The cure for masculinity isn’t less, but more

“The APA introduces its new guidelines this way: ‘Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.’” - W. Examiner

Discussion

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

It’s worth noting that the APA’s description of masculinity is really a straw man, drawing attention to the minority of men who abuse masculinity as a big part of the definition. It would indicate, as with APA statements on gender disphoria, an organization struggling to define its primary terms as it drifts further and further from traditional moorings.

Consider; if you are going to define mental illness, you’ve got to decide that some things are objectively wrong, and 100 years or so after Freud and others worked so hard to separate psychology from religious views, those objective standards are no longer available. To use gender dysphoria as an example, even a ~40% (if I remember correctly) rate of suicide attempts among those who have it is not sufficient to persuade them that something is amiss with it.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

[Bert Perry]

To use gender dysphoria as an example, even a ~40% (if I remember correctly) rate of suicide attempts among those who have it is not sufficient to persuade them that something is amiss with it.

That’s because the suicide rate is caused by societal non-acceptance. If only society wasn’t so sis-gendered and binary…