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Quotes About Toxic masculinity

Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term "masculinity") is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.
~ bell hooks
Unfortunately, our over-emphasis on the male as oppressor often obscures the fact that men too are victimized. To be an oppressor is dehumanizing and anti-human in nature, as it is to be a victim. Patriarchy forces fathers to act as monsters, encourages husbands and lovers to be rapists in disguise; it teaches our blood brothers to feel ashamed that they care for us, and denies all men the emotional life that would act as a humanizing, self-affirming force in their lives.
~ bell hooks
Today small boys and young men are daily inundated with a poisonous pedagogy that supports male violence and male domination, that teaches boys that unchecked violence is acceptable, that teaches them to disrespect and hate women.
~ bell hooks
From the moment little boys are taught they should not cry or express hurt, feelings of loneliness, or pain, that they must be tough, they are learning how to mask true feelings. In worst-case scenarios they are learning how to not feel anything ever.
~ bell hooks
We do know that patriarchal masculinity encourages men to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been born male.
~ bell hooks
Patriarchy demands of men that they become and remain emotional cripples.
~ bell hooks
White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action.
~ bell hooks
A man who is raised by a misogynistic father can absorb his father's contempt for women very early in life. The boy learns that a man must always be in control of women and that the way to get that control is to scare them, hurt them, and demean them. At the same time, he learns that the one sure way to get his father's approval is to behave as his father does.
~ Susan Forward
Male pride is not really about pride. It's about fear - the fear of being seen as feminine. And that's why "girl stuff" is so dangerous. And as long as most men remain deathly afraid of it, they'll continue to take it out on the rest of us.
~ Julia Serano
And if presidents and generals were man enough to wear lip gloss and mascara, they wouldn't have to prove their penis size by going to war all the time. Because male pride is not really about pride. It's about fear - the fear of being seen as feminine. And that's why "girl stuff" is so dangerous. And as long as most men remain deathly afraid of it, they'll continue to take it out on the rest of us.
~ Julia Serano
From a very young age, boys are taught that real men get into fights, say demeaning things about girls and women, show extraordinary athletic prowess, avoid looking studious, don't do anything to display supposed emotional 'weakness' and prioritise competition over cooperation.
~ Owen Jones
A man's honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it.
~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman
That men prove their manhood in the eyes of other men is both a consequence of sexism and one of its chief props. "Women have, in men's minds, such a low place on the social ladder of this country that it's useless to define yourself in terms of a woman," noted playwright David Mamet. "What men need is men's approval." Women become a kind of currency that men use to improve their ranking on the masculine social scale.
~ Michael S. Kimmel
Growing up as a young man you're often told, 'You shouldn't cry,' and 'Emotions are weakness.' I think that's so damaging and I genuinely think that if we raised young boys better we wouldn't have such a need for feminism.
~ Oliver Stark
When I see these guys write all this macho stuff I want to smash their heads.
~ John Turturro
Gold diggers are the wife beaters of men!
~ burr billy
My father learned his disinterest under the guise of masculinity. Boys don't cry. There are whole disciplines, institutions, rubrics in our culture which serve as categories of denial. Science is such a category. The torture and death that Heinrich Himmler found disturbing to witness became acceptable to him when it fell under this rubric. He liked to watch the scientific experiments in the concentration camps
~ Susan Griffin
Stop crying, bitch. This is nothing compared to what I went through with my soccer team or my frat or my old man, so man up already.' I am caught in the toxic cycle of masculinity, the one quietly tolerated by the American System of Miseducation and he was hazed so he wants to haze me...
~ Caroline Kepnes
Then I realized that most of the world's problems stemmed from macho dickheadism, and if I cold defeat that I could save the world.
~ Carrie Vaughn
they assume that the overly macho demeanor of the Super Thug is a true representation of a real man. The
~ Tariq Nasheed
Wad Rayyes, you're a man who talks. rubbish. Your whole brain's in the head of your penis and the head of your penis is as small as your brain.
~ Tayeb Salih
The three most destructive words that every man receives when he's a boy is when he's told to 'be a man'.
~ Joe Ehrmann
I've always had a problem with the average macho man - they've always been a threat to me.
~ Kurt Cobain
dehumanizing the opposite sex
~ Neil Strauss