Thread by @AWPConnecticut

THREAD: It is no accident that we are silent about the one common through-thread of repeated public mass murders. It is masculinity. 1/
rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

The concept and embodiment of masculinity is so interwoven within our culture it is invisible, and yet it is so obvious that at some point we must face it, name it, and change it. 2/

Some call it “toxic” masculinity in order to imply “not all men.” That is a mistake. It is indeed all men. 3/

We are swimming in death-oriented definitions of what maleness actually is, and it permeates everything – media, family structures, local and global politics, even the definitions and lived experiences of romantic desire. 4/

Heterosexuality would not exist without our understanding of masculinity. Enforced gender binaries, racism, ableism, classism, carceral states – injustice in all forms are directly traced to masculinity. It is the original colonization mindset of ownership over production. 5/

Women giving birth is the ultimate production mechanism. And masculinity requires all those with functioning uteruses to use them to produce the human species under the watchful eyes of masculine systems. 6/

Enforced binaries (who can give birth and those who cannot) are essential for this to “work.”
Birth as the core production in need of ownership, control, and monitoring holds a deep truth. 7/

Those who cannot produce must control those who can by forcefully taking control of the MEANS of production - women’s bodies. Masculinity is designed to do just that. 8/

This concept is self-replicating and is then applied to certain skin tones/colors, body shapes and abilities, languages, geographical locations, and any resources therein. 9/

It results in the ability to shamelessly invade and colonize other cultures and righteously take what is not theirs in the name of masculinity. 10/

Masculinity assumes the sole ability to name what is real and true. It assumes violence solves all problems. It requires denying the basic need for love, inclusion, connection, and safety. 11/

Masculinity requires denial of self to the point of failure to even experience physical pain, let alone emotional distress. It also requires inflicting this callousness, pain, and distress on others. 12/

Masculinity requires becoming always ready for violence and to uphold narrow definitions of personal respect and honor. It requires ongoing grievance that “what is rightfully mine” is never satisfactorily forthcoming, and thus in need of continuous monitoring and defending. 13/

Masculinity requires being the “lover” not the “friend” by wielding the external penis appendage as a sword. Masculinity within sexual relationships is predicated on rape and the ever-present threat of rape. 14/

It is ripping and tearing penetration and the taking of another body. It is intentional injection of seed in the name of forced production, which is then named “desire” and “romance.” 15/

Masculinity requires superiority and domination. It requires being the master within an ever-expanding area of control. It requires a hierarchy of gender, skin color, physical ability, and meaning-making. It requires “othering” at all times to maintain power and control. 16/

Masculinity requires death. It is a death cult that requires absentminded death, sacrificial death, public death, neglectful death, righteous death, death by a thousand cuts, accidental death, ritual death, invisible death, death by erasure – murder in all its forms. 17/

Masculinity requires everyone participate in the masculinity cult under pain of death. No one is untouched by masculinity. 18/

We are swimming in masculinity and we are all required to pretend it does not exist, it is not real, it is a figment of our minds, the devil, or ghosts who visit in the night. 19/

Masculinity requires the greatest trick of all. Mass delusion that what is happening to us is not. Sexism, racism, ableism, classism must all be invisible and therefore ignored. 20/

And we believe in the delusion and not the blood on the ground, the pain in our bodies, the hunger in our stomachs, the forced births, our own deaths. 21/

Masculinity requires denial, denial, denial – all up and down, side to side, and forced participation in our own demise. We are all infected by masculinity, and it is killing us. 22/

@threadreaderapp unroll