(Newswire.net — June 5, 2019) — Promoting her debut appearance in the upcoming HBO hit series ‘Big Little Lies’ Hollywood diva Meryl Streep said that the term “toxic masculinity” is harmful.
“Sometimes I think we’re hurt. We hurt our boys by calling something ‘toxic masculinity’. I do,” Streep said. “And I don’t find [that] putting those two words together … because women can be pretty f***ing toxic.”
With this statement, Academy award winner Streep strayed from the usual Hollywood line of pointing fingers to testosterone as the source of all evil.
While the digital social networks slam the actress for allegedly not knowing what “toxic masculinity” really is, there are voices of support to Streep’s claims there is a “toxic femininity” as well.
The academic Shepherd Bliss called typical male aggressive behavior a product of society of warriors. He proposed a return to agrarianism as an alternative to the “potentially toxic masculinity” of the warrior ethic.
The growth of the feminist movement along with a rise of gender neutrality promotes silencing the “toxic masculinity” of boys growing up in a modern society that portrays non-aggressiveness of women as a remedy for social unease.
According to Sociologist Michael Kimmel, the birth of term “toxic masculinity” is a result of the feminist movement challenging traditional male authority, Russia Today reports.
The term is also described as harmful to men. Preliminary research suggests that cultural pressure for men to be manly and suppress emotions actually shorten men’s lifespans by causing them to be less likely to discuss health problems with their physicians.
So, if “Big boys don’t cry,” they suppress their emotions and get tough, but at the same time they become emotionally vulnerable. In America, men are 3.5 times more likely to die from suicide than women, and many experts say it’s because men are told not to express their emotions, Arwa Madhawi said in a report published in the Guardian. She slammed the famous actress that she missed the point.
“Seriously, Meryl Streep? ‘Toxic masculinity’ doesn’t hurt men – it kills them,” Madhawi wrote.
Explaining the difference between toxic masculinity and toxic femininity, Madhawi emphasized sexist behavior of the US President Donald Trump and Supreme Court justices who have been accused of sexual misconduct. The author, however, neglects the role of for example Hillary Clinton, Madelaine Albright and Christiane Amanpour in war crimes that the U.S. has been involved in during the last two decades.