“The taxpayer-subsidized anti-Trump site The Conversation is at it again, featuring a Christmas Eve article on how boys kissing and diverse Asgardian characters such as “deaf elves, Muslim American female warriors and genderfluid pottery artists” can improve the concept of masculinity,” reports The College Fix:
According to Edinburgh Napier University Senior Research Fellow Adrianna Zabrzewska, “toxic masculinity” not only “marginalizes” women and those in the LGBTQ+ community, but hurts straight males by “discouraging emotional expression, tenderness, and connection.”
In order to reach young boys “before they radicalise in dangerous ways,” Zabrzewska says children’s and young adult literature can assist in “rethinking masculinity” by focusing on “relationality, vulnerability, and inclination.”
Two books in particular Zabrzewska recommends are “Two Boys Kissing” and “Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.” In the former, two boys are “hoping to set the world record for the longest kiss,” while the latter features a “sweet, caring” teenaged male protagonist and an “engaging” lesson on intersectionality via “deaf elves […] Muslim American female warriors and genderfluid pottery artists.”
A primary school uses trans actor Elliot Page as a rare positive example of masculinity. Author Wesley Yang notes that this shows that “White masculinity ceases to be toxic” for progressives, “and becomes good again when you are identifying into it as a woman.”
Harvard professor James Hankins notes that in the George Floyd era, many academic departments stopped hiring white males, including “literally the best student at Harvard,” a white male who “won the prize for the graduating senior with the best overall academic record.” He “was rejected from all the graduate programs from which he applied.”
“The one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female,” Professor Hankins says.
Cornell University has had a class called “Queer Marxism.” Occidental College offers the course “Black Queer Thought,” which critiques “the demands” of “patriarchy and capitalism.”
“To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” says Ibram Kendi’s book How to Be An Antiracist, which has been assigned reading for many students.
