I have 99 fucks to give to a good home

However, the idea of what a man can be has not expanded in the same way. Every man has to be stoic, loud, take up space, and never show weakness. Allowing men to be sensitive, emotional, soft, pretty, and feminine used to be one of the goals of feminism. After all, how are we supposed to see ourselves as truly equal if we still have such strict rules guiding gendered behavior?

Recently, I have seen feminism (trans exclusionary and trans inclusive) solidifying those strict rules of manhood instead of breaking them down. The idea that all men are agressive, stubborn, and will physically overpower you has been parroted so many times, it almost feels like fact. It is forcing —not the men themselves— but the idea of men into the role of the evil wrongdoer. The ways in which terfs have used this image to harm trans women are myriad and obvious.

It used to be common knowledge that feminism also ought to benefit men in this way. If the sexes were truly equal, then men could act feminine, and women could act masculine without social repercussions. This breakdown of gender roles is a good thing! It is freeing for all of us to remove the arbitrary rules guiding gendered behavior.

I can’t remember the exact wording, but there was a post charting archetype of the ‘swole grifter’ - the only thing that successful, conventional, heterosexual men have been permitted to be - which is so much more restrictive than any mainstream historical model of masculinity.

Like, don’t get me wrong, Victorian society had hellishly restrictive gender roles (and class came in to it as well)- but it had a diversity of masculinities which one could inhabit, and many things which were seen as ideally masculine were things that much of modern masculinity views with suspicion. (Eg, being family focused, being devout in non muscular-Christianity ways, the stereotype of the scholar, or of the eccentric, the focus on various types of devotion).

None of those things are inherently masculine, ofc, but they were acceptable masculinities of the day, and often involved things which out culturally dominant masculinity derides - like gentleness, care projected outwards, fussiness, the following of unprofitable pursuits which don’t bring prestige, platonic physical and emotional intimacy, etc etc.

And what gets me is that while there has been some pushback against this narrowing, and while men *can* express themselves more widely than at any time hitherto, there is a… defensiveness about it, where one rejects, rebels against, seeks to redefine masculinity through those actions in a way that situates that which is being reacted against as more real and permanent.

Which is simply not true.

Throughout history, men have worn flower crowns and cried in public and told their friends they loved them (and absolutely *would* have done glitter beards if they’d had the glitter) and not only were these acceptable reactions to/dismantlings of extant masculinities, they were seen as manly.

Flower crowns were the garlands which people wore for various ceremonious and social occasions, crying was (at times and in places) seen as evidence of finely tuned feeling and morals - the knights of chivalric fiction sob constantly - and the swearing of love between two manly men is one of the staples of pre-20th century fiction. None of this stuff used to be disruptive to hegemonic masculinity! The idea that is is betrays a really deep sickness in our current conception of what it is to be a man.

And I’m not saying that the answer is to redefine a bunch of stuff that’s currently coded as “feminine” back to being “masculine,” but I also don’t think it’s very helpful to define them as feminine and say, “it’s okay for men to do feminine things”.

However, the idea of what a man can be has not expanded in the same way. Every man has to be stoic, loud, take up space, and never show weakness. Allowing men to be sensitive, emotional, soft, pretty, and feminine used to be one of the goals of feminism. After all, how are we supposed to see ourselves as truly equal if we still have such strict rules guiding gendered behavior?

Recently, I have seen feminism (trans exclusionary and trans inclusive) solidifying those strict rules of manhood instead of breaking them down. The idea that all men are agressive, stubborn, and will physically overpower you has been parroted so many times, it almost feels like fact. It is forcing —not the men themselves— but the idea of men into the role of the evil wrongdoer. The ways in which terfs have used this image to harm trans women are myriad and obvious.

It used to be common knowledge that feminism also ought to benefit men in this way. If the sexes were truly equal, then men could act feminine, and women could act masculine without social repercussions. This breakdown of gender roles is a good thing! It is freeing for all of us to remove the arbitrary rules guiding gendered behavior.

DIZZY SOON GUYS!!

It's called the glass cliff, and it's a phrase that was first coined in 2005 by University of Exeter researchers Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam. The research was inspired by an article in the Times (of London, not New York) that suggested women leaders have a negative impact on stock performance. Perhaps Ryan and Haslam smelled the whiff of bullshit coming from the page. They wondered if it was actually true that women brought doom and gloom to the businesses they led, or if there was some other reason why women were more likely to be found in leadership positions at troubled businesses.

They found that women were indeed more likely than men to be in leadership positions at distressed companies, but they also found that the problems were not the women's fault... These firms had shown months of decline and seemed at risk of failure prior to adding women to their boards.

When Allison Cook and Christy Glass at Utah State University followed up on this research by looking at US companies, they also discovered disturbing patterns impacting women and people of color in business: women and people of color were most likely to be placed at the head of a company when it was already at risk of failure; white men were less likely to accept leadership positions when companies were at risk of failure; and when women or people of color fail to quickly turn around the struggling company, they were most likely replaced with white men.

Women and people of color are often only given the opportunity to steer ships that white men have already rammed into icebergs. Then, when the ship sinks, the media reports that women make bad captains."