Toxic Masculinity and How It Is Practiced Normally?

" do you like football?"

"Hmm, no I don't tend to...?

"heh... you are such a sissy"

The above excerpt is a portrait of a common misconception related to the gender structure that has been ingrained in normal society. even until now, there are still collective perception that men are supposed to do hardworking, dealing with harsh activities, doing and loving sport, having cool appearance, preserving their beard without shaving it making them stronger, and other things that is unrealistically become normalized due to they said that "it's ruled by nature". Then have do you think what happen if you think that this conditions are opposite, where women and man position is reversed? of course it could be weird and nonsense. If so, then what are the thing that underlying this common sense as we are adhere to the gender norm of society which makes a men is stronger, suppress their feeling and vulnerable emotion, and are expected to even just type of preferences personally like a hobby, favorite colour, physical appearance and even the way of speaking is determined by constructed societal value. As I mentioned earlier, I had also experienced common conversations when I was very young, at a level where I did not understand the reason for basic common rules, which the majority of society, or maybe patriarchal society, tends to underestimate other men's preferences who have different views from what is expected. At that age, i often avoid kind of sports activities in my school or even sometimes I prefer to pretend to be sick or skip sports class and lend my sports shirt to my friend who didn't bring it at that time. I would have be so excited when it comes to math or language class. This kind of preferences, seems to them is regarded as unusual, irregular, or even at some stances they slightly mocking me as nerd student.

But why does it happen in our society that men can legitimize their sense of superiority not only subjected on women but also to men who does not following this toxic pattern. So this false faith is called as Toxic Masculinity which refers to narrow-minded thinking and behavior about how men should act and behave, by "enforcing" standards of "manliness" or "real men," where men should not cry, should not play and act like women, being trained to engage in physical behavior, and so on. The negative impacts of toxic masculinity also severely damage the psychological state of victims. It can cause mental illness for the perpetrator if persistent, leading to depression and even suicide in the victims. This is in line with research published by the WHO, which states that 80% of men who commit suicide in America, or 2.9% of every 100,000 people (with men being the dominant figure), are caused by men's feelings of inability to fulfill the masculine social roles imposed on them by society. Every single judgement start from trivial matters to which that this type of stereotyping has been normalized since we were child. As i said in my another articles that the tendency of women who are supposed to play with such a girlish thing- lets say dolls, liking pinky stuff and then at the teenagrs age they are naturally being attracted to beautify their face with many kind of skin-care just for fulfilling the beauty standard which again, constructed by society. At the same time, men also trained to design what is like to be a "cool-guy" which are tied to many characteristics and myth of representation like a black colour symbolized as masculine, hidden feelings, virile, brave, aggresive. So do it is similar in connection with sport like football where men are physically assumed as strong, unbreakable, and have capability to handle harsh activities that women cannot, presumably. Additionally, Masculine men also don't use facial and body care products as women do, and masculine men don't have light skin, but rather dark skin or brown skin might be more appreciated because shows the being "man" symbol.

https://sites.psu.edu/civictom/2019/02/12/toxic-masculinity/

Furthermore, doesn't the idea of patriarchal traits that is supported by most men actually go against the idea and principle of freedom that men themselves want?  Men are naturally adventurous and don't like rules that don't make sense to them. At the same time, they don't think objectively about the structure of social norms that affect how they should act based on the idea of a manly shows virility.  It looks like they don't realise that the division they made goes against what they want to achieve, which is the idea of freedom itself, they are longing and not willing to be in an inferior and submissive position. Rather, they mostly inclined to rebel and fight this kind of illogical and unjust system.  In addition, the differences in how boys and girls behave since youth can leads to a significant effects on how a person will act, and these patterns are reinforced subtly, gradually and institutionally by the dominant discourse we talked above..

The philosopher and also feminist Judith Butler, in her book Gender Trouble, makes you think about how much dominant perspectives control a person's actions and how much those actions are shaped by words and social norms and institutions.  She says that the idea of a "natural" behaviour comes from secret and subtle limits. She also looks into how language shapes the social world through everyday speech acts.  By following social norms in everyday actions and speech, these made-up rules are not questioned and are seen as normal or even important. She also says

"gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being"

https://medium.com/@lilyzheng308/masculinity-vs-femininity-gender-discrimination-in-the-workplace-850bf2a72847

Gender is seen as not only not natural, but also as something that is made by doing things over and over again that create the two big categories of what is considered "feminine" or "masculine."  In a broad sense, gender is not decided by biology. Instead, it is shaped and maintained by social norms.  The performance of gender, which is basically doing the same thing over and over again, is what creates the idea of gender and the two sexes. In this way, people are not women or men, but they act like they are either by acting that way.  If someone doesn't act like their gender, bad things could happen. As it seems, societal norms also can be possibly varied depending on the historical and political situation of one country, or at the local level, which are continuously holding on to local beliefs that are maintained down from generation to generation. This form can also subtly form an ideology where certain aspects of social practices that are perpetuated continuously have a high possibility of being maintained because they maintain the purity of a particular culture and until eventually at a certain level people or groups of people will realize that something is wrong with this deeply rooted ideology or belief that has an oddity in its essence towards modern norms that come from the fruits of struggle and social movements.