STOP CALLING MY MASCULINITY TOXIC!
Shoo, American Psychological Association, with your guidelines, shoo! I am speaking loudly and carrying a Big Stick! Get away, commercials for razors!
DO NOT COME NEAR MY MANHOOD!
Are you saying masculinity is harmful? I WILL DUEL YOU, SIR!
I will duel you to the death with an enormous saber that was once a tiger's tooth, and we will see whose masculinity is toxic!
I would rather leave my son to be suckled at a wolf's teat as true men once were than attempt to plan a week's worth of meals or wait until the APA has completely explained its position before I begin to object to it.
Are you saying men can't do JUSTICE any longer? That men can't do COURAGE? That men can't fight fires but must instead become COLLABORATORS with the enemy FIRE? No? Oh. Well, I am NOT LISTENING! Listening is for females, whose lobes are better suited to it.
Are you saying all little boys should be shunned and made to feel ashamed of themselves and not given crayons of their desired colors?
No? I have decided (IT IS A MAN’S PLACE TO DECIDE) that this is what you are saying — that you have called half the population sick. Well, I’m not sick! Or if I were, I could decide not to be, and come and cough at the workplace for a few weeks without covering my nose (MY NOSE IS NOTHING TO BE ASHAMED OF!).
Do not criticize my masculinity. It is far from fragile. Fragile is a teacup or the silence after your best bro shares a personal revelation to which you are emotionally ill-equipped to respond.
I'll show you fragile! Look, I am crushing a kestrel's nest with my hand. Let that sink in.
If there were a mammoth here I would be hunting it! We would not even be having this discussion! But instead I am going to go make a woman's life unpleasant online. If asked to discuss anything with a real woman, I will throw chocolate or Pandora charms at the problem (as the Internet requires) and then flee into the cave where I feast on spiders.
Stop telling me this is toxic or that I need to apologize! Apologies are for people who I disagree with and Obama's America!
Everything is broken here? NOTHING IS BROKEN HERE!
You were not complaining about all of it? I have not been listening to the nuances of your argument; nuance is for ladies and Tiny Tims.
I am sick of being told that yelling at a woman on a street or doing a harassment is a part of masculinity that is bad. Either masculinity is all good or it is all bad, so pick one!
Do not tell me that I am debating a straw man. Some of my best friends are straw men — straw men are men, too, and they deserve our respect.
My point is, we are served well by this!
Why, I remember when an emotionally healthy response to good news was to tear off your silk pajamas and wave them like a flag. It was either an emotionally healthy response or something Stanley Kowalski did in "A Streetcar Named Desire," one of the two, PROBABLY BOTH!
I must go step on an anthill, for I am enraged by recent developments. Am mad. Am full of rage (ACCEPTABLE EMOTION). Wish to shout and bang and say PEW PEW POW, but grit teeth in silent agony even as fox cub under my cloak chews through entrails. New guidelines about masculinity are very angry-making.
That would rather claw own eyes out than admit to simple warm, honest feeling is trait on which I pride myself. I wish to return to a time no one wore helmets unless they also carried a lance, when feelings were expressed in simple grunts.
This is a man's way. It requires no fixing, but if it did need fixing, I would know how, just, instinctively, and would require no instruction.
I think we can agree that we are all served well by this, that nothing of us is being crushed, that we are all being allowed the full range of humanity and that it would be better to continue in this way.
*bangs heavily on door with Big Stick*
There is nothing wrong with my masculinity.
Pardon me, miss, but no.
No?
NOTHING IS BROKEN HERE! By Zeus. By God. By Hibernian Jove, I am perfect and so is my manhood!
Alexandra Petri | The Washington Post
Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of “A Field Guide to Awkward Silences.”
