Toxic Masculinity

As someone who is extremely interested in activism, and therefore is constantly looking at everything  with social justice in mind, I found myself more surprised than I thought during this movie. Tough Guise 2 showed numerous clips of movies that I never looked at as potentially problematic. Examining media how the documentary did showed me how important it is to continuously critic and make sense of our day-to-day experiences with pop culture. One of the most interesting and thought-provoking concepts I took away from Tough Guise 2 is the idea of “toxic masculinity”.  That concept is one that fits into a lot of discussions we’ve had about this idea of masculinity as a tool of power. I’m constantly thinking back to the talk at Fall Gathering where Carine Mardorossian discussed sexual assault not as a “women’s” or “men’s” issue, but as an issue with a specific type of masculinity and femininity, a certain power dynamic that creates and perpetuates systems of oppression. I wish in class there was more time to discuss how Tough Guise 2 can be related to or talked about in relation to Ferguson. Although the topic can be hard to get into, because of varying viewpoints and a lot of opinion, I feel like we all, for the most part, agreed that it’s because of these specific types of toxic masculinity that situations like police brutality can arise. Also, taking race into account, particularly in this instance since it was and is constantly used as a source of violent, dominant behaviors, is essential. Therefore, it’s important to discuss Ferguson and all cases of violence where there’s more than one contributing factor as such, keeping intersecting identities of power in mind, and in the conversation.