How every parent can help get rid of toxic masculinity

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Welcome to Small Humans, an ongoing series at Mashable that looks at how to take care of – and deal with – the kids in your life. Because Dr. Spock is nice and all, but it’s 2019 and we have the entire internet to contend with.


Youth sports are often pure chaos. I’m the head coach of two girls’ basketball teams and I’ve seen my share of wild behavior. There are coaches cursing at referees like the NBA championship is on the line, and parents who think their 5-year-old is headed for a full basketball scholarship at Stanford just because she can dribble a ball without falling down. But one thing I witnessed a couple of years ago really shocked me.  Read more…

More about Feminism, Sexism, Family Parenting, Misogyny, and Toxic Masculinity

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The masculinity revolution is a quiet one. Don’t trust its loudest critics.

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Men are under attack. Everything that makes masculinity sacred — valor, honor, chivalry, leadership — is under siege. 

What else could explain a recent commercial for a Gillette razor blade suggesting that men should spare each other from bullying and hold each other accountable for sexual harassment? How else should we interpret guidelines recently issued by the American Psychological Association to help therapists more effectively work with their male clients by better understanding the social pressure they face to be so-called real men? 

Masculinity is having a moment. There’s a movement for a more expressive, more inclusive definition of manhood, but its critics see something more nefarious. If you listen to Piers Morgan or New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, skeptics of the Gillette ad and APA guidelines, you might mistake that movement as an assault waged by feminists and liberals when it’s really a quiet revolution staged in large part by men of diverse backgrounds who are tired of living by the very narrow, unforgiving standards of stereotypical masculinity.  Read more…

More about Men, Mental Health, Masculinity, Gillette, and Toxic Masculinity

View More The masculinity revolution is a quiet one. Don’t trust its loudest critics.

‘Toxic’ is a sadly perfect word of the year for 2018

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2018 has been one toxic year.

You know it, we know it, and the Oxford Dictionary knows it. The prestigious publisher has chosen their Word of the Year, and this time, it’s “toxic.” 

“The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression that is judged to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance,” reads on online statement from the dictionary.

“In 2018, toxic added many strings to its poisoned bow becoming an intoxicating descriptor for the year’s most talked about topics.” Read more…

More about Oxford Dictionaries, Toxic, Word Of The Year, Toxic Masculinity, and Culture

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Meet Aaron Gouveia, the dad who defended son’s nail polish in viral Twitter thread

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From the moment expectant parents learn a baby’s sex, they’ll hear messages about how that baby should look and act. Parents of boys are often told they should raise boys to be competitive, aggressive, and stoic. Aaron Gouveia, the founder of the blog Daddy Files and father of three boys, thinks that’s all B.S. 

On Oct. 22, Gouveia posted a Twitter thread about his 5-year-old son, Sam, who was bullied at school for wearing red nail polish to school. The thread’s first tweet, which has since received over 68,000 likes, touched on toxic masculinity and gender norms, two themes Gouveia has explored in his personal life and professional career. For Gouveia, conversations about those subjects couldn’t be more relevant today — and not just because he wrote a viral Twitter thread about them.  Read more…

More about Nail Polish, Masculinity, Gender Stereotypes, Gender Identity, and Toxic Masculinity

View More Meet Aaron Gouveia, the dad who defended son’s nail polish in viral Twitter thread