Recent series of news and reports quoting diverse incidents in public life has featured men at various levels of aggression.
What is hyper masculinity?
Hypermasculinity is a psychological term for the exaggeration of male stereotypical behaviour, such as an emphasis on physical strength, aggression, and sexuality.
e.g Road rage and is almost always a male affair.
Student disputes and clashes with the police, though not exclusively male, nevertheless often witness male-instigated and male-directed violence.
Cow vigilantes, anti-Romeo squads, the goons engaged by various strongmen and political parties, extra-constitutional “militias”, khap panchayats, the list seem long and alarming.
Hypermasculinism is about resisting any dilution of its essential attributes.
It equates femininity with weakness and needy of its “protection” at all times.
Strength lies in subjugation, in bending the disobedient to your will via force or violence.
To preserve their masculinity it is imperative they contempt and reject feminism in all its form.
Hypermasculinism despises hybridity, the stain of “impurity”, which is the basis of all culture, and indeed, of all creativity.
Love jihads, conversions, ghar wapsi, honour killings, and all forms of moral policing are part of this anxiety that enforce “discipline” on those who defy.
Violence is often its first resort, and its message is unequivocal.
Everyone who does not subscribe to this regime is vulnerable.
As a culture that has acknowledged androgyny, cherished hybridity, advocated non-violence and celebrated difference, we need to first recognise and renounce this.
