Ok, we’ve got to talk.
I’m sure all of you have seen the controversial Trump statues that have popped up in a few major U.S. cities. They’ve sparked a bunch of discourse on body politics, body shaming and what counts as art. While I have opinions on all of those topics, today I want to talk about toxic masculinity, especially as it pertains to genitals. Yes, I just said GENITALS!
So, what is toxic masculinity?
To put it simply, toxic masculinity is the ways in which standards of manliness, can be dangerous and/or harmful. For example, have you ever been policed for actions that others have deemed feminine? Have you ever been called a pussy, been told you throw like a girl or had your sexuality questioned based off of your attire or mannerisms? Those are all ways that people monitor your manliness. And that’s not cool!
Now, what is masculinity? What is being a man? (Perhaps I should have started with this…oh, well.)
As a feminine trans man, I am constantly re-examining what it means to be a man. Some believe, the perfect mixture of hormones, genitals and other arbitrary biological markers determine how ‘manly’ one is. I still have breasts, I menstruate and I can’t grow a beard. Do I still count as a man? (The answer is yes.) For cis men (men who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) is it the length of your penis that makes you a man? Is it a deep voice? Is it how you treat or love women? No! Manliness is however you define you being, if you are a man. You are a man simply because you know you are. Even if you are passive, have a high voice or throw like a girl (Also, wtf does that even mean? We can discuss that in another article.)
Back to Donald Trump. No matter how you feel about the dude, it is important that we don’t judge how manly he is by the size of his penis! One of the reasons people found the statues funny was because of the size of his ‘manliness’ as well as the inscription under the statue proclaiming 'The Emperor has no Balls'. BUT THAT’S NOT OK! The presence of a penis or testicles does not make a man. The size of a penis does not make you more or less of a man (or any gender, for that matter). NO GENITALS (nor their size, their shape or any other marker) MAKES YOU ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT YOU IDENTIFY WITH/AS. Get it? Good!
Now that that's all taken care of, we can go back to hating Trump for other reasons!
