Elle Beau ❇︎
2 min readDec 27, 2023

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Men commit nearly all violence in this culture and that's actually not an aberration - it's a feature of how masculinity is constructed in our society - something that is well documented in my OP. It doesn't matter if only a relatively small percentage of men do this if a giant percentage of women experience it and it's a normalized feature of masculinity. Your being a bystander who looks the other way is the very thing that allows this to continue.

Every single person has the ability to speak up at inappropriate jokes or the casual objectification that takes place as a routine part of male bonding. Every single person has the ability to tell their friends or their brother, "Hey, that's not cool" when they are professing misogynistic beliefs or watching dehumanizing porn. There are literally hundreds of little ways that you and every man can and should be standing up to the inherent male violence of this culture that have nothing to do with physical intervention.

The APA recently issued new guidelines for working with men and boys that notes that norms of "traditional" masculinity are very harmful to men and boys - as well as to everyone else. They drive not only suicide but also domination of others and control of women as normative masculinity. If you aren't challenging those norms and working with other men to change them, you are complicit in the harm that is done - to women, but also to your fellow men.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner

We all co-create the culture together. You being a "good guy" is not enough because your passivity and inaction allow for the dysfunction. Pointing that out may feel confronting but in the face of the extreme amounts of violence in our culture - against women, and against other men - nearly all of which is driven by masculine norms - it's entirely appropriate and necessary. You are either a part of the solution or you are a part of the problem. Time to step up...

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Elle Beau ❇︎
Elle Beau ❇︎

Written by Elle Beau ❇︎

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother, I'm a sinner, I'm a saint. I do not feel ashamed. I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between.

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