American culture hates femininity

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Recently writer and writing coach Sasha Chapin opined: “Lots of young men who crave female approval also haven't learned to like femininity, and this is a weird, tense, angry place to be.”

There’s so much to unpack here. I mean, first, yes it’s obviously unfortunate that so many people fundamentally dislike and distrust an entire gender and/or gender presentation. It’s perhaps even more unfortunate that many of them, men and women alike, seem to want to date members of the gender they despise.

I think there’s so much hidden in the “crave female approval” part. I’m of the opinion that so much of sex and dating isn’t actually about sex or dating. As Oscar Wilde probably didn’t say, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

Far be it from me to deny the power of people’s carnal cravings. Obviously most post-pubescent humans have an innate desire to have sex for sex’s sake. However, research shows that’s hardly the only reason people give for wanting or having sex. Categories of other reasons include:

• Physical: Pleasure, stress relief, exercise, or curiosity

• Goal-based: To make a baby, improve social status (for example, to become popular), or seek revenge

• Positive emotional: Love, commitment, or gratitude

• Negative emotional: To boost self-esteem, keep a partner from seeking sex elsewhere, or feeling a sense of duty or pressure (for example, a partner insists on having sex)

I’ve often said that incels don’t actually want sex. If they did they’d just lower their standards and/or pay for it. What they want is the approval/status/worthiness that being allowed to have sex with a certain type of woman represents to them.

And we’re all like that to some degree. The thrill of the chase is in large part wrapped up in whether or not we are or can become worthy of acceptance. We often want to be wanted as much as or more than we want the actual sex.

For the “haven't learned to like femininity” part, I can hardly blame them. American culture hates femininity. Sure, we like women to look feminine (insofar as we define feminine as fuckable to straight men). But we don’t want women to ACT like women. Look at the cool girl trope. Look at the NLOG phenomenon. Lean In feminism teaches women to ape men at work. Masculine female characters anchor blockbuster franchises.

Feminine men, on the other hand, get pilloried.

This is, of course, all part of evangelical culture and toxic masculinity. Evangelical culture posits that God himself established rigid gender roles and a hierarchy that puts men at the top. Toxic masculinity reinforces those rigid gender roles and gender hierarchy with scorn, mockery, and sometimes violence.

Toxic masculinity harms men. Men who more fully buy into gender essentialism are more likely to feel depressed, hopeless or suicidal, fail to seek help, binge drink, and crash their cars. Toxic masculinity pressures men to provide financially as economic forces make that harder and harder to do. Pressure to downplay their more “feminine” characteristics or face exclusion or physical harm isolates boys and men, causing loneliness and depression.

It’s going to take more than learning to like femininity to fix what’s broken here. It’s a good step, for sure. But ultimately we need to reject everything evangelical culture and toxic masculinity have to say about sex and gender before we can begin to heal from the harm they’ve caused.