Male is absolutely not an immutable characteristic beyond physical aspects that have nothing to do with anything about who that person is. Why is this so difficult to understand? Gender is a social construct - and Male has been constructed in many toxic and harmful ways in our culture. Men (who have the ability to separate themselves from that social construct) as you yourself pointed out when referencing the Equimundo study, do not need to equate themselves with the small, constrictive, norms of masculinity that they have been bombarded with. They are not the sum total of who those rules and norms are as human beings. As I’ve already pointed out, in different cultures and at different times in history, “male” has had very different rules and norms.
And as you've finally clued in, when there's a box, not everyone will fit neatly into it. A huge amount of the harm of the Man Box is that many men do not fit well into it - and they suffer because of that. Many try to kill themselves because of it. That's why it needs to be gotten rid of - helloooo! This is literally the main thesis of those who talk about the Man Box!!!!
"Children are constantly bombarded with gender-based expectations from society and from the media, and they are reinforced by both peers and adults alike. Sometimes that reinforcement is coercive and comes in the form of teasing or bullying for failing to comply with norms. Boys are more likely to be subjected to this kind of censure, sometimes with terrible consequences. A study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) found that “20% of gender non-conforming students reported attempting suicide compared to 7% of gender-conforming students. The data is bad for both sexes, but it seems to be worse for males.”
This is just one of the many, many ways that stupid artificial norms of binary gender harm people - particularly men. Man is a social construct, male is not. Welcome to the fucking 21st century. 🙄 In most indigenous cultures there are somewhere between 3 and 5 genders. That says nothing whatsoever about biological sex.
I wrote an entire article trying to persuade reasonable people - not zealots and Manosphere acolytes. Duh! Stop trying to tell me what I'm saying and who I'm trying to connect with because that is literally the dictionary definition of Mansplaining.
