“Biological (insert gender here)” serves as a dogwhistle for a lot of organizations that actively push trans bigotry. It gives a fake impression of a scientific take on sex that really hasn’t been embraced by the scientific community for about 50 years at this point.

They aren’t telling you what to think here, they are alerting you to a tool that organized bigotry is using and giving potential tools to subvert it. Once you see “Biological man/woman” for what it actually is (non-scientfic false categorization) it really can’t be unseen.

Also - Can we stop with the calls that people are trying to control what people think? It’s pretty lame. There’s nothing about this interaction that is trying to force you. All that’s happening is you’ve denied that a certain school of thought is valid. You have stated your reasons why you think it’s invalid and now people who have taken upthat school of thought are defending their position. That’s just normal discourse.

Give you a hint. When people tell you “they are trying to control what people think” that’s actually doing more to control people - because it’s asking someone to take it on someone else’s faith that there’s nothing to be listened to rather than engaging with the arguement yourself.

Trans masc person checking in. Might be my bias or community or something but I get way less misgendering by guys under 30 than basically any other demographic. They seem to pick it up faster and be really chill about it in ways that a lot of the women in my life really don’t seem to get as comfortable with.

But there is definitely a part of my brain that sees men as being of my tribe in ways that women are not. Like not to say that I don’t have incredible women in my life whom I have incredibly close bonds with… But there’s definitely some kind of cognitive distance that has always kind of been there.

I think trans femmes might experience a similar situation with feeling accepted by women ( Or maybe not because TERFs tend to look at them as a threat) but to answer your question about if the bros are alright… Yeah, they good.

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It’s more like the definition used by Right leaning government to cast Progressive social agendas as the downfall of society because in their case you slap “Neo” on something to mean “Untested and scary”. This isn’t so much a “Tankie” thing so much as a Fox News thing.

They get away with it because people aren’t taught or don’t absorb the actual technical meanings of different labels for subtypes of political philosophy. Hence why “liberal” has become buzz word to mean “civil rights and social emancipation enthusiasts”, “conservative” is abandoned to be this wishy-washy ground that evokes both a retaliatory resistance to social movements and/or a sort of nebulous (often false) vision of fiscal austerity and “communist” a brush to tar a variety of social movements with that handily has an implicit conspiracy aspect.

None of these definitions are accurate but they serve to muddy the water. That’s really the point of it. To rob us all of accurate ways to discuss political matters and to create team sport like voting blocks.

Neoliberal doesn’t actually mean " The newest Brand of liberal" NeoLibralist regimes historically have also been exceedingly anti-queer. The term was coined in the 80’s to describe a burgeoning different brand of liberal government that focused on cutting spending by privatizing swaths of the government. Think Thatcher, Regan and the modern Republican party… See also the early Nazis who historically privatized huge amounts of government to pad the wallets of their supporters but the label was applied retroactively.

If they are getting rid of government services and outsourcing them to a private company that’s “Neoliberal politics”. You are right that they are effective as an empty soda can at stopping facism but that’s because they are usually better positioned to assume power, give up on democracy and go fascist but they aren’t the group you’re calling out here.

Really the bar for what “liberal” means is a system with a basic set of rights of the person that cannot be infringed upon by the government, universal rights of the person to own stuff (though not all stuff) and a dedication to some kind of democratic system. Basically it’s become democracy’s basic format and practically everyone in government who isn’t a fascist is some variation of liberal or at least playing by Libralism’s rules. It’s not a statement on socially progressive or socially conservative rhetoric. You’re probably better off specifying " Social Progressives" if you want to be accurate to whom you’re talking about.

It’s kind of the same rules as “NeoClassisism” which isn’t constantly updated to mean the newest thing. That term got coined to specifically refer to an art style that is now 300 years old. Neo these days practically never refers to anything cutting edge.

“Toxic” has a wide range of uses outside just toxic masculinity or just describing men. One of the side effects of a very therapized society is wider recognizing that some people in your life are dragging you down because their behaviour is unhealthy for all parties. Before the reaction groomed mostly into women but men to a lesser degree was to shut up, take the abuse, take the hit to the psyche, self doctor yourself using coping mechanisms that don’t address the problem directly and endure because the pressure was on being a dutiful, selfless sibling, child, partner, parent, friend etc.

Describing people as “toxic”, while like any tool can be used wrongly or hurtfully gives people a tool to shake themselves out of that cycle. When used properly it empowers people to take their own status and wellbeing seriously when they are being taken for granted, abused or bullied so that they can source the problem and engage with people in a way that wins them their agency back. When we talk about “Toxic men” isn’t effectively any different than talking about “toxic siblings” or “toxic friends” or “toxic parents” or “toxic narcissists” The only ways it differs is in the behaviour dynamics of the group in question. These people are all uniquely “toxic” but in each of those cases you probably gain a different picture of what that toxicity looks like. Those are not individuals, they are groups within our cultures the reclassification of which is systemic. What needs to be emphasized is that in all cases nobody should be forced into a relationship of any kind, friend, family or romantic. There is a society wide push for true emancipation of the individual free to establish and demolish social ties based on the merit of the tie.

