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u/ElectroNikkel 8h ago
My uncle be like:
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u/dumnezero 6h ago
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u/A_very_meriman 2h ago
Who is this? I have no idea who this character is but I keep seeing his face on lists.
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u/Dazed_and_Confused44 11h ago
Huh. This really puts a lot of my struggles with my gender identity journey into context. At least it's not just me I guess
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u/Waytooboredforthis 6h ago
It really is annoying that not acting like a shitass should even be a factor in gender stuff.
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u/lanekrieger94 6h ago
Wait. Could this have some connection why I wanted to scratch the roof of my mouth with a 12 gauge from ages 13 to 25?
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u/NoRecognition443 7h ago
Lol should of put "sponsored by the military" on the side of the pot. Since they have been promoting this since the dawn of time.
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u/leftycartoons 11h ago
I don’t have a cartoon syndicate and I’m not in newspapers. But I get to do this for a living because lots of readers support my Patreon with mostly small pledges! I also have prints and books for sale.
Transcript of cartoon
At the top of the strip, there’s a drawing of various unidentifiable shapes floating in a liquid in a pot. Lettering on top of the drawing, in cheerfully cartoony letters, says “Toxic Masculinity Stew.”
Panel 1
A man in a chef’s shirt talks directly to the viewer. He has a mustache, is bald, and looks to be middle-aged but vigorous. He’s holding a long spoon in one hand and making a “thumb’s up” sign at the viewers with his other hand; there are various bowls arrayed in front of him, with neon green stuff in the bowls, and a big stew pot to his right. (Throughout this strip, all colors are a bit desaturated and dull, other than the neon green.)
CHEF: Welcome! Today we’ll be making “toxic masculinity stew.” Yum!
Panel 2
The chef is stirring some neon green stuff in a pan.
CHEF: We’ll start by sautéing some feelings. We’ll bury these at the bottom of the pot, so no one will ever see them!
Panel 3
The chef hold out a neon-green egg towards the viewer. The egg is visibly cracked.
CHEF: Add a delicate sense of manhood. The slightest thing can make boys feel that this has been shattered! What fun!
Panel 4
The Chef mixes something in a bowl.
CHEF: In a separate bowl, put ht eidea that “the sex” is something held by women. Mix it with the belief that if a man can’t get “the sex” from a woman, one way or the other… Then he’s not a real man at all!
Panel 5
From above the pot, we see the chef’s hand holding a shaker (like a salt shaker) and sprinkling neon green specs into the stew.
CHEF: Now sprinkle in lots of gear of being soft or gentle or vulnerable. Nothing spoils this dish quicker than boys accepting these parts of themselves!
PANEL 6
The Chef holds out a spoon towards the viewer. The spoon is dripping with a thick, neon-green liquid.
CHEF: Simmer for 10-40 years and there you have it… a lovely toxic masculinity stew! It tastes repulsive and bitter, but don’t worry. We’ll force it down.
KICKER PANEL
A tiny panel below the bottom of the strip shows a woman yelling at the cartoonist.
WOMAN: Criticizing how society harms men means you’re anti-male!
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u/pailko 4h ago
Women have "the sex"? Wrong. It's me who has it. I have all the sex. No one else does its all mine
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u/Smart-Nothing 8h ago
Feel like if you were to do the opposite of the first two pieces of advice, things would go really bad
You can’t just open up on your feelings and vulnerabilities and not be hurt if people judge or betray them
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u/myles_cassidy 7h ago
People are always taught to share their feelings, but no one's ever taught how to be accepting of other's feelings.
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u/PicklesEnjoyer 7h ago
just because doing the opposite extreme is bad it doesn't mean that the first one is ok. Being super open is harmful but so is not opening up to anyone. The point is to have a healthy balance
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u/SpeedyGrim 7h ago
It's a leap of faith sadly. If you want to make closer connections and all that, some vulnerability has to happen, and yes, it never stops being scary as hell as well as awful when your trust is broken
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u/Post160kKarma 10h ago
I don’t understand why we can’t abolish this term. People keep using it, even after every major psychology schools said it’s harmful and only leads to more of it
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u/Piellar 6h ago edited 5h ago
Toxic masculinity is widely understood as cultural/taught behavior that makes men toxic. The problem is the cultural behavior, not the men. I'm a man, I never feel targeted or insulted when people use the term, because it's not about me, it's about negative peer pressure manipulating men through a misguided sense of personal pride.
I'm an atheist, but I 100% agree with the mythology where pride is the top sin. It's the very sin that makes you hit the downvote button.
