If a substance can’t be used in any pleasant way to clean your teeth, would you call it toothpaste?

Masculinity is about

  • protecting the weak and innocent
  • providing life’s necessities to the community you’re a member of. In our highly individualized culture that’s usually just the family unit, but ok
  • politely showing romantic/sexual interest in women you’re attracted to. If men wouldn’t do this, we’d go instinct. A nice word for this is ‘courting’ a woman. I believe men should show their sexual interest in women, but they should be confident enough to deal with rejection extremely well. Women never owe us sex, never. But we can offer. I don’t think women want a world where all men are deeply ashamed of their own sexual desires… It’s just that our dating culture has become of a war zone full of men trying to ‘trick’ women into having sex. That’s not a masculine approach at all.
  • being reliable in times of crisis
  • banding together with other men and creating something whether it be housing, music, entertainment, food or just swapping experiences and passing on traditions
  • express their feelings as truthfully as possible
  • accepting and welcoming boys of a certain age into the circle of men
  • find a higher purpose (= not think with their dick, but without becoming asexual celibate monks, positive sexuality is definitely a part of masculinity)
  • take risks, push the limits, explore, turn their innate restlessness into something productive or inspiring

Anything that goes against that is not masculinity. It’s behaviour by men who – for whatever reason – have not become masculine, but have turned into stunted self-hating creatures stuck between boyhood and manhood. These lash out, these are indeed toxic.

But it’s not toxic masculinity they display, it has nothing at all to do with masculinity.

Apples cut in the shape of French fries simply aren’t French fries.

Only attention from and time spent with masculine men can turn these creatures into masculine men.

Sadly, our society has largely broken the bonds that normally exist between men in a community. The healthy ones have now little influence over the unhealthy ones.

Boys almost always have only their father as a role model in our culture, and all too often not even that.

No wonder boys don’t become pillars of society anymore.