I See A Post Talking Doom And Gloom About How We'll Never Escape Toxic Masculinity. I Think About Back

i see a post talking doom and gloom about how we'll never escape toxic masculinity. i think about back in 2017 when american girl released their first boy doll, and a review for him went viral in the collecting community. the review was written by a mom, who said they went into the store to get their daughter a doll, only to see their son's eyes light up like fire when he saw a doll that looked like him, and now every night he puts his doll in pajamas and rocks him to sleep. i think about the toddler in my daycare room a few years back who was obsessed with baby dolls, carrying them everywhere, and his mom proudly told us he uses his sisters' old baby dolls and wants to be just like them. that toddler saw another toddler crying one day and gave her the doll he had to cheer her up. i think about the eight-year-old boy i saw a few years back, excitedly waving around raya's sword in a target checkout line like all his dreams were coming true. there was a video on my instagram the other day of a little boy at disneyworld crying with joy upon meeting his hero, mulan. i think about the voice actor for bow in the she-ra reboot saying his nephews only wanted adora action figures. celebrity men are wearing dresses on tv now. last halloween i saw a little boy dressed as elsa. i went to go see spiderverse over the summer, and in the line ahead of me was a boy who couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen, bouncing and beaming, giddy with excitement over getting to see the female-led romance movie elemental. i think about the five-year-old boy at my library who breathlessly asked me where the pinkalicious books were, eyes widening when i had more on my cart, his mom explaining that he is all about pinkalicious and fancy nancy. i saw so many pictures online of boys and men dressed in pink to see barbie. teenage boys are gonna open their phones and see the man who wrote fucking game of thrones dressed in pink to see barbie. when i was a kid, a boy dressing in pink was practically a social death sentence. there are boys running around in pink on my street right now.

Imagine purporting to be a journalist and saying there were no economic changes after 2007.

Men, as a class, are emotional sadists, and we need to talk about a lot of men’s emotionally sadistic treatment of women. I’m talking about how many men genuinely enjoy and get pleasure from making the women closest to them scared or angry “as a joke.” I’m talking about how many men as a “harmless prank” will make their wife, girlfriend, sister, or female friend screaming and/or sobbing in fear and he will laugh about it and not show remorse. I’m talking about how many men will, for fun, “troll” their wife, girlfriend, sister, or female friend into making her so angry she’s yelling or in tears of anger, and he will laugh and enjoy that, and show no remorse. We all know of or have experienced something like this, a boy or man just being ruthlessly emotionally sadistic in how much he enjoys pushing the girls and women closest to him into tears or screaming in fear or rage, and they think it’s all in good fun. And they think this is normal manly behavior to enjoy “getting a rouse” out of the girls and women in his life. Most people accept it as normal behavior from boys or men, just another “boys will be boys” scenario even if we’re not still calling it that.

I’m talking about the time my (adult and in his 30′s) cousin lied to his sister and told her there was a tornado in the neighborhood and hearing her sob in fear while she hid in her closet with her dog was hilarious and enjoyable to him. I’m talking about how even as an adult my brother would intentionally push me to being so angry I was crying, because he thought it was funny and enjoyable. I’m talking about the endless parade of YouTube videos of men pulling “harmless” pranks on their girlfriends or wives that leave them screaming and sobbing in fear, and the positive reactions their viewers have to how “hilarious” that is.

Yes, before you derail this post this does happen in other gender combinations, however it’s hard to deny the overwhelming pattern of how much more common it is for men to enjoy bringing emotional pain to the women closest to them and receive pleasure from putting women close to them in emotional distress, and how much this gets dismissed as “guys being guys” and just typical male behavior, it’s disgustingly acceptable, and our cries of outrage at this treatment will only be amusing to them.

I don't know why this keeps happening but I keep meeting toxic heterosexual couples who experiment with polyamory and are heavily into funko pops, board games, Disney princesses and Burlesque stripping and the man is always a withdrawn bearded dude and the woman is always a passive aggressive control freak with an Etsy shop that sells lawn gnomes styled after Dr Who characters and they don't really even seem to like each other but they're always exactly the same. this has happened four times