a) Expected, given our contemporary milieu
b) Intentionally provocative, given our contemporary milieu
c) Part and parcel of the materialist lifelong learning program being forced on everyone, everywhere
d) Ideologically-driven pseudoscience that is meant to provoke a reaction, which will then be gauged in order to launch the next line of assault (the two steps forward, one step back approach of ensuring the progressive agenda continues progressing).
Thus, I will leave the reacting to the ranters and ravers over at the Manosphere, and other valiant defenders of masculinity like Jordan Peterson who is shocked, absolutely shocked that his “field has been compromised, perhaps fatally.” In all honesty, I cannot conceive what Peterson is so shocked about. I believe he had better start coming to terms with his own notions of “The Sensible Left” and begin understanding that the APA and its most recent set of guidelines pretty much epitomizes “the sensible left.” Its the same Sensible Left he so desperately wants to discover, and with whom he so anxiously wants to break bread.
Predictably, other Sensible Left organizations like PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) wasted no time hooking up their booster cables to the revving engine of the APA masculinity guidelines. A recent post on PETA's website not only endorses the APA’s harangue against "traditional and toxic masculinity", but also goes a step further by declaring meat to be the fuel that drives the toxic masculinity machine. PETA writes:
Imagine having such a fragile sense of self that you’d torment, kill, and eat defenseless individuals just to look “manly.”
It certainly takes a bully to destroy the lives of sensitive, conscious “others” in an effort to validate one’s identity in terms of an archaic ideology dictating what it means to be a man. Bullfighters drunk on machismo stab and slaughter bulls for “sport.” Trophy hunters display dead animal parts on walls in desperate attempts to embody “big bwana” masculinity. A psychologist might say a man needs counseling if he tries to prove his manhood by gunning down a 2-pound bird or killing a struggling fish.
Got that? Going fishing is nothing more than a man’s pathetic attempt to prove his manhood. Counseling is definitely required. What about women who like hunting and fishing? Double dose of counseling required. But don’t misunderstand, the good people of PETA honestly care about men. They really do – especially men’s health.
Men who eat steak, hotdogs, and hamburgers, thinking that it makes them “real men,” are eating themselves to an early grave. As the APA points out, men in general eat fewer fruits and vegetables than women do. American men also consume 57 percent more meat than women do. Yet it’s no secret that meat consumption has been linked to an increased risk of suffering from numerous health problems, including heart disease, obesity, cancer, strokes, and diabetes. Men have a higher risk for every one of these. Did we mention the link between eating meat and erectile dysfunction? So much for proving your “manhood.”
So forget the meat and hook yourself up to some intravenous soy or something, because if you are a carnivore, you can pretty much kiss your heart, blood sugar, and boner good-bye. Maybe PETA should contact Jordan Peterson, who has been on an all meat diet for a while now, and ask about his penis health. On second thought . . .
All kidding aside, I cannot help but laugh at this nonsense, and I hope you are doing the same. Yet, I wonder where it will ultimately lead because, as I mentioned above, this is all part of the lifelong learning mantra, which, for the time being, is focused on destroying definitions of masculinity in the West and replacing it with something else entirely.
So be prepared for more guilt-trip lectures from razor companies, more retooled guidelines from medical and psychological associations, and more revamped definitions from academia because they is all gonna learn you good about what it truly means to be a man today, and if you as much as utter a breath of objection while they are cutting off your penis, you will be accused of masculine fragility, or something of that nature, so suck it up, tough guy!
I will sum up and close this rather unintentional post (I originally wanted to write a little lyrical essay about my car's smashed rear windshield) by presenting Slavoj Zizek’s views concerning veganism and vegetarianism, which ties in nicely to the notion that eating meat fuels toxic masculinity. Oddly enough, it is one of the few topics on which I wholeheartedly agree with Zizek, bless his sensibly left, communist soul.