One of the most pathetic causes of all the conflict in the United States is the reality of fragile masculinity. I would suggest that much of the toxic patriarchy and the toxic rape culture of the United States is derived from a sense of fear that a world of traditional masculine values is slipping away.
Nonsense.
We’ve never had a world of masculine values. It’s always been masculine oppression.
The reality is that the past is gone and it’s gone forever. It’s not coming back. You can’t expect people to forget the things they’ve learned anymore than you can expect someone to unsee a rainbow. The image lingers on in your memory forever.
Do conservatives think they can take the smart phone away? Are they going to take back cars and go back to the inconvenience of horse drawn carriages? Should we no longer have modern medicine and go back to blood drawing and drilling holes in the head to stop a headache?
It’s not happening.
Today, even with the regressive Republicans soiling our society, the power of women is irrefutable. They outshine men in the workplace, and their ability to make astonishing discoveries and tremendous intellectual advancements has contributed more than their fair share to the advancement of humankind. It doesn’t take too much of a re-examination of history to see that’s always been the case.
It’s also obvious that the undeservedly elevated model of toxic masculinity has not been the origin of as many advancements as people like to claim. This is something I’ve had to struggle to recognize in my own life. I grew up in a household with a father who discouraged his wife from working outside the home. He stomped around in cowboy boots and drove an absurd pickup truck. Much of his behavior was a reflection of his own lack of masculinity. He relied on his physicality to dominate situations and the only emotional response that gave him comfort was anger.
Over the years I had to learn not to behave that way. I had to remove that rage response, which is an obvious sign of immaturity. Throwing a temper tantrum where you allow yourself to lose control is nonsensical.
Rage only creates more problems and more messes for everybody else to clean up. The sooner we learn that as a society, the more we’ll get out of our labor and resources.
I remember my grandma visiting when I was holding my daughter. As my grandmother watched, I put my daughter down to change her diaper.
“That’s something I never saw my own father do,” she said. “He never even held a baby.”
“Well then,” I replied feeling somewhat piqued, “I pity your father. He missed out on the best things in life.”
It’s true, and this is something I had to learn on my own since so much of our society is designed to protect cowardly men who run out on their responsibilities. If you should be granted the enormous privilege of raising a child, be sure that the baby falls asleep on your chest every day.
Every day.
That changes you on a level that cannot be attained in any other way. It pierces all the lies about gender roles that you’ve been callously groomed to believe, and trains you how to forge a human connection that cannot be broken.
The fragile, toxic men who turn into predators of children are the ones who listened to right-wing liars who told them they mustn’t participate in the rearing of their own children. Do not listen to the lies of false counselors. They hide the evil of their ideology with snorting laughter and false camaraderie. But be warned, when the day of judgement comes, they will not stand beside you.
Our society needs to learn to encourage men to view all relationships not through the lens of dominance, but through the lens of mutual respect.
All the foul behavior that the right wing is trying to normalize in government and the media today is really just the death rattle of toxic masculinity. All the right-wing speakers who are supported by the unlimited funds of hate groups that accumulated their fortunes in the era of slavery, cannot stop the march of progress.
They know it, and they’re in full-on, pathetic, immasculine collapse. They’re like toddlers throwing a temper tantrum, but instead of wielding a rattle, they’re wielding nuclear weapons.
It’s always criminal and tragic to recognize that all these conservatives never experience any form of sexual interaction other than some form of rape. When you examine the structure of traditional marriage, you can’t escape the truth that it constitutes a form of captivity for women. When you take that understanding and regard history, you can perceive how entire political movements have been set forth to deprive women of their ability to live on their own terms.
The confederacy was not the only enslavement state that has been conceived on American soil. Many others are still alive and in operation. It’s because the right-wing is so insecure that they would rather secure relationships by force instead of merit.
Even now you can go out into your community and observe women who are chained by the ankle to some loathsome man. The same unjust mechanism that creates poverty and crime is also designed to deprive women of their autonomy.
