The interactions I watch my boyfriend have now that he passes have really changed my perception of what it is like for men, and frankly, it's bleak in some fundamental ways I didn't understand.
Friendliness is taken differently. Women interact very differently, there's not as much casual small talk like women in my part of the country will make between each other, that becomes a sudden gap, a lack of daily friendliness that is so, so wonderful. People make small talk differently. Showing happy interest in a child like waving at a toddler in a shopping cart, a NORMAL THING TO DO that is good for a small child's development and sense of security, is kind of sus suddenly. Men speak differently to one another and it can get weird, you hear people say the quiet stuff out loud, or hear people say things they wouldn't say to a woman (not all of it bad as in gross, some of it bad as in oh man you have trauma my guy, this is not how it should be).
It's not, like, REALLY bad for him, but we are adults with partners and an existing friends group. It would be such a different scene if he were younger, dating age, cis, surrounded by cis men, raised cis...the emotional landscape is...not great.
This is toxic masculinity, and it is not a reason for pity or making excuses, but a reason for sympathy.
"Plenty of people go through bad shit and don't become assholes." Yeah but some of us DO. I did. Not with masculinity stuff, it was other stuff, but I was a fucking asshole. I had to work on that and recover from it. And the environment a lot of men find themselves in is not super conducive to doing that.
"I want better for you too" is better than "your problems are your own fault". You have to give a fuck about other people. You just do. You cannot hate or dismiss entire groups of people because of characteristics that are beyond their control, even when those characteristics bestow significant privilege.
"This is a good thing you're trying to do" is better than "don't expect praise for being a decent human". Actually, I'm the kind of person who thinks it is very very important to thank people for doing things like chores and other stuff they should be doing. I think praising people for the slightest fucking thing is important, because I have lived without that and it was so very hurtful. And I think pointing out when a man is being a decent guy in an area where men are often not so decent is a good thing to do.
This isn't even about being nice to men because their help is needed. It's about being nice to people when people need help, and there's some kinds of help that men don't get as much of. And as we see above, that is just so very, very sad.
Toxic masculinity can make men behave in some pretty unempathetic ways. But our own sexist* ideas about how men are/should be can make us be pretty unsympathetic as well. I think that we need to work on that.
* "All women have an innate mothering urge and their connection to their children is always stronger than men's" is a sexist idea. The idea that men need less support for child loss is derived from that. It's a sexist idea too.
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