Are todays men less masculine?

I disagree. I feel like people are far more respectful today. Whenever I'm called "hon" or "sweetie" in a condescending way, it's never a millennial or gen z guy doing it. When there is resistence to using pronouns, DEI, political cortectness, and things like racial slurs being tossed around under the guise of, "relax, it's just a joke" it's almost always coming from older folks.

Today's men aren't more or less toxic or more or less masculine. They're just different--for better or worse--from our dad's generation.

And that's okay

 

I didn't say it was solely sexism. I just said that the internet amplifies bad behaviors, by giving everyone a bullhorn and a certain degree of anonymity.

I've been to websites where the community is tight-knit, and newcomers are warmly welcomed. Its fairly moderated without feeling stifling, and they're just a wonderful place to be.

I've been to websites where the community does nothing but make people feel hurt, belittled, stupid, and angry and they're bickering constantly.

Most website communities fall in between that. Furthermore, age doesn't automatically guarantee people will be prejudiced or sympathetic.

 

I think the kind of men that each of us knows or sees mostly (and then will judge as masculine or not) has at least a little bit to do with where we hang out and the kinds of people that we are most likely to observe or meet. Maybe that sounds redundant but I mean it as cause and effect. Forget people on TV and movies (and Internet), so many that are nowhere near reality in so many ways, they're actors and they live in bubbles, everything is fake or to look glamourous, even a lot of the news talking heads, politicians, the most visible ones, and so many of those personalities lean a lot toward behavior that they think is supposed to be the most trendy, as they avoid (or even demonize) people that they're supposed to think are 'undesirables' or just not worth thinking about.

A little more on point, I seriously do not like those skinny pants that even many older men are wearing now.... though I see them on my TV screen a lot more often than I see them right in front of me (see above, TV versus reality). But one example is the football talk crew on Fox's Sunday NFL pregame show, not all of them wear traditional pants, just Michael and Terry and maybe a couple others, but the newer guy Gronk does wear those silly skinny pants. I don't think they are masculine at all. I don't even know what to think. That's just one 'symbol' that stands out to me., maybe a comparatively minor one but it's very representative I think.

My 2 favorite older people (60s and 70s) are the most respectful towards women as anyone that I know, because that's how they were taught by their parents, and despite the fact that both of them carry the average levels of testosterone for active men, sportsmen, outdoorsmen, and one of them is a pure country boy who grew up working on a farm. And also several men about my own age and younger who are my friends.... men who wear jeans, men who sweat and sometimes get dirty or greasy doing various kinds of hard work.... men who wear uniforms and know that it doesn't make them different than they are but it does make them special, but they stay humble because they respect the responsibility that the uniform represents.... and as far as I know, everyone of those friends of mine is as respectful to others as anyone can expect them to be.

So are today's men less masculine..... I think that it's far more possible than ever for men to be less masculine than ever. But there are still a lot of masculine men out there if we just know where to look.... and what to look for!!

 

Joke.......woman wanted men to get more in touch with there feelings..............now you have it(zeitgeist).

Male or female or whatever.........everybody is to focused on.............am i this or that(social media)............or whatever.



Mzzls

 

Good rhythm in that one!!

 

Love placebo..........

Mzzls

 

On one side of this, there's still a lot of talk about toxic masculinity and something that goes way back in time and all about how men are supposed to behave and all that stuff. Women rose up against this and, oh, perhaps in the late 1960s and about the time Women's Liberation came to be, the ladies told us guys that we need to get in touch with our feminine side and I kinda laugh at this if those women knew how some men responded to that other than being pretty pissed off and like a lot of macho guys were.

On the other side, there are men who are... less masculine. Not up to that ridiculous standard that I know I was told about growing up and what a lot of men still live by today. It's not how they dress and I agree that Gronk looks ridiculous in skinny jeans but it's all about how a man carries himself and from a sexuality point of view, there are a lot of guys who, um, aren't afraid to let their inner girl out to play with the fellas and embracing the "softer" side and like those women way back in the 1960s were asking us to do but, yeah, being guys, we took what they said to an extreme.

Male toxicity still around and it's being questioned if men are less masculine and it infers that there's a middle ground but is there something between these two extremes? Is there supposed to be? Kinda cray-cray to complain about men being toxic and not being masculine enough or at all? It seems to me - and I could be wrong - that if you remove the toxicity aspect of what some of us were taught about being men, you get men who are... less masculine and as masculinity has been defined. The question is: Is this a problem if men are less masculine?

 

Yes I think there is a problem with less masculine men. Would you want a fireman, a policeman or a soldier to be less than masculine?

 

Personally? I'd want them to do the job they were trained to do and I wouldn't question their masculinity or lack thereof (if present). But I'll ask again: What's between toxic masculinity and men being less masculine? It almost seems to me that men are... extremists in that we're either one way or the other. I don't think that I'm a toxic male because I don't believe in that bullshit I was told growing up... but I'm not less masculine because... I'm just me. Who's really "complaining" about men being less masculine? Is it women - and the same folks who, again, told us to embrace our feminine side and if that's what we've done - even metaphorically - now the complaint is we're not man enough?

Help me out here.