A while ago, I was thrashing a willing gent with a flogger. He was flinching, moaning and making rather irritating squeaky noises.

“You’re such a pussy.”

I said it without thinking.

“No,” I said then, quickly correcting myself. “Pussies are strong. You’re weak. You’re a testicle.”

It’s easy to use macho language as it’s so common. Everyone does it. Our culture is saturated in it. Yet it doesn’t make sense when scrutinised. Why should anything female be seen as an insult to either gender, and why does society tolerate this being the norm?

Below is a snippet from Charles Clymer’s blog on exactly that:

‘…Simply put, I never understood why it’s wrong to do “feminine” things, especially when I saw girls and young women my age, throughout childhood, do “masculine” things without any sort of backlash.

A woman who “acts like a man” may across as a “bitch” (one of the more indicative terms of ignorance in society), but she can still often be portrayed as strong and confident and effective. We wouldn’t exactly say a girl who wants to be like her daddy is in the wrong.

A man, on the other hand, can never “act like a woman,” which is thinly-veiled code for being weak, emotional, and ineffective. We would never encourage a boy who says he “wants to be like mommy” when he grows up.

This sentiment easily seeps into male culture from a young age. The go-to insults for any man (and often, many women) against another man is to slam him for being feminine.

“Stop being such a little bitch.”

“Pussy.”

“Fag.”

“You’re such a girl” or “You fight like a girl” or “You throw like a girl”, etc.

On the other side of the coin, it can be implied you’re not being “man enough.” There are “man laws” and “man cards” to describe guys who aren’t living up to another man’s expectation of what it means to be a man.

Some really do think of this as just a humorous outlet and nothing to take seriously.

Others take it incredibly seriously and indicate their own insecurity behind a habit of being macho and describing other men in feminine terms…’

Read the full blog post here.