#MasculinitySoFragile

Submission 31,005

About

#MasculinitySoFragile is a Twitter hashtag used to call out and mock stereotypical male behaviors that align with the feminist concept of "toxic masculinity," which asserts that certain attributes of the Western machismo archetype can be self-detrimental to those who embrace them.

Origin

Starting on December 2nd, 2013, Twitter user @puppydogexpress^[10] posted several tweets with the hashtag #MascunilinitySoFragile, which contained jokes referring to the word masculinity as if it were a frail human being (shown below).

For nearly two years, the hashtag was seldom used. On June 16th, 2015, BuzzFeed^[1] published a listicle featuring tweets mocking the target demographic for products and advertisements featuring stereotypically macho packaging, brand names and slogans (shown below).

Spread

On September 23rd, BuzzFeed^[5] published another compilation of tweets mocking products displaying overtly macho themes (shown below).

That day, Twitter users began using the hashtag #MasculinitySoFragile^[2] in tweets mocking American machismo culture (shown below). Meanwhile, several news sites published articles about the hashtag, including Bustle,^[12] AskMen,^[3] The Mary Sue^[13] and Mic.^[14] According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy,^[22] the hashtag was mentioned over 80,800 times in the first 24 hours.

Meanwhile, other Twitter users began hijacking the hashtag with sarcastic tweets mocking social justice issues.^[7]^[8] Additionally, critics of feminism began posting similar tweets with the hashtag #FeminismSoFragile^[9] (shown below).

On 4chan that day, a thread about the hashtag was submitted to the /pol/^[6] (politics) board, where many accused the tweets of being a type of flamebait. Also on September 23rd, Redditor frozen-silver submitted a post titled "Some irony from the #MasculinitySoFragile" to /r/TumblrInAction,^[4] featuring a screenshot of a #MasculinitySoFragile post juxtaposed next to tweets defending the use of trigger warnings (shown below).