Ours was called "Critical Issues in Modern Living." You didn't have to take it if you took two years of a foreign language. It was quite clearly and obviously intended for the underclass - a patronizing move by the school board to say "my kids are fine but your kids? Yeah, they're the ones we worry about."

I was in there because I graduated a semester early to get out of that shithole, which meant I only had a year and a half of a foreign language, which meant I had to take it. In one 45-minute class we covered "how to escape a hotel fire" (always book rooms on the first two floors) and "how not to catch AIDS" (always wear a condom, mmmmmkay).

If you were not in "Critical Issues in Modern Living" you got NOTHING.

So I get how everyone's all fuckin' horrified at the state of manlymanlyness and our acceptance of vulnerability in this modern era or some shit but FUCKING HELL IT'S NOT LIKE THAT'S NEW. I grew up playing "Smear the Queer" and had friends who liked to "beat up fags" for fun (spent a fine Friday evening evading the cops after he smashed up a convenience store while I was in the bathroom - everyone knew exactly who it was but because the convenience store clerk was hispanic no charges were ever filed) and things are SO MUCH BETTER now. But the kids are worse off in an entirely different direction: because so much of their lives are online they aren't learning how to deal with people face to face.

And that has been studied at length, and that has the backing of science and journalism, and that is something that has definitely changed for the worse, and that is definitely something with a negative impact on women

But because it's Orenstein, we get to wring our hands over "toxic masculinity."