On top of that, the toxic right-wing men who view both their wives and children as “property,” have the nerve to demand gratitude from the people they oppress.
“I am the provider, I am the patriarch, have you said ‘thank you’ lately?”
They’re like jailers who demand that prisoners must thank them for bringing a daily meal. A person who holds you in captivity doesn’t deserve gratitude after depriving you of the freedom to care for yourself. That’s like expecting to get rewarded for cleaning up your own mess.
In fact, the only “achievements” conservatives have to their name tend to fall under that category. They create a crisis with their bumbling, and then expect to be applauded when they repeal the orders they issued that led to destruction.
The majority of conservative men who were groomed within America’s structure of toxic masculinity will never truly know the beauty of consent. They will never know what it’s like to be an object of desire rather than a target of hate. They’ll never understand how a relationship can be cultivated into something that will endure beyond the limitations of mortality.
Deprived of this, they seek power and money to fund their cruelty.
The ideology of toxic masculinity is why the divorce rate in the United States is so high. Cowardly dishonest men want to blame feminism, but they’ve been trained to always seek out an external culprit for their own fundamental weakness.
They’ve been taught, through years of conditioning, that relationships based on care and affection are impossible. In reality, the best things in life only become impossible to achieve when you succumb to an ideology of cruelty and domination.
Everything the right-wing preaches devolves to this.
The best they can hope for is a decade or so that provides the appearance of function. But conservatives only peddle in illusion. These are the “social media” relationships where they’re always taking pictures and praising each other publicly while they curse each other in private.
Men who attempt to portray themselves as all-powerful can’t hide the cracks in their facade forever. Eventually, it becomes too hard for anyone to maintain the illusion, and the relationship crumbles.
These are emotional toddlers in the body of a man. These are man-children who demand that their needs are met at the expense of all others.
True masculinity requires compassion and cooperation. It’s only through the mechanism of mutual support that a couple might prosper.
It’s ridiculous to observe America’s absurd fascination with toxic masculinity. I see a nation filled with frustrated boys who are desperate for a connection, but who steadfastly refuse to treat women, or anybody, with respect. I see men who are so insecure that they don’t have the confidence to allow women to choose them voluntarily.
When you have no merits, you can’t expect other people to recognize them.
So, these right-wing boys have to cheat every scenario in pursuit of trophies. They don’t see women as human beings because conservatives do not practice accountability.
Ultimately, the radical-right wants to hide from their deficiencies rather than work to overcome them.
Naturally, these right-wing men become sexually frustrated. In depriving others of their autonomy, they also deprive themselves of the ability to grow. Because their ego is too fragile to recognize their faults, they miss out on the opportunity to overcome them.
They pick a path that leaves them emotionally stunted. We cannot coddle them and act as if this was a reasonable choice. Their actions deprive them of the chance to achieve anything good or decent in their lives.
This is why so many elderly conservatives become wealthy predators. Because they refuse to indulge in self-examination, they begin to think, “I just need somebody younger who I can mold into the woman who will finally understand me.”
This is the process through which child rapists are made. So, no, we shouldn’t feel pressured to break bread with these people during the holidays. They should not be welcome into your company until they renounce their ideology of cruelty.
Toxic masculinity ultimately results in the brutal rape of children. Eliminating this horrific mind-virus should be the focal point of all our activism.
We need to teach that succumbing to the horrific right-wing model of male fragility creates a toxic death spiral that ultimately ruins every life it touches. It all begins by upholding traditional male values rather than adapting to a better future in which all people are respected and revered.
The solution to all the problems faced by our nation can be found not by putting back the clock, but by boldly venturing forward into the realm of progress. We can’t allow nefarious forces to believe the answer lies in erasing knowledge in pursuit of the illusion of a simpler time.
Instead, we have to abandon the false assumptions that trick men into believing there’s nobility in halting the process of their own evolution.
We live in a society that shuns diversity. We live in a society that grooms young boys to shut off all avenues of exploration at an early age. We circumcise their ability to grow into men of decency, and we end up being led by sexual predators to the detriment of all.
There is a better way.
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