Why do we have to redefine masculinity?

PassengerCultural421 · 2026-01-19T10:53:02+00:00

Because feminists still expect men to adhere to traditional male gender roles.

I call this cakism masculinity.

Because "positive masculinity" usually just becomes traditional masculinity with a feminist gaze.

And 3 is spot on. 3 is how the red-pill and manosphere bad actors end up capitalizing on men that are outcasts.

Dark_Prince_of_Chaos · 2026-01-19T11:08:24+00:00

We don't.

My masculinity mean : Don't tell me what to do.

Specific_Detective41 · 2026-01-19T11:01:34+00:00

I want a world where all types of men are celebrated.

Not where feminists, tradcons etc enforces traditional masculinity as a set standard / ideal for every man to adhere to. Whilst also shaming men who don't meet those same standards.

As it is all types of women are celebrated, it's not the same case for men.

aaahhh_ghosts · 2026-01-19T14:58:05+00:00

The "positive masculinity" people never want to make things more positive for men. To them, being masculine in a positive way still involves a male-only draft, receiving far less public research and funding into men's health as women's, dying several years sooner, having no reproductive rights for men, ignoring the "Women Are Wonderful" effect in everyday life as well as society at large, not to mention all other inequalities that are heresy to address in feminists "positive masculinity" spaces.

Feminists will rightly say a women can fully express and celebrate her femininity without female gender roles. But they seem to think it's dangerous to say a man can fully express and celebrate his masculinity without male gender roles, and moreover those roles must be vetted and pre-approved by women. It's a harmful misandrist idea that masculinity is inherently tied to male gender expectations at all, like you have to be earn the right just to feel like a man. Masculinity is much more personal and expressive, like appreciating and feeling at home in a male body. That actually has nothing to do with "toxic masculinity." If feminists were willing to admit the existence of male gender roles/expectations, they would've labeled it correctly as "toxic male gender roles/expectations." But to avoid having to do that, they went after masculinity, which is incredibly invasive. Women would rightly resist a man trying to define her "correct" femininity. The whole thing feels like a gross intrusion on behalf of feminists who seem to see nothing sacred or beautiful about male essence, and only want more bend it into a useful and compliant tool.

hlanus · 2026-01-19T14:35:01+00:00

Radical Feminists need Masculinity and Patriarchy to cloak their fear and hatred of men and perpetuate the falsehood that they are always victims and never the violators. They never talk about constitutional or institutional amendments because they want to use the broken systems to keep themselves on top.

They perpetual war against some vague and terrifying outside threat, one that is omnipresent and powerful yet containable and weak. They claim to be a revolutionary movement yet appeal to traditional roles and ideals and reject modernity. They claim to be liberating for the people yet impose absolute conformity and control.

We're seeing a lot of the same contractions and hypocrisies among these Radical Feminists and the Far-Right because under the surface they both want the same thing just for their own tribe.

SpicyMarshmellow · 2026-01-19T21:01:50+00:00

My stance is that traits unrelated to physical sexual dimorphism should not be gendered at all.

Especially personality traits. Your personality is your personality. Gendering them does not a single positive thing for anyone.

Those who are perceived as having personality traits matching their apparent gender are seen as having them because of their gender, not because of themselves, putting their gender identity in front of their individual humanity.

Meanwhile, those same traits are gatekept and discouraged in everyone else, making it difficult for them to figure out and be simply who they are.

It's dumb.

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Dapper_Platform_1222 · 2026-01-20T13:46:12+00:00

The secret is that it was never about redefining masculinity since most women are still attracted to traditional roles in men. It's about henpecking most men into submission and making them cowed little wimps. Just don't listen to the noise.

Codexe- · 2026-01-20T16:40:56+00:00

Well we're in the digital age. So in the modern world, we need to reevaluate how we fit.

LordXenusEvilMinion · 2026-01-22T19:55:27+00:00

Sounds like you dont even know the kind of masculinity that is toxic.

Think a little harder and then come back.

