When I talk about man box culture, that is, the rules for how to be a man in our culture of masculinity, I often say it isn’t actually these particular rules for being a man that are the primary problem. It is the *enforcement* of these rules on men for whom this way of being is not a good fit. And there are millions of us for which it is not.
So I couldn’t agree more. If men simply learned to mind own own business, which would include allowing the men around us to do whatever version of masculinity fits for us, (including so-called traditional masculinity) most of our problems would be gone overnight. The problem arises when men who are performing traditional masculinity decide it’s their job to police and bully others to conform to that version.