"I’m not on board with this modern trend of telling men that they should act less like men. I dream of a world where the beer is cheap and plentiful, violence can still be an acceptable solution to life’s problems...”
-Introduction to "Manly Guys Doing Manly Things."
There is a constant pressure on men to act manly arising out this is the ugly idea of toxic masculinity. So what is toxic masculinity and why should you care? It is the harmful way men have tried to assert their masculinity in fear of failing to satisfy a perceived notion of manliness by shunning things that are effeminate and unmanly or engaging themselves in destructive behavior. It is the absurd idea that instantly places a person into instant adversarial relationships with everybody they meet. Placing other men as competition and women as part of the prize of winning. The effects of it have permeated into daily life, both private and public.
On a micro level, I’ve seen toxic masculinity in action from a very young age. The first time I learned about the concept of someone being gay, it was used as an insult. When I first joined my high school wrestling team, there were a couple of members who peppered me with some of the most hateful profanity I’ve heard heard for also being in choir. I’ve seen intelligence, emotion and sensitivity discarded in favor of hate and rage. On a macro level, toxic masculinity can be see in many places from Donald Trump’s ravings about the size of his appendages to the fetishization of certain aspects of gun and military culture and most certainly having a part of play to in shootings like Columbine and Orlando.
When the topic of toxic masculinity comes up, it is decried as an attack on all things male; a declaration of masculinity as evil. That is not true. Masculinity is not inherently a bad thing; strength, confidence and assertiveness are all celebrated qualities. The criticisms of masculinity are always centered on other aspects such as the vigorous application of violence and aggression. Violence and aggression are natural and can feel oddly satisfying in a cathartic fashion. There are many different healthy outlets to let those emotions out such as sports, martial arts or even video games. The problem arises when violent aggression is seen as the silver bullet to solve all of life's problems.
There’s a concept called the weakness of strength that theorizes that with every strength an individual has there is also an associated weakness. This can be aptly applied to masculinity. Aren’t violence and aggression simply an unchecked application of strength and assertiveness to a harmful level? As a society we can’t prize power and control without accepting the fact that we are inviting the more negative and abusive aspects of these qualities to come to the forefront. Not because these qualities of power of control are bad but because the way people apply them allow room in a spectrum for their negative counterparts.
I believe that toxic masculinity is just a part of a larger problem that occurs when there is a distinct dissonance between idealized societal standards of how people should act and the reality that people are all imperfect and different. The world would be a much better place if we could accept that while we should aspire to certain virtues, a person shouldn’t be ashamed for fulfilling these traits in a non traditional way or sometimes failing to live up to them at all. Even more so, all of the qualities that I have listed both good and bad aren’t owned by the male gender. Perceptions of gender are constantly shifting. A decade from now, traditional notions of what constitutes the spectrum of masculine or feminine will most certainly have changed. Perhaps there will never be a proper way to describe the differences between people, but I hope there will be a willingness to accept whatever changes may come.
