Unpacking “Toxic Masculinity” (Op-Ed By Thomas Budds)

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Submitted by Thomas Budds –

The American left and their fellow-traveler media have been on a mission to pejoratively mischaracterize all conservative men for political purposes. They have successfully exaggerated typical male traits calling them “toxic” linking this adjective with masculinity. “Toxic masculinity” has become part of the American lexicon, but does it exist without exaggerations?

The exhibition of male traits is being viewed as insanely dangerous to health and life! “Real Men” with shaved heads, thick mustaches, long sideburns, coiffed and unkempt beards abound everywhere. Camo caps embroidered with Old Glory, or renditions of wildlife prey, lions and tigers and bears; oh my!

These “dangerous men” are seen at scale at rodeos, ice hockey rinks, Bass Pro Shops, Sportsmen’s Warehouses, or most anywhere you can buy rifles, shotguns, pistols, or other mechanisms to slay deer, bear, wild pigs, or defeat large-mouth bass, salmon, or marlin at sea. Tattooed men with multi-pocketed camouflage shirts and pants, dark reflective sunglasses, and boots with bison leather laces to pass through the labyrinth of steel forged eyelets to cinch-up their steel-toed boots before they stalk their prey of choice in the wild brush.  

These most “male” of men can be observed most every weekend retrieving a four-step ladder from their man-cave necessary to reach the door handle of their Super-Heavy-Duty-Diesel. Four-wheelers raised so far off the ground a person walking a parking lot could unintentionally bump their head on the under bottom of their personal “monster truck”! You can always tell the sightly insecure of this breed by the trailer hitch attachment resembling part of a bull’s anatomy. 

This particular “talisman” isn’t seen very often as it must be removed to attach your double-axel BBQ trailer for tailgating at pro and college football stadiums, from sea to shining sea. These are the trailers with multiple grills, each able to accommodate a side of beef. The ones with smokestacks reminiscent of the old steam locomotives on the “Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe”. It’s hard to get a real good look at these trailers as they travel the highways. They only appear intermittently because of their HUGE American flag sitting atop a 20′ steel pole rising magnificently from the stake pocket of the pickup bed. It flutters defiantly in the 70+ mph speed generated wind accompanied by other distractions of “masculinity” like tailgating, horn honking, and highway “fist” gestures all the way to their favorite teams parking lot. 

Wearing camouflage clothing and their blood-stained aprons standing amongst the billowing smoke, these most “male” of men are difficult to see as they rustle up the grub at their oak-fired grills, grub often slain, trophied, skinned, and butchered with their own hands. The conflagration creates an eerie effect only given context when the intermittent beer can is tossed from one “brother-to-another” as it reflects a flash of sunlight as it arcs like a football; a final play; the “Hail Mary” thrown to win the game; how “manly I feel.

The time to eat comes soon, not just a plate but a “side” of ribs, mere rib-eyes are replaced with “tomahawks” so raw and rare they ooze goblets of bright red blood down the consumer’s forearms making one wonder why they went to the effort to trailer the BBQ at all? Yeah, these are the “men” the media refers to as “toxic” with “toxic masculinity”; but once again it’s all FAKE NEWS! “Toxic masculinity” does exist, but none of the foregoing captures what constitutes the true “Toxic Male”.  

“Toxic masculinity” is when fathers abandon their daughters and sons to the immoral whims of “educators”, online and other sexuality groomers all championing dirty schoolbooks, sexualized sex-ed curriculum. They’re toxic when they sit-by silently as the so-called “do no harm” medical community and educational “professionals” conspire to butcher their children chemically and surgically. 

Toxic masculinity is exhibited by their inaction or being indifferent when boys are indecently exposing themselves in their daughters’ locker and restrooms. Letting teachers, school boards, and librarians with broken moral compasses to steal their parental rights. Toxic men aren’t defined because they flock to hunting and sporting events, or monster truck rallies, they are better defined by the things they don’t “flock” to.

Why aren’t these “men” applying their primal passion flocking to local school and state educational board meetings and the board of education wearing their camo holding monster-truck rallies to save their kids? Where’s the million “man” march or “truck-in” demanding publisher’s, educators, et al, clean up the “literature” forced on their “minor” children or be arrested? Real men protect their families; they don’t abandon their daughters and sons to secular perversion.

Masculinity becomes toxic when men cease individually and collectively being Godly serving humbly with willing minds. Masculinity isn’t looking and acting tough, it’s meeting men’s responsibility to nurture, cherish, and protect their family, their wife, and children, all children.  It becomes “toxic” when “men” choose to remain merely “male” shirking their moral responsibilities. The well-being of our families and our country demand a collection of Godly men.

“Start the children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old, they will not turn from it.” – Proverbs 22:6. Seems too many “men” today weren’t started off on the way they should have gone. Seems too many do not understand the way they should be going.

It’s way past time for dads everywhere to take pause and apply the hunting and sports team scenarios to their own families. They should know that, while they hunt in the denizens of animals, fish in the sea, and tailgate at sporting venues, other men are hunting their little daughters and sons in the school yards, libraries, classrooms, and chatrooms for their own salaciously grotesque perversions. 

Real men have “vocation” to protect their children and families first before “avocation”. Those who don’t are the true toxic males suffering self-inflicted “toxic masculinity” and aren’t real “men” at all!