If you were to ask young men who came up with the term ‘toxic masculinity’, most would likely say that it was coined by feminists. In reality, the term was first used in the 80’s by a male poet called Shepherd Bliss who was seeking to find a way to describe the behaviour of his military, authoritative father.
Usage of term didn’t gain much traction until about five or so years ago when the fourth wave feminist movement latched on to it. Over that time it has been used as a battering ram to condemn any behaviour exhibited by men that is deemed intolerable. Violence against women? Toxic masculinity. High rates of male suicide? Toxic masculinity. Man opens his legs too far on public transport? Extremely toxic masculinity!
I’m not going to argue that there aren’t behaviours that are toxic. That would be absurd. What I will argue is that the blanket us of this term is serving to have the opposite affect its users would like; that of changing the behaviour of men.
The first issue with ‘toxic masculinity’ is that it is inaccurate. Let’s use violence against women as an example: we would all, I am sure, agree that there is far too much violence enacted against women by men in every country across the world. The reasons for gender-based violence are complex, but to simply label it as an example of ‘toxic masculinity’ shows a lack of understanding of the varied and complex factors at play.
Another issue is that men and boys are increasingly feeling attacked and shamed by the term. The vast majority of men rightly feel that masculinity is a core part of their identity. After all, there is nothing inherently wrong with masculinity itself. To have their own identity labelled as either partly or entirely toxic only serves to push them away from active engagement in important discussions. In short, if you tell me my very existence is part of the problem, how can you expect me to engage in any solutions.
The result of this is that younger men, feeling attacked as many do right now, are pushed in to the arms of the online manopshere. Influential voices on this subject are able to lure in disaffected men and boys with the simple message that they ‘reclaim their masculinity’ – then peddling the more dangerous rhetoric of misogyny and hatred, the likes of which we’ve seen explode in schools in the past year or so.
So, what is the alternative? Well, it’s important for us to address specific behaviours, but without shaming and blaming boys and men for being who they are. It may not be as pithy as ‘toxic masculinity’, but what we’re really talking about are the undesirable behaviours associated with societal pressures placed up men. Male suicide is not a toxic trait. It’s a trait associated with the pressure men have faced since being young boys of not being allowed to show weakness. You can blame it on masculinity if you want, but what if you were to learn that research has shown mum’s police the emotional responses of sons more than daughters from the age of two onwards? That’s not to do with masculinity, is it? Of course I’m not blaming women, either. This is a pan-societal issue.
In my masculinity workshops I ask attendees to name all the traits they can that are associated with ‘toxic masculinity’. The responses vary, but the most common ones are: violence, abuse, arrogance, controlling & selfishness. I’ve been doing this workshop for years and I’m yet to receive an answer that, in some way, doesn’t boil down to the need for men to show and assert their dominance. Because that’s the real culprit here. It’s not our masculinity, or our inherent maleness. It’s living in a culture where we have been taught, from the earliest possible age, that we must assert out dominance over everybody, at all times. And it is exhausting.
When I then ask men to share what it would be like to live in a world without the pressure to constantly feel dominant, the answer is always that they would feel free.
So let’s free men from demonising terminology that’s hindering progress and instead begin to work towards freeing more men from the grips of a dominance loop they can’t see any way out of.
