Masculinities
Here's to all the real men out
there...
Boys play house, men build homes
Boys shack up, men get married.
Boys make babies, men raise children
A boy won't raise his own children, a man will raise someone
else's.
Boys invent excuses for failure, men produce strategies for
success.
Boys look for somebody to take care of them, men look for
someone to take care of.
Boys seek popularity, men demand respect and know how to
give it.
Boys will be what we teach them to
be.
TED Talks
(11)
A Different
Perspective (25)
What
Women Want ( (4)
Modern
Masculinity (59+ 4)
Men Return from
World War I & II (24)
Michael
Kimmel - 2013 (4)
The
ManKind Project - A Viable
Option (59)
Sigma
Sales (29)
Boys
will be Boys Memes (16)
Breaking
Points (3)
Alison
Armstrong (My best teacher
ever!) (10)
Sandy
Dawn Moore - Men Matter
(9)
Richard
Reeves (10)
Impact
Theroy - Tom Bilyeu (9)
Modern
Wisdom - Chris Williamson
(53)
Scott
Galloway (6)
Male
Loneliness (8)
Toxic
Masculinity (4)
Incels -
Involuntary Celebite (3)
Instagram/TikTok
Shorts (4)
Alpha
Central - Reality Check
(7)
Brett
Cooper (2)
Population
Collapse - Birthgap
Sexless
Men
|
TED Talks
|
 1:31:51
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18:20
|
18:07
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11:10
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10:54
|
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The Mask You Live
In
|
Unmasking masculinity --
helping boys become connected men | Ryan
McKelley
|
The Mask of Masculinity -
the traditional role of men is evolving | Connor
Beaton
|
Social support and how to
get it
|
How to fight fair with
assertive communication
|
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12:50
|
2:38
|
3:07
|
11:45
|
11:13
|
|
The Boy Crisis: A Sobering
look at the State of our Boys | Warren
Farrell
|
Dads — Official
Trailer
|
Boys Don’t
Cry
|
A call to men | Tony
Porter
|
A call to
men
|
|
12:56
|
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How movies
teach manhood
|
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A Different
Perspective
|
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54:24
|
42:15
|
15:56
|
24:21
|
1:35:03
|
|
Jordan B Peterson on
masculinity and the plight of young men -
10/31/18
|
'Masculinity is essential
to society' – full Interview | Modern
Masculinit 5/10/19
|
When you're not working you
don't feel like a man | Modern Masculinity
11/25/20
|
The Insidious War on Men:
The Destruction of Masculinity -
12/5/20
|
The absolute necessity of
fathers: Warren Farrell - 5/6/18
|
|
18:31
|
13:08
|
13:34
|
48:02
|
4:02
|
The Insidious 'Toxic
Masculinity' Myth is Damaging Humanity
2/8/19
|
How barbershops can keep
men healthy 6/20/16
|
The Men of the Future
Discuss Toxic Masculinity 11/13/21
|
Where Have All the Good Men
Gone? 9/3/19
|
How babies were raised in
the 1970's
4/3/21
|
|
31:05
|
10:14
|
10:07
|
|
23:21
|
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Funny Gender Reveal Fails
|
Dads Being Dads for 10
Minutes Straight
|
Reasons Why Dads Are THE
BEST
|
Hot Dads
|
Funny Dad play with Babies
Fails
|
|
10:01
|
10:17
|
13:10
|
36:23
|
59:16
|
|
This Is Why I Am
Fearless
|
Let's talk about what men
can learn about masculinity from
women
|
Why Are Violent Killers
Almost Always Men?
|
Call To
Men
|
Breaking out of the Man
Box: Gender-Based Violence
|
|
2:01:36
|
4:15
|
1:15:59
|
6:22
|
1:53:49
|
|
Breaking The Male Code:
After Steubenville,
|
The Roles Men
Play
|
MINIMALISM
|
Scholar identifies alarming
trends among US men - CNN
|
#1 reason the rate of
single men looking for dates has declined.
|
|
41:56
|
12:15
|
18:18
|
14:51
|
41:40
|
|
Black
Men's Round Table | Masculinity
|
Young men are turning their
backs on society in record numbers
Important
|
Society Has Failed
Men
|
Men are the enemy or so I
thought - Listen Closely The Red Pill
Film
|
Are you man enough to get
through this and tear? Jason was.
|
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What
Women Want
|
|
6:49
|
3:10
|
7:31
|
|
2:27
|
|
Do Women Want Men With
Money?
|
What women ACTUALLY WANT
off a man
|
Why Do Women Run When Men
Have Financial Problems?
|
|
The Husband Store: A
Hilarious Journey to Find the Perfect
Man!
|
|
Modern
Masculinity
|
|
18:42
|
10:12
|
13:38
|
12:55
|
14:50
|
|
Affection Between Men was
Normal in the 1940s: Why Did Things
Change?
|
Boys won’t be boys.
Boys will be what we teach them to be -
1/7/19
|
What makes a man?
5/16/19 E3
|
Masculinity is not what you
see on TV' |
5/30/19 E4
|
‘Respect is a two-way
thing’
6/13/19
|
|
16:02
|
18:07
|
18:20
|
17:32
|
25:25
|
|
What Does "Be a Man" Really
Mean? - 1/31/19
|
The Mask of Masculinity -
the traditional role of men is evolving
1/16/16
|
Unmasking masculinity --
helping boys become connected men
|
Boys will be
boys
|
The barbershop where men go
to heal
Must
see!
|
|
18:18
|
14:15
|
9:59
|
14:25
|
15:05
|
Redefining masculinity
10/28/14
|
Be A Man
2/20/13
|
The Masks We All Wear -
11/1/16
|
Expanding Masculinity:
Moving Beyond Boys Will Be Boys -
8/18/15
|
The Data Men Miss
6/3/16
|
|
17:44
|
24:25
|
16:05
|
14:13
|
17:11
|
|
Suffering in Silence: The
Emotional Abuse of Men 6/10/16
|
Why boys are failing? -
7/30/15
|
Reimagining masculinity; my
journey as a male sexual assault survivo
4/2/18
|
Men Need To Talk About
Their Sexual Abuse 12/13/17
|
Breaking the Boys Code of
Masculinity
4/28/11
|
|
7:40
|
9:23
|
8:55
|
14:08
|
8:54
|
|
My search for masculinity:
- 8/3/12
|
Boys to men -- myth and
masculinity - 7/7/14
|
The Myth of Masculine
Isolation - 10/25/19
|
Masculinity needs a reboot
5/23/19
|
The male identity crisis
6/21/19
|
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17:53
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5:06
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32:55
|
2:10:25
|
16:57
|
|
Why big boys don't cry
8/15/18
|
The West Has Lost Faith In
Masculinity - 1/5/18
|
Masculinity is not toxic" -
part 2 - 1/26/18
|
Toxic Masculinity - A 12
Rules for Life Lecture 10/2/20
|
Tackling The Boy Crisis |
Michael Kimmel 6/14/16
|
|
10:24
|
17:32
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8:49
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59:44
|
11:00
|
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My boyfriend isn’t
allowed to cry unfortunately.
|
Boys will be
boys
|
Jordan Peterson talks
MASCULINITY with Russell Brand
7/22/21
|
Russell Brand VS Jordan
Peterson: Part #3 - 4/17/21
|
Real
Men
|
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17:11
|
37:18
|
29:45
|
20:49
|
12:50
|
|
Why Aren't Men Getting
Married Anymore? And Where Have the Manly Men Gone?
11/9/21
|
Is There A War On Men? Part
1 - 6/10/16
|
A world without fathers? -
6/11/16 Part 2
Some Religious Overtones
|
The War on Boys
4/16/17
|
The Boy Crisis: A Sobering
look at the State of our Boys
10/19/15
|
|
16:19
|
14:13
|
12:35
|
9:26
|
5:38
|
|
Breaking the Silence of
Male Trauma Survivors - 11/15/18
|
Men Need To Talk About
Their Sexual Abuse - 12/13/17
|
Domestic abuse: not a
gender issue - 1/28/20
|
Domestic Violence from a
Son's Perspective - 1/9/18
|
Alienating Young Men is
Deeply Sad - 1/17/18
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11:20
|
9:33
|
10:42
|
42:56
|
4:38
|
|
Jordan Peterson: What
low-status highly creative men need -
|
6 Things Women Need to Know
About Men - 10/8/21
|
5 Male Personality Types
RANKED! (Which one are you?)
|
What Are
Women?
|
5 Brutal Truthsd About
Masculine Men - 11/19/21
|
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18:32
|
10:28
|
18:10
|
46:30
|
1:30
|
|
Trained not to cry: the
challenge of being a soldier
|
interview about global
masculinity
|
He Reveals What 1950s
"Real" Men Thought & Felt & Did &
Didn't Do.
|
What men do.
