Did anyone else love that #like a girl commercial?

fear and hatred of femininity.

I have never met or even heard of a single man in my life who was afraid or hated "femininity" (mind you: femininity, not women). I have, however, met and seen countless, and I mean countless women who had a deep-rooted fear of masculinity. Fears of being raped by a big, strong guy. Fear of being overpowered by a big, strong guy. Fear of being abused by a big, strong guy. Just coming across a guy at night is enough for many women to feel intimidated. It's not so much the men they are intimidated by, as it is the notion of masculinity; of superior male strength and heaps of testosterone. Women in our culture are, without a speck of doubt, afraid en masse of (aggressive) masculinity, and that is a key observation we have to make in order to make any progress in any of this. There's a sort of mealymouthed pleasure in pretending like this sort of masculinity is all about being a bunch of scared men, because that puts you in a haughty position from which you can look down on these "poor boyish brutes" while pretending you're not really afraid of them - they're afraid of you! I'm afraid all you're doing is projecting.

Furthermore, this derision of young men by likening them to girls is more often than not rooted in facts. Because we're talking about the Superbowl, let's take the all-famous "you throw like a girl". It turns out that this is definitely a "valid" thing to say, as girls really do throw weaker and with worse technique than boys - pretty much across the board in different cultures.[1] I know this is going to get downvoted by the downvote-brigade on here, who only like to see things that confirm their worldview, but it's still a fact, and it's true. You not liking this isn't going to change anything.

Take a different derision; "stop being acting like a little girl" when a guy is being too sensitive or if he cries in public. I myself have rarely ever witnessed this, so I'm starting to doubt how much of this is just guy-joking, or actual insult. Nevertheless, I'm going to go ahead and pretend like this happens to men all the time. A large meta-study by the German Society of Ophthalmology found that women, on average, cry significantly more (and more often) than men.[2] Why is this not a "valid" thing to say then? Sure, you might argue that it's used as an insult and that its usage indicates a degree of negativity - after all, likening men to girls usually isn't well received or well-intentioned. But wouldn't most women feel offended if I told them they act "mannish"? Wouldn't most women feel insecure if I told them they walk like a man? Or that their voice is manly? Even just telling them they're masculine wouldn't sit well with most women, I'm sure.

The problem with your analogy is that there's not a whole lot of things you can associate with black people that'd be effectively used as an insult. Black people are what? I can't really think of a single characteristic that black people have across the world that white people don't also have, apart from physiology. You might point to ghettos in the US, but then I'd point you to all the black people in Europe who're not like that. Women and femininity though - that's a different story altogether. Almost every major culture in this world has similar notions of femininity. And like the study I linked about girls throwing balls; whether you're an aboriginal child or white american kid, "throwing like a girl" is a real, quantifiable and observable phenomenon.

/r/TwoXChromosomes Thread