Here's how toxic masculinity feeds rape culture

Every time I think I’m going to be sick of it, my 1.5 year old closes her eyes and gives a soulful “beeeeeeve me” and I’m right back in it…

Superstar is definitely also deep in my roots. We might have a “games” thread percolating here…

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Agreed.

I’m all for personal accountability, but there comes a point when a universal ‘moral stand’ must be taken; otherwise, all claims of integrity, ‘righteousness’ and even the concept of being civilized are forfeit.

Obligatory, because I adore The Nutshell Kids, and pretty much all things Sendak;

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All that is necessary for the triumph of Trump is for people who don’t want him elected to stay home November 8th.

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I was talking about this the other day… (its on topic mods, promise!)

When it comes to gender, and sexuality and gender roles and breaking them and freeing our kids…

We had SO MUCH in the 70s.
Really Rosie, Free to be you and me, and just so much messaging that girls and boys can do and be anything.
(I literally had a book called “Girls can be anything”)

I feel like we’ve lost that message somewhere along the way… and I don’t understand why?

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I PM’d you my reply, so as to stay on topic.

I’m tired of getting modded on a whim.

I was born in the 70’s, and therefore grew up watching shows that had been produced during that time; and I think that you are quite correct, there was more overt ‘consciousness’ back then.

I also agree we lost it along the way, but I think I may know why, in a “nutshell;”

The Dumbening.

It’s not just a nefarious plot to make the average citizen mentally weak, lazy and complacent so that they can be more easily controlled; it’s also an attempt to make us apathetic to the well being of others.

I hate to reference a Supernatural plot, but in whatever season that “the Big Bad” was Leviathans, that was the disturbingly familiar subtext; the villains were conspiring to make people easier prey - slower, fatter, stupider, and totally lacking empathy.

That the vehicle they chose to use to do this was highly addictive but toxic fast food (freakin’ Turducken) which eventually enslaved those who ate it is beside the point

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Surprisingly informative video from MTV, who at times has been a breeding ground for said Toxic Masculinity.

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So what are we anti-social animals supposed to do?

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Go find an uncharted deserted island to live on?

Because that’s the only way one can viably just ‘opt out’ of the society we live in.

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Look at you, using language and whatnot. Poseur.

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If you reply to an obvious trolley, expect their comment and anything replying to it (including your own reply) to be deleted. It’s very unlikely to be an objection to anything you’ve said. If you do want your reply to stay up, you should be fine mentioning the user (or maybe even quoting them, I’m not sure) rather than pinning your comment to a branch that will be removed.

(I’m not calling @popobawa4u a trolley, just pointing out that this is probably why it keeps happening to you. Popobawas are an entirely… different creature).

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Duh. Because it isn’t needed any more.

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What I do is that if I am quoting a troll, or post that otherwise seems to be contentious (blows raspberry) is that I delete the post number from the bbcode. I’ll just do [quote=“person”], so that my replies do not automatically get eaten.

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You made me snort my tea! You owe me a new keyboard!

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I know this, and I expect it.

That’s not the issue here.

Like you stated, Popo is not a trolley, he’s a long standing member of this community, whether I agree with him or not.

(And I often don’t, but that’s beside the point.)

Jlw is not a trolley, either; he’s admin, but apparently I’m not allowed to engage him at all, because I’ve had that happen twice now on comments that didn’t violate the terms or CoC in any way that I am aware of.

And that’s fine; I much prefer Rob and Pesco’s posts, anyway.

Lastly, I’ve repeatedly seen the mods issue reminders to stay on topic without gutting the fucking conversation, especially if there was no real wrongdoing going on.

It’s starting to feel kinda personal, even though I know that’s highly unlikely; and it’s making me think that maybe I need to take and extended break from this site.

It’s one thing to sanction me if I break the rules I agreed to, or if I act unaccordingly: I can deal with that… but to do it just because they “feel” like it , or because they simply dislike what I had to say?

That’s fucked up, even if it’s explicitly stated in the terms that they reserve the ability to delete any content they please, (and it is.)

It’s even more annoying after days upon days of a tedious and down right histrionic argument about perceived “censorship.”

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I often ask myself that question and related ones. I’m 50. It’s the children and even grandchildren of people in my age group who are at the bleeding edge of today’s toxic masculinity, and I really struggle to understand what went wrong. (And I deliberately said children, not sons, because some young women buy into this culture too.) How could my generation, raised on 70s feminism, gay rights, disco, David Bowie, Boy George and on and on, have failed so badly in (collectively) raising our kids?

(I don’t have any children, but just by being or not being in the lives of my friends’ and relatives’ kids I think I deserve some tiny share of the blame or credit for how they’ve turned out. I know full well I have no clue what it really means to be a parent, I’m talking about being a role model.)

My preferred explanation: misogyny has never been really close to going away, but the Internet provides not only platforms for individual misogynists, but places for them to congregate, embolden and amplify each other. And since misogyny tends to overlap strongly with arrogance, condescension, bullying and other similarly wonderful character traits, these people are naturally given to asserting their ostensible dominance over the rest of us. Some of them are happy to do it all day long on cesspits like Facebook and Reddit. And the more they dominate those cesspits, the more toxic they get, the fewer good people stick around to push back, they become echo chambers, and so they feel validated.

On the other hand, feminists and allies also have strong voices today. But when it comes to being in-your-face about it, we don’t have the same kind of numbers as the unrepentant assholes do, nor centuries of entrenched attitudes and legislative support. It can make the struggle feel hopeless.

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If you think you don’t believe a whole lot of things just because you internalized them from your culture, you probably haven’t really stepped back and looked at it.

The only people who might not do that are Autistic. (Not to disparage people on the spectrum in any way.)

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Ding ding ding!

It’s not like there aren’t millions of us worldwide or anything

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For those of us who are “neurotypical,” (which is kind of a silly description because it covers an enormous variety of very different modes of thought) the experience is different. If I step back and look, I can see that I have all these reflexive, culturally conditioned, reactions to people based on race, culture, gender, how they speak, etc., and just being able to observe those reactions in myself doesn’t mean that I don’t still have them. They operate on a generally subconscious level, and are how I function in society. You don’t generally notice it any more than you notice breathing. Normal people who don’t realize that just haven’t managed to step far enough away from their conditioning to even imagine that such a thing might exist.

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Unless I’m mistaken, I believe Pops is autistic.

Of course there are; my brother is one of them.

That still doesn’t mean that his personal perspective of life and human interaction is accurate for everyone else.

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If you need a celebrity example of healthy masculinity, consider Josh Homme, ringleader of Queens of the Stone Age and one of Them Crooked Vultures.

The man is a 6’4 Norse god of rock who drives his daughters to school, has written songs and lyrics that can snap heartstrings, sings falsetto whenever he feels like it, and once addressed Elton John as ‘honey’. Josh Homme does not give even half a fuck about culture’s notions of masculinity.

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