The More Young Men Are Bathed in Femininity, the More ‘Toxic Masculinity’ You Will See

One of the most ironic things about the constant “toxic masculinity” complaints that we hear these days is that we live in an overly feminized culture where most of the “toxic” males seem to have either been raised without fathers or claim to be adherents of feminism. The statistics on men raised without fathers are grim almost beyond belief.

70% of gang members, high school dropouts, teen suicides…and teen substance abusers come from single mother homes.

…80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978.)

…85% of all youths sitting in prisons (Source: Fulton County Georgia jail populations, Texas Department of Corrections 1992)

Then there are the men from liberal Hollywood who have been at the epicenter of the #metoo earthquake. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Michael Douglas, James Franco, Morgan Spurlock, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Russell Simmons – it goes on and on and on.

Doesn’t it seem a little odd that masculinity gets blamed when some kid without a dad turns into a rapist or ends up in prison? Doesn’t it seem weird that masculinity would get blamed for a feminist ally like Harvey Weinstein, “who championed older actresses like Meryl Streep and Judi Dench, joined a Women’s March, donated to Democratic candidates, raised money for Planned Parenthood and publicly venerated Gloria Steinem”?

We take a young man and kick his father out of his life, send him to school where he has mostly women teachers, barrage him with negative messages about masculinity, then turn him loose at college where we treat him like a guilty-until-proven-innocent rapist, and after all that, we blame “masculinity” when he goes off the rails despite the fact that he spent a lifetime bathed in femininity. Unsurprisingly, the more women try to change masculinity, the more negative and toxic it actually becomes. Yet, articles explaining how masculinity needs to be changed and rewired—written by women or feminized males—are practically a cottage industry these days. For example…

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