#especially because im so tired of wider feminist discourse ignoring butches like WE EXIST TO GOD please make room for masc women christ

[surpriserose]

okay heres my hot take

i think i hate the term positive masculinity L O L

like i saw a twitter thread of people listing examples of positive masculinity and like 1.) there was like no one listing people like trans men and butch/masc women (including butch trans women) people who are...you know actively discouraged and punished for their masculinity for genuinely challenging cishet concepts of masculinity and 2.) hey why are we doing this anyways?

Like what is the point of a term like positive masculinity especially when we're just applying it to cishet men like a gold star for reaching the goddamn bare minimum? Obviously its been set up as the opposite of toxic masculinity which is honestly just kind of fucked? Toxic masculinity doesnt need some kind of uwu notallmen counterpart? it was created to name the way men are encouraged by the patriarchy to subjugate women and themselves slash other (usually marginalized) men for not adhering to the same misogynistic patriarchal ideals like? You know the things that result in shit like domestic abuse and a bunch of other nasty shit even though its been kind of defanged into here's why men don't cry uwu like GOD!! like yeah thats part of it but christ!!! can we please focus on how it affects women you know the way feminist terms are supposed to??

and thats honestly why positive masculinity is the same to me as like...people and like...well anti feminists trying to create toxic femininity as a term which like can you just shut up we already have internalized misogyny which is 1000 times more accurate.

And honestly positive masculinity feels kind of anti feminist in the same way

Like the things people list about positive masculinity aren't...connected to masculinity at all? They're connected to the way society views femininity if we're going to work inside this binary for a minute. Like people will praise men crying and being vulnerable which is good i dont disagree...but those are often things society associates with women/femininity and more importantly, punishes women for. For every goddamn person praising men for crying in public we're getting 10 women crying in public called hysterical lying bitches. Which is honestly why I feel if we're gonna use a term like this at all we should focus on how these are perceived as feminine traits and not just slapping positive masculinity around so men are still #manly even when they're crying and never have to examine the way they still have privilege for doing the same goddamn shit women do.

And moreover why are we gendering traits like this anyways? it gets really gross really fast. Like if it wasn't traits we associate as a culture with femininity it was shit like leadership which...why are we leaving that in the domain of masculinity/men? Why by using positive masculinity as a term do people cede ground to misogyny by dressing it up in progressive language? Like when your positive masculinity is listing shit like taking charge and ambition are you not just saying ambition is for men, not women? Not that a term like positive femininity would work either, do you really want to start listing shit like when women are subservient and submissive and niceys to their positively masculine men ^_^ like we're just repackaging the stupid essentialist misogynistic divine feminine and divine masculine shit that keeps popping up like why do we keep doing this. These aren't useful terms for anything they're making gross sweeping statements about things that are...just traits people can have. Women can be ambitious and it doesnt mean they're exhibiting positive femininity and men can cry and it doesn't mean this is some positive masculinity shit it just means thats a woman whos ambitious and a man whos sensitive like its fine!!!! like christ