Thread by @RemakingManhood

THREAD: There is no single traditional masculinity. This excerpt is from Chap. 3 of Remaking Manhood in the Age of Trump - Collected writings in the battle against dominance-based masculinity 2017-2021 All books -- amzn.to/3iTG69H /1

The full spectrum of masculinities is an exercise in nearly infinite variation and diversity. Just as there is a wide spectrum of masculinities within the subset of gay masculinity, so there is a wide spectrum of masculinities in the subset of traditional masculinity. /2

The United States has hundreds of years of Latino American masculine traditions. We have Native American masculine traditions that date back thousands of years. We have centuries of African American masculine traditions. /3

We have centuries of traditional Asian American masculine traditions. We have Jewish masculine traditions that date back to the Old Testament. Need I go on? Okay, thank you. I will. /4

We have masculine traditions among religious groups such as Southern Baptists or Unitarians. We have geographically located masculine traditions in places like Boston, and Wyoming, and South Florida. /5

Hundred-year-old organizations like the Boy Scouts have their own sets of masculine traditions. Colleges have them. Sports fans have them. And all these traditions intersect. /6

Men socialized across the vast range of “traditional masculinity” are practicing very different versions of it, and because there is intersectionality across all of these traditions, traditional manhood becomes even more diverse still. /7

Within these populations there are most certainly stark disagreements about politics, religion and even about what it means to be a man. /8

Put simply, traditional masculinity doesn’t exist. Traditional masculinities do, by the thousands. The rules of Man Box culture enforce a brutal and abusive caricature of what it means to be a man. /9

The rules of Man Box culture codify bullying and extremism, creating a culture of abuse that many so-called “traditional” men would and do oppose. /10

When the APA released Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men, they tiptoed up to the edge of naming Man Box culture with their language “traditional masculinity ideology.” /11

What the APA failed to do was differentiate "traditional masculine ideology's" singular agency and location (culture) in relationship to the full spectrum of masculinities (identities). /12

Man Box culture is not traditional masculinity, it is a cultural agent, which acts on, distorts, and assaults all masculinities, traditional and otherwise. The process looks like this: /13

Acknowledging our wide-ranging spectrum of masculinities, undermines the gender binary, which is foundational to the messaging of white and male supremacists. Their violent ideologies collapse without the gender binary’s narrow ideas of what men and women supposedly are. /14

Our fight is not with masculinity, traditional or otherwise, it is with dominance-based Man Box culture, which is a danger to
us all. /15

Like this wonky masculinity stuff? Want to break men out of Man Box culture? Support us by picking up our new book. There's tons of good stuff in there. All books are here: amzn.to/3iTG69H /16