Periodically one comes across some research finding that make me stop short. One of them was this one that suggests that some men hesitate to take certain actions towards protecting the environment because those actions are seen as feminine and so others may doubt their heterosexuality.
No, really!
Maybe RealMen would use them if the reusable bags had camo patterns.
Or pictures of guns and trucks.
This is precisely what “toxic masculinity” is.
Re: 1 Tactical shopping bags, with optional Kevlar inserts. Unfortunately, there seems to be a legitimate market for them.
“others may doubt their heterosexuality.”
I’m man enough to embrace my inner homosexual.
https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/1143922/1118full-alain-delon.jpg
This guy makes me regret I’m mainly straight.
Btw, Alain Delon was a marine during the French Vietnam War in the 1950’s. So he’s more manly than those snowflakes who worry about reusable shopping bags.
The Stupid! It burns!
Wow. I wonder whether these kinds of stereotypes exist also in other cultures. My own observations are that where I live green behaviors are strongly correlated with awareness about environmental issues rather than gender or sexual orientation. For example, all the environmental sciences students whom I met at my university engaged in and promoted environmentally friendly behaviors. And my boyfriend is the person who convinced me to buy reusable fabric shopping bags and start sorting my trash. His degree was in chemistry, but his job is monitoring air pollution. Producing written reports about pollution for a living makes a person pretty aware about how the humanity is trashing the planet.
Real Men also have to dump their plastic bags full of food waste at least six feet from the nearest bin, so that wild animals can taste some of that freedom too.
It’s not just purses or shopping bags. Back when I was “male”, I heard regular homophobic insults because I carried a backpack everywhere. I still do -- it’s handy for going to work and shopping after work.
I still hear insults and mockery regularly (“hey, granny!”) because I use a folding shopping cart -- not the exact one below, but something similar. It’s a lot easier to pull 20kg on wheels than carry it.
http://www.healthykin.com/images/Product/large/1359.jpg
It’s the same reason “Dove for Men” and things like that exist and come in black and dark blue bottles.
But I guess that must come with men being the logical, reasonable sex.
This is right in line with those bozos who are into “rolling coal” — deliberately making their trucks into massive polluters because fuck you lefties.
Real men should be less concerned with what strangers think they might be doing in the bedroom, and more concerned about where their reusable shopping bags come from. Sisal plantations in Madagascar are contributing to deforestation there. Apparently green isn’t always actually green.
Perhaps more to the point, locally green isn’t always globally green.
Tim Minchin wrote a song about using canvas bags: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvnYIxv_364
The word “canvas” came from “cannibis” because that’s what canvas was originally made from: hemp.
When your masculinity is so fragile you can’t even use a reusable bag…
Intransitive @#8
Ouch. That sucks. I’m glad that where I live we don’t have at least this one. I routinely see men carrying backpacks in public. By the way, here yoghurt is sold in gender neutral packaging and anybody is allowed to eat it. Gender norms vary across the world.
Unfortunately, we have this one here as well. Only elderly people are allowed to put their stuff on wheels. And this sucks, because pulling weight on wheels is just so much better.
Oddly enough, I have never heard insults or mockery from strangers on the street. People have often mistaken me for a butch lesbian (I’m actually genderqueer) due to my lifestyle and fashion preferences clashing with the shape of my body, but nobody has ever insulted me about it within my hearing range. Online insults, anonymous insults, sure; but I never got insults in my face.
Tabby Lavalamp @#9
The society really should get rid of those (for a lot of reasons). I recently wrote about gendered consumer products here https://andreasavester.com/the-pink-tax-or-why-we-need-more-gender-neutral-consumer-products/ and they are just overall awful.
I once overheard a big dude-bro defend his choice to drive a Hummer with “pansies sip, real men guzzle”.
That is just silly. The manifestations of toxic masculinity in USA are sometimes really, really weird. Maybe I am not just paying attention to such things, but where I live using canvas shopping bags or carrying backpacks is not seen as a gendered thing or something that indicates one’s sexual orientation.
It’s amazing that people who don’t really care about the environment—or other people—apparently really care what other people think and with whom they have relationships.
Toxic masculinity: as lethal to the environment as it is to women.
Backpacks are very common for all genders. How else would one carry a lap-top computer?
Btw, real men, did you know that beer is for women?
@ 17 Charly
Maybe I am not just paying attention to such things, but where I live using canvas shopping bags or carrying backpacks is not seen as a gendered thing or something that indicates one’s sexual orientation.
Sounds normal to me but I live in Canada. I was buying something a couple of weeks ago and a solder in the store mentioned that there was few things so handy as a backpack as I stuffed the cat food {?} into it. Note I am male and have a white beard.