the gender binary. What needs to change is the common perceptions and expectations of the male and female genders.
These expectations are expressed through the words of Guante in his spoken word piece ‘Man Up’ and Savannah Brown in her slam poem ‘What Guys Look for in a Girl’. Guante articulates the idiocy of masculinity as a concept, as well as its ineffectiveness as a barrier against actual issues; “you cannot arm wrestle your way out of clinical depression”. He voices his concerns for young men who feel they need to reach a certain standard; “we teach boys how to wear the skin of a man but we also teach them to raise that skin like a flag and draw blood for it”. Violence and brutality are central concepts to ‘masculinity’; if boys believe these are the inherent characteristics of men, they will learn to perpetrate these same traits. Masculinity celebrates dominance; men then inflict this upon women, who are constantly subject to subordination by patriarchy. From this, notions develop of women being the ‘weaker’ sex; one whose worth is defined not by character, but by presentation. This is expanded on in Brown’s poetry piece, a response to YouTuber Nash Grier’s video on what men desire in women.