel Kahneman’s _Thinking Fast and Slow_ for the terms, and the research behind this), and our knee-jerk reactions all too often leave the knees behind and just become jerk reactions.

There will be time, if someone is truly a threat to ourselves and our tribe (whatever that may be), to circle the wagons and shut them out *after* they have demonstrated their asshole credentials individually and unmistakeably. We don’t need to race to hurt them or shut them out, as soon as they show their faces or try to say something which might be the opening move of a manipulation or might simply be an earnest attempt to be understood.