It did occur to me from this that “non-toxic masculinity” is basically “adulting, and you happen to be male”.
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As is, I think, the idea of femininity. The binary derived from the division of traits and behaviors and emotions and so on that pretty much all humans have into two separate categories. Which has led to the extreme (yet common) belief that a person placed on one side expressing or displaying anything that supposedly belongs to the other side is “unnatural.”
And a result, I think, is that most people on either side are stunted, or stifled, and thus are living with suppressed qualities and capabilities that they could otherwise express and value. What a sad way to live!
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I think that sums it up pretty much perfectly. And “masculinity” seems to be defined as perpetually arrested adolescence.
(This coming from a guy who cries at movies really easily, while my wife laughs at me. My masculinity is that I am OK with that.)
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Yup!!! Absolutely agree. Has always been mumbo jumbo in service of oppression I think.
“Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman?”
Once people negate some aspect of the real embodied experience of another human they can manipulate or control them a little easier.
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man, do i feel seen.
shit, i get teary at the trailers before the movie starts!
dating was hard for young jefe…
but i’m ok with that, too.
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I’ve done that. Also once at the 20th Century Fox music before one of the later Star Wars movies, and the Marvel Studios logo thing after Chadwick Boseman had died.
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I would’ve started laughing uncontrollably at the idiot. And not been able to stop for at least a minute or two. Eventually responding “tell me you drive an Incel Camino or Swasticar without saying it.”
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So many rules; this must be what Freedom™ looks like!
ETA:
I have a rule for men: be confident in who you are, knowing that other people’s opinions won’t change it. It’s the same as my rule for women, and for nonbinary folk, and others.
If I am a man, then I am still a man if I drink a milkshake. Even a strawberry milkshake. While wearing a pink tutu and a sparkly tiara. Even if, thanks to an accident of birth, I have a vagina; I am still a man.
I don’t know what’s so fragile about your identity, if who you are can be changed by what people think. Maybe that’s just because I’m autistic.
Now… what people think certainly affects how they act towards you. I, and many like me, try to treat people as we would wish to be treated. What do you do, Watters?
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Ever seen Silent Running? Bruce Dern murders his entire human crew and no one cares, but when the little robot breaks his arm, the entire audience cries.
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Seriously. It’s reminiscent or Regency Era rules for young ladies, never cross your legs or let your back touch the back of a chair when seated in public. And just like those rules, they’re made by one group but then enforced by the imposed-upon group. It’s frustrating to see it happen to anyone.
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This! The same folks who insist that what someone assigns you at birth defines you for life, also seem to think that some inconsequential action could “make you a woman” or whatever. The cognitive dissonance must be agonizing.
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Soup???
Soup is unmanly now???
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Of course. What kind of man would ever eat something that requires a spoon? The only possible option, if you’re like, literally starving, is to pick up the bowl and drink it. With one hand, of course. 
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Because masculinity is loud and stinky! Roll some coal to show you are a real man!
(Eye roll)
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Literally. As much as we joke about it as something too absurd to be taken seriously, they LITERALLY believe this.
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Putting the “toxic” literally into “toxic masculinity”
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