A funny thing happened a little while back that really made me examine how much time I waste arguing with random people on the Internet. I got kicked out of a superhero appreciation Facebook group for bullying.
It really wasn’t my fault. It was right around the time the Black Widow movie was released and like anything that doesn’t feature a straight, white male as the hero a bunch of insecure dudes were complaining about wokeness and PC culture. Following not long after The Falcon and The Winter Soldier television series introduced Anthony Mackie’s Falcon as the new Captain America and not just another sidekick person of color there was a lot of complaining about all the diversity being rammed down their throat.
As someone who prides themselves on trying to be more evolved and sensitive to the inadvertent toxicity of a lot of the things that I grew up saying I resisted the urge to make a comment about things being rammed in their throat and instead expressed my condolences about the small nature of their penis making it hard for them to deal with a woman on screen kicking ass.
If you hadn’t guessed it was probably a bit past when I should have been in bed. I woke up the next day short one Facebook group but with a few messages from people that appreciated a man not consumed with fragile fears about his masculinity. I didn’t find it necessary to tell any of them that I spent the better part of two decades overcompensating for my nerdiness and lack of ability to fix or put together anything by trying to prove my manliness in other ways or that it still bugs me that I have feet like a hobbit and a chest like a sasquatch but still can’t seem to grow a real beard.
As is often the case my smugness was both short lived and undeserved. If I had used the first joke that came to mind it wouldn’t have been coming from a homophobic place, instead mocking my target’s assumed homophobia, but it still would have been insulting to those that participate in the implied activity. What didn’t occur to me until it was pointed out at a later time was that I was being ableist. It wasn’t my intention but there very well could have been a super nice guy with a really small penis scrolling Facebook around that time and I instantly ruined his day. While attacking toxic masculinity I also perpetuated it.
It’s probably well past time that we stopped making fun of juiced up gym rats, guys with huge jacked-up trucks, dudes always starting bar fights and those that constantly talk about all of their guns as trying to compensate for their small penises. There are a lot of different reasons that guys feel the need to prove how manly they are, reasons that might have nothing to do with the size of their junk. Jeff Bezos is a billionaire that went to space in a rocket that looked like a giant penis. Was that a flex? Only he and his ex’s know for sure.
There is a joke in Michael Che’s new Netflix special where he tells any woman looking for a way to break up with a guy to simply say that his penis is too big and he will walk away happy. I’m sure the twitterverse will have a lot of jokes and things to say about this post but guys, it really is time that we stop trying so hard to be “manly” and it’s also time we stopped using dick size as either a way to brag or as a way to insult each other. Put the measuring tape away, understand that strong women aren’t anything to be afraid of and maybe stop trying so hard.
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Previously Published on Thirsty Daddy
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