#InternationalMensDay and a thread about Toxic Masculinity.

This involves issues that affects heterosexual CIS men.

It isn't meant to invalidate anyone else's experience. I just can't ask people to be vulnerable about their pain while lecturing them about how lucky they are.

1/ First thing's first: Toxic Masculinity isn't about cucks and feminazis wanting you to never speak or stop eating meat.

Second thing: Toxic Masculinity kills men. Lots of us.

2/ The first way it does that is that men aren't allowed to have feelings. We're not supposed to be 'pussies', which often means not bonding with our spouses, not talking about emotions, not showing 'weakness', not apologising.

3/ This results in one thing: isolation, and isolation kills. It increases your likelihood of an early death to 84%. It increases your likelihood of heart disease, cancer and stroke by 30%.

Isolation isn't the same as being alone. You can be isolated amongst hundreds of people.

4/ Another problem with this sort of isolation is how it contributes to male suicide. According to the ONS, of the 5,691 people in England and Wales who had ended their own lives by Sept 1st this year, 4,303 were men. Suicide kills more men under 50 than anything else.

5/ Of those who don't commit suicide, it aggravates mental health issues. It makes men more likely to drink instead of seeking help for anxiety or depression, leading to substance problems and making the isolation worse.

6/ Other causes of isolation are linked with the tropes of the 'real' man:

The idea that men should be the primary provider is a great way to work us to death and make sure we miss watching our families grow.

7/ Conflating aggression with strength is a great way to ensure that young men are a handy disposable resource: to blame for society's ills, then sent off to die the first time there's a war.

8/ Showing compromise as weakness is also a wonderful divisive tactic. Once you've been trained to other every single person who makes you feel bad, you're much easier to control.

9/ Encouraging sexual activity as the only permissible form of intimacy is another issue -- the sexualisation of all human contact has been proven by large scale studies to be responsible for ensuring that Western Men are chronically starved of touch.

10/ It also fuels a huge number of social issues, especially domestic and sexual violence against women (or people who present in a feminine manner), as well as ensuring that men who suffer domestic and sexual violence are basically a punchline.

11/ (If you're not sure whether a comment will make a female co-worker or acquaintance uncomfortable, just imagine that you're in prison, it's after lights out, and your cellmate, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson has just said the exact same thing. How would it make you feel?)

12/ Toxic Masculinity is a cycle that benefits no-one. Break the cycle.