dynamoxie

“Your babies are going to be so cute.”

if someone hadn’t eventually listened to me i would have died

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. I can’t walk when it happens, it hurts so bad. It’s been since I was a little kid.”

“It might twinge a bit, sure,” he told me. “Go to physical therapy for a few weeks.” I burst into tears.

My mom then refused to take me to physical therapy, because it was a long drive and the doctor said it wasn’t serious, so why should she bother? That was the start of her not listening to any complaint about my joints I ever had.

As it turns out, my knees were dislocating every couple of days. She and my doctors ignored and taught me to ignore sprains, fractures, cartilage tears, and dislocations until I moved out and learned that it wasn’t normal. I missed out on years of my life because of my doctor not only discounting the experience of a young girl, but fully blaming my pain on the fact of my being a young girl.

The ER doctor said I had asthma. So, he attempted to give me a diagnosis, at least. But I told him that I knew what being out of breath felt like, that I didn’t feel out of breath, that I couldn’t breath in deeply when the asked me to because the stretching of my chest was causing more pain.

They sent me for a chest x-ray, gave me a nebulizer treatment that night, gave me a prescription for an inhaler, which would have been helpful, if I had had asthma. Luckily, I had a regular pediatrician and a saw her a week later, the first thing she said was, “This isn’t asthma.” It was inflammation and swelling of my rib cage, which is a thing that happens to people after exercise and more frequently to kids. Apparently, both my and my mom’s protests were recorded in the chart that the ER sent to my doctor, as well.

But seriously when did Peggy jump ship from going mini Joan redder to switch gears to mysterious brunette?

Stan went from Fred to Shaggy, but like, even with more orange Daphne hair, Peggy was never anything but Velma, right?

Because “that doesn’t happen to guys” *IS* a feminist issue. Male victims of abuse being dismissed, blamed or ridiculed because they weren’t “manly” enough is a part of patriarchy. And you can raise awareness of that without dismissing other feminist issues or bringing it up as a “counter argument” to problems women face.

Toxic masculinity is one of the ways in which Patriarchy is harmful to men. It is the socially-constructed attitudes that describe the masculine gender role as violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth.

A well-known masculinity movement that is not mostly anti-feminist has yet to appear.

Examples

Male [video game/film] protagonist bingo card illustrating toxic masculinity.

Men are just like that: the idea that a Real Man constantly thinks about sex.

Emasculation: the idea that there is a finite range of political attitudes a Real Man can hold.

The idea that Real Men should be prepared to be violent, even when it is not called for.

For example, a common response to women’s tales of experiencing street harassment is for a man who’s listening to say, “If I was there, I would have punched [the harasser].” This is problematic .

The expectation that Real Men are strong, and that showing emotion is incompatible with being strong. Anger is either framed as the exception to the rule, or as not an emotion.

Relatedly, the idea that a Real Man cannot be a victim of abuse, or that talking about it is shameful.