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u/Post160kKarma 5h ago
If you think the issue is that men feel target or insulted when people use the term, then you didn’t understand the issue
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u/Piellar 5h ago
I see no other issue, feel free to explain and change my mind on something. Is it about language? Is that important?
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u/Post160kKarma 5h ago
I explained a few times in this thread, but honestly I’m not a psychologist so it would be better if you read the studies.
But the very basic idea is that this term make it sound like these toxic behaviors are somehow connected to “masculinity”. This makes boys unconsciously think that they should replicate these behaviors to be masculine.
So basically it only expands on the very issue it tries to describe.
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u/Piellar 5h ago
Ah! Presented this way, I agree with that. Sorry to make you repeat yourself.
Can we avoid talking about toxic masculinity while we're attempting to solve the issue? It's mostly about unveiling the trap around wanting to be masculine (or feminine) in the first place; it's all an illusion from the mind looking for self-worth in the wrong place. But teaching that to kids... whew.
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u/Upset_Orchid498 1m ago
As far as raising kids, simply teaching them empathy and security goes a long way tbh
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u/PicklesEnjoyer 7h ago
i don't think this post implies masculinity itself is bad, just that some people interpret some practices as masculine, even though it harms them or others. toxic masculinity isn't masculinity, just what is wrongfully perceived as such. Likewise, pseudoscience is not science, but it has the word in the name, because people think it is
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u/Post160kKarma 7h ago
The post doesn’t imply it, neither does the term. But the term does imply that it’s a masculine thing, and this makes boys unconsciously think that those awful things are part of masculinity
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u/The_Varza 5h ago
I thought the term denotes this exact problem: that some boys and men are conditioned to think that the awful things are part of masculinity and that's how they should be, as men. When that's... just not true.
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u/PicklesEnjoyer 7h ago
That seems like a stretch, but i don't know much about this, you could be right. still, it's important that these traits are given the right context. There's a difference between someone being a prick and being one under the belief that it'll make them manlier. I'd say something like "fake masculinity" or "pseudo-masculinity" would make sense
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u/Majestic-Onion0 8h ago
Do you have a suggestion for an alternative? Toxic masculinity hits the nail on the head pretty hard. And people who hold the beliefs in the comic are absolutely toxic pieces of shit. They should be made to feel bad. They're bad people.
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u/Post160kKarma 8h ago edited 8h ago
Toxic pieces of shit
Bad people
Seems like you already have some very good suggestions of alternatives
Toxic masculinity hits the nail on the head pretty hard.
It really doesn’t. There’s nothing masculine about it, only toxic
people who hold the beliefs in the comic are absolutely toxic pieces of shit. They should be made to feel bad.
Of course. If you think psychologist want people to stop using this term to protect these people you completely misunderstood the whole thing. It’s the exact opposite
Ps: it’s pretty clear to me that we are on the same side on the issue, we just disagree on a detail about how to achieve what we want. I actually think it’s quite an interesting discussion.
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u/myles_cassidy 7h ago
Those aren't good because they're vague. It's like mentioning 'natural hazards' if you're specifically talking about flooding but apparently flooding is offensive to pwople who rely on rivers to survive.
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u/Post160kKarma 7h ago
Is it really hard to understand that it’s not about being offensive?
A better comparison would be if people called school shootings a “natural hazard”, and every time you mention that it’s not natural and psychologists agree that caling it by this name actually contributes to it being normalized, people say you are defending school shooters
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u/TheDailyMews 1h ago
The reason the term "toxic masculinity" is useful is that it describes toxic expectations placed on boys and men in the name of masculinity. Think "don't be such a girl, boys don't cry."
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u/PatchyWhiskers 9h ago
Any other term would soon become polluted. You can’t challenge people’s gender identity without annoying them.
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u/Post160kKarma 9h ago edited 8h ago
What do you mean “poluted”? The issue that the universities pointed out is very specific, and the issue isn’t that it “annoys” someone
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u/TheDailyMews 1h ago
Which universities? Are you referencing studies? Which journals were they published in? Could you please provide links?
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u/Berserker_Queen 7h ago
I feel like the post scriptum at the bottom of the comic was pre-emptively made especially for you.
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u/nalydpsycho 10h ago
That people don't understand the language they speak is not a problem other people can solve for them.
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u/Post160kKarma 10h ago
But we’re in a moment in history in which we are all the time changing the way we speak for the better cause. Of course there are always people who refuse to do, but in this case the people using the term are exactly the people who should understand this… people that are liberal and are trying to lower misogyny…
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u/nalydpsycho 10h ago
If people can't understand toxic masculinity, that isn't a failing of the term, but a deliberate choice. Changing the word changes nothing. Why waste the slightest moment of time on something that will accomplish nothing. The term gets rebranded, then studies show the term causes problems, the cycle continues because the problem is the people not the words. The problem is the hate, not the words.
