There are barbarians that walk amongst us. Most of them are Men. I want to talk to the cis-normative males out there. Some of you can be real shits at times.
I think you know that flashing your penis in a text without consent is indecent. Dick Pic may sound cool but it never knocks it out of the park. It makes you seem only interested in that bedroom action for your own satisfaction.
Others of you think you have a trophy cock. That every woman should bow to your penis and worship. This is not dominance. This is narcissism. It is unhealthy levels that make you a highly toxic masculine guy.
The concept of toxic masculinity is used in many discussions of masculinity to refer to certain cultural norms that are associated with harm to society and men themselves.
Traditional stereotypes of men as socially dominant, along with related traits such as misogyny and homophobia,[1] can be considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence. The socialization of boys in patriarchal societies often normalizes violence, such as in the saying "boys will be boys" about bullying and aggression.
Masculine traits that are considered 'toxic' include:
•Using or threatening violence.
•Controlling others.
•Acting aggressively.
•Suppressing emotions.
•Trying to appear 'tough'
•Treating sex as a competition.
•Feeling entitled to sex from others.
•Using power over women, perceived 'weaker' men, and marginalised groups.
•Homophobia, Transphobia and Misogyny.
•Scoffing at vulnerability.
•making a place where women are expected to adapt to stereotypes.
•Male one-upmanship in competition
•Verbalizing sexual objectification of women
•Dick pics in unsolicited texts.
Violence is not preclusive to males only. Toxic masculinity comes in other forms. One of the most toxic group of ladies are known by acronym controversial (and often disparaging) term: TERFs.
'TERF' stands for 'trans-exclusionary radical feminism'. Terf ideology is a specific form
of transphobia, and more specifically transmisogyny, as terfs mostly target trans women
and transfeminine people.
According to terf ideology, trans women are excluded from womanhood and should accordingly be excluded from women-only spaces. Womanhood is supposedly defined exclusively by "sex-based" oppression, aka oppression as a result of being what terf ideology terms "biologically female".
This idea weaponizes a reductive understanding of "biology" to argue that 'women' - or those assigned female at birth - all experience gendered oppression in the same way, which erases our diverse experiences of gender as it intersects with race, class, sexuality, disability, and many other structural factors.
The problem with Terfs often dub themselves "gender critical", which on the surface of it seems very reasonable - however, the problem arises in the failure of terf ideology to be similarly "sex critical".
While the gender binary is obviously a societal construction that is important to criticise and denaturalize, the same is equally true of the sex binary (the assumption that everyone can be split into two discrete biological sexes, "male" and
"female")
As you have learned there are many more genders than male and female. Terf ideology fails to recognise that women are not homogeneous, and face many different kinds of intersecting oppressions;
As a straight 'womanhood' and queer 'womanhood' are not the same, just as trans 'womanhood' and cis 'womanhood' are not the same. Structural misogyny is complex, and women's oppression can't be reduced to *only* specific biological or anatomical elements, although oppression based on these things is still very much a feminist issue.
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