It's almost automatic.
|
ManKind Project USA -
Healthy Men's Community
|
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8:50
|
1:57:46
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43:15
|
1:10:38
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MORE
|
|
Malehood
|
The
Red Pill
Full Documentary
|
"Be A Man”: Modernists
and Traditionalists Debate Masculinity
(1)
|
The most dangerous creation
of society is the man who has nothing to
lose.
|
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Men
Return from World War I &
II
|
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6:57
|
7:28
|
22;23
|
18:20
|
7:09
|
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American MEN in the 1940s
Communicated STRENGTH and RESPECT - Where Are We
Now?
|
Changing Attitudes Towards
Public Nudity in Men's Spaces,
1940s-Present
|
Going SHIRTLESS could get
you ARRESTED in 1934: How Men Normalized Bare
Chests in the 1930s
|
Open Affection Between Men
was Normal in the 1940s: Why Did Things
Change?
|
From Brotherhood to
Autonomy: How Men's Camaraderie & Body Image
Changed Post-1940s
|
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9:29
|
9:36
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46:00
|
9;50
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12:52
|
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From Skinny Dipping at the
"Y" to Board Shorts: Men's Ideas of Body Image
& Privacy from the 1940s
|
Did the YMCA turn its back
on young men by going co-ed?
|
In the 1940s, American MEN
were masters of their OWN fates. What
happened?
|
In the 1940s, SEX for
American men was an Activity not an identity. What
happened?
|
Men in Nature: Blackie
& Buddies' 1950s Photos of Camping, Swimming,
Boats, Adventure, & BROTHERHOOD
*
|
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11:47
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10:53
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19:45
|
5:58
|
10:53
|
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Reviving MEN'S UNITY:
Insights from American Masculinity of the
1940s
|
Naked Beasts: American
Men's Physiques from 1940s-Present
|
Naked Brotherhood No More:
The Dismantling of Men's Fraternal Spaces
Post-1940s
|
From Skinny Dipping at the
"Y" to Board Shorts: Men's Ideas of Body Image
& Privacy
|
How sex as identity rather
than activity segmented American men
post-1940s.
The Blue Spectrum
|
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18:28
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27:48
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52:53
|
18:07
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From Fit to Flab: the
American Male Physique Since the
1940s
|
Off Duty: How American Men
in the Military Spent Free Time in the
1940s
|
What would MASCULINITY be
in the Western world WITHOUT Judeo-Christianity?
|
Brylcreem, Liberty Cuffs,
& Tattoos: Navy Sailor Personal Style in the
1940s-50s
|
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26:15
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1:00:01
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59:55
|
58:38
|
17:39
|
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Home Front: America in the
1940s
|
The Homefront 1940 to 1941
- - Volume 3
|
The Homefront 1942 to 1943
- Volume 2
|
The Homefront 1944 to 1945
- Volume 3
|
The 1950s: Ameerica Hot and
Cold
|
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Michael
Kimmel - 2013
|
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27:00
|
27:00
|
27:00
|
7:01
|
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Part 1
|
Part 2
|
Part 3
|
Part 4
|
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The
ManKind Project - A Viable
Option
|
|
28:02
|
10:26
|
1:30
|
22:20
|
10:42
|
|
Mankind Project - Bill
Kauth, Founder on "Like WOW!" Ashland
Oregon
|
ManKind Project - South
Africa - the truth about MKP
|
ManKind Project USA -
Healthy Men's Community
|
ManKind Project / NWTA
Origin Story
|
Wentworth Miller Talks
About Coming Out and ManKind
Project
|
|
4:36
|
4:35
|
7:03
|
2:23
|
5:53
|
|
Brandon Clift - Before and
After the New Warrior Training
|
ManKind Project on TODAY
Show with Maria Shriver
|
ManKind Project NZ - the
truth about MKP - ruthless real
honest
|
BrothaHood Intro Video -
Jermaine Johnson
|
The ManKind Project - Break
through your fears! Make life count
|
|
17:21
|
32:33
|
29:55
|
4:12
|
7:32
|
|
The ManKind Project Durango
- Changing the World
|
- ManKind Project USA
Interview
|
"Out of Our Heads"
interview with Leo Horrigan & Sparrow
Hart
|
the Men's Work 3 Week
Course Intro
|
ManKind Project LA - the
truth about MKP - see for yourself
|
|
34:30
|
2:26
|
9:19
|
1:12:18
|
24:50
|
|
About Men Film - Interview
with Maja Bugge
|
Mark Rowley talks about the
New Warrior Training Adventure
|
ManKind Project NWTA
Homecoming | Warrior Films
|
Animus Valley Institute and
the ManKind Project in 2018
|
Introducing the Next Step
Training - ManKind Project USA
|
|
9:35
|
10:31
|
3:11
|
4:23
|
4:08
|
|
ManKind Project - Hawaii -
Brotherhood of Men in Paradise
|
The Oldest New Warrior in
the Brotherhood - Gordon Becker
Interview
|
the Men's Work GBTQ Intro
Video
|
ManKind Project - the truth
- Fatherhood & Discovery
|
ManKind Project Open Men's
Groups
|
|
1:15:14
|
1:46:12
|
1:12:10
|
47:23
|
1:16:17
|
|
Luis Rodriguez Interview |
Warrior Films | Rites of Passage
|
Chike Nwoffiah Interview |
Warrior Films | Spiritual Warriors
|
Starhawk, Fifth Sacred
Thing Interview | Warrior Films | Rites of
Passage
|
Robert Bly Interview |
Warrior Films | Rites of Passage
|
Michael Meade Interview |
Warrior Films | Rites of Passage
|
|
Sigma
Males
|
|
5:31
|
19:19
|
9:34
|
10:40
|
10:04
|
|
Sigma Male Test | 9 Quick
Questions
|
14 Characteristics of a
Sigma Male | The Lone Wolf
|
15 Signs You're a "SIGMA"
Male \& Is it Better Than
"ALPHA"?
|
10 Signs You’re a
Sigma Male
|
The Power of Silence: Why
Silent People Are Successful
|
|
12:39
|
8:06
|
8:05
|
8:04
|
4:36
|
|
Top 10 Sigma Male Traits |
Signs You’re a Sigma Male
|
Sigma Male as a Father |
Lone Wolf or Cool Dad?
|
The Childhood Struggles of
Sigma Males (The Dark Truth)
|
What Makes a Sigma Male The
Best Father? | The Cool Dad
|
Why Sigma Males WALK Alone?
- 1/7/22
|
|
6:21
|
11:20
|
9:38
|
8:05
|
8:43
|
|
10 Reasons The World is
AGAINST Sigma Males
|
The Unique Social Media of
Sigma Males | Notes From a Sigma
Male
|
Why All Women Want a Sigma
Male
|
How Sigma Males Approach
Women
|
10 Things a Sigma Male Will
Do When Rejected
|
|
8:36
|
8:46
|
7:50
|
8:08
|
11:51
|
|
10 Types of Women Sigma
Males Would ALWAYS Date
|
15 Things Sigma Male
Absolutely Hates
|
5 Things Sigma Males Hate
Most About Women
|
8 Normal Things Sigma Males
Do That Women Can't Resist
|
10 IRRESISTIBLE Sigma Male
Traits That Women Can't Resist
|
|
8:14
|
8:38
|
8:06
|
9:31
|
10:34
|
|
Sigma Male Quotes that Will
Change the way You Think
|
How Sigma Males CHASE Their
Dreams
|
10 Things Sigma Males NEED
From Women
|
10 Red Flags In Dating That
Sigma Males Never Ignore
|
Gamma Males Explained |
Fake Sigma Males?
|
|
5:09
|
8:03
|
8:54
|
9:22
|
|
Sigma Males
1O COMMANDMENTS
|
How Sigma Males Find Their
Soulmate
|
9 Ways Sigma Males Can
Improve Their Emotional
Intelligence
|
The Body Language of Sigma
Male
|
|
|
Boys
will be Boys Memes
|
|
9:09
|
7:20
|
8:20
|
8:22
|
7:17
|
|
# 26 -
1/1/22
|
# 27 -
1/8/22
|
# 28 -
1/13/22
|
# 29 -
1/19/22
|
# 30 -
1/25/22
|
|
8:33
|
7:38
|
9:18
|
8:33
|
|
|
#31 -
1/31/22
|
#32 -
2/6/22
|
#32 -
2/12/22
|
# 33 -
2/19/22
|
Traditional Masculinity -
Step-Fathers - 2023
|
|
17:04
|
13:545
|
11:14
|
31:50
|
5:58
|
|
Male Loneliness: No One
Cares - 8/29/18
|
25 Years Old: I Have NO
Friends...I Have Social Anxiety -
8/5/20
|
No Friends No Family and
Left Behind In Life - 2/9/21
|
21 Years Old With No
Friends And Social Anxiety - 10/12/20
|
An old man's advice.
|
|
50:27
|
1:03:55
|
1:20:38
|
|
|
|
Analysis of 10 boy-girl
fights - Why are they so harmful?
|
Dr Carole Hooven Interview
On Testosterone, Harvard Cancellation, NoFap &
More
|
What Makes Men And Women
Different? - Dr Carole Hooven | Modern Wisdom
Podcast 544
|
|
|
|
Breaking
Points
|
|
19:40
|
16:09
|
9:57
|
|
|
|
Time For Left To ADMIT
Boys, Men Are In CRISIS
|
Men In CRISIS As They Drop
Out Of Workforce
|
WAPO columnist: Men are
'lost' - CNN
|
|
|
|
Alison
Armstrong Videos (My best teacher
ever!)
