Toxic Masculinity is harmful to men and it is related to social construction wherein masculinity is described as being violent, showing no emotions, and being sexually aggressive. Existing dichotomies in gender explicitly describe the competition among both the genders. We cooperate less and fight more because we tend to ignore the consequences due to less interactions. In terms of companionship, neither men understand women nor women understand men because we still think that men and women are different. So, our genitals are becoming major reasons for rapes or any other form of violence which women are facing. There is a gap between
what society believes in and what we really aspire to do.'Real men' think that women love sex but they forget that women love consensual sex. They also think that women can be handled by force because women are shy to reveal their sexual desires. True enough but it is not fair because force cannot be equated with shyness. Power dynamics are more regressive and have to be aborted in order to build a strong companionship. Using strength and power is described as masculinity but it is intoxicating men and this image of 'real men' created by society is responsible for repetitive violence against women.
Men think that women will accept violence because they are fragile and women will not feel offended if they are passing sexist comments or masturbating in front of them while she is walking down the street or travelling by any public transport because she will not take the risk to complain because she might become a rape survivor or
an acid-attack survivor afterwards. What men think and men's psychology is shaped by their socialization experiences. We need to understand their thinking in order to understand their actions because without a thought or an idea, we cannot describe the socialized reactions which are complex and are complicated because we are not taking into consideration that might have made a man commit a heinous crime like rape. These conditions are not just situational but they are also longitudinal and might have shaped a man's masculinity since his childhood.It seems that a chain of crimes like domestic violence or child sexual abuse, which a man/boy might face inside his house has shaped his masculinity which has suffocated him afterwards and killed his inner innocence because his mind internalized these 'private' crimes as normal. Thus, normalising a crime like domestic violence can also be a reason why some men still think that women needs to be dominated or subjugated. We need to keep a check on every type of violence committed against women because these mormalied and internalized crimes give birth to other forms of crimes. Toxic masculinity is a curse and it needs to be curbed through a well-channelized socialization which gives every man a chance to express or cry or act feminine because femininity is no longer a customized entity or identity ascribed to women. Let each human be free and compaassionate towards humanity.
