this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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How brave of you to make the point “Not All Men!”
I don’t know, maybe because I am a heterosexual man and I have met countless heterosexual men and one of the most common threads that makes heterosexual men stand out from other people is their deeply ingrained insecurity and propensity to project it with regimes of control and violence?
And ok… to calm the all the men having temper tantrums I am not saying men are inherently…. well anything but is undeniable that the constructed male heterosexual identity is imbued with what I am describing. Our jobs as heterosexual men is to demolish that construction of violence that we were taught (which as you brought up, someone like Nick Offerman does effectively through characters), of course it isn’t inherent to “being a man” , unlike bigots I am not insulting the mental capacity of men by pretending like they don’t have a choice of how to behave, but rather pointing out that heteronormative masculinity is an extremely problematic construct that we must intentionally dismantle and rebuild in more healthy ways for everyone.
Part of doing that is taking the piss out of heterosexual men drowning in insecurity that they impose on everyone else through sexism, driving massive pickups that are custom designed to kill children in a car accident, mass shootings (~99% of mass shooters in the US are, surprise!, heterosexual white men!) talking over other people constantly, pretending the ideas put forward by women are theirs, desiring to possess a partner as an object not a human being with a brain, confusing displays of the capacity for violence as a display of a confidence in their masculinity, taking up as much space as possible in public, demanding to settle disputes with other men through violence and using the threat of that those men will no longer be real men if they refuse….
….how much do I have to go on?
By making fun of the worst aspects of heterosexual men like Donald Trump I am punching up at a thing that needs some punching I think. If this were punching down at a vulnerable group without power in the societies they inhabit ok that would be a different conversation than punching up at the category of people that controls almost every power structure and power dynamic in society wouldn’t it?
Ok honestly fair, tbh I totally read your comments as someone who’s been in queer female vent spaces long enough to forget how to act outside of them. And part of my reason for the response is because I do see harm being done by a lack of positive role models for young straight men, and I think the solution is twofold: yes they do need some obviously, but also they need to learn the media empathy that women are expected to always be showing.
Though I feel from the bottom of my heart a desire to make a “who here has been victimized by ~~Regina George~~ heterosexual male insecurity” meme if I wasn’t on my phone on my lunch break. But yeah you ain’t wrong, it’s just the sort of thing I instinctively keep to inside thoughts for fear of men’s anger.