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How Does Masculinity Affect Women

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We often see women affected by social norms and negatively represented but it's always good to look at the other side of the spectrum. Masculinity can deeply affect and cause issues in boys and young men. These issues are mainly emotional damages and the definition of what being a man is. On of the ways to fix this would be to better represent masculinity and widen the spectrum of what a man really is. First of all, the definition of what being a man is a central issue for young males. Paul Theroux talks about always liking being a man in his essay, “Being a Man.” He points out that, “Fiction ­writing is equated with a kind of dispirited failure and is only manly when it produces wealth — money is masculinity. So is drinking.” This shows …show more content…

In Rebecca Walkers’ “Putting Down the Gun,” she states that, “When I asked him about making friends based on common interest rather than superficial categories, he got flustered. “You don’t understand,” he said huffily. “Boys talk about sports, like their matches and who scored what and stuff or they talk about new version... Tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t have anything to talk about.” In this quote we can see the emotional damages of expectations in Walkers’ eleven-year-old son. He has to pretend to be someone he is not in order to make a conversation with someone. This shows the pressures of masculinity on young males. The constraints of conversations has brought an eleven-year-old into tears about not fitting in. This shows a small spectrum of the psychological issues and damages on males. Paul Theroux also goes on to speak about the causes of the psychological problems males face in “Being a Man,” he claims that, “how can one think about men without considering the terrible ambition of manliness?... It is a hideous and crippling lie, it not only insists on difference and connvies out superiority, it is also by its nature destructive━emotionally damaging and socially harmful.” Theroux is trying to say that masculinity allows superiority and difference between men and women which causes damage between both gender and socially harm them. The act of making men and women seperate has caused a

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