Let's get down to business.

With a new movement of Feminism going underway, there has also been questions raised about our society's take on masculinity. Unlike feminism, however, masculinity has not undergone as many dramatic and revolutionary changes in the US, and has remained stagnant. Why is this? What is the source of all the stereotypes and expectations we've made for our men and boys?

Like many other things, manliness differs between cultures. It is a social construct to mean whatever a society wants it to mean. The problem is, today's masculine culture is promoting an abusive and unemotional male - this is where the 'fuck boys/playboys' and stoic men come into the picture. For some reason, it has always been socially acceptable - encouraged, even - for men to "go after" multiple women, and they play it like a game: 'scoring' women, getting 'home runs', and doing x amount of 'rounds'. Thus, sexual assault and date rape occurs. 

But, whoa, slow down, most normal men won't take someone on a date and intend to rape them, that's a crime after all. The issue here is they're doing these things without being aware it's wrong. To them, they are just taking their due payment. They just expect to get sex. But why? Why do men feel entitled to sex as a reward for being nice? Well, if you take a short look around the internet and the media you'll see women draping themselves over male main characters and how they always "get the girl" by the end of the movie. In these scenarios, the "girl" is an object, and is often treated as such. Of course, there is also the issue of how saying "no" in movies is handled as well, like if you egg her on enough she'll say yes eventually. This unfortunately creates a bad role model for young boys in terms of how they should view and treat women (by the way, no is no. No eggs here).

It is also very common in movies and media to portray men as emotionless figures that have everything sorted out and will make everything happen. Fathers are more frequent to punish and discipline as compared to mothers. Boys are told not to cry and "suck it up and be a man". But this has a terrible detriment to a little boy's psychological and emotional well being. These boys then grow up, have their own children, and are likely to have the same ideals their fathers had - repeating the cycle all over again. Little boys continue to bottle-up their emotions, continue to hide their tears, and continue to become depressed.  

In short, there are a lot of problems our society has concerning raising young men and how incredibly unhealthy it is for them to be raised on stereotypes we associate with masculinity. In this blog, this issue will be explored further and hopefully, give some good advice on how to treat your fellow male, be they five years old or fifty.