Expanding on what I talked about last night my friend Max pointed out that there actually exists a term for the culture I was describing, that being Toxic Masculinity, I actually had known the phrase, but had not actually connected it with what I was talking about, probably because I didn't really talk about gender much last night, and I perhaps should have.
The culture of violence we live in is particularly targeted towards men, in entertainment when we see violence being committed without consequence, it is usually men who commit it, and when women break the rules, they are often punished for it. I have an example from a show that I really like, The Blacklist, in it is an FBI agent who is a woman works with a criminal who happens to be a man to catch other criminals, now as I have written before I like the show a lot, mostly because there are consequences to breaking the rules and the good guys don't usually treat those rules as inconveniences to be avoided whenever possible, however at one point our main character sets off a chain of events that leads to the of an innocent man. When it is found out she only avoids prison due to the abuse of power by those higher up than her protecting her program, and her direct boss is very disappointed with her.
Compare the the male lead, who breaks the rules, murders, cheats, and steals all the damn time with no consequence at all, or with her partner in the FBI, who has a whole subplot involving painkiller abuse and an illegal vendetta he pursues against an enemy from his past, again, no consequences happen, and he is able to overcome his problems without help.
Without help, the worst part of Toxic Masculinity is the idea that if something bad happens, then it is your fault, and your responsibility to fix by yourself. Everyone gets the victim blaming, women definitely get hit with that more than men, but men perhaps get the myth of self sufficiency more, perhaps the only area of Feminism in which we can say men are hurt more than women.
Of course, that ends up hurting women in the end, because as a result of these ideas, that self worth is dependent on what you can do for yourself, men kill women, and they do it with guns.
A lot of them, not as many as men who are killed with guns, but the majority of women who are shot, are shot by men, and the large majority of them are shot by men who they live with and have relationships with.
These are the shootings that gun restrictions can help prevent, the other shootings, the mass shootings that seem to have to happen before we talk about this shit at all, are almost universally performed by men, and the targets of those are often women and children.
The thing is, men are told that we are powerful and deserve to get what we want, and we are also told that if we don't have what we want then it is our fault, and our responsibility to fix, too often we decide that the problem is women, our latest shooter left a manifesto(as I predicted) that seemed to show some bitterness towards women in it, to put it mildly. In the world of Toxic Masculinity, the three major things we are taught to seek as an expression of maleness are sex, money, and violence.
Most of us don't have money, and many of us are unappealing to many women for many reasons, one of them possibly being we put so much emphasis on sex and that puts a lot of people off, but for the poor man feeling left out of the world he is told he deserves, that only leaves violence as a way to express his power.
And you don't need much money, nor do you need sex appeal, to get a gun. Hell you barely need to wait a few hours before the ability to destroy dozens of lives at once is in your hands. For the poor, sad, fool who has bought into the whole illusion, is it so impossible to see how they might decide to go on a killing spree?
Fixing the culture of Toxic Masculinity is going to be pretty hard, though I believe the process is ongoing and helped, of course, by the rising tide of Feminism throughout the country and indeed the world. The more ideas that can be put out to conflict with it the better, men can be successful without being dominant, there is nothing that says otherwise no matter what misogynists might try to tell you. If we reduce the need for dominance, we reduce the need for violence, I do not believe the one is possible without at least the threat of the other.
Of course, this is not just a cultural issue, it is most definitely political as well, look at the Republican front-runner right now, Donal Trump has been married three or four times, and in America for men that is not seen as a problem, is an advocate of concealed carry and has stated that he himself does so, and of course is among the wealthiest people alive today, he is practically the walking embodiment of Toxic Masculinity, however the entire GOP field, and to be fair, pretty much every elected representative on the national stage embraces the idea to some extent or another, Bernie Sanders has not historically been a fan of gun control laws, and as I mentioned before, Barack Obama has embraced and expanded the drone program, possibly the ideal of push button murder.
It's pervasive, and change on this front can only be gradual, the good news is that for it to happen, we only have to keep doing what we are doing now, pushing for equality protections, increasing our mental healthcare system, expanding social services, increasing gun control. As these become normal, the culture will become less toxic.
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