“Don’t Be A Pussy — Do Something Painful Instead!”
It’s really common in feminist spaces, or honestly anywhere that women are speaking, to hear statements like “the patriarchy hurts men, too” or more specifically “toxic masculinity is harmful to men.” But men, in my experience, either don’t hear these things because we aren’t participating in those conversations, or we aren’t receptive to the messages. An awful lot of men, especially blue-collar men, hear a phrase like “toxic masculinity” and parse it as “men are bad”. So they feel attacked, and withdraw from that conversation. It’s not productive for them.
Here’s a video that I think makes the same point in an unmistakable visual language. It was circulating on virality social media with the caption “a man will do anything if you call him a pussy” which, sadly, is too-often true. For too many men, no amount of physical pain is worse than the idea that his buddies will think him unmasculine. This man, although he clearly knows he’s going to experience sharp and immediate regret, allows himself to be goaded into touching his tongue to an electric bug zapper paddle, while other unseen men say things like “stop being a pussy” in the background:
Weaponized misogyny is a drug, gentlemen, and you might be its next victim!
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=34169
I get the points about toxic masculinity in the name calling, but it feels to me like this could have been filmed in any kindergarten, with (non gender specific) kids daring each other to do something stupid. It feels to me more about maturity than gender.
Finagle, it’s easy enough to say that, but go find me video of a group of adult women where one of them gets goaded into doing something this physically stupid because somebody calls her a prick, a cock, a dick, or a penis.
Bacchus has talked about how a lot of American women seem to believe “men like this” or “men think that is slutty” when its actually other women making up and enforcing a rule that no man knows about or cares about. I agree with finagle that much of social media is adults with solid jobs behaving like dim middle-school students!
Tricky since I don’t use any social media at all. But I’m sure if you look for ‘ladette’ culture you’ll find examples. Certainly I’ve seen hen groups where women do stupid things in response to taunting. Whether ladettes use misandrist language I can’t say.
I’m also pretty sure any derogatory insult, misogynistic or not, would have lead to the same outcome in the video. While the taunt used here is misogynistic, it could easily have been homophobic (pansy, sissy) or non gendered (wuss, chicken).
Well, finagle, you’ve used the word “sure” twice and “certainly” once, but I challenged you to provide an example for a reason — because I expect it to be difficult. I’m not going to do that research for you. I’m perfectly content to abide in disagreement, though.
I should point out, however, that if I’m arguing “under the toxic structures of patriarchy, here are two types of insults that make men easier to control” it is not a counterargument to list other ways that men are also controlled to their detriment.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence :-D
I can only provide anecdotal evidence of things I’ve seen on nights out. Which were not under lab conditions. Or video’d and posted. I’m not wading into the cesspit that is social media hunting non AI generated examples, sorry. Wonder is this is a Rule 34 exception? Is there porn of women taunting other women to do harmful things in order to avoid being considered butch? Almost sounds like a genre.
As for other insults, my point is that the misogynistic nature of the insult is not necessarily why he did it, only that he was being taunted. Another insult may have been equally effective to someone acting in this adolescent, approval seeking way. That the insult heard in the time window posted was misogynistic was all to the benefit of the captioner.
Regardless, seeing this I initially thought ‘childish’. And then thought a few more times whether I could agree that what I was seeing was unequivocally toxic masculinity, and I’m afraid I always come down to it being childish behaviour, and there is insufficient evidence that the misogyny alone is causative in my eyes.
Beyond that, well I don’t dispute the premise that toxic masculinity exists, nor that people make bad decisions because of it, nor that it harms those of us who consider ourselves men, by lumping us in with those who suffer from it. I just don’t agree this video supports it well without other interpretation.
Agree to disagree?
I’m certainly willing to drop it, but I’m not sure you’re engaging squarely enough with the argument I’m making to concede that this is an “agree to disagree” situation. However, last word is yours if you like.