Eugregoria · 2026-01-27T07:22:19+00:00

I would argue that women have already redefined womanhood in a lot of ways, and that leaves manhood in a very odd position, because manhood and womanhood are a matched set, and if womanhood changes and manhood doesn't, that leads to a lot of confusion and failure to integrate as a society. If you picture manhood and womanhood as dance partners, women have already said, "I don't like this dance, so I'm going to dance a different way," and reinvented their own dance--and what can men do? The old dance is no longer a match to whatever women are doing. Men can't even necessarily follow along to be the counterpart to whatever women are doing even if they wanted to, because women are still figuring out their own role and a lot of their own "dance" is in flux, in the process of invention, and it isn't clear at all what the male counterpart of that would be--or if there is even room for one at all. And even if such a role did exist, men are ambivalent as to whether they want that to define them, whether women know enough about men to define that role for them, and so on. Women, themselves, seem ambivalent as to what they want men to do, or even what they, themselves, want to commit to.

I'm not making women the villains here--there are a lot of good reasons why this movement happened, and why women felt dissatisfied with their role. And to make my own stake in this clear: I'm nonbinary, I'm on testosterone now and do feel men's problems are at least partially my own too as I'm seen as male in many contexts these days, but I started out female, transitioned later in life, and did my time in the trenches of feminism. So I'm not judging women from a distance when I say this: I think a lot of women, themselves, don't really know what they want out of feminist reinvention, or what their endgame is. "Equality" is a laudable goal, but certain things about sex are inherently asymmetrical. The primary female labor throughout history was the bearing of children, which I do not say in any way to lessen the role of women--to bear children is no small feat, and it takes a great toll on the body. Without women bearing children, there would be no civilization, and every culture in every generation has known this. Women are not liberated from that role because there is currently no other way to produce children, and society needs babies. (Trans people being the exception to the rule, and most trans men don't wish to be pregnant anyway, so bearing children remains mostly a female burden.) This has only lightened slightly through a few factors--birth control, abortion, and improved understandings of marital consent mean that women can have more choice in when they bear children, and great improvements in infant and child mortality mean fewer children need to be borne, but society still needs babies, which means women still need to do the traditional form of female labor. And in fact, many would not be willing to give that up.

A lot of the reinvention of womanhood meant women also moving into traditionally male spheres of labor. This granted women a lot more legal and economic independence and freedom, and meant women could be economic agents distinct from their husbands, and therefore changed what marriage means. Marriage, historically, was in many ways a business partnership and even a "career" for women--it was how women moved economically through the world, and they were tied to their husbands for better or worse--divorce was rare and often required some huge justification. It's wild to think about how Prohibition was initially a feminist movement--at the time, most women did not drink alcohol, it was perceived as a male activity, and feminists believed that men battered their wives due to the influence of alcohol, and that enforcing abstinence would end or lessen DV. It really shows how much things have changed in such a short time that feminists in that era couldn't even imagine things like stronger legal protections against DV, or women being empowered to leave husbands who beat them, and instead grasped at the idea that men would stop hitting their wives if they couldn't get drunk.

So womanhood changed by incorporating more of manhood into itself. This was made easier by the fact that manhood itself was changing, not because of women, but because of automation. Historically, what made male labor male was that it was so physically strenuous that the vast majority of women couldn't do it. But women can operate heavy machinery as well as men can, and heavy machinery can do a job better than the strongest man, so even men were using it. The difference between a male laborer and a female laborer became aesthetic where it wasn't in the past. Additionally, you had white collar work becoming increasingly important, and women got a leg up there in several ways. Early computing often used female laborers because the earliest computer logic had similarities to weaving and knit/purl patterning, and in the early-to-mid 20th century, more women knew how to touch-type due to doing more secretarial and transcription work, which led to more high-status jobs as keyboards became a lot more important. (This boost wasn't lasting, as men also started learning to touch-type, but it got women in the door early.) You also had the effect of WWII leading to more women in the 40s experiencing a high degree of independence in the workforce, and while many settled down by the 1950s as traditional wives and mothers, I tend to think they influenced their daughters who came of age in the 1960s.

This led then to a battle to "have it all," where women tried to do both the traditional male work and the traditional female work. It was possible for the first time in history, both because of the changes to work meaning men's work was less demanding, and the changes to family planning (as well as automation in the home--washing machines and dishwashers and what not) meaning women's work was less demanding, but both were still quite demanding, and this led to women feeling quite burnt out. The sudden disruption to gender roles also destabilized marriage as an institution. I'm not saying this is bad, or that marriage as it was was good or needs to be restored, but it's just something that happened. This led to many divorced single moms trying to do both male and female labor alone. Some still found this preferable to a more limited, dependent lifestyle, but I think it's something women are getting disillusioned with--it isn't exactly that they miss how things were, but that how things are now is hard too. They tried to "have it all" but didn't have the support for it. And perhaps what they were trying to do with womanhood was so radical, manhood couldn't keep up.

