‘Traditional masculinity’ is harmful, says the APA

Last August the American Psychological Association (APA) released its first-ever guidelines for therapists working with men and boys. Nobody paid much attention to these for several months, but they went viral this week. This was largely due to the APA condensing its academic report into a tweet explaining that the key takeaway is that traditional masculinity is harmful and socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage. Suddenly everyone on the internet was an armchair psychologist and conservatives were up in arms about war on men.

Traditional notions of masculinity, marked by stoicism, competitiveness and aggression, are clearly toxic to both men and women. As the APA write in an article accompanying the study: “Men commit 90% of homicides in the United States and represent 77% of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide.” They also point to research that found men who bought into traditional notions of masculinity were less likely to seek mental health support than those who had more open gender attitudes. The guidelines advise psychologists to understand “how power, privilege and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles”.

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While all that sounds eminently sensible to me, certain intellectuals on the right have predictably interpreted it as meaning the APA has it out for men. The Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for example, made the compelling argument that toxic masculinity is actually great because she “loves James Bond”. (Please can someone explain to Ingraham that Bond is a fictional character?) Meanwhile Tucker Carlson, that bastion of reason, asked: “What would happen if you told girls the qualities that make you feel female are poison and you must suppress them?” I don’t think he quite understands that feminists have been fighting against poisonous gender stereotypes for a very long time. And, by the way, the APA has a set of guidelines for women.

Despite the right using the APA guidelines as an opportunity for outrage, we should all be highly encouraged by the new guidelines. It’s a great sign that toxic gender norms are being gradually interrogated and dismantled and it will literally save lives.

Rahaf al-Qunun is safe – many Saudi women are not

Twitter can be a hellhole, but it can also be a powerful force for good. This week it may well have saved the life of 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, who fled her Saudi family and pleaded for help on Twitter from an airport hotel in Bangkok. When she first tweeted about being worried her family would kill her for renouncing Islam (which is punishable by death in Saudia Arabia), Rahaf only had a handful of followers. But, thanks to the Egyptian American feminist Mona Eltahawy translating her tweets from Arabic and sending them out to her large follower base, she quickly caught the world’s attention. On Friday, Rahaf was granted asylum in Canada. It is wonderful that Rahaf is now safe, but let us remember that many women in Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime are not. The kingdom has locked up a number of women’s rights activists, and there are worries they are being tortured. Let’s not stop paying attention to the plight of women in Saudi Arabia when Rahaf has faded from the headlines.

Stop trying to rein in AOC

Republicans aren’t the only ones having a meltdown over Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Politico published an article on Friday titled Exasperated Democrats try to rein in Ocasio-Cortez, in which her various colleagues gripe about the politician daring to take on the establishment. Yet another example that there is nothing that scares people more than a strong young woman who knows her mind and won’t toe the line.

It’s officially Januhairy

Every month needs a neologism and a hashtag now, didn’t you know? If you missed the memo then Januhairy is a new campaign encouraging women to grow and love their body hair. Good for you if you’re not shaving for the month – but also good for you if you are. It’s important to challenge and interrogate sexist beauty ideals, of course. But I’m growing somewhat tired of these campaigns that would purport to turn hairy armpits into #empowering #emblems of hashtag feminism.

Japanese tabloid sorry for its sleazy ‘sex listings’

Last year Spa!, a Japanese tabloid, published a ranking of universities, based on how willing its female students were to have sex at drinking parties. More than 38,000 people signed a petition condemning this gross list, and the magazine apologized on Tuesday.

Drug overdose epidemic among middle-aged American women

The overdose rate among women 30-64 rose by more than 260% between 1999 and 2017, according to troubling new data from the CDC.

The antidote to mansplaining

A woman in China can’t hear men’s voices due to a rare but temporary hearing condition. Don’t worry, though, she’s expected to make a full recovery, and I’m sure a helpful dude will explain to her exactly what happened.