I'm not 100% sure how if this belongs here but:
I personally think every Soriku-shipper should take a long walk on a short pier, so they could wash some sense into their heads.
I know I'm talking about a difficult subject. But I don't mind if some fans simply think Sora's & Riku's personalities would have a nice correlation, or if they wish their bromance would have something more in it. But actually stating that the ship is legit, and that Riku is the one Sora is meant to end up with is what makes me cringe. All the "proof" about Sora & Riku being gay is just taking scenes about those two characters out of context, and ignoring the obvious signs about Sora & Kairi. Those shippers are only "seeing" what they want to see.
And most important, I say the ship feeds the idea of toxic masculinity, trying to force a deep connection between two guys into something it was never meant to be. I especially loved how in the end of Kingdom Hearts 2, Sora and Riku were able to be so open with each other after all they had went trough. But this is a perfect example of why especially young guys in real life shun from the idea of expressing or talking about emotions: cause they have to be afraid of those, who take it as a sign of homosexuality/something that makes them less manly.
While I don't actually ship them (I basically don't ship anything in the series because ... the series doesn't do that justice very well), I have to disagree with a few points here.
First of all, EVERY shipper does basically only see what they want to see. Personally, I think the SoKai ship is one of the worst romances I've ever seen in any media because it's just so forced and bland. People ship Riku and Sora together because they have a lot in common, they have a deep connection (damn, Riku was in Sora's heart) and DDD is all over it with them constantly telling everyone how much they care about each other and how they miss each other and so on. Yes, you're right, you don't need to take that as a hint of them being gay, but I can see why people do and personally, I think they'd compliment each other well. SoKai is basically Kairi sending Sora cheesy letters in her head, Sora never thinking about her and only talking about Riku when they're supposedly having a moment (looking awkward as hell) and suddenly, they're supposed to be in love. Sort of. It has a reason that extra stuff was in the DLC, it was an afterthought. If anything, I felt KH3 disproved SoKai as a functional couple more than it proved it. Nomura doesn't care one bit about Kairi, so why would I? For Riku, Repliku wanted to protect Naminé and Riku respected that wish, I don't really see the sexual tension there. Anyway, this is not a shipping war.
I feel like you got toxic masculinity wrong ... toxic masculinity is a (usually manly) behaviour when people consider others less manly because of certain things, like displaying emotions. To put shippers in the same pot is just insulting ... I mean the problem here is not that people ship them - shippers ship anything that's been together on the screen for two seconds - it's that real people treat other real people worse because some part of some fandom who thinks two men loving each other (on whatever basis) is gay. At least that what you're implying, I guess. Basically your idea is people should stop shipping fictional characters as gay because it might imply that two good friends in reality are gay? Sounds pretty wild to me.
Guess what, I wish people would stop basically making love comments about every friendship between men and women. They CAN be friends. People are like that especially with hetero pairings and so often when someone brings up the possibility of a character being gay they yell "oh, you with your homosexuality! Why do you have to make everyone gay?" - I don't, I simply imply it's a possibility. Why do you have to make everyone hetero? With fictional characters we can ship whoever we want on whatever signs we want, shipping is simple fun. "Because 90% of the world's population is hetero!" - we can't know that for sure, like, we really can't (who even makes these large-scale guesses?) and even if they are, you might win statistically, but that doesn't disprove the idea the two characters we're talking about might be in the remaining 10%. That our society is heteronormative is not exactly healthy and shouldn't be a point of an argument.
So, if people treat two good friends worse because they imply they might be gay and on top of that, imply that makes them any less manly, this is nowhere the fault of shippers, it's solely the fault of those awful people. THAT'S a sign of toxic masculinity, not shipping. Toxic masculinity is basically punishing shippers for their (playful) opinion while harassing real life people and putting the blame for that on someone else.
Riku being gay or not has nothing to do with him being manly or not, something he also doesn't have to be if he doesn't feel like it. Also, me thinking Sora and Riku might be a good couple doesn't make any two guys in the real world gay, that's just excessive and if anything, people should take Sora and Riku as poster childs of a lovely connection (of any sort). If people would stop seeing emotions between men as "unmanly" and thus as baaad, we wouldn't even have a discussion about this.