"Be A Man" - the sentence that almost all men and little boys have heard all their lives. And I wonder if you see the same image I see when I hear this phrase. I see a man - powerful, strong, violent, oppressive, private, and aggressive. If you see the same thing like me then you've cracked exactly what Toxic Masculinity means.
What is Toxic Masculinity?
First thing first, not all masculinity is toxic. The elements that are present to show that men are dominant over women or any other being are the parts that contribute to the toxic masculine culture. Toxic masculinity is the idea that society expects men to embrace behaviours and characteristics that make them seem more powerful but that can be harmful to women and other beings. Traits such as sexually aggressive, violent, unemotional, physically stronger, and more are just some of the layers of toxic masculinity. And in this highly Me-Too environment that we're living, toxic masculinity has no place.
Identifying Toxic Masculinity
It should be fairly easy to guess who embraces the negative masculine side. If a man sees women as mere objects, uses his power and position to inflict harm on the less powerful one, is violent, and cold, then you know you should stay as far as possible from this type of person. Men who exhibit characteristics of homophobia, misogyny, self-harm/suicide, or look down to men who take care of themselves and their physical appearance (which is regarded as highly feminine) are the ones who are preaching toxic masculinity. Sidenote: A research found that men in the UK spend more on makeup and beauty products on a monthly basis than women.
Now that I think about it, how many of you can 100% say that you have the same relationship with your father as with your mother? Yes, now you get what I say. Mothers are more caring, tender, and warm. Our fathers are maybe more violent, dominant, and probably colder. Looking back at it, our fathers cannot be blamed as they were only taught how to behave by their fathers who learned the same from theirs and so on.
Can Men Be Blamed?
A report from the American Psychological Association came up with some guidelines to help men and boys. These guidelines are based on their conclusions where they reported that boys and men receive harsher disciplines and treatments, face the most academic challenges, have mental issues but are never encouraged to seek help, and face a wide variety of other quality-of-life issues. So no, the whole blame cannot be entirely put on men, the number one suspect is SOCIETY.
Society has built these different constructs and boxes of how each person should behave and if they don't conform to any of the set guidelines, they are either shunned or push away. The society we dwell in plays a big part in building our character and shaping the person we become. Also, boys are taught from a young age through socialization to be self-reliant, strong, and to minimize and manage their problems on their own which in turns yield adult men who are less willing to seek help and use violence or dominance as their answer.
Positive Masculinity
As an alternative to toxic masculinity, the concept of positive masculinity has erupted which seeks to champion positive HUMAN traits associated with masculinity. These include strength, courage, bravery, valour, heroism, loyalty, self-reliance, fraternity, risk-taking and resilience, and importantly generative fatherhood which deals with caring, leading and mentoring.
Men can cry, they can share their problems without feeling weak, they can seek help, they can tell another man he looks great without it to be seen as gay, they can love spending time in the kitchen cooking, or playing with kids, or at the spa taking care of themselves. Men can do all the things that they were told they could not.
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