I am constantly frustrated by the conversations around cis men always boiling down to 'men can't be trusted, because they're more prone to commit violence.' Two things can be true there: one is that yes, statistically, the majority doers of physical violence ARE men, because we're raised our entire lives to believe men are instantly capable of violence and women really aren't, they're just serial victims.
The other is that when you insinuate that this is a facet of their biological nature as a discrete type of human being, you are contributing to the problem: our culture teaches men that to express violent urges is a part of their natural male expression, and thus men who want to express violence feel absolved of responsibility for their violence, because they can't help it, because they're men. If you play the role right and do the violence the right way, to the right people, at the right times, you'll be REWARDED. What's the point of fighting something that you're rewarded for if you're also being told that it's a permanent fixture of your personhood that you can never escape? Society makes it easier to be a violent man than a compassionate one.
It is one thing to be wary around strange men as a survival practice. All feminized people learn it at some point. Even as a masc, even as cocky as I tend to be with the idea that I can take care of myself and that the average cis straight man doesn't want anything from my fat hairy ass, I am wary around strange men, I pay attention for warning signs and if I start seeing them I start keeping that guy in my line of sight and a hand on the knife in my pocket. But you have to recognize that if these guys are dangerous, that is because there is a societal pattern of teaching men "you are dangerous, it's inevitable, it's in your DNA, it's in your hormones, you are sexually violent by nature" that enables men to function in this way in their heads - it is not actually an intrinsic trait of their being.
When you are hurting people, and it is cathartic for you, it's very comforting to believe that it was inevitable. You're not doing anything WRONG if it's just in your nature. You're just doing what's natural, and who can judge you for that? Why should you be responsible for policing your own very nature?
And if you truly believe that violence is intrinsic to something in the male biology... why the fuck would you even bother being a feminist? You believe that an entire half of the population instinctively wants to exploit you by nature, and can never be rehabilitated away from that, and also they are more powerful than you and can hurt you more easily than you can hurt them. If that's true feminism is cooked and can never succeed. You're just wasting your time flailing and struggling until the monster inevitably eats you. You can never fundamentally change this for yourself or for other women. That's a fucked up way to see the world.
For feminism to even HAVE an end goal of true liberation, you need to be able to believe that men can be made into allies. Otherwise you might as well pack it in and start picking out your handmaiden bonnets.
But if you don't want to do that, then you need to start thinking of toxic masculinity as a training process that little boys are put through that we can STOP putting them through if we stop telling them "yeah you're just gonna be violent and want to rape girls sometimes, that's just nature, boys will be boys wink wink"
And on a final note: there is really something interesting that has happened within the queer and trans community where a lot of people believe that transgender men are dangerous until proven safe just the exact same way cis men are, by virtue of identifying as men. Which seems like a contradiction to me. Is the toxic masculinity stored in the brain, the balls, the testosterone, or the gendered socialization? Because I don't have a 'biologically male brain' I just have a normal brain, I don't have balls, I don't have male levels of testosterone, and I wasn't socialized as a male. But there are people on here - including other trans guys - who will insist that the moment you start identifying as male you become toxically masculine by nature until you prove yourself through hard work to be safe.
Well, are you sure? Because again, I was not socialized as a man. I was socialized as a woman. If I absorbed messages about what a man is Supposed to be and you think that that messaging is what makes me potentially dangerous, because even though they weren't intended as instruction for me, I was internalizing them -- would that not also be true of every other girl I grew up with who DIDN'T turn out to be trans male? Is male violence a potential energy that exists inside the body of every human being, that is released upon the trigger of accepting a male identity?
I honestly have trouble with the concept of "socialized male" vs "socialized female" because it seems to me like we're all just socialized, we're all taught to internalize a set of expectation for each sex, not just the one we were assigned. Boys learn what to expect of other boys and of girls - girls learn what to expect of other girls and of boys. We are all downloading the same complete set of gendered expectations, regardless of which ones are intended for us. We are all expected to put in the work to reinforce the other gender's roles; women are expected to reject and belittle 'weak' men who fail to perform masculinity just as men are expected to reject and belittle 'masculine' women who fail to perform femininity.
both genders do their part to police the other. Women are also responsible for enabling and training men toward violence, because they are taught to expect that from a successful man. Again "boys will be boys," to come full circle to my original point: you are literally contributing to this training process every time you insist that violence is an inherent part of the male identity.
I am expected to hold myself responsible for cis male trends of violence, as a feminized person who was subjected to it and knows firsthand exactly what it's like to be victimized by it. Because the same people who think that masculine violence is a biological trait caused by the evil hormone Testosterone, also believe that trans men are a risk for masculine violence with or without testosterone, because to consciously accept the male identity is to tacitly accept the baggage associated with it into your identity.
But also men are just naturally evil because of their brain chemistry and nothing we can do as a society will ever rehabilitate them. But also you become naturally evil the second you accept the societal label of man even without the chemistry.
It's like a recursive loop.
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