|
|
47:06
|
53:17
|
1:24:51
|
1:01:13
|
2:57:36
|
|
She Studied Men For 30
Years and Taught Me Everything
|
Men Are Experts on
Femininity Because They Need It
|
Why Criticism Never Works
(And Why We Do It Anyway
|
Become a Better Dater with
Alison Armstrong
|
"The Queen's
Code"
|
|
1:08:30:
|
50:49
|
49:47
|
31:39
|
1:26:08
|
|
The Secret Sauce to
Relationships
|
Become a KING with Alison
Armstrong
|
Understand Men & Listen
To Men!
|
Men Do Things (We Don't
Understand)
|
What Women Don't Understand
About Men
|
|
Men
Matter - Sarah Dawn Moore
|
|
14;57
|
17:07
|
17:17
|
42:07
|
13:41
|
|
No One Understands What Men
Are Going Through. Here's Why.
|
10 Signs Of A Low
Value Woman
|
5 Reasons Why Men Are Going
Their Own Way
|
Why Women Are Standing Up
For Men
|
Why Men Are Going Their Own
Way (MGTOW Explained)
|
|
13:56
|
15:30
|
19:33
|
15:30
|
|
|
10 Lies Women Were Told
About Men
|
7 Double Standards Men Face
(And Women Don’t)
|
How To recognize A TOXIC
Relationship (and what to do about
it)
|
7 Double Standards Men Face
(And Women Don’t)
|
|
|
Richard
Reeves
|
|
15:06
|
59:58
|
2:01:34
|
1:36>21
|
2:18:441
|
|
Male inequality, explained
by an expert | Richard Reeves
|
The Boys Are Not All
Right.
What Could Go Right?
|
How Modern Life Is Making
Men & Women INFERTILE | Shanna
Swan
|
How to Turn Boys Into Men
in the Modern World Richard Reeves
|
Why the Modern Male Is
Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About
It
|
|
7:24
|
15:06
|
57:56
|
1:33:58
|
|
|
Liz Plank & Richard
Reeves Debate Gender Inequality
|
Male inequality, explained
by an expert | Richard Reeves
|
"Of Boys and Men", February
22, 2023
|
Are Men Done? They Are
Failing at School, Work, and Life.
|
Are Incels A Threat To
Society? - William Costello
|
|
Impact
Theroy - Tom Bilyeu
|
|
2:56:52
|
1:53:49
|
2:03:48
|
3:07:1
|
2:18:41
|
|
DESTROYING SOCIETY: Why
Woke Culture Has Gone TOO FAR... | Konstantin
Kisin
|
#1 REASON The Rate Of
SINGLE MEN In The US Looking For Dates Has DECLINED
| Chris Williamson
|
MATING CRISIS:
The Biggest Problems Keeping Men & Women
SINGLE... | Stephan Speaks
|
Justin (J.)
Waller
|
Richard
Reeves
|
|
3:30:41
|
1:04:40
|
2:54:13
|
|
1:36:46
|
|
Mastering Sex, Power,
Gender Roles, & The Secret to Maintaining
Relationships That Last | Sadia
Khan
|
David Goggins on How He
Became Unstoppable and Doing the
Unthinkable
|
MATING CRISIS: Why The Rate
Of Single Men Looking For Dates Has DECLINED |
William Costello
|
|
SEX RECESSION: The Dangers
Of Modern Dating & Why NOBODY Is Having Sex
Anymore | Emily Morse
|
|
Modern
Wisdom - Chris Williamson
|
|
14.52
|
1:31:36
|
1:34:13
|
1:20:40
|
1:44:12
|
|
Record Men Are Dropping Out
Of College (and it’s terrible for
women)
|
Why Is The Modern Dating
Market A Mess? - Vincent Harinam
|
5 Forbidden Topics That
Psychology Won’t Discuss - Dr Cory Clark
665
|
Why Are People Falling In
Love With Robots? - Rob Brooks
|
Feminism Is No Longer
Helping Women - Mary Harrington 596
|
|
1:18:32
|
1:30:22
|
1:18:26
|
1:22:58
|
1:23:26
|
|
What Use Are Female
Friendships? - Dr Tania Reynolds
|
Why Is No One Having Sex? -
Alex DatePsych
|
The Mystery Of Female Sex
Drive - Roy Baumeister
|
Ugly Psychology Truths No
One Wants To Admit - Adam Lane
Smith
|
Dating, Sex, Porn - Danica
Patrick, Pretty Intense
|
|
1:32:23
|
1:05:57
|
2:13:00
|
2:11:04
|
1:20:38
|
|
The Dark Side Of Casual
Relationships - Louise Perry
|
How To Succeed In The
Modern Dating Market - Sadia Khan
|
#1 Dating Coach Reveals The
Red Flags Everyone Should Know - Matthew
Hussey
|
Surviving The Cancellation
Apocalypse Andrew Schulz -
|
What Makes Men And Women
Different? - Dr Carole Hooven
|
|
1:ll:05
|
1:03:27
|
1:25:44
|
1:02:43
|
1:48:13
|
|
How Do
Women Compete For Partners? - Joyce Benenson
571
|
What Are Women Actually
Attracted To? - Catherine Salmon
|
The Crisis Of Modern
Masculinity - Nina Power
|
What Is The Manosphere
Getting Wrong? - Destiny
|
A World Of Unusual Sexual
Orientations - Dr James Cantor
|
|
3:13:35
|
2:43::35:
|
1:29:06
|
1:20:49
|
1:33:22
|
|
Why Can No One Agree On The
Truth Anymore? Eric Weinstein
|
The Secret Hacks For Living
A Fulfilled Life - Jimmy Carr
|
The Terrifying Impact Of
Single-Parent Households 689 - Melissa
Kearney
|
Are Women In Charge Of The
Dating Market? - Jon Birger
|
Does The World Actually
Want Vulnerable Men? - 692 - Connor
Beaton
|
|
1:25:01
|
1:03:33
|
1:41:26
|
1:27:32
|
7:52
|
|
Why Are Differences Between
Men & Women Being Denied? - David Geary
622
|
How To Reset Your Brain's
Dopamine Balance - Anna Lembke
|
An Evolutionary
Psychologist's Dating Advice - Geoffrey
Miller
|
15 Harsh Psychology Truths
- Adam Lane Smith
|
These Factors Predict
Divorce With 80% Accuracy - Sadia
Khan
|
|
1:21:20
|
55:08
|
2:04:58
|
1:25:01
|
1:10:35
|
|
Activists Are Trying To Get
This Researcher Banned - Michael
Bailey
|
Why Do Millions Of Men Not
Want To Work? Nicholas Eberstadt
|
The Metrics That Matter
Most For Longevity - Dr Peter Attia
|
Why Are Differences Between
Men & Women Being Denied? - David
Geary
|
Does Anyone Care About
Men's Mental Health? - - 445 - Matt
Rudd
|
|
1:21:29
|
1:52:59
|
1:01:48
|
1:02:16
|
12:24
|
|
How Men Compete For Status
- Rob Henderson
|
How To Master Your Life
David Goggins
|
Why Is This Generation
Struggling So Much? - Scott
Galloway
|
Why Fathers Matter - Dr
Anna Machin
|
Do single parent households
actually hurt a child's future? - Melissa
Kearney
|
|
2:07:59
|
12:43
|
1:33:22
|
1:07:47
|
11:33
|
|
Why Is Modern Dating Such A
Mess? Sadia Khan
|
Why Is Supporting Men Seen
As A Threat To Women? Connor Beaton
|
Why Men Are Struggling With
Mental Health - 692 Connor Beaton
|
Did The Sexual Revolution
Actually Benefit Women? - Mary
Eberstadt
|
The Shocking Reasons Why
People Cheat In Relationships - Sadia
Khan
|
|
12:05
|
7:12
|
18:25
|
1:40:07
|
1:09:14
|
|
What Happens When Girls
Grow Up Without A Father? - Sadia
Khan
|
Dating Coach Explains Why
Nice Guys Actually Finish Last
|
50% Of Men Have Given Up On
Women Entirely
|
Why Has Everyone Given Up
On Dating?
