I don’t agree that it affects the worst perps less though. I think society has progressed enormously. I think strong men have significantly much less power than they did before, both with respect to how women are treated and with respect to how men interact with other men. There is work to be done, and it is hardly universal, but it is much better.

For example, you can’t just… grab and hump subordinate women in the workplace as a joke anymore in most areas. This is a kind of thing that is now so outrageous you will see people young people doubting that it was ever a normative thing.

Or cliche locker room bullies. You’ve got someone in this comment thread denying that this was real because it’s so far from their experience.

A large part of this is probably because being a strong white dude is not a good indicator of social power anymore because the economy is much harder. But narratives help.

I agree that society has progressed enormously, and that there was a time where harsher attitudes about this were appropriate given the prevalence of these behaviors.

It may be that during some time periods, the impact was not disproportionate. My point was that in the current social climate, it seems equally appropriate to reexamine this rhetoric, and direct focus to bad behavior.

To your point, there are things you could never get away with today, and that is excellent. But it is that very progress that makes it questionable to perpetuate the same attitudes towards a younger generation, who will not have the contextual understanding to know why it was necessary, or how it relates to them and appropriate behavior relative to the current norm.

Perhaps. My gut says no, today’s youths should be more than capable of correctly identifying what is and what is not genuinely harmful behaviors. I don’t think toxic masculinity narratives are particularly prevalent or over saturated.

Perhaps with the exception of California, not that I have any personal experience there.

The combination of the depictions of nerds vs jocks in 80s and 90s media plus this huge overcorrection on toxic masculinity really fucked with me hard. I thought that nerd and jock was a hard line, that I had to actively avoid anything sports related to not be one of the stupid jocks who were all woman objectifiers. I was also convinced that women wanted nothing to do with sex, hated getting hit on, and would consider any physical contact without explicit verbal approval to be assault.

Now I know that's all a load of crap. Nerds can and should play sports for the health and social benefits, women absolutely have sexual desires, and all physical interactions with someone are contextual. It just would have been great to have had that realization way sooner than my late 20s!

There must be a middle-ground somewhere that discourages being disgusting to women while also not making men feel like they are inherently disgusting. Something that lets a wide spectrum of both masculinity and femininity be considered valid and acceptable.

The ideas you’re proposing are the mainstream norms. I’m inclined to think the internet has played a large part in it. The social dialogue is simply much better. Earlier movies were overly simplistic and dumb.

I think Slasher films are the poster child of this. They began as this thing for the geekier men, with their idolization of the pure final girl in the 80s and 90s. But they all kind of portrayed this same dumb world view as lampooned in Cabin in the Woods. It mostly ended with Scream, which featured characters openly reflecting on the nature of such films and how they translated to pop culture and a final girl that fucked, despite still being kind and pure and unpunished. But it still kept this cultural narrative of the dorky guy protagonist.

The newer scream (number 6, which is unironically fantastic imo; best since the og) features a jock named chad who is not an obtuse asshole, horny girls that are not defined by being horny, and weird people with weird passions that are shown as sociable and well liked. This is good.

But this highlights the larger point. Being a jock was not the problem, it was being an asshole. It’s good that we recognize that jocks are not necessarily assholes. But assholes still thrive and environments where physical strength assertions to social power are probably the worst of them.

at the end of the day there is going to be a social hierarchy. If this shifts to favor intellect, academic achievement, and social skills; how do you support the dumber bigger kids who will geeked compelled to physically assert themselves into positions of social power? Very difficult. And it’s not like there aren’t a plethora of dumber, weaker kids who lack that option and also need support.

“Who will weep for the bully” is not easy to answer because being an asshole is often a survival strategy…