This new Twitter hashtag perfectly details how toxic masculinity affects all of us

I will always stand by the fact the biggest issue with the ongoing suppression of women, doesn’t root from women, it roots from men being told to suppress them — or in this case, their potentially feminine traits. I also stand by the fact men aren’t inherently evil for this, they’re poisoned by a misogynistic mindset from a very early age.

The violence and entitlement and vindictiveness and inability to empathize or express themselves isn’t an inherent trait in most guys — we inject it into them. So when I saw the hashtag #failingmasculinity, first I rolled my eyes because I thought it was a gag, and then I was shocked by what I read.

The hashtag started earlier this week when James Michael Nichols, the queer voices deputy editor at The Huffington Post tweeted a joke about a memory he had of a time that he failed masculinity as a child ― by not wearing shorts that fell below his knees.

He said “What followed was an emotional, telling and oftentimes painful series of tweets where people, mostly men, shared memories of moments from their own childhood when they, too, failed masculinity.”

Have a look at some of the tweets for yourself, and ask why we’ve allowed this to become normal. Expectations of masculinity are damaging, and they have a real and harsh affect on how women end up being treated.

When I reached out to a male friend for comment, he said, “All of this shit is real as fuck. Not to bitch about growing up male but the expectations are real and they suck.

“I don’t mean that in an apologist capacity — of course everyone is responsible for their own actions, but we have to change how we raise boys.”

Of course as men get older, the responsibilities of how they are going to treat us falls into their hands, but it’s hard to unlearn something, and when you learn in your absolute most formative years that feminine traits are weak, and punishable and less-than, you of course begin to believe it.