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I think it must be exhausting for teenage boys and men to constantly be subjected to 'gay policing': Having to watch everything you say, do, wear, or consume [media] because it/YOU might be 'gay'. Michael Kimmel describes it in his book Guyland. I know one of the reasons why we see vaginas in non-porn movies but very rarely dicks is because male viewers will be highly discomfited if they see a dick in a non-porn movie) and worry that they're gay, that someone saw them watching the scene and suspect the watcher might be gay. Seriously? You don't know what's coming, you see a sex scene with a dick in it, even just a flaccid one, and you think you're gay for watching it? Or that the guy next to you might be gay because he didn't immediately look away like women do at the Braveheart evisceration scene?

Then there's all the emotional stuffing and burying that has to be done to not be 'unmanly' (i.e., 'womanly'), i.e., don't you DARE try to talk about it with your friends, because they're all too busy pretending everything's fine, nothing matters, nothing ever hurts you. So men bury their pain with drugs and alcohol and toxic masculinity, because they're no more allowed to be their true selves than women. Or non-binary whatevers.

Aug 27, 2022
at
5:01 PM

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