If you internalize all the lessons of toxic masculinity & then just point them at women, you're a feminist!

All right I'm supposed to be working but this really f'ing irritated me so I have to rant a minute. One of my favorite things about AOC, Katie Porter, and the rest of the young generation of women infiltrating American politics is that they are modeling a new kind of strength.

They are showing, through their daily behavior & comportment, that "strength" does not have to mean what it has come to mean for American masculinity: stoicism & emotional illiteracy. It doesn't have to mean being an asshole or gritting your teeth & tolerating assholes.

It is perfectly possible to be strong & also reveal vulnerability. Shitty, insensitive behavior from men is frightening, infuriating, & hurtful, & there's nothing wrong with revealing fear, fury, & pain when it happens. It would be stifling & inhuman *not* to.

When AOC spoke on the floor after that meathead Yoho accosted her on the Capitol steps, she did not "take it like a woman," whatever TF that means. She didn't pretend it wasn't scary & unsettling & infuriating. She was open about that, signaling it's *OK* to be open about it.

But she also didn't back down. She didn't grin & bear it. She made Yoho & his meathead buddies & all the meatheads watching TV confront what he had done. He can giggle & high 5 his buddies & collect MAGA donations, but he can't pretend he wasn't a bullying asshole.

Embracing your full humanity, in public, takes way more gonads than being yet another third-rate John Wayne ripoff, unable to identify, process, or articulate your emotions. It's a kind of strength & courage that emerge out of, rather than deny, being a whole-ass person.

It's a version of strength that is in every way preferable to the sullen resentfulness that passes for male strength these days. These women shouldn't be learning how to be "tough" from men; men should be learning from them how to be fully human. </fin>