yanno i really do loathe this rhetoric surrounding male violence towards women (both physical and sexual) that says “he’s a monster/animal/piece of shit/not a real man” and basically anything else to divorce them from their masculinity. it’s like no, nonononono, you do NOT get to uphold and participate in toxic masculinity that holds up physical prowess and physical strength and violence and sexual predation as the pinnacle of maleness then turn around and distance yourself from the shitty consequences of that. if it so bothers you as a cishet man to be associated with awful people like that then why don’t you reinvent masculinity as something less shitty?
It’s just another version of ‘not all men’, except reversed…and hey, no one likes to admit they’ve actually been raised to believe abusive behaviour is okay, AND that they participate in it in any way.
It’s a shitty rhetoric- it’s easy, though. So easy, makes you feel good about yourself, too. “He’s not like me, who is like men should be”. What we fail to realise at first is that what we’re actually saying is “I, too, have the power to abuse you, but as a Real Man I never would.”
One has to start questioning that power. Why do (cis) men have it? What is necessary for men to have it?
Then you realise it’s a whole system that builds this up for you. That you should not be basing your masculinity on
1. How abusive you have the power to be
2. How you benevolently refrain from using that power.
because that’s fucking disgusting, manipulative, ABUSIVE shit by definition. “I could be a jerk but I’m not.”
I hate this shit so much, I hate how hard it is to shake it off, to challenge it when it’s everywhere and upheld by everything from deodorant ads to classic literature.
You know, irt to your first paragraph, I remember reading that an ideology reaches its zenith when people no longer consider it an ideology, they just think it’s “the way things are” and I kind of feel that way about what we’re taught about masculinity. There’s this assumption that it’s inherent instead of learned, and that’s confronting if you’re looking at yourself honestly, but also a great oportunity to interrogate and change it in your own life at least.
#and this is where I say again how much I appreciate Fury Road’s Max#and the way Miller set it up so that Furiosa is absolutely a match for him#so we don’t get to assume he’s got power over her#not for a second
I’m gonna happily engage this tangent because I think it’s also the way they frame that relationship that’s reassuring in terms of depicting a different type of masculinity.
Because they could have easily had Max still be this macho warrior type and simply have her match it in terms of skill and aggression, but instead they make him physically and mentally vulnerable and don’t use that as an excuse for violence and intimidation.
I think the best example of that is when he’s stuck in the hold with Angharad: he gives her so much space and makes himself as small as he can. He’s still aware of the space he takes up and how that makes the women around him feel and mitigates it as best he can.
Oh man, I have so many thoughts on this right now; I wish I could engage. But work. Gotta get ready for it. Laame. But this is a brilliant discussion and yes yes yes. There is so much gold here. I have soo many thoughts on taught, toxic masculinity and how that shapes the violence that happens in our world. A lot of it isn’t terribly coherent and needs refining, which is why I wish I could engage. Bah! But yes. This.
Thoughtfulfangirling 