In some ways this loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing may in part be due to this renegotiation of relationships in a bid to make things better overall. One could argue the development of an expectation for too perfect boundaries is maybe a contributing factor but overall the attitude across the board is “enough is enough” and that isn’t nessisarily a bad thing. If people are not forced into connections at a systemic level they can apply consent and engineer for everyone the understanding that people either must act at the very least decently if not kindly and with respect if they want deep connection.

So much of the discussion around the subject of toxic masculinity devolves into either the idea the people critiquing the behaviour are being mean towards and victimizing men but all discussions of toxic behaviours are not about victimizing the perpetrators, it’s about advocating for better conditions for the targets.

If you look at the history of the word “man” from it’s origin it was originally a gender neutral term. You had to append a modifier (were or wif) on it to specify gender. Over time this eroded and people stopped using “wereman” to mean masculine people and just started using the default phrase that meant everybody but sorta kept “wifman” and changed the pronunciation.

So if you peel back the history women are indeed 100% man because everyone is a man.

Also in the category of gender neutral once : “Girl” used to just meant “child” and “boy” meant something along the line of “young ruffian”.

Everyone is blaming the Dems for being everything. For pandering to the left or to the middle or to their courting of Republican voters… It’s worthless effort. The Democrat playbook has been to play by the rules which systemically support the crony capitalism status quo. The only benefit of them is that they play by the rules which means if you pressure them enough to change the rules they can be manipulated.

Realistically speaking voting them in was one point on a checklist of multiple things that needed to happen to progress and as long as the rest of the checklist is happening then it’s an ethical win. It’s not a matter of “debasing one’s morals” so long as you are doing the other things on the list. This idea of cooing over people’s reluctance to hold one’s nose and swallow the nasty pill is one I truly believe people need to get over. People should learn from their mistakes so they don’t repeat them and the pat on the head with the “You only did what you thought was right” routine is in the end not a kindness. People need to learn how the levers of power work and what is effective tactics and what are the traps that the system baits to stop people from effectively participating.

Hands need to get dirty to make change happen and not every step is a feelgood exercise in feeling righteous. It’s a boring slog of a group project. That feeling of refusal to compromise on values for any reason is the easiest thing in the world to exploit and divide people and we collectively should up the social cost of that action and teach that collectivism has it’s costs. No effective movement in the history of mankind has checked every box for every member who propelled it to success. We can all afford to swallow a few nasty pills and bank on the delayed gratification of setting up a future win because the alternative is violence which doesn’t have historically great outcomes… And yes that sometimes means somebody you don’t like gets some kickback out of it.

Inaction by deadlock of a bunch of actors refusing to properly collaborate unless their demands are met are enemies of making change. It’s just really hard to chisel past he messaging that they are not actually a noble group because so often we’re taught that absolute rigidity of every stage of praxis is the virtue by which change is made. The people who sowed that narrative were knowingly or not imparting weakness. We don’t need paragons or heroes we need people who can take tactical advantage of the natural cupidity of the powers that be and be willing to shake with one hand and hold a knife in the other.

I can understand their feelings of powerlessness in a two party system where both parties suck. Here in Canada the concept of strategic voting has been the norm for at least the past 20 years because people are aware of how shit the first past the post system is and how it forces us into a two party race we don’t want but need to compromise on to make progress. We’ve spent that time trying to make viable third parties and that has worked to pressure the Canadian version of the Democrats to court more leftist politicians for support and minority governments with three parties have caused a steady march towards a better chance at fixing the underlying issue.

But unfortunately that’s bred a backlash from people who think very much like Republicans. It was very rough watching Americans fall into a trap we Canadians have been stepping strategically around for so long.

I find this an issue when I hear people discuss this point. In the previous US election you had two candidates who were effectively capable of taking the spot. Both of them were Pro-Israel because US interests abroad have always been genocide apathetic in the face of economic gains. So you were not voting for Israel / Palistine. You were voting for which regime you would have an easier time to pressure into Palistinian support and which one could be compelled to do the least amount of damage in the meantime.

If you chose abstention then yeah, people are gunna be angry because we’re all fucking scared.

Abstention from voting as a protest measure has never worked but besides all that - It is too late now. Now instead of having space to fight against genocide abroad there’s not much space because now Americans have to direct their energies to stopping everything else from going to shit. You won’t be able to fight at all if this regime gets its way. It is time to move on and deal with the problems American’s collective choices have wrought not defend the good intentions that got us here.

Hey can we not do this?

While there is an endemic issue with toxic variations of masculinity that looks at sex as a tool of domination erasing the experience of people who have been assaulted by women and other gender minorities isn’t the way to go about this. There are lots of ways to get this point across without turning around and being gross towards other groups affected by abuse.

Sloganizing these issues in this way doesn’t make the allies needed to combat abuse.