As we enter the New Year, the cultural obsession with dismantling traditional masculinity continues apace. “Dismantling,” by the way, is one of the favorite verbs of neo-Marxists to describe subverting masculinity, because it implies that masculinity is socially constructed to begin with (and not biological), and therefore can be (and should be) deconstructed and cast off.
A recent article at The New York Times declared 2022 to be “The Year Pop’s Men Dismantled Their Masculinity” – “pop’s men” referring to a trio of successful male performers notable as much for their gender-bending sartorial style as their music. The Times noted that Harry Styles (pictured above), Bad Bunny, and Jack Harlow “all found success while offering refreshingly subversive challenges to old-school masculinity.”
Refreshingly subversive? The Times writer, who states that “the norms and expectations of what a male pop star can and should be are evolving,” seems unaware that male pop stars have been parading onstage in androgynous dress for half a century. David Bowie, Boy George, Mick Jagger, the New York Dolls and countless other glam-rock bands, down through Prince and Marilyn Manson to today’s K-Pop boy bands have all mixed-and-matched men’s and women’s clothing in addition to wearing makeup.
In any case, the Times article is sprinkled with depressingly common gender ideology buzzwords like “heteronormativity” and “allyship,” and the writer celebrates the three young men’s “expansive vision of gender and sexuality” because “misogyny and homophobia aren’t exactly good for business anymore.” The implication is that misogyny and homophobia are characteristic of “old-school” masculinity.
The upshot is that male celebrities flouncing around in women’s clothing are being hailed now as courageous trailblazers of a new-and-improved masculinity, a welcome evolution from the purportedly uptight, insecure, oppressive, patriarchal, toxic, masculine norms of the past. This seems ridiculous to the unwoke masses, but it is part of a deadly serious agenda to emasculate and feminize men in order to erase the very definitions of masculine and feminine. And those who refuse to participate fervently in the culturally-mandated celebration of these gender heroes will be denounced as bigots and haters by the woke mob.
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Speaking of Harry Styles, he was one of a slate of nominees announced yesterday for Artist of the Year at the upcoming Brit Awards. It’s “Artist of the Year” now because last year the annual showcase of British musical performers threw out the “gendered” categories of Best Male and Best Female solo artist in an effort to be more inclusive, to award “artists solely for their music and work, rather than how they choose to identify or as others may see them,” according to a statement.
Sounds so very equitable. The problem is, this year’s nominees don’t include any women. The nominees for Artist of the Year include Central Cee, Fred Again, George Ezra, Harry Styles, and Stormzy – all males. How awkward.
Predictably, this didn’t sit well with the woke. “So the Brits introduced an Artist of the Year category as a gender-neutral replacement for Best Male and Best Female Artist category – but this year all five nominees are blokes,” musician Tim Burgess shared in a tweet. “One step forward, three steps back.”
Even when a woman wins, as singer Adele did last year, she made the cardinal error of celebrating womanhood in her acceptance speech, prompting angry accusations that she was “transphobic.”
The woke activists so obsessed with “inclusiveness” and “diversity” can't get it right no matter how hard they try to engineer “equity.” Maybe that’s because the reality of masculinity and femininity refuses to conform to the delusion of gender ideology.