Why The ‘New Masculine’ Movement Is Just As Toxic As The Old One
By Erin Innes
The mythopoetic men’s movement sounds great —until you dig a little deeper and realize it’s more of the same.
I ’ve been lucky enough to know some stellar men in my life: people of integrity and compassion and courage, who care deeply for others and for the world. I’m grateful for these men — because they enrich my life, but also because I know it would be so easy for them, in a male-dominated culture, to be otherwise.
Like most women, though, I’ve also known a much larger number of men who are awful: bullying, entitled, hurtful, lashing out in fear at any female-bodied creature that refuses to make herself smaller to accomodate them. All women know the type. These men are in all of our pasts, and often in our present, and in our most immediate future — they will be there when we get to work in the morning or, worse, when we get home from it.
Violent masculinity is not dangerous only to women. But it tends to be femininity that sets it off — either too much effeminacy where they think it shouldn’t be, or too little where they think it should. Men who are gay, or seem gay, or simply appear too soft or quiet often find themselves on the receiving end of masculine violence. As…
