Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks

Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by opportune on Sunday June 25, 2023 @06:59PM (#36473539)

Toxic masculinity is absolutely a thing, think things like refusing to admit you're wrong, being overly aggressive and escalating situations, being overly boastful, being reluctant to show emotions other than anger. A lot of people are just triggered by the term for whatever reason. You could just as easily replace "toxic masculinity" with the word "machismo" if it makes you feel less threatened

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by darth_avocado on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:24PM (#36473714)

You just described a bunch of traits of a narcissist and assigned them to masculinity. But I’m reality plenty of women display the same traits.

> refusing to admit you’re wrong > escalating situations > being overly boastful

The reason why people, mostly men, don’t like that term is because it gets thrown around for pretty much anything at this point to mostly put men down. Spreading your legs and holding the door open for someone is considered toxic masculinity.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by epicureanideal on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:07PM (#36473589)

"Machismo" is still a gendered term though.

Why not just describe it as "being an asshole", or "stubbornness", or "aggressiveness", or "being disagreeable", "being antisocial", etc?

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by abracadaniel on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:28PM (#36473736)

Because people tie these behaviors to their identity as a sense of their masculinity. It isn’t calling masculinity toxic. Identifying these behaviors as inherently masculine is what is toxic.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by Natsu on Sunday June 25, 2023 @09:13PM (#36474497)

So why wouldn't it be better to attack people's bad behavior than their identity?

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by abracadaniel on Sunday June 25, 2023 @11:47PM (#36475551)

Because they’ve made their identity the bad behavior. You can’t change behavior when someone has adopted it as their identity. Any criticism is perceived as a personal attack. Thus, the only approach is to point out that being an asshole as your identity is toxic and to be avoided.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by Natsu on Monday June 26, 2023 @12:04AM (#36475622)

Everything you just said is only reinforcing my belief that it's best to separate the behavior from the identity at all times, but especially when criticizing it, so that we don't spread the bad idea of linking bad behavior and identity in the first place.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by abracadaniel on Monday June 26, 2023 @01:07PM (#36482594)

That's just a return to the status-quo, which led to where we are. Giving advice of "don't be an asshole" didn't work because people made it their identity. Switching the advice to "don't make being an asshole part of your identity" is at least an attempt to change tack and address the weakness of only targeting behavior.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by Natsu on Monday June 26, 2023 @02:23PM (#36483642)

I can respect teaching people not to make it their identity, but the term "toxic masculinity" does nothing to teach people, it just bundles the toxicity to their identity.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by opportune on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:11PM (#36473613)

Well, it's a masculine failure mode of essentially being overly prideful/insecure of maintaining one's sense of masculinity. You don't see a lot of women trying to defend their masculine sense of pride by picking fights

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by falcolas on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:29PM (#36473746)

> You don't see a lot of women trying to defend their masculine sense of pride by picking fights

Why limit this only to "masculine" pride? You absolutely see women picking fights to defend their pride.

We just call that behavior "being a Karen" (or "catfights"). Which, being fair, both come with their own misogynistic problems.

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by type0 on Sunday June 25, 2023 @07:42PM (#36473843)

> A lot of people are just triggered by the term for whatever reason.

trigger warnings for whatever reason

it's a blanket statement, it gets thrown around way too often without apparent reason, that's why

Toxic femininity might not be as visible, but in many ways it's more harmful for society because it hinders collaboration on every level

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Re:Ignoring Boys' Emotional Needs Fuels Public Health Risks by guerrilla on Monday June 26, 2023 @05:20AM (#36477513)

> Toxic masculinity is absolutely a thing, think things like refusing to admit you're wrong, being overly aggressive and escalating situations, being overly boastful, being reluctant to show emotions other than anger.

In general, women do all of this all of the time except the last. So you see the problem.

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