„The only feeling men have culturally been entitled to is anger.“

Let that sink in before I present to you the newest specimen of my feminist library. Or maybe, if it won’t sink, sink about this:

1. There are four more basic human emotions next to anger: Joy, fear, sadness and disgust. Now imagine what it looks like if you have to turn every single one of them into anger (which turns into violence, hostility, resentment, oppression or sawing your meatsandwich in half with a chainsaw after you parked your monster truck in the driveway) – because that’s the only one that is socially accepted. Welcome to the world of toxic masculinity.

2. Imagine what it does to a person growing up in that environment.

In this essay Mareike Fallwickl elaborates on feminism from the – in my opinion – most promising (yet impossible seeming) perspective which is: Why is feminism not „women’s business“ but something also – maybe at times especially – men's too.

As ever so often, it’s more a „why“ rather than a „how“, and also at times uses polarizing phrasing (even if it’s just reproducing narratives for argumentation), like for example when she talks about women struggling being pregnant with boys. „The enemy inside me.“

But here’s her and my point: We are not each others enemies, but our own. Boys turn out to be assholes because women keep up the system too. Women are systemically oppressed, yet they are not innocent. Each dickhead had a mom, and the cliché of them crying for their moms once you have them by the balls is not without context.

Sophia Fritz points it out in her book „Toxic Weiblichkeit“ (Toxic femininity): Men’s abuse of power is outward, women’s is inward.

I can’t imagine what it’s like trying to raise a boy into becoming one that is not afraid of his emotions – and the possible backlash he will experience because of his lack of manliness.



I also can’t image what it’s like not being allowed to cry.

I can image more people spending some thought on this though.

Mareike Fallwickl
Liebe Jorinde oder Warum wir einen neuen Feminismus des Miteinander brauchen

ISBN 978 - 3 - 910372 - 42 -9