Alex DatePsych
|
Modern Society Is Failing
Men & Women - Mary Harrington -
444
|
|
1:29:06
|
1:33:22
|
1:39:07
|
1:13:46
|
10:56
|
|
The Terrifying Impact Of
Single-Parent Households - Melissa Kearney
689
|
Does The World Actually
Want Vulnerable Men? - Connor Beaton
692
|
Are Women Actually Happy
With Modern Dating? - Louise Perry
|
Men Aren't Having Enough
Sex - Zack Telander
|
The Number of Sexless Men
Has Tripled in 10 Years
|
|
1:33:41
|
1:25:21
|
1:14:26
|
1:15:32
|
|
|
Why Do The Left Not Care
About Men’s Problems? - George TheTinMen |
658
|
Is Population Collapse A
Real Risk? - Stephen J. Shaw | Modern Wisdom
Podcast 583
|
The Rise And Fall Of The
Girlboss Meme - Katherine Dee | Modern Wisdom
Podcast 606
|
Why Does Modern Cinema Suck
So Much? - Critical Drinker | Modern Wisdom Podcast
591
|
|
|
Scott
Galloway
|
|
58:25
|
1:23:36
|
48:24
|
1:56:19
|
13:01
|
|
Why Young Men Are In
Decline, And What To Do
|
College shouldn’t be a
luxury brand. Scott Galloway joins.
|
The Four - What To
Do
|
“It’s An
Emergency!” The Number Of Men Having No Sex
Increased 180%!
|
Scott Galloway’s
Honest Take On Andrew Tate & "Toxic"
Masculinity
|
|
1:29:36
|
|
|
|
|
|
Your Passion is Only For
The Rich + What to Do Instead w/Jennifor
Cohen
|
|
|
|
|
|
Male
Loneliness
|
|
6:44
|
20:50
|
5:38
|
20:30
|
11:40
|
|
Toxic Masculinity In Boys
Is Fueling An Epidemic Of Loneliness -
1/18/18
|
The Loneliness Epidemic -
4/23/19
|
Men Read Other Men's
Deepest Secrets 3/15/19
|
I'm 25 Years Old And I Have
No Friends - 5/8/21
|
I'm 31 And Have No Friends
- 4/14/21
|
|
45:57
|
1:17:22
|
19:55
|
21:58
|
3:59
|
|
You are a 25 Year Old
Loner
|
Does Anyone Care About Male
Loneliness? - Max Dickins
|
Default life for men is
likely alone. It's better to adjust to that sooner
rather than later.
|
The Male Loneliness
Epidemic
|
How Do You Get That Lonely
- Blaine Larsen
|
|
1:18:07
|
21:58
|
26:22
|
20:08
|
22:41
|
|
Stop Victim Blaming
Men
|
The Male Loneliness
Epidemic
|
“Men Deserve To Be
Lonely!” Responding To Backlash Over ‘The
Male Loneliness Epidemic’
|
If You're Antisocial AND
Lonely... Do THIS
|
Hikikomori: Boys
severe social withdrawal and "Rental
Sisters"
|
|
29:56
|
|
|
|
|
|
Why A Lot of Modern Women
are Delusional | And The Male
Loneliness
|
|
|
|
|
|
Female
Loneliness
|
|
8:19
|
50:23
|
11:47
|
35:19
|
20:25
|
|
A Loneliness Epidemic Has
TAKEN OVER Modern Women
|
A Perspective on Female
Loneliness
|
Epidemic Of Loneliness In
Modern Women | The Wall
|
Women Are Struggling With
Loneliness And No Commitment From Men As They Age
Out
|
Can we solve women being
lonely? Or should they finally accept reality and
change?
|
Loneliess
- Generally
Increases the risk of heart disease (29%); stroke
(32%) and for older people dementia (50%), or
heart
|
|
1:36:41
|
|
|
|
57:54
|
|
How We Became the Loneliest
Generation | Asmongold Reacts
|
|
|
|
Toxic Femininity: The 4
Dark Truths Nobody Told You.
|
|
Toxic
Masculinity
Toxic
Femininity
|
|
9:08
|
3913
|
18:26
|
14:21
|
2:57:03
|
|
Students at Georgetown U
Hate Toxic Masculinity But Can't Define
It12/8/21
|
For the boys, psychological
patriarchy & toxic masculinity
explained
|
Is This What It's Like To
Be A Man In 2023?
|
Stop Calling it 'Toxic
Masculinity' | Reece MacKinney
|
Should Modern Women Fear
Men?
|
|
Incels
- Involuntary Celebite
|
|
1:25:59
|
1:02:02
|
1:12:53
|
1:18:07
|
|
|
Are Incels A Threat To
Society? - William Costello
|
The Truth About
Incels
|
Investigating The Incel
Community - Naama Kates
|
Stop
Victim Blaming Men
|
Are Incels A Threat To
Society? - William Costello
|
|
Instagram/TikTok
Shorts
|
|
|
|
|
|
1:25:59
|
|
Alpha
Central - Reality Check
|
|
54:32
|
1:13:33
|
59:51
|
1:01:03
|
1:00:45
|
|
Why
We Need Single Sex Fitness Center
Options
|
200 Times When Women Get
Rejected and Men Stop Simping #4
|
200 Times When Women Get
Rejected and Men Stop Simping!
|
The Best Of When Men STOP
Simping For Women
|
200 Times When Women Treat
Men Like KINGS!
|
|
Brett
Cooper
|
|
33:09
|
31:49
|
|
|
|
|
Brett Reacts "If Teen Boys
Were 100% Honest"
|
Brett Reacts To "If Teen
GIRLS Were 100% Honest"
|
|
|
|
|
Emily King - "Double
standards.."
|
|
0:58
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I'm a men's
advocate."
|
|
|
|
|
Masculinity is a set of attributes,
behaviors, and roles associated with men and boys.
Although masculinity is socially constructed, research
indicates that some behaviors
considered masculine are biologically influenced. To what
extent masculinity is
biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate.
Wikipedia
A Real Man
This appears on our menstuff.org
home page superimposed over Leonardo da Vinci's David.
It's what we stand for.
"Man's inherent nature is to be
curious, gentle, intimate, responsible, enthusiastic,
sensual, tolerant, courageous, honest, vulnerable,
affectionate, proud, spiritual, committed, wild, nurturing,
peaceful, helpful, intense, compassionate, happy and to
fully and safely express all emotions. When will we stop
training him to be otherwise?" - Gordon Clay
Toxic Masculinity *
Toxic masculinity refers to
traditional cultural masculine norms that can be harmful to
men, women, and society overall, which does not condemn men
or male attributes, but rather emphasizes the harmful
effects of conformity to certain traditional masculine ideal
behaviors such as dominance, self-reliance, and
competition.
* Shephard Bliss was one of first
if not the first to coin the words "Toxic Masculinity" in
his writings "Behaviors of Toxic
Masculinity."
 Masculinity
- Wikipedia
Masculinity
Masculinity
Definition
Male
Privilege, Another Perspective
Why
is the Idea of Privilege so
Controversial?
9/1/2018
Man's
Inherent Nature
(Menstuff.org)
Home Page Quote superimporsed over "The Man"
8/1/96
The
Traditional Definition of Masculinity - Man in a
Box
“Putting
My Man Face On” – College Men’s Gender
Identity
Work is
broken. Can we fix it?
Gen
Zed does not dream of labor
The
reinvention of a ‘real man’ - The Washington
Post
- 5/23/22
Initiation
Toxic
Masculinity - Wikipedia
See also:
Incel,
Machismo
,
Male
privilege
,
Patriarchy
,
Sexism
I Melt
with You
(film) Wikipedia
The War
on Masculinity
What
are women? 42:56
video
What
Is Toxic Femininity?
Toxic
femininity
Wikipedia
Toxic
femininity
-
Psychology Today - 8/28/19
Men's
False Beliefs about Mental Health
Man's
Best Friend
Hard
Wired
93
Percent
Serious Intent
Men
and Suicide
Today's
Masculinity is Stifling
- The Atlantic - 6/11/18
If
Just This One Idea About Manhood Is Changing, There’s
Hope 7/23/20
Olympian
Vincent Zhou on masculinity, skating, mental health and
‘strict’ parents'
The
Daily Dose - Ozy presents troubling trends in
Masculinity
Amateur:
How Do I Reconcile My Masculinity With The Toxicity of
Men?
Older
men cling to 1950s, '60s blueprint of
masculinity
Raising
Boys with a Broader Definition of
Masculinity - The
Atlantic - 4/15/19
To
My Son: Men Have to 'Allow Ourselve to Be
Loved' - The
Atlantic - 9/15/20
Real
Men Can Dance Video
4:15
Why
do Football Players Practice
Ballet?
Twinkle
Toes in the NFL
Competing
in Dance to Improve in Football | NFL Films
Present - Video 7:37
Why
Professional Athletes Take
Ballet - Video 1:39
Thinking
Critically About Rural Gender Relations: Toward a Rural
Masculinity Crisis/Male Peer Support Model of
Separation/Divorce Sexual Assault
QAnon’s
Unexpected Roots in New Age
Spirituality
What
Do Gender Relations Look Like in Rural
America?
If
Just This One Idea About Manhood Is Changing, There’s
Hope 7/23/20
Been
called a 'snowflake'? The 'it' new insult
War
Is the Force that Gives Masculinity
Meaning 10/1/14
Men
are Killing Themselves
Why
men are lonelier in America than
elsewhere
Hikikomoris
What's
Behind the Rise of Lonely, Single
Men - Psychology
Today
What
makes a real man? Much more at menstuff.org
A
Third Of Men Under 30 Aren’t Having Sex…
Here’s Why
How everyone got so lonely -
New Yorker - 4/4/22
Definition of
masculinity
mas-cu-lin-i·ty | ma-skye-li-ne-te
: the quality or nature of the
male sex : the quality, state, or degree of being masculine
or manly
: challenging traditional notions about masculinity
and femininity
- A style which alternates between a
polished grace and blunt masculinity.— Stuart
Keate
- The man controlling his
environment is today the prevailing American image of
masculinity.— Susan Faludi
First Known Use of
masculinity
1613, in the meaning defined above
Masculinity
Masculinity is defined as a configuration of practices
that are organized in relation to the structures of gender
identities and relations (Connell, 1987). Safety Science,
2015
Masculinities and
Femininities
M. Kimmel, in International
Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences,
2001
Masculinities and femininities refer
to the social roles, behaviors, and meanings prescribed for
men and women in any society at any time. Such normative
gender ideologies must be distinguished from biological
‘sex,’ and must be understood to be plural as
there is no single definition for all men and all women.
