Benjamin Cain
1 min readSep 29, 2021

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Wow, you even used the phrase "safe places."

There are indeed toxic places on the internet and in social media, such as Twitter. Conflict sells, and there are better and worse ways to disagree.

But you're looking only at toxic masculinity here, at aggressive bullying and the like. What about toxic femininity? Don't you see that as a thing? Isn't it a shame, for example, that the Millennial generation and later ones have been so overprotected that they can't handle even honest, objective criticism and literally have to retreat to safe spaces? They can't handle human interaction and hide behind their cell phones.

You say "we're all grown here," but I'm afraid that adults don't generally have to plead for everyone to be nice and to stop disagreeing so much. We're supposed to not take everything so personally and to be open to learning from criticism. Sure, rude personal attacks needn't be tolerated. But while it's possible to go too far in the direction of hypermasculine aggression, it's evidently also possible to go too far with hyperfeminine nurturing.

We have to learn to face the real world that doesn't care about our feelings or even whether we live or die. That's the existential kind of growing up.

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Benjamin Cain
Benjamin Cain

Written by Benjamin Cain

Ph.D. in philosophy / Knowledge condemns. Art redeems. / https://benjamincain.substack.com / https://ko-fi.com/benjamincain / benjamincain8@gmailDOTcom

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