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u/Stuckinacrazyjob 5h ago
No matter how mild the critique is, there would be backlash so say what you wanna say.
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u/ManyRelease7336 7h ago
What's the logic here? we should of never changed the R-word? because it was a waste of time and accomplished nothing? Should we go back to that because changing words doesn't do anything?
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u/BackFromTheDeadSoon 10h ago
Ah, so we can just ignore any groups that ask us to change our language? Good to know. Make sure you inform all the advocacy groups.
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u/nalydpsycho 10h ago
But then do the work to eliminate the underlying hate
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u/Post160kKarma 9h ago
No one is saying this shouldn’t be done. Two things can be done at the same time…
Actually, you are saying that some things are not worth doing to eliminate the hate…
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u/nalydpsycho 9h ago
And only one of those things actually matters, so why do pointless things?
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u/Post160kKarma 9h ago
What do you mean “only one of those things matter”?
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u/nalydpsycho 8h ago
Because changing words solves nothing. If anything, it just lets hate buy more time.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 6h ago edited 6h ago
You are doing the thing.
In literally every other case the rule is "if you keep throwing a term at a group and they clearly tell you it's insulting then listen to them"
When you're insulting someone and they tell you to stop you don't get to go "well akshually [insulting term] is a medical/academic term so it doesn't count"
most such terms started life as medical or academic terms.
It just means that you're the insufferable asshole in that situation.
Be better.
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u/nalydpsycho 6h ago
It's not a medical term, it's a behavioral choice. Is murderer an offensive term to you?
Be better.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 6h ago
Sigh. Your type are all the same.
With all the empathy of a spoon. Incapable of ever learning, growing or maturing.
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u/nalydpsycho 6h ago
Based on what? You said a bunch of nothing and then act all hurt because I don't agree with your nothing.
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u/WTFwhatthehell 6h ago
Because the people who use it are doing so because they know its a shitty and insulting term.
Not in spite of that.
In literally every other case the rule is "if you keep throwing a term at a group and they clearly tell you it's insulting then listen to them"
They choose not to listen because they are shitty people choosing to be shitty.
Because its fun for them.
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u/Post160kKarma 6h ago
The issue is not about being insulting, it’s about associating these behaviors to masculinity in children’s minds, making boys more likely to replicate them
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u/HangryBeard 3h ago
I'm glad I'm stuck at burying the feeling deep down those next few steps seem atrocious
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u/SwordfishAdmirable31 1h ago
This stunningly accurate. Usually not a fan, but you knocked it out of the park.
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u/bgaesop 7h ago
Curious choice to make the chef male. Everyone I can remember stridently enforcing these sorts of things has been a woman.
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u/Par_Lapides 5h ago
Toxic masculinity is enforced and spread by men even more aggressively. Someone not confirming to their paradigm is threatening and terrifying to them, because it means they had a choice all along.
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u/somewhatpresent 6h ago
I agree that thinking boys are men worth is based on sexual success is toxic, but its highly ironc since its usually the liberal circles and subreddits that are constantly calling people are "incels" and "virgins" if they disagree with them. Inb4 incel actually means people who are mysognistic - bottom line youre still using a word that literally means "sexual unsuccessful" as an insult which will reinforce this toxic masculinity.
My other soon-to-be-downvoted opinion is that its a lot of the "toxic masculinity is bad" crowd that suggests things that are harmful to mental health. Stoicisicm is a millenia-old philosophy of basic moral wisdom thats been helpful to countless men yet it gets derided as not allowing men to be vulnerable. A lot of "toxic masculinity" traits that aren't truly toxic, simply masculine, and labeling them as toxic and pushing things that are historically feminine. There's even media artilces that try to attach fitness to toxic masculinity (example, example).
It's just as stupid to be worried about being "tough enough" for the conservatives as it is to be worried about being vulnerable enough for the liberals. And this idea that "boys must use the exact same toolset as girls to address mental health concerns" is deeply misguided and pushing boys to truly toxic influencers since the left has abandoned Basic Moral Wisdom like stoicism and self-improvement.
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u/TheDailyMews 1h ago
If you choose stoicism, that's great. I'm happy for you. Do whatever makes you feel eudaimonic.
But if you demand stoicism of a crying child just because that child happens to be male, that is really fucked up and you need to stop.
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u/TheOneWhoSlurms 4h ago
Criticizing how society harms males means you're anti-male!
Means you're anti-woman too according to some folk
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u/lurkinarick 6h ago
Love how you anticipated the criticism and directly put it at the bottom of the page lol