Dear Manny the Mansplainer –

Dear Manny the Mansplainer -

Why were men angry about the Gillette Ad? I mean, it just seemed to be encouraging men to call each other out on their gross behavior, didn’t it?

Confused Woman in America

Dear Confused,

You have to be careful about this term toxic masculinity. For instance, if a trans person committed some kind of violent or abusive act, would you say that is because of their toxic gender non-conformity?

Or if an ethnic person did something bad, would you say it’s because of their toxic ethnicity?

OK, think of this one:

A Labrador Retriever bites somebody.

It’s because of his toxic doggishness?

It wasn’t that this individual dog was crazy. No, all dogs are now tarred with the bloody brush of his bite.

Masculinity — as it is defined by the people that use the term in this way — refers to the values of courage, toughness and strength.

Those values never caused anybody any harm. And little lady, I hope it’s not the case, but who knows, you might be glad of a male with those values some day after society breaks down and lunatics are running around foaming at the mouth — I’m talking about zombies. Men will help out a lot then, with their courage, toughness and strength, just like I did in Viet Nam when I served our great nation to protect it from communism. And then later on the Volunteer Fire Department here in Olean, New York, where I protect our town from fire — and also communism, by never voting for the libtards.

My point is, what causes harm is malevolence, sadism, psychopathy. Evil.

Toxic badness.

That’s what causes men to do harm.

Not toxic manliness.

Honey, there was a psychologist a long time ago who studied infants and toddlers, at an age before they knew that they were boys or girls, I’m talking pre-Oedipal, pre-castration fear. And what did the doctor discover? Babies are capable of tremendous sadism. Males and females. They enjoy hurting things. Later on they suppress that urge into their unconscious, but it comes out in the form of passive aggression.

So Toots, that’s just the sad truth about our species, boys and girls both. We enjoy hurting things. And that probably is why we survived in the evolutionary jungle — we weren’t too squeamish to strangle a squirrel when we were hungry.

But now, of course, this impulse doesn’t serve us.

It’s better to be civilized and cooperative. However, the urge to hurt does not come from masculinity as such.

To say that it does is blatantly sexist.

Oh and by the way, the ad suggests that we “nice” men try to intervene and stop these “toxic” men from behaving badly.

Um, does the little lady who made this ad know that this is America? A lot of crazy fuckers out there are carrying guns. Are you really suggesting I go up to a guy and tell him to treat his wife better? Woops, I just got shot in the face. Thanks a lot. Sure, if you see something, call the police on your fellow toxic males, but please, do not try to personally intervene with these lunatics. This razor blade company is giving you some seriously bad advice.

So that’s why, little lady, in the garbage can in front of my house, you know what you’ll find? Some Gillette razors, unused. They never will be used. Not until hell freezes over. (See that’s some of my babyish aggression coming out. It’s OK, it’s healthy venting).

I hope this helps, and by the way, it’s Superbowl Sunday, so check out my next column, where I will mansplain the offensive pass interference rule.

Yours truly,

Manny the Mansplainer