Masculinities and femininities are structured and expressed
through other axes of identity such as class, race,
ethnicity, age, and sexuality. Thus some definitions are
held up as the hegemonic versions, against which others are
measured. Gender ideologies are more than properties of
individuals; masculinities and femininities are also
institutionally organized and elaborated and experienced
through interactions.
Masculinity and the Focus on
Sport
The study of masculinity and
femininity provides one method for investigating the
underlying sociocultural context of the ideal body image.
Masculinity and femininity have been conceptualized as
multidimensional constructs which include gender role
stereotypes, adherence to traditional gender role norms,
gender role conflict, and gender role stress. These
constructs reflect stereotypes about the beliefs and
behaviors typically attributed to males and females, which
are acquired as they learn about the world and their roles
in it. They also contain social norms that “prescribe
and proscribe what males and females should feel and
do.” The Western cultural view of masculinity and the
masculine gender roles prescribed for males are very clear.
Males need to be powerful, strong, and efficacious. The
sporting context is one of the main forums that Western
males have for demonstrating the various aspects of
masculinity that are closely aligned with the pursuit of
muscularity. These include athletic strength and
superiority, competitiveness, toughness, endurance,
leadership, status, power, and authority.
The focus on sport is also an
important positive socializing influence for boys. For
adolescent boys, participation in any kind of sport is
related to higher self-esteem, and adolescent boys more than
girls perceive that the function of sport participation is
to increase their social status and peer popularity. A focus
on sport is also one of the main ways that males have for
demonstrating and strengthening various facets of
masculinity that are closely aligned with the pursuit of
muscularity. Interviews with adolescents have shown that the
majority of adolescent boys are reluctant to focus on their
body per se but through their talk about sport, the boys
openly discussed what they liked and did not like about
their body. In addition, this research showed that what boys
liked about their bodies and the aspects they wanted to
improve were synonymous with the attributes associated with
being successful at sport. Surveys with adolescents have
also shown that male physical attributes associated with
athleticism and physical superiority are among the main
predictors of the drive for muscularity among adolescent
boys.
Meditation, Yoga, and Men's
Health
Claire Postl, Lawrence C. Jenkins, in
Effects of Lifestyle on Men's Health, 2019
Recommendations
Social constructs of masculinity and
socialization play a key role in men's ability to seek help.
Men struggle with emotional expression and the
identification of coping mechanisms due to constructs of
masculinity. Meditative practices, which are female
dominated in our society, are not as frequently sought out
by men [19, 20, 27]. Medical and mental health
providers can help men utilize meditative practices as
complementary and alternative medicine.
Firstly, providers should incorporate
a social worker or mental health provider into their
referral network. Social workers can provide men with
resources to help manage psychosocial stress, including
meditative practices. Awareness of psychosocial adjustment,
support systems, and coping skills are needed and should be
assessed regularly [47]. Having an integrated social
worker or mental health provider can help to normalize the
stress that cycles alongside health issues and provide
easier linking to services.
Secondly, providers should talk about
masculinity and the barriers men face when seeking help. Men
are more likely to seek help if barriers are actively
addressed by medical providers [3]. Discussing
masculinity and social influences that shape emotional
expression can help to normalize the stress that the patient
may be experiencing.
Lastly, patients should be educated on
the different services and interventions available for the
management of stress [3]. Providers should educate
men on meditative practices and potential benefits related
to patients’ stress-related issues. Similarly,
providers should encourage participation in meditative
practices pre- and postmedical diagnoses. In order for
providers to gain comfort in talking with men about
meditative practices, it is encouraged that providers
practice meditation, mindfulness, or yoga themselves
[1].
Gender and Culture
Conceptions of masculinity and
femininity vary widely across cultures, but two universals
are plausible: (i) To varying degrees, every society assigns
traits or tasks on the basis of sex, and (ii) the status of
women is inferior to the status of men in every society. As
one would expect based on these generalizations, extensive
differences do exist in the work roles of men and women.
Examining jobs and tasks in 244 societies, Roy
D’Andrade found that men were involved in hunting,
metal work, and weapon making and tended to travel further
from home than women. Women were responsible for food
preparation, carrying water, caring for clothing, and
various child-rearing responsibilities. Although
women’s subsistence activities generally included
child-rearing demands, some did hunt in societies in which
this activity did not compete with child care. The strong
sex segregation for child-rearing duties was mirrored by
another study that found that men were significant
caretakers in only 10% of the 80 cultures examined. However,
both sexes seemed to be flexible enough to adapt to a range
of socioeconomic roles.
Today, women account for a substantial
proportion of the world’s labor force. With decreases
in infant mortality and fertility, women now spend less time
in child-rearing roles. Furthermore, technological advances
have allowed women in many parts of the world to separate
childbearing from child-rearing and thereby contribute to
the family through jobs outside the home.
However, women’s increased
autonomy has not been paralleled by increased acceptance or
equality. For example, in a 56-country study of labor trends
from 1960 to 1980, the job market was marked by declines in
women’s occupational opportunities and increases in sex
segregation. When measured by per capita gross national
product and women’s level of education, modernization
was associated with increased segregation of the sexes.
Additionally, increased workplace involvement for women
correlated with decreases in total fertility rate. Women
continue to be disadvantaged in the workplace, most overtly
through persistent salary discrepancies that favor men. In
addition to women’s lower salaries is evidence
suggesting that women prefer traditionally female jobs,
especially those offering extensive contact with other
people. Moreover, these jobs tend to be low paying. On the
contrary, men tend to prefer jobs with high income and
promotion opportunities.
Even in the countries with the highest
proportion of females in the labor force, women continue to
face inequality within the home. Studies in several North
American and European countries have found that women
perform a majority of the housework, regardless of the
extent of their occupational demands. Along with children
and larger homes comes reduced male involvement in domestic
chores. This is surprising in light of the previous
suggestion that increases in education and income are
associated with more modern sex role views (i.e., equality
in the workforce). However, studies suggest that systematic
differences in sex role ideology persist in these more
modern countries. For example, in the United States, Great
Britain, West Germany, and Austria, people with relatively
high levels of education and women with employed husbands
indicated less support for efforts to reduce gender
inequality compared to those with less education and women
without employed husbands. Such findings suggest that even
the subjective change in perceived life quality associated
with improved socioeconomic conditions may be greater for
men than women.
Men’s Mental Health and
Masculinities
Overview and Theories of
Masculinity
Within broad definitions of health and
wellness, gender figures significantly in individuals’
feelings, thoughts, appearance, behavior, and embodiment.
Masculinity is a form of gender, variously defined as an
identity, a social role, and a form of power and is
typically, though not exclusively, associated with men. In
the socialization of masculinity, boys and men are
encouraged to reject or avoid anything stereotypically
feminine, to be tough and aggressive, suppress emotions
(other than anger), distance themselves emotionally and
physically from other men, and strive toward competition,
success and power. In particular, anti-femininity and
homophobia are at the core of what traditional masculinity
means. Boys and men are rewarded in a variety of settings
such as schools, intimate relationships, the workplace,
military, and prisons for adhering to these stereotypic
expectations and often are punished or rejected for
violating them. However, fulfillment of these gendered
expectations is also associated with a range of health and
social problems including anxiety and depression, substance
abuse, and interpersonal violence.
The role of gender in health is often
analyzed in terms of sex differences, in which the
prevalence and severity of men’s mental health
disorders and help-seeking are compared to women’s.
Although such comparative analysis may be useful in
identifying domains where there is a possible connection
between biological sex and health, such analyses are
analytically incomplete and potentially misleading. The
relatively few differences in actual behavior and health
outcomes between men and women are overemphasized and the
greater variation existing within each group is
underappreciated. An expanded analysis is needed that goes
beyond a sex comparative lens to address the connection
between masculinity and mental health among diverse men.
Consequently, we pursue an intersectional analysis that
attends closely to the complex diversity in masculinities as
they are related to mental health among individuals
belonging to different cultures marked by race, class,
gender, age, sexuality, ability, and so forth.
We begin our analysis by tracing the
development of theories of gender and masculinity, including
the psychoanalytic theory of gender identity, the social
psychological theory of gender roles, and a sociological
theory of intersectionality in masculinities. Next, we
summarize what research has shown about the relationship
between various aspects of masculinity, such as male gender
role stress, and mental health among men. In particular, we
review the connection between masculinity and specific
health problems that men experience including depression and
suicide, violence victimization and perpetration, substance
abuse, and stress. Then, we discuss how the values
comprising masculinity are especially reinforced and
amplified in particular settings, such as prisons and jails.
