Sexism

I prefer apple or honey, myself.

Buy women's products for the hair you want to keep, and men's products for the hair you want to get rid of.

@Tobias: My point is that going from "these products exist" to "masculinity is fragile" as if that's the only thing that matters is a rather huge leap that fails to consider a lot of other factors. Marketing departments are known for making mountains out of molehills if it helps something sell better, so basically taking their word for it isn't the wisest judgement. It doesn't mean masculine insecurity is something that doesn't exist, but you might as well watch The Jerry Springer Show to find out how your average couple handles various crises.

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I like how when the subject of gendered products aimed at women (which usually means "colored pink and/or covered with sparkly crap"), it's because marketing departments are full of braindead cis white hetero males who have no idea how women's minds work, but gendered products aimed at men is because men are so pathetically insecure in themselves that they need their gender identity to be bolstered by buying manly masculine products for manly masculine men.

I like it even more how being insecure in one's masculinity is something apparently worthy of derision. Because real men are just naturally manly and never have confidence or self-esteem issues, especially about their masculinity. Because that's not the exact kind of attitude that leads to toxic masculinity or anything!

Actually, the best one on the list was #15. "Men have feelings too. No, not just the hippies." OH HAHAHA THOSE SILLY MEN, HOW FRAGILE THEIR SILLY LITTLE CONCEPTS OF MANHOOD ARE! LET'S LAUGH AT THEM FOR IT, SURELY THAT WON'T ADD TO THE PROBLEM AT ALL!

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

He's got a point. Those bloggers were unsympathetic. You could taste the smug.

But insecurity has always been a target for derision, and self-confidence one of praise. That's why it's self-perpetuating.

edited 18th Jun '15 8:27:41 PM by TheHandle

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

That's kind of what I meant by comparing it to "girls are bad at math", although from a different direction.

It seems like it wants to be gender-aware, but only manage to perpetuate the problems it claims to highlight. It laughs at the victims of it, not the perpetuators.

edited 18th Jun '15 8:43:23 PM by AnotherDuck

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For me, it's calling out the ridiculous nature of Toxic Masculinity as a social construct. The values and lessons we teach to boys that they carry with them when they grow up and become men.

You can't hug men 'cause that's GAY. You can't touch hands 'cause that's GAY. Fruity drinks are for GIRLS. Why is your shampoo so colorful, are you a QUEER? Only FAGS smell that pretty. Etc. etc.

That we have created a world where men need to have soap that's shaped like a hand grenade and chrome-colored shampoos with the label "FOR MEN" to avoid external and internal judgment is what's tragic. And it needs to be laughed at, because only when we accept that "Your suntan lotion is yellow and that means YOU ARE NOT A MAN" is completely f*cking ridiculous and stupid, can we start to fix it.

The butt of the joke isn't the men who buy the product. It's the social values that encourage men that they are only masculine if every single thing in their house is shaped like a gun, colored grey, and has the word "MEN" somewhere on it.

It's like cat-calling. The purpose of cat-calling has never actually been about the women. It's about the other men who are cat-calling. Men cat-call because men are expected to cat-call and masculinity is a thing that requires constant reinforcement, constant proving, constant vigilance. Men cat-call because if they do not cat-call then the other men cat-calling will think that they are not men.

edited 19th Jun '15 9:08:18 AM by TobiasDrake

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Call it what you want. It's still a sexist cheap shot that hurts more than it helps.

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It needs to hurt. Toxic masculinity is too thoroughly ingrained as a positive thing by the people with the power to change it, to the extent that what we think of as Men's Issues are usually less, "This is a problem with the way society perceives us," and more, "We're f*cking great, but people keep saying bad things; how do we get them to shut the f*ck up?"

The hardest part of raising awareness of Toxic Masculinity is convincing men that there could even be a problem with what is traditionally thought of as masculinity. Toxic Masculinity is a thick suit of plate mail that reflects any attempt to even discuss it with its impenetrable "Stop whining and MAN UP, pussy," alloy.

edited 19th Jun '15 10:08:11 AM by TobiasDrake

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No we don't. In situ mutation of words, phrases and grammars is major point of excitement for linguists, unless you're dealing with prescriptivist mechanics for pedagogical purposes. Seeing language change from a descriptivist linguist's point of view is like an entomologist discovering a new species of butterfly and a new flower that corresponds to its pollination methods. It makes us geek out, especially full-time professionals who collate and catalogue this stuff.

Now when we get into the political implications of words like "bitch" and "fuck", that's where sociolinguists start poking and proding.

edited 19th Jun '15 10:11:50 AM by Aprilla

But "stop whining and man up" is what you're saying by "it needs to hurt". Claiming that because you like guns or the colour grey you think hugging men is gay and to be avoided is stupid. It's Real Women Don't Wear Dresses but with men. "You're not allowed to like these things" is not a good message.

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So, "boner" gives linguists boners?

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Hey, there are female linguists too.

edited 19th Jun '15 10:45:19 AM by AngelusNox

Inter arma enim silent leges

So, "boner" gives female linguists female boners?

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Who doesn't love a Cunning Linguist?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

I think the term is "ladyboners" which gives boners and ladyboners to linguists, cunning or not.

I picked the wrong subject to study.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Boner has another, more offensive meaning. Ask the Joker.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

He is busy revving up his Harley.

Vroom vroom.

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

But how many boners can the joker make?

Inter arma enim silent leges

Please take this to the semantics thread. It was erected for a reason.

edited 19th Jun '15 11:45:49 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I appreciate the phrasing.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

That doesn't even remotely resemble what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it's f*cking ridiculous. It's ridiculous to market guns to women by spraypainting them pink to appeal to their girly whiles and it's ridiculous to market soap to men by shaping it like a hand grenade so they don't get self-conscious while being hygienic.

You can like a pink handgun or a hand-grenade soap but it's still ridiculous and we're still going to laugh at it. And if Bob has hand grenade soap because he feels like he needs hand grenade soap to be a man, then maybe he should stop and think about why hand grenade soap is such an important part of his identity.

Whereas if Bob has hand grenade soap 'cause he just thinks it's funny, he's laughing too.

edited 19th Jun '15 12:59:46 PM by TobiasDrake

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Most of that wasn't what you were saying (only the first part), but what the blog was saying.

The last bit is about laughing with people. That's not what the blog was about. It was about laughing at people for their tastes. It was plain stupid and they should feel bad for making it.

I remember the pink gun thing being brought up and discussed before somewhere. People ridiculed whoever made it and marketed it (I don't remember if that was an actual market thing, or just a custom weapon, but people believed the former). The woman wielding it? Pretty cool.

My point is, point and laugh at the people marketing the things, if you must. Not the people buying it. The blog did exclusively the latter.

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The blog did neither. It pointed and laughed at the social value of Masculinity that caused these products to exist. Toxic Masculinity was the butt of the joke.

Out of 27 entries, only 1 actually had a person as the butt of the joke: a tweet saying, "That uncomfortable feeling when you're a dude and you have to walk past the bras and panties in Wal-Mart and girls won't stop staring at you."

That one may have been uncalled for. It's debatable, given that general reluctance to be in the vicinity of or even have knowledge of Female Products for fear of being judged is one of the many ways Toxic Masculinity asserts its fragility, and so this tweet is still thematically accurate.

The rest? Pictures of products marketed towards men with captions poking fun at the fragile concept of masculinity. Possibly excepting the one example above, no men were harmed in the raising of this awareness.

edited 19th Jun '15 2:21:55 PM by TobiasDrake

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I don't buy that for a second.

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Doesn't mean it isn't true.

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