Against Masculinity
Against Masculinity
It’s perfectly fine to be a “feminine” man. Young men do not need a vision of “positive masculinity.” They need what everyone else needs: to be a good person who has a satisfying, meaningful life.
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I think that there is positive masculinity and there is nothing wrong with a positive masculinity. I find some stoics as my role model. for example Marcus, and also I used to find a lot of help from the Enquiridion from Epictetus . For example Marcus Aurelius was all about compassion.
Is there anything inherently male about positive masculinity? Is it just a person with positive traits that happens to be male or are the traits themselves masculine?
I think it’s less to do with the traits themselves and more to do with the person and how they’re perceived. As other people have said - people get more of a significant impact from role models they can identify with or look like them. There’s so much room for role models of all types, but if we’re thinking about masculinity specifically, so many young men and boys only have masculine folk in their lives who, for example, don’t share their emotions - and this pattern affirms the idea that it’s not ‘manly’ to be vulnerable.
More people who express themselves in a ‘masculine’ way modeling these positive traits show other people with similar identities and expressions that it’s possible (and good) for them to do it, too.
I think the generally accepted rule of thumb is: if it's bad, it's male generated. If it's good, it's only human and could have an origin in any gender (but mostly female). So, no...only negative masculinity can be attributed to males. Positive masculinity is just another thing that got under the umbrella of "females can have that too".
I was going with an /s but decided no to use it, because somehow this is the insane state of affairs in 2023, the 21st century.