By: Lily Martin NOTE: This story contains mentions of gun violence, racism, sexism, and homophobia. Office TAC Lizzy Campbell is a film buff, an appropriate hobby for someone majoring in Communications at UNC Chapel Hill. This passion shines through most clearly when she’s talking your ear off about her movie or leading an elective on writing for the screen. If you ask her, though, she’ll tell you that she’s also a double minor, and is studying Women and Gender Studies. This week, Lizzy departed from her usual genre of elective and hopped from a lecture about film to a discussion about fragile, toxic masculinity. Campbell notes that masculinity is not the problem. However, when men are made to feel less than because of their dress, attitudes, or experiences, fragile, toxic masculinity becomes dangerous. To supplement, Lizzy shared a definition put forth by psychologist Terry Kupers: “The constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence.”
She started off the rest of the lecture with another definition. An incel (short for “involuntary celibate”) is defined by Lizzy as “a member of a group of people on the internet who are unable to find sexual partners despite wanting them, and who express hate towards people whom they blame for this.” That hatred, Lizzy goes on to say, is usually directed towards women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. After this introduction, the origin of the actual name of the elective (“How to Write a Reddit Manifesto”) is revealed. A fundamental trait of the aforementioned incel is entitlement, something that Campbell herself noted via a tongue-in-cheek catchphrase that adorned some of her slides: “Entitlement brought to you by the Patriarchy!” One of these entitled, enraged men was Elliot Rodger, the Isla Vista shooter. Through a vile rant documented on Reddit, Rodger outlined his “reasons” for doing what he did, most of which he attributed to his hatred for women, a hatred that stemmed from their lack of interest in him as a romantic and intimate partner. It was evident how much Lizzy cares about what she is talking about. She spoke with conviction and her compassion shone through with every sentence. In the second half of the elective, Lizzy focused on how a hypermasculine society harms men, and not just women. Phrases like “man up” and “boys will be boys” may seem trivial, but are, in hindsight, words that contribute to a culture that promotes unrealistic ideas of “manly men.” Advertisements use women as props and suggest that it’s “manly” to treat women that way. These ideals are then internalized by many men, a process that leads to the emasculation of any man who does not fit the sex-crazed, buff, white bread-winner that is portrayed in media as the universal standard. This pressure, emasculation, and what he perceived as denial of his right as a man is what eventually culminated in destructive action on Rodger’s part. After a somewhat bleak discussion that incorporated bits from the lecture and anecdotes from the audience’s personal lives, Lizzy presented her final piece: information on how we can do better. She asks that we evaluate our own biases and think about the assumptions that we make about men when we see them. Why do we have those biases, and is there any real reason? She asks that we be critical of the media that we consume and consciously check to see if it perpetuates stereotypes about men or pushes an agenda of sink-or-swim conformity. Overall, the lecture was rounded out by a message of hope and a push for self-improvement, something that the entire room was better off for.
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