Response to Phillips Reading

One of the major themes in the Phillips reading was toxic masculinity in society. The quote that stood out to me the most was, “The fixation on hardness restricts masculine individuals to a limited range of emotional and physical responses. Anger and violence, with their obvious shows of strength and rejection of weakness, predominate.” This quote reminded me of politicians and political commentators angrily calling people “snowflakes” and “wimps” that don’t approve of their rhetoric. In this clip, commentator Ben Shapiro lashes out at students who feel threatened by the his messages. I repeated the clip where Shapiro says, “You selfish children,” multiple times because I wanted his words to have an impact. I kept the last word, “predominate,” by itself on the last shot because I wanted to tie its significance (prevalence of these sorts of attitudes in society) in with his name-calling.