You can just vent if you want, but here’s more context: We’re playing a DnD oneshot soon, and the theme is toxic masculinity (particularly in a gym). We’re all playing dudes who visited the gym for a long time already. I already have some ideas for my character, but I want to collect some more stories of toxic masculinity, as I’m quite lucky that my bubble doesn’t have much of it.
There are a lot of great answers here, but I’d like to add one that I think is often forgotten in these conversations:
Purposeful incompetence around supposedly non-masculine skills.
It drives me up the wall every time I hear some dude talk about how they don’t know how to do basic tasks of living because the women in their lives take care of it for them.
Guys who act like laundry, cooking, dishes, changing a diaper, gardening, grocery shopping, etc. require arcane knowledge they just don’t possess.
Every time the party encounter a FEMALE they have to comment on their body and if they’d have intercourse with her or if she isn’t hot enough to be worthy of their attention. And if all of them say no but one says he’d “do her” all the others have to mock him for his low standards (see moped).
They all have to one-up each other all the time on all kind of small things.
No one can ever see another man peepee. They all have to refer to their peepees with highly sounding names that confer absolute potency (e. g. the horn of breeding).
Their horses/companion animals have to be waaaay oversized and impractical, with no real bonuses and lots of drawbacks (e. g. Brutus the destroyer, a 100kg dog that is slow, eats all the time, shits copious amounts that they have to pick up and has a dps of 2, and love scratches behind the ears).
They have to carry
walletsswords on their back because it looks cool but it’s absolutely impractical. A couple of true stories on this last bit: my dad once told me I should start putting my wallet in my back pocket “like a man”. A friend of mine got back problems because he used to sit all day with his wallet on his back.Love the ideas
Just thought of a couple more: they have to eat unhealthy amount of meat (pork or beef only obviously) and zero vegetables (fries are acceptable). Breakfast is a mixture of (leftover) pizza, fat, eggs and any other kind of heavy greasy food. Even better if blended together so they can show how manly they are by their prowess in eating shit. They have to drink lots and lots of beer, and the first one to say they had enough (of either meat or beer) is mocked for being a lightweight.
Real men don’t wipe their ass. That’s touching your butt, which is always gay unless you have to scratch it.
When I first read about this, I thought it was satire. Unfortunately, it isn’t.
Which is kinda funny because I would use shimpoo, but gods forbid men can have some skin routine. It’s not my thing, but let people do what they want.
a DnD oneshot soon, and the theme is toxic masculinity
Sounds like… fun. Why do you want real-world problems in your games?
To make satire of them and laugh about it
My response to Real Men® statements is “Real men don’t need their masculinity defined by others.”
Real men characteristics:
Uneducated
Willing to fight after losing a debate
Only have 3 emotions- mad, sad, horny
Refer to themselves as alphas
Impose favors on women for a reward
Assume women are flattered by attention
Might makes right
Ends justify the means
Say offensive things to assert dominance
Believe that children are small adults
Try to take charge by yelling
Poor impulse control
Only have aggressive impersonal seggs
Low Theory of Mind ability
You forgot the red hat.
I used to participate in r/theredpill. It’s an ideology that got increasingly toxic over the years.
The part that truly made me ditch the manosphere was meeting a lady on a dating app who mentioned to me that RooshV was doing a rally near her town and that it had her fearing for her life. For the record, that was an incel/redpill influencer who was an advocate for legalizing spousal rape.
Taking senseless risks for little or no reward, terrible attitudes toward health & safety
As a gay trans guy who grew up in the 90’s trying to sort out the toxic masculinity/internalized misogyny while fully closeted and being unaware that other trans men exist is a trip. Like doing all that “I have no emotions and refuse anything remotely girl-coded” song and dance kind of made me into what looked from the outside like a “pick-me” for years and I was relentlessly pursued romantically by people I just wanted to hang out and drink beer with. It was isolating and fucked up even if the behaviour soothed the dysphoria.
Had to address the internalized misogyny thing first, realize that was not motivating the trans portion of the issue and then had to work on getting off the toxic sauce that felt so darkly affirming and actually spend time with cis men who had properly deconstructed their own masculinity. Now I’m generally way better off and have a bunch of folk whom I brunch with who gas each other up over cocktails.
It wasn’t over the top toxic, but I remember my old immigrant Italian landlord was on the phone with me as I called him about a repair, and after speaking to me about what I needed for a moment, asked if he could speak to my ex instead because he didn’t seem to think I could take the instructions.
