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holsn39's picture

My negative view of masculinity

I have been trying to make a conscious effort to use this unit on masculity to change my perspective on it because I feel like I have a really negative opinion of masculinity. I was hoping that maybe Felice Picano's visit might help, but it didn't really. When I think about male masculinity (male identified people embodying masculinity) I feel really irritated. I've been trying to figure out why I feel this way, and why I think differently about female masculinity or genderqueer masculinity. What I'm starting to think is that I have this bitterness about male priviledge and an attitude that men often carry but I don't want to project this negative view on males, so I associate it with their masculinity, not their being male.  I feel a little uncomfortable with being biased towards female masculinity, because that leads to being biased towards females themselves. Felice picano did not help because I was hoping he would give an example of a male who embodied a male masculinity that I didn't view negatively... but he didn't. I still felt like he had a somewhat condescending attitude and repeatedly was trying to prove his value in a very dominating way.  I think maybe people who are male (not all but many) might often embody this kind of masculinity that I have a poor opinion of just because they are victims of our male priviledged society.  I just wish that men would see themselves as victims in this way, instead of just seeing women as the victims, because that way they could figure out how to embody a kind of masculinity that I might be able to see positively.

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