The impact of masculinity on men’s mental health and
well-being is especially pronounced in these contexts.
Finally, we examine the implications of theory and research
on masculinity for psychological practice, intervention and
social action that improves men’s mental health and
well-being.
Gender Identity
The earliest theory of masculinity in
modern psychology was built on psychoanalytic and
personality theories that ascribed gender mainly to natural,
inevitable biological forces. Gender identity theory argues
that biological sex and gender are synonymous in healthy,
well adjusted individuals. Gender identity is
unidimensional, such that greater masculinity means the
person has less feminine identity, and vice-versa. Healthy,
securely-adjusted men identify and display characteristics
defined as masculine while also disidentifying with and not
displaying feminine characteristics. In this view, normative
personality development among biological males leads to a
masculine gender identity (Terman and Miles, 1936), and
deviations, such as men with stereotypically feminine gender
identity, including homosexual behavior, or exaggerated
masculinity (i.e., hypermasculinity) indicated unhealthy or
insecure gender identity development. The conflation of
gender and sexuality is noteworthy. Failure among men to
demonstrate masculinity is understood to be problematic, a
symptom of gender identity disorder or weakness. Personality
tests such as the Attitude Interest Analysis Test that were
designed to measure gender identity included assessments of
specific interests and knowledge of the respondent that were
believed to indicate an underlying gender identity. Some
data using measures of conventional adjustment at the time
indicated that more masculine men were better functioning
and healthier.
Sex (Gender) Role
Identity
In the late 1970s, Bem (1981) advanced
an alternative theory, known as gender schema or sex role
identity theory. She argued that masculine and feminine
identity and characteristics vary independently within
persons. Consequently, individuals could have clearly
masculine or feminine identities, or an androgynous
combination of stereotypically gendered characteristics, or
characteristics not identified with either gender (i.e.,
undifferentiated). The assessment used to measure sex role
identity emphasized an individual’s endorsement of
personality traits that were defined by the authors as
either masculine or feminine. Androgynous individuals were
defined as those who rated themselves as having masculine
and feminine characteristics; and substantial data indicated
that these individuals were typically the most well adjusted
and mentally healthy.
Gender Role Conflict and
Strain
Subsequent gender role theories
emphasized more directly the destructive and harmful aspects
of masculinity as well as the stress of fulfilling and of
failing to fulfill the role normative expectations (Pleck,
1981, 1995). The general characteristics associated with
this role comprise what is referred to as traditional
masculinity and include themes of antifemininity and
homophobia, success and achievement, independence, and
toughness and aggression (Brannon, 1976), as well as
heterosexuality. Beliefs about the normative characteristics
that men should display in order to fulfill the male gender
role constitute the dominant masculinity ideology (Smiler,
2004). Individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse
traditional masculine ideology.
Belief in, and adherence to, normative
gender role expectations for men is theorized to cause
gender role stress and strain, in part due to the
contradictory and unattainable aspects of the role, and
because many of the role demands are associated with
unhealthy behaviors, such as suppression of emotion or
aggressive responses to interpersonal conflict. Further, to
the degree that the expectations are discrepant from
men’s inherent characteristics, they experience gender
role conflict (O’Neil et al., 1986). Individual
variation in gender role conflict is associated with a large
range of health risk behaviors and negative health
outcomes.
Masculinity and Power in
Context
In the 1990s, sociological theorists
developed critiques of gender role theories of masculinity
on the basis that they do not adequately incorporate an
analysis of power into how the roles are created, enforced,
and maintained within social systems. In this view,
masculinity is intimately interwoven with the dynamics of
power and privilege. As such, the terms ‘dominant
masculinity’ or ‘hegemonic masculinity’
(Connell, 2005) are used to extend and sharpen the concept
of ‘traditional masculinity,’ emphasizing that
masculinity is imbued with both symbolic and material power
in a society. Importantly, the majority of men do not
possess the characteristics idealized in hegemonic
masculinity, nor have access to the social, cultural, and
material resources on which hegemonic masculinity is built.
Were it otherwise, hegemonic masculinity would not be an
effective way for some men to consolidate and maintain power
over other men.
Diversity of
masculinities
Consequently, men belonging to diverse
groups and from varied geographic places and cultures
perform masculinity in varied ways. Included within this
diversity are masculinities among men who identify with
different racial and ethnic groups, sexualities, and
genders. Further, men manifest masculinities differently,
and have different opportunities and capabilities to perform
hegemonic masculinity, depending on their socioeconomic
class, religion, body and abilities, age, and living context
and environment (e.g., prison). Rather than being discrete
or additive, these positions of privilege intersect in
dynamic ways to create unique, contextually specific
masculinities. These diverse masculinities differ in terms
of their correspondence to hegemonic masculinity and are
defined by men’s race, class, sexuality, ability, age,
and other symbolic and material markers of power.
Men from diverse backgrounds have
varying capabilities to successfully perform hegemonic
masculinity. For example, individually and as a group, gay
black men cannot perform hegemonic masculinity as do
heterosexual white men. As a result, these men may attempt
to demonstrate hegemonic masculinity in alternative ways, or
in different settings and domains. For example, the cool
pose, the machista, and the queer bear all perform powerful
forms of masculinity within their respective African
American, Latino, and gay male cultures. Machista describes
Latino men who portray a complex macho persona characterized
both by toughness and the devaluation of femininity and
women as well as emotional connectedness, care for family,
and a sense of dignity. The queer bear is an identity for
gay men who present an exaggeration of certain stereotypic
masculine characteristics such as a large (usually muscular)
body type, considerable facial hair, and a general show of
toughness or propensity for aggression. Although these
variations in gendered expressions contain many
characteristics of traditional masculinity (e.g., toughness
and anti-femininity), they are nonetheless particularly
defined by their departure from hegemonic white,
heterosexual masculinity.
Scholars have noted that signifiers of
hegemonic masculinity may change over time within American
culture (Kimmel, 2012; Rotundo, 1994). However, the
underlying characteristics and meanings associated with
hegemonic masculinity remain quite stable, even as the
signifiers of those characteristics (e.g., clothing, hair
style, occupation, and recreations) may shift. Hegemonic
masculinity consistently represents anti-femininity, success
and achievement, independence, and toughness and aggression,
but the symbolic displays of those characteristics in
men’s appearance, sexuality, activities and so forth
are more transitory, in part because of their
commercialization. Anxieties about one’s manhood, often
located in men’s bodies, are exploited through
marketing of products and services. Manhood must be proven,
and proven again, through symbolic and behavioral
demonstrations to others, typically male peers, who are in
positions of validating, questioning, and challenging
assertions of manhood, as well as policing and punishing
those men whose demonstrations are judged to be inadequate.
There is no way to establish manhood once and for all.
Manhood is thus a perpetually vulnerable, contested, and
fleeting status. Men’s denial and repression of their
vulnerabilities function as an attempt to validate their
masculinity.
Androgyny
2.1 Development of Androgyny
Measures
Development of psychometrically sound
masculinity and femininity scales based on the revised
assumptions was an important first step for androgyny
researchers. The favored scale format was paper-and-pencil
self-descriptions using Likert scales. Criteria for item
selection were somewhat variable. Although a (small) number
of measures were eventually developed, only two achieved
prominence: The Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) (Bem 1974) and
the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) (Spence and
Helmreich 1978). The items on the BSRI and the PAQ reflected
judges' ratings of personality characteristics utilizing
criteria of sex-based social desirability or of sex
typicality, respectively. The PAQ incorporated only
characteristics generally seen as desirable. The BSRI
included some femininity items with less positive
connotations (e.g., ‘childlike,’
‘gullible’), a decision that complicated
subsequent analyses considerably (Pedhazur and Tetenbaum
1979).
Correlations between the masculinity
and femininity scales of a single androgyny measure tended
to be small in magnitude as was desired, and the content of
corresponding scales across androgyny measures was
overlapping but not identical. Factor analyses (e.g., Wilson
and Cook 1984) indicated that the content of the femininity
and masculinity scales corresponded generally to theoretical
definitions of femininity as representing empathy,
nurturance, and interpersonal sensitivity and masculinity as
representing autonomy, dominance, and assertiveness. The
emergence of this factor structure is interesting in that
item selection procedures did not specifically select items
to be congruent with the expressive/communal and
instrumental/agentic distinctions. These content
distinctions appear to be central to the broad-based
perceptions of the sexes' personalities and behaviors
elicited by the androgyny measures (Cook 1985).
Stress, Depression, Mental Illness,
and Men's Health
Contribution of Class, Race/Ethnicity,
and Sexual Minority Status to Men's Experience of
Stress
Social factors, other than
masculinity, are also implicated in the experience of
stress, and can significantly impact many men's health
outcomes [27]. Social status and social roles
determine the types and amount of stress. Baum et al.
describes socioeconomic status as a predictor of health and
illness outcomes [28]. Dowd and colleagues evaluated
the effect of socioeconomic status on stress and discovered
that low socioeconomic status was highly associated with
higher levels of perceived stress and stressful life events
[29]. Low socioeconomic status is also associated
with adverse psychosocial situations that can result in high
levels of stress [30].
