'Toxic Masculinity'

Submitted by Mastodon on Sat, 2013-04-13 11:04

Article here. Excerpt:

'It’s time for a serious intervention in masculinity. It’s not enough to not be a rapist. You don’t get a cookie or a Nobel Peace Prize for that. If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men who are willing to do the hard work required to unpack and interrogate the ideas of masculinity they were raised with, and to create and model new masculinities that don’t enable misogyny. Masculinities built not on power over women, but on power with women.

This is going to take real work, which is why so many men resist it. It requires destabilizing your own identity, and giving up attitudes and behaviors from which you’re used to deriving power, likely before you learn how to derive power from other, more just and productive places. There are real risks for men who challenge toxic masculinity, from social shaming to actual “don’t be a fag” violence—punishments that won’t ease until many, many men take the plunge. But there are great rewards to be had, too, beyond stopping rape. Toxic masculinity is damaging to men, too, positing them as stoic sex-and-violence machines with allergies to tenderness, playfulness, and vulnerability. A reinvented masculinity will surely give men more room to express and explore themselves without shame or fear. (It will also, not incidentally, reduce rape against men as well, because many rapes of men are committed by other men with the intention of “feminizing”—that is, humiliating through dominance—their victim.)'

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Comments

... some good observations, assuming you can put aside the problems in it. For example, men and boys still get pressured to conform to limiting stereotypes that when mixed with other factors can cause some to behave sociopathologically. For example, raise a boy to conform to a rigid stereotypically masculine image and then supplement it with violent sports (e.g.: football) training and in essence teach him to ignore his own pain/boundaries and those of others. Now add the high hormone level that comes of adolescence, immaturity, and alcohol, and you get: a far-greater chance he'll do something he shouldn't do, like start fights, commit rape, damage property, carry on in other disruptive ways, etc. But no guarantee. For every such boy that gets created under those conditions, those same ones produce a whole lot more who don't behave that way. (But in any case, nothing can excuse criminal behavior such as rape, robbery, etc. Some factors can help explain why certain ppl become criminals or behave criminally at some point in their lives, but these don't *excuse* the behavior.) But nonetheless should not this pattern be questioned for everyone's benefit?

The problem isn't so much "toxic masculinity" as it is "toxic child-rearing", particularly as it pertains to boys. Boys are people, too. Raise them a certain way, you get certain results. For example, in "less modern" place or venues, crimes of person or property tend to be a lot less frequent than in modern ones. This is moreso where use of inhibition-reducing substances (alcohol, for example) is either prohibited or restricted to more controlled venues. Parents in "less-modern" societies tend to pay a lot more attention to what their kids are taught and to their emotional needs. Consequently, they produce much-less criminally-inclined children. Now really, how much time are we devoting to raising the next generation? Very little. They're practically being left to raise themselves, and given things like social media and video games (desensitizing violent ones, too) to take the place of actual attention and affection from their parents.

All the on-line discussions abt "toxic masculinity" or anything else will have zero effect until or unless the fundamentals of child-rearing are restored. Bets on just when that'll happen?

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2013-04-13 19:22

Good points, Matt.

I couldn't help but think to myself just how many male criminals came from single parent households. The problem is not "toxic masculinity", or even a lack of male role models. It's these boys being separated from the male role models available to them by a society that just doesn't care.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Sat, 2013-04-13 20:18