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"toxic masculinity" ❌subtly implies masculinity is toxic ❌encourages fear, hatred, shaming ❌divisive: little "toxic femininity" "traumatized masculinity" ✅recognizes trauma as cause, not just effect ✅encourages compassion, grief, healing ✅unifying: we are all traumatized

@QiaochuYuan For excellent source on: 1⃣ how being traumatized leads to abuse of power 2⃣ how people abusing often feel powerless while doing it 3⃣ how the patriarchy traumatizes men (well, boys) see this free online book Power-Under: Trauma & Nonviolent Social Change https://t.co/4htgEnKhCe

@QiaochuYuan (I've only read the first 3 chapters and iirc each of those numbers above roughly corresponds to those chapters) The list: I: The Politics of Trauma II: The Power-Under Paradigm III: Trauma and Gender IV: Trauma and Oppression V: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change

@QiaochuYuan (Point 2, about people feeling powerless while enacting patterns of abuse, has an exception: the sociopath pattern. Whatever is going on there, and whatever the prognosis, it seems to be characterized by a totally different internal experience.)

@QiaochuYuan Btw: I don't particularly think "abuse" is a helpful category; I'm using the term here because it's the main one that is used by the Power-Under book, and probably also by people using the phrase "toxic masculinity". For context, see this book: https://t.co/cuE3O8n82n

@autotrnslucence @dopaminendreams @cognazor @TellYourSonThis I've recently been reading Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman and it describes the intertwinglement of people in relationships and what it means to seek resolution in mutually created conflict rather than blaming. Very powerful book. https://t.co/L6RUzANSV1

@QiaochuYuan This excerpt points at the problem of the term "toxic masculinity" and the need for a term like "traumatized masculinity": > "Efforts at self-protection by trauma survivors that demonize or dehumanize the Other unwittingly and tragically compound the damage to our own spirits." https://t.co/YPQYPSSc4k


@nosilverv @QiaochuYuan likewise https://t.co/jH2D5X14d5

@DRMacIver Not quite as self-defeating, but there's something absurd about making your book available as a free ebook but telling ppl not to print it due to carbon footprint. …especially if the book has the potential to produce paradigm shifts… if it's worth reading, it's worth printing! https://t.co/Ka7cvUlDOI