Men's other identities, including
ethnicity and class, can shape the male role and result in
added stress [31]. Minority men have higher
age-adjusted morbidity, mortality, and death rates. This is
a pattern that has been documented for over 150 years
[32]. Compared with White men, African American men
have higher odds of stressful life events, including racism
and social exclusion with resulting higher levels of
psychological distress [29, 33]. Income inequality
is also a contributor given large racial differences in
socioeconomic status [34]. In studies of racial
differences in health, adjustment for socioeconomic status
markedly reduces and, in instances, eliminates racial
disparities in health [32, 35]. Men who cannot reach
traditional norms of social success and status due to
poverty, minority status, and/or marginalization may
compensate by demonstrating their masculinity and mastery by
engaging in risky behaviors that can be detrimental to their
health, such as high-risk sexual behavior
[36].
Gay men experience a different form of
minority stress, resulting from social stigma and rejection.
For some gay men, repeated social discrimination may result
in internalized homophobia, which adds an inner conflict to
the experience of hostility from the social environment
[37, 38]. Research shows that gay men suffer from
more mental health problems than their heterosexual
counterparts as a result of stigma, prejudice, and
discrimination. They also suffer from inadequate response to
their health-care needs by health-care providers through the
lack of providers’ understanding of their needs and, in
some cases, through rejection by providers. Lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender populations have been declared as
suffering from health disparities by the Institute of Mental
Health, and research to improve health-care provision has
been encouraged by the National Institutes of Health
[39, 40].
It is important to recognize that some
men experience all the factors that tend to be risk factors
for poor health: struggle with their masculine role, low
economic status, non-White race, and gay sexual orientation.
This combination of factors, also dubbed as
“intersectionality,” multiplies the risk beyond
the contribution of any individual one and must be taken
into consideration when a health assessment is conducted
[41].
Cross-Cultural Psychology,
Overview
5.5 Sex
Differentiation
Hofstede has identified a dimension he
calls masculinity–femininity. In feminine cultures,
members of the culture attach more importance to
relationships, to helping others, and to the physical
environment than people in masculine cultures. In masculine
cultures, people emphasize careers and money. The goals of
men and women are more differentiated in masculine than in
feminine cultures. National samples that emphasized male
goals were found in Japan, Austria, and Venezuela, whereas
the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands emphasized
female goals. In the countries that were high in
masculinity, men and women gave very different responses to
Hofstede’s value questions, while in the countries that
emphasized female goals, the answers obtained from men and
women were the same. Similar differences were observed
across occupations, with engineers giving masculine and
secretaries giving feminine answers. The consequences of
this cultural difference included such matters as people in
masculine countries wanting brilliant teachers versus people
in feminine countries wanting friendly teachers. Differences
in politics were also identified. In masculine countries
people supported tough policies toward poor people and
immigrants. Economic growth was given priority over
preservation of the environment in masculine countries. In
feminine countries, compassionate policies toward the weak
and the environment were given high priorities.
Body Image Development – Adult
Men
Penis size
Finally, just as muscularity has been
equated with masculinity, so has penis size. Comparatively
little research has examined the role of men’s genitals
in body satisfaction, despite many men expressing
dissatisfaction with the size of their penis. Research
reveals that actual penis size is normally distributed.
Although most men view their penises as average in size,
there is discrepancy in the research as to whether more men
underestimate or overestimate the relative size of their
penis. Given that penis size is culturally equated with
masculinity, it is not surprising that fewer men who rate
their penis as modest or small in size are satisfied with
their size compared to men who believe that their penis is
average-sized or larger than average. Recent research has
also revealed a relationship between satisfaction with penis
size and global body satisfaction.
Gender and Physical
Health
The distinctions between biological
sex, ‘gender,’ masculinity, and femininity and
their importance for health are examined. There has been a
recent shift in emphasis from concerns about women's
reproductive health to a gender analysis of health, but
men's health remains neglected. Societal gender roles and
relationships pattern women's and men's health, and
intersect with other structures, especially social class and
age. Gender differences in mortality and morbidity are
considered, together with explanations for these gender
differences. The previous orthodoxy that women are
‘sicker’ than men has recently been challenged in
developed societies, but continued gender disparity in
disability remains, especially in later life. Lone mothers'
health is particularly poor, mainly due to their
disadvantaged material circumstances. The divergent
structural positions and roles of women and men lead to
gender differences in the nature of inequalities in health,
which vary across the life course, over time, and among
societies.
Source: www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/masculinity
Toxic
Masculinity - Wikipedia
The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic
and media discussions of masculinity
to refer to certain cultural norms that are associated with
harm to society and men themselves. Traditional stereotypes
of men as socially dominant, along with related traits such
as misogyny
and homophobia,
can be considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of
violence, including sexual
assault and domestic
violence. The socialization of
boys in patriarchal
societies often normalizes violence, such as in the saying
"boys will be boys" about bullying
and aggression.
Self-reliance and emotional
repression are correlated with increased psychological
problems in men such as depression, increased
stress,
and substance
use disorders. Toxic masculine
traits are characteristic of the unspoken code of behavior
among men in prisons, where they exist in part as a response
to the harsh conditions of prison life.
Other traditionally masculine traits
such as devotion to work, pride in excelling at sports, and
providing for one's family, are not considered to be
"toxic". The concept was originally used by authors
associated with the mythopoetic
men's movement, such as
Shepherd Bliss. These authors contrasted stereotypical
notions of masculinity with a "real" or "deep" masculinity,
which they said men had lost touch with in modern society.
Critics of the term toxic masculinity argue that it
incorrectly implies that gender-related issues are caused by
inherent male traits.[1]
The concept of toxic masculinity, or
certain formulations of it, has been criticized by some
conservatives
as an undue condemnation of traditional masculinity, and by
some feminists
as an essentialist
concept that ignores the role of choice and context in
causing harmful behaviors and attitudes related to
masculinity.
Etymology and usage
The term toxic masculinity originated
in the mythopoetic
men's movement of the 1980s
and 1990s.[2] It later found wide use in both
academic and popular writing.[3] Popular and media
discussions in the 2010s have used the term to refer to
traditional and stereotypical norms of masculinity
and manhood. According to the sociologist Michael Flood,
these include "expectations that boys and men must be
active, aggressive, tough, daring, and
dominant".[4]
Mythopoetic movement
Some authors associated with the
mythopoetic men's movement have referred to the social
pressures placed upon men to be violent, competitive,
independent, and unfeeling as a "toxic" form of masculinity,
in contrast to a "real" or "deep" masculinity that they say
men have lost touch within modern
society.[5][6] The academic Shepherd
Bliss proposed a return to
agrarianism
as an alternative to the "potentially toxic masculinity" of
the warrior ethic.[7] Sociologist Michael
Kimmel writes that Bliss's
notion of toxic masculinity can be seen as part of the
mythopoetic movement's response to male feelings of
powerlessness at a time when the feminist
movement was challenging
traditional male authority:
Thus Shepherd Bliss, for example,
rails against what he calls 'toxic masculinity'—which
he believes is responsible for most of the evil in the
world—and proclaims the unheralded goodness of the men
who fight the fires and till the soil and nurture their
families.[8]
Academic usage
In the social
sciences, toxic masculinity
refers to traditional cultural masculine
norms that can be harmful to men, women, and society
overall; this concept of toxic masculinity does not condemn
men or male attributes, but rather emphasizes the harmful
effects of conformity to certain traditional masculine ideal
behaviors such as dominance, self-reliance, and
competition.[9][10] Toxic masculinity is
thus defined by adherence to traditional male
gender
roles that consequently
stigmatize and limit the emotions boys and men may
comfortably express while elevating other emotions such as
anger.[11]
It is marked by economic, political, and social expectations
that men seek and achieve dominance (the "alpha
male").
