Peter Coates
2 min readAug 21, 2024

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You're right, but that kind of male behavior doesn't emerge from a vacuum. As a practical matter, the mores that prevail in either sex are not separable from the fabric of society built and operated by all of us, and which is ironically, disproportionately maintained and transmitted by women. The hand that rocks the cradle, as they say. Having raised kids, and been around a ton of people raising kids, I was always surprised at how even the most apparently progressive and liberal parents enforce the traditional gender norms, apparently entirely unaware that they are doing it. They would ostentatiously buy toy trucks for the girls and dolls for the boys, but the real messages were the opposite, and relentless. We talk to the young out of both sides of our mouths. For instance, officially, the message is, we're all equal in every way, and apparent difference are all learned. We say this even when they obviously aren't, such as in athletics. Yet, at every turn, you hear that if women ran the world there would be no war because women are naturally peaceful and reasonable. We hear constantly about how dangerous, destructive, exploitative, etc. men are, and that their nature itself is toxic, an adjective that is never attached to femaleness. Either it's all learned or it's not---and if it's learned, the operative thing is the learning, not the gender. It's a subtle thing until you notice it, then you see it everywhere. It's always maleness, not simply bad behavior by a male. I've heard "toxic masculinity" all the time, but rarely do I ever hear just "masculinity" used descriptively, and I don't know if there even is a word for positive masculinity. The actual messages we send about gender norms emphasize innate differences more than ever, not less, and they do it while loudly proclaiming that they do not.

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Peter Coates
Peter Coates

Written by Peter Coates

I was an artist until my thirties when I discovered computers and jumped ship for a few decades. Now I'm back to it. You can probably find some on instagram.

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