I will start this by saying I think it is very important to acknowledge that women and girls do face serious, gendered issues, as do men. It always pisses me off when feminists either don’t acknowledge male’s issues or try to blame men for their own problems using the “patriarchy” excuse. I don’t believe male advocates should make the same mistakes.

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For instance, being a teenage girl/young woman can be an absolute nightmare. Suddenly, many teenage boys and young men start to be interested in them out of nowhere, and they can get propositioned by men who they’re not ready for. Add this to the fact that recent media seems to think that only ‘masculine’ women can be taken seriously (pretty much all women in fiction have to be “tough warriors”) and this has lead to what could be called a “crisis in femininity”). You might even go as far as to say that feminists are the ones cheering on “toxic masculinity” when it is expressed in female characters.

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The thing is though, teenage boys/young men don’t have it any easier. When they start realising they have these feelings for girls, it can also get very intimidating or overwhelming. It can lead to fear of public humiliation (or worse, actual public humiliation) which can lead to them not wanting to interact with women at all, and then they’ll be even less likely to talk about this for fear of being branded an “incel”. Add to this the fact that any positive male representation is being scrubbed out and it’s no wonder there’s a “crisis of masculinity”.

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I have seen people try to downplay these things and it is utterly disgusting. For instance, some people have tried to say that men’s issues don’t matter because “men are afraid women will laugh at them and women are afraid men will kill them”, and others have argued “women have it easy because all they have to do is be attractive and they can get whatever they want”. Both these perspectives are some of the most harmful garbage I’ve ever heard. They look at people facing real, serious, gendered issues that can have profound impacts on their lives and the lives’ of those around them (fear of public humiliation/fear of too much sudden attention) and go out of their way to shame people for these problems, and perpetuate them, instead of offering advice on how to fix them. If someone thinks that they need to participate in the conversation by shaming people for their fears then it is for the best that they seriously rethink what they’re doing.