A review by lostwing
The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making by Jared Yates Sexton

Wow. This was nothing less than someone baring his whole soul. It feels invasive and presumptuous writing a review for something this personal tbh. What I really want to say is that I've read a lot of examinations of toxic white male patriarchy and masculinity written by anybody but white men; to read it from the perspective of a white man was of course very different and not in a bad way. Certainly this book answered questions I've often had as a WOC puzzled by, and in today's climate very fearful of white toxic masculinity. And I didn't necessarily like the answers. But I liked that there's someone, many someones, out there trying to warn of the damages and dangers. Someone doing the work of digging into the roots of the problems and working on solutions and having the difficult conversations in the communities that need to be having those conversations. I admire this author greatly for the bravery it must have taken to write this book. I hope this book reaches many different people because I think, living in the white patriarchal country in which we live, we all could learn something from it.