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Misuse of the phrase toxic masculinity came about when the focus was placed on maleness rather than on truly inappropriate behaviors. The practical effect of this has been a general form of misandry: a prejudiced, unfair attitude or open hatred of men or all things masculine. Rather than criticizing excessive behaviors or encouraging positive ones, some people leap to the assumption that anything “boyish” or “manly” is, by definition, to be mocked or avoided.

Boys, especially, have suffered from this cultural trend. Competitiveness, risk-taking, daring, noisiness, and so forth are not always bad and were once accepted as “boys being boys.” Today, however, those traits are often labeled as inappropriate or even “toxic.” Group settings frequently exacerbate this problem. Schools, care centers, recreation programs, and even churches now tend to promote equality of results, communal work, sentimentality, and other more typically feminine expressions. Classically feminine behavior is stressed as “good,” while roughhousing, boisterousness, adventurousness, and so forth are punished as misbehavior.

The result is an environment where girls expressing more typically “girlish” behavior feel empowered and connected, and boys expressing more typically “boyish” behavior feel ashamed or rejected.

Here is some great insight from J.B. Shurk at the American Thinker. God created us male and female. We have our distinct roles. That is the way of God. Men, we need to stand up and proclaim that is way God intends it to be.

I have long believed that one of the most dangerous mass movements gripping the West today is the suicidal drive to emasculate, and even infantilize, men.  History is not filled with examples of prosperous and peaceful civilizations made up of men apologizing for their strength and promising to be less stoic and more tearful in battle.  “For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother,” Henry V proclaimed to his far-outnumbered soldiers in Shakespeare’s recounting of the king’s St. Crispin’s Day speech that rallied his men to victory near Agincourt in 1415.  Six hundred years later, and Henry’s exhortation would surely be deemed “toxic,” “patriarchal,” and Heaven forbid! “cis-normative.”  Talk of blood and honor and manhood has no place in a society committed to trampling boys’ self-esteem and shaming men into constantly “checking their privilege.”  Woe to any nation, though, that thinks turning men into women will protect either.

“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak.  It is then that tyrants are tempted.”  That was the essence of President Reagan’s “peace through strength” diplomacy that finally toppled an Evil Empire still suffocating half of Europe forty years after the official end of WWII.  “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far,” Theodore Roosevelt urged when noting how imperative it is to a nation’s survival never to bluff but to be always ready for swift, decisive action.  Doing otherwise, such as when the mom jeans–wearing Obama publicly barked at Syria’s Assad about chemical weapons “red lines” not being crossed while lacking the strength to bite forcefully when the time came, only serves to make America more vulnerable and less safe.  As if to remind the world that the ignominious Obama Doctrine of “slaughter through weakness” had slunk back into the White House, our “woke” military and “asleep” president showed quickly with their Afghanistan retreat how lethal to both civilians and military personnel emasculated leadership is.

Source: The War on Masculinity Will End Badly – American Thinker