the danger and diminishment of the modern masculinity narrative

I found this quote to sum up my thinking on the danger and diminishment of the modern masculinity narrative:

Toxic masculinity aspires to toughness but is, in fact, an ideology of living in fear: The fear of ever seeming soft, tender, weak, or somehow less than manly. This insecurity is perhaps the most stalwart defining feature of toxic masculinity.

This illustrates quite handily the narrow path of fear, insecurity and self-doubt that we consign our boys to from an early age, and to which we demand our men conform. How often have we heard men say to boys “Chicks dig scars?” This is an awful narrative to imprint on boys, and an unfair one.

And thanks be to all the powers of the universe that someone finally said guns don’t actually stop violence:

The idea that a bunch of drunk people dancing around a nightclub are safer with loaded weapons on their bodies is clearly not coming from a rational place, but from a place of deep insecurity and gender weirdness that treats phallic symbols like they are magical totems.

While it’s easy and comfortable to sit in our First World Realities and poke holes at the rampant illogic of it all, what seems elusive and tricky is finding a way to interrupt the toxic narrative. The idea of the most kills continues to be a real driving factor for many of the spree shootings we have seen in the last twenty years. It has been expressly stated as an objective by shooters of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook. The disassociation required to see people as targets for kills in a game and not as people at all is disturbing to contemplate. And yet we must take this nauseating perspective not only as real, but one that our society imparts to everyone -- men and women, boys and girls, all races, colors and creeds -- that this is what it means to be a man. We reel at the death count, stagger at the thought of the loss of life, but it is our own society which is creating this competition for dominant virulence.