Molly Sprayregen (she/her) has opened my eyes.
Until five minutes ago, I thought masculinity was a good thing. Not that masculinity alone is a good thing; femininity is too, because they are complementary. Men and women, yin and yang, Mars and Venus…you get the idea.
But now I know better. Masculinity is crippling society, and trans ‘men’ are here to save us. Thank God. Or should I pray to a different deity? It’s so confusing.
From a journalistic perspective, there is no evidence that masculinity is crippling society. There is more evidence, in fact, that calling all men toxic for being masculine is crippling society.
But they just print it like it’s true.
ALSO, the “trans” movement is the most…
— Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) August 7, 2025
Firefighters, construction workers, linemen, plumbers, inventors, firefighters, and all sorts of toxic professions are dominated by men, so it is a bit of a mystery to me that I hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that men cripple society. And that doesn’t even include fathers and fatherhood, which, after all, contribute to the CREATION of toxic masculinity. It’s a positive Zyklon B of characteristics.
Men have long felt compelled to publicly perform masculinity, and when they don’t conform, they pay the price, whether through bullying, self-induced shame, or social isolation.
In short, the pressure for men to be “manly” is crippling society, but at the same time, no one actually knows what it means to be a “real man.” Such is the subject of an in-depth exploration of masculinity by journalist Jude Ellison S. Doyle, a trans man who posits that we must look toward trans folks to start shifting the way society sees gender roles.
If you like, you can further explore the issue in a related article, by the way.
I have to admit that I wasn’t even aware that masculinity was crippling society. Fox News, those evil, radical right-wing propagandists hadn’t informed me of this fact, so I lived in ignorance for years. Now I know, thanks to LGBTQ Nation.
“Trumpism is a kind of gender performance,” he wrote. “It’s about shoring up a traditional, misogynistic, dominance-obsessed ideal of ‘masculinity’ against social progress, about restoring straight cis white men to their traditional place at the head of the family and the top of the world. Attacks on trans people, who supposedly threaten ‘masculinity’ by existing, are very much a part of that effort.”
Doyle’s explorations made him realize that even though so many men, fueled by the right, are bowing at the altar of so-called traditional masculinity, no one actually knows what that means or what kind of person embodies the ideal.
But one thing is certain, Doyle said. Whatever that ideal is, it’s unattainable.
“What’s at the heart of most masculine performance is not power, or even gender, but a perpetual suffocating anxiety about not performing one’s gender correctly.”
“No wonder no one can come up with a definition of ‘masculinity’—it’s not an object, but a void where an object should be, a negative that must be proven in each new interaction. The quintessential experience of being a man is wondering if you’re really a man; it’s always acting like a man and never actually getting to be one.”
Nobody even knows what masculinity is. “It is a void where an object should be.”
Profound. Very Critical Theory-y.
Now I have to admit that I am not the most manly-man you could find. I am short, pudgy, nerdy, and the opposite of the “strong, silent type.” My wife and I joke that I am the “weak and effusive type,” although neither of us would go so far as to say feminine. I am quite recognizably masculine not only in biology, but in character traits.
“The emotions of powerful white men are given tremendous importance, and allowed to dictate national policy,” he said. “It’s the victims’ feelings that don’t matter; it’s empathy for them that is being denied. This carries over to the attempts to come up with a softer, more ‘positive’ masculinity: ‘Strength’ and ‘leadership’ sound like nice qualities, but they are both synonyms for being in charge.“
One expert Doyle spoke with, transfeminist Talia Bhatt, explained that masculinity is often used euphemistically for setting men above women. Bhatt believes it is difficult to separate toxic masculinity from any positive form of the concept, since doing so negates the fact that misogyny and violence are patriarchy’s intended goals.
I do think it is accurate to say that Trump is obviously an Alpha Male–and if you pinned her down, Molly Sprayregen would have to agree to some variation of that characterization, even if she thinks it is a performance. Which of course means that masculinity is NOT a void–we all know exactly what it means, even though it is not an object.
What is striking, though, aside from the asininity of the article, is the premise: that masculinity is “crippling society.” The claim is absurd on its face, and that is not because I have some ideological attachment to masculine ideals. It’s much more basic than that.
All these gender ideologues will assert that Western societies are cisgender, sexist, heteronormative that idealize masculinity. In other words, our society is based on oppressive masculinity.
How can society be both the product of and crippled by the same thing? It literally makes no sense.
However, Critical Theory/Queer Theory are not about making sense. They are about destroying sense and liberating the world from reality. Give up the binary of fact/fiction, true/false, male/female, and embrace the pure will! We are crippled by the truth, so let it go!
It is Dadaism put to words and ideas.
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