All this basically leads to...maybe four ways manhood could respond to what womanhood is doing. I am not presenting any of these as good or bad, merely as things that could happen.

The first is that manhood could do nothing--women could change, while men could stay the same. However, this is functionally impossible, because the world itself has not stayed the same, and manhood was changing anyway (due to factors like automation). And because the old life stages of manhood (like the traditional form of marriage, marrying young after a minimum of dating and staying together until death) are not possible without women's participation in that system. So taking this route means not just not changing, but taking steps to bring women to heel, to put women in their place, undo over a century of feminist change and reassert the old system--which is in itself a change to what manhood is and how it is expressed, because men in the old system didn't have to do any of that.

The second is that men could incorporate more femininity into themselves, just as women have incorporated more masculinity into themselves, and we could become a less specialized, less dimorphic society, where gender matters less to who someone is and how that person lives. For example, men could adopt some more feminine communication styles (as women have adopted some more masculine communication styles to integrate into the workforce), take a more active role in parenting, do more household chores. Men could dress and present more androgynously and reinvent feminine expression as a type of masculine expression, just as women did when they incorporated masculinity into womanhood. Some men already are doing all of these things, and in some cases it's working for them. But there are some pressures against this--men might be bullied for it both by other men and by women, and whether women actually want this in a partner seems highly variable. It also leaves men in the same fix women are in--that trying to do everything may prove exhausting, and men feel they have less to gain from this arrangement than women did. The old system, for all its flaws, was efficient in how it divided labor.

The third is that men could reassert the difference between men and women by becoming hypermasculine. This is different from the first option--they wouldn't be trying to push women back to where they were before, but accepting the new role while maintaining the old difference between men and women by becoming as much more masculine compared to the modern woman than the traditional man was to the traditional woman. I'm also seeing this happen in some cases, where masculinity becomes a more unachievable, narrow target, as it strives to become as removed from the more modern, androgynous womanhood as traditional masculinity was from traditional femininity. This is not necessarily "toxic masculinity" either, and I think some women actually desire this, as they like being independent modern women, but also like feeling the difference between themselves and a more masculine man. But it means that while womanhood expands, manhood contracts--while womanhood becomes more liberated, manhood becomes more constricting.

Long comment, continued in reply:

addition · 2026-01-20T17:58:38+00:00

Meanwhile the reality is women hate the idea of being seen as a “person” because that doesn’t make them feel special, and it means responsibility and accountability.

Men are playing the game that women created.

For example men brag about “getting women” because women made it a game to “get” them and we like feeling like winners.

NoBlacksmith8137 · 2026-01-19T14:11:24+00:00

You say “why do we have to redefine masculinity” and a bit later you say “why do people try to give men a role that many don’t even want”. Well I assume you don’t want the male role that is tied to what feminism refers to as “toxic masculinity” either, being entitlement, infantilising or sexualising women, asserting dominance, using violence to exert power and control… I’m a 100% convinced that thats not what you all guys on this subreddit here stand for. That that feels alienating to you…

So redefining masculinity as I see it is not “you have to be X, Y and Z or else you’re toxic”. It’s a question for you all… How do you define masculinity? What does masculinity mean for you? What do you consider to be masculine that you value a lot and that you would not want to disappear?

It’s a question asking men like you: how do you see it? Not wanting to give you a role you don’t like. At least not the way I see it. I think only men can define masculinity, not women. That makes sense to me. As women we can complain about all the gendered displays that harm us, and as men you can complain about the same things in reverse. But defining what it means to be masculine, to be a man… that’s an identity question for you… Who do you want to be? It’s a question that asks for you all to give your perspective and define yourself in a positive way (“we’re pro-X”) and not in a negative way (“we’re anti-Y”). So how would you define positive masculinity and what does it mean to you?

ncoozy · 2026-01-19T13:02:21+00:00

To the part about toxic masculinity: It's not meant that masculinity in itself is inherently toxic, but that there exist toxic aspects in traditional masculinity, like chauvinism/machismo for example. The "redefinition" of masculinity has the goal that one doesn't have to be a chauvinist/macho to be/feel masculine.

So my conclusion is that we as a society should stop enforcing rules and standards on people in general

I agree and I also see gender roles as reactionary. I'm not playing or fulfilling a role, I'm simply me.

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