Evan Urquhart

Men shouldn't: Treat women as unworthy of competing with. Feel ashamed or emasculated when they fail in competition with a woman or more feminine-coded person.

Men shouldn't: Be surprised if some tasks come less easily to them than they do to women, such as nurturing young children. Men should: Value, and work hard to become competent at, those tasks.

Men shouldn't: Engage in over-dramatic self-shaming monologues about how they, like all men, are trash and women have it soooo unimaginably hard and, and, and... Men should: Speak up to confront sexism. Support women's political and social equality. Vote with this in mind.

Men should generally worry less about being perceived as sexist, and more about supporting efforts to break down and ultimately bring an end to sexism.

I think about my masculinity like I do about my favorite color, yellow. I dunno if I was born predisposed towards yellow or subtle social forces steered me towards yellow, but I'm sure I like yellow. I don't, however, think there's anything wrong with liking red, blue, or pink.

I don't see any point in pretending to like pink (or pretending to like blue), but I do try to be vocal in my support of people who like pink, because they seem to get a lot more shit.

It is harder to have this attitude of "I like what I like but it's not better than what someone else likes" about masculinity, bc of all the cultural shit I've been talking about. But, it's necessary to try, bc not being masculine, or not being a man, would be untrue to myself.

Great thread. Got to ponder when liking what I like is just that versus when it is masculinity. I'm interested in positive masculinity, but the strong focus on testosterone in part 2 threw me a bit.