Problem is that this legitimizes their belief that there are set characteristics that define people as “manly.”
Every 30 years or so we make some sort of social progress for women and/or LGBT people, and then a panic ensues that society is trying to destroy manliness. The Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates of the world suddenly pop up and start selling their nonsense that will magically make them the man’s men that their grandfathers were (while in fact their grandfathers were being told the same thing.)
The solution to this isn’t to tell the loud whiners that their exact fears are true. It’s to divorce ourselves from the notion that being a man is determined by penis/testicle size, or even by having them at all. By telling the bigots that their worst fears are true, we’re tacitly endorsing their bigotry as legitimate, when we should be doing the exact opposite of that.
Problem is that this legitimizes their belief that there are set characteristics that define people as “manly.”
Every 30 years or so we make some sort of social progress for women and/or LGBT people, and then a panic ensues that society is trying to destroy manliness. The Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates of the world suddenly pop up and start selling their nonsense that will magically make them the man’s men that their grandfathers were (while in fact their grandfathers were being told the same thing.)
The solution to this isn’t to tell the loud whiners that their exact fears are true. It’s to divorce ourselves from the notion that being a man is determined by penis/testicle size, or even by having them at all. By telling the bigots that their worst fears are true, we’re tacitly endorsing their bigotry as legitimate, when we should be doing the exact opposite of that.