In a gender
studies context,
Raewyn
Connell refers to toxic
practices that may arise out of what she terms
hegemonic
masculinity, rather than
essential traits.[3] Connell argues that such
practices, such as physical violence, may serve to reinforce
men's dominance over women in Western societies. She
stresses that such practices are a salient feature of
hegemonic masculinity, although not always the defining
features.[3][12]
Terry Kupers describes toxic
masculinity as involving "the need to aggressively compete
and dominate others"[13] and as "the constellation
of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster
domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia and wanton
violence".[14][15] According to Kupers,
toxic masculinity includes aspects of "hegemonic
masculinity" that are socially destructive, "such as
misogyny, homophobia, greed, and violent domination". He
contrasts these traits with more positive traits such as
"pride in [one's] ability to win at sports, to
maintain solidarity with a friend, to succeed at work, or to
provide for [one's] family".[14] Feminist
author John
Stoltenberg has argued that
all traditional notions of masculinity are toxic and
reinforce the oppression of
women.[16][17]
Gender norms
According to social
learning theory, teaching boys
to suppress vulnerable emotions, as in the saying "big boys
don't cry", is a significant part of gender socialization in
Western society.[18][19]
According to Kupers, toxic masculine
norms are a feature of life for men in American prisons,
where they are reflected in the behavior of both staff and
inmates. The qualities of extreme self-reliance, domination
of other men through violence, and avoiding the appearance
of either
femininity or weakness,
comprise an unspoken code among
prisoners.[20][21] Suppressing vulnerable
emotions is often adopted to successfully cope with the
harsh conditions of prison life, defined by punishment,
social isolation, and aggression. These factors likely play
a role in suicide
among male prisoners.[20][22]
Toxic masculinity can also take the
form of bullying
of boys by their peers and domestic
violence directed toward boys
at home.[23] The often violent socialization
of boys produces psychological
trauma through the promotion
of aggression and lack of interpersonal connection. Such
trauma is often disregarded, such as in the saying "boys
will be boys" about bullying.[24] The promotion of
idealized masculine roles emphasizing toughness, dominance,
self-reliance, and the restriction of emotion can begin as
early as infancy. Such norms are transmitted by parents,
other male relatives, and members of the
community.[18][25] Media representations of
masculinity on websites such as YouTube often promote
similar stereotypical gender roles.[25]
According to Ronald
F. Levant and others,
traditionally prescribed masculine behaviors can produce
harmful effects including violence (including sexual assault
and domestic
violence), promiscuity, risky
and/or socially irresponsible behaviors including
substance
use disorders, and dysfunction
in relationships.[18][26]
Health effects
The American
Psychological Association has
warned that "traditional masculinity ideology" is associated
with negative effects on mental and physical
health.[27][28] Men who adhere to
traditionally masculine cultural norms, such as risk-taking,
violence, dominance, the primacy of work, need for emotional
control, desire to win, and pursuit of social
status, tend to be more likely
to experience psychological problems such as
depression,
stress, body
image problems, substance use,
and poor social functioning.[29] The effect tends to
be stronger in men who also emphasize "toxic" masculine
norms, such as self-reliance, seeking power over women, and
sexual promiscuity or "playboy"[clarification
needed]
behavior.[10][30]
The social value of self-reliance has
diminished over time as modern American society has moved
more toward interdependence.[25] Both self-reliance
and the stifling of emotional expression can work against
mental
health, as they make it less
likely for men to seek psychological help or to possess the
ability to deal with difficult emotions.[25]
Preliminary research suggests that cultural pressure for men
to be stoic and self-reliant may also shorten men's
lifespans by causing them to be less likely to discuss
health problems with their
physicians.[31][32]
Toxic masculinity is also implicated
in socially-created public
health problems, such as
elevated rates of alcoholism and certain types of cancer
among men,[33] or the role of "trophy-hunting"
sexual behavior in rates of transmission of HIV and other
sexually
transmitted
infections.[34][non-primary
source needed]
Psychiatrist Frank
Pittman wrote about how men
are harmed by traditional masculine norms, suggesting this
includes shorter lifespans, greater incidence of violent
death, and ailments such as lung cancer and cirrhosis
of the liver.[17]
Criticism
Toxic masculinity has received
criticism as a concept. Some conservatives, as well as many
in the alt-right,
see toxic masculinity as an incoherent concept or believe
that there is no such thing as toxic
masculinity.[35]: 2 [36] In January 2019,
conservative political commentators criticized the new
American
Psychological Association
guidelines for warning about harms associated with
"traditional masculinity ideology", arguing that it
constitutes an attack on masculinity.[37]
David
French of the National
Review criticized the APA
guidelines on "traditional masculinity ideology" for
including "very common, inherent male characteristics"
including "anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the
appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence."
French argued that these traits are not "inherently wrong or
harmful," and that a proper understanding of traditional
masculinity "rejects harmful extremes."[38] APA
chief of professional practice Jared Skillings responded to
conservative criticism, stating that the report's discussion
of traditional masculinity is about "negative traits such as
violence or over-competitiveness or being unwilling to admit
weakness" and noting that the report also discusses positive
traits traditionally associated with masculinity such as
"courage, leadership,
protectiveness".[37]
The concept of toxic masculinity has
also been criticized from a feminist perspective. Andrea
Waling and Michael Salter have argued that the concept of
"toxic masculinity" in contradistinction to "healthy
masculinity" emerged from a misunderstanding of
Raewyn
Connell's 1987 work on
hegemonic masculinity.[39]: 366 [36] To
Waling, "toxic masculinity" is problematic because it
presents men as victims of an unavoidable
pathology,[39]: 368 an essentialist
approach that ignores the surrounding social and material
context and the personal responsibility of men.[39]:
369 Waling also argues that instructing men to practice
"healthy masculinity" dismisses androgyny and adopting
aspects of femininity as valid options for men, thereby
perpetuating gender binaries and privileging masculinity
over femininity.[39]: 369 Waling also argues that
"toxic masculinity" dismisses certain traditionally
masculine traits that are appropriate in some
situations.[39]: 368 Salter notes that, properly
interpreted, Raewyn Connell's work presents male violence,
not as a result of toxicity intruding into masculinity
itself but rather as resulting from the surrounding
sociopolitical setting, which induces "inner conflicts over
social expectations and male
entitlement".[36]
References
1. Salter, Michael (27 February 2019).
"The Problem With a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity". The
Atlantic. Retrieved 3 May 2020.
2. Salter, Michael (27 February 2019).
"The Problem With a Fight Against Toxic Masculinity". The
Atlantic. Archived from the original on 11 May 2019.
Retrieved 11 May 2019.
3. Ging, Debbie (20 May 2017).
"Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of
the Manosphere" (PDF). Men and Masculinities. 22 (4):
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Although the term 'toxic masculinity' has become widely used
in both academic and popular discourses, its origins are
somewhat unclear.
4. Flood, Michael. "Toxic masculinity:
A primer and commentary". XY. Archived from the original on
12 June 2019. Retrieved 12 June 2019.
5. Ferber, Abby L. (July 2000).
"Racial Warriors and Weekend Warriors: The Construction of
Masculinity in Mythopoetic and White Supremacist Discourse".
Men and Masculinities. 3 (1): 30–56.
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7. Hartman, Rebecca (2003).
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pp. 20–22. ISBN 978-1-45-226571-1.
8. Kimmel, Michael S., ed. (1995). The
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9. Hess, Peter (21 November 2016).
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James W. (December 2005). "Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking
the Concept". Gender and Society. 19 (6): 829–859.
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13.Kupers, quoted in Ging (2017), p.
3
14. Kupers, Terry A. (June 2005).
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15. Kupers, Terry A. (2010). "Role of
Misogyny and Homophobia in Prison Sexual Abuse" (PDF). UCLA
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17.Dowd, Nancy E. (2000). Redefining
Fatherhood. New York University Press. pp. 185–6. ISBN
0-8147-1925-2. [Pittman] links toxic masculinity to
men being raised by women without male role models. In his
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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity
Men's
False Beliefs about Mental Health
Common Belief: “I don’t need help. I got
this.”
Research shows that, often, the men
who need mental health services most – stressed out,
successful, athletic, family men – are also the least
interested in getting help. The traditional male role
encourages a preoccupation with success, power and
competition. And yet these types of men are at higher risk
of negative psychological consequences, such as depression,
anxiety, and relationship problems.
Common Belief: “Talking
about my problems is not going to change
anything.”
The term “normative male
alexithymia” has been used to describe men’s
problems with expressing their emotions, a possible
contributor to depression and barrier to treatment. Men are
geared towards problem solving, but sometimes holding in how
you feel is part of the problem. When you start talking
about things that bother you or are causing stress, the
problem solving can begin. Athletes will “huddle
up” on the court or field to make a plan or a game
strategy and make adjustments as they go along. This is
similar to what happens in counseling or therapy.
Common Belief: “It’s
not that bad, it’s the way I’ve always
been.”
Most likely, you don’t like to go
to the doctor when you have a fever, sore throat, and cough.
You probably want to ride it out and see if you can just get
better on your own. But then you realize the cough has now
turned into bronchitis and you aren’t able to work.
Mental health issues can be similar. It can be hard to know
when it’s time. Sometimes, you just need to talk. And,
other times, it’s pretty bad. You can’t get out of
bed or function. Untreated depression and other psychiatric
problems can result in personal, family, and financial
problems, even suicide. According to NIMH, four times as
many men as women die by suicide in the United States, which
may result from a higher prevalence of untreated depression.
Yet eight out of 10 cases of depression respond to
treatment.
Common Belief: “People
will think I am crazy if I see a
psychologist.”
Our brains are sensitive organs that
respond to our genetics, traumatic life events, and stress.
Many of these factors are not in our direct control. Men may
express their depression in terms of increases in fatigue,
irritability and anger, loss of interest in work, and sleep
disturbances. It has also been shown that men use more drugs
and alcohol, perhaps to self-medicate. This can mask the
signs of depression, making it harder to detect and treat
effectively. A diagnosis is not a life sentence. A diagnosis
can be a name of a condition that provides a road-map for
proper treatment and improvement in your mood,
relationships, and life.
Start a conversation. With someone you
trust. With someone who is trained. With someone who cares.
Ask questions. Start the conversation. Are you okay?
QAnon’s
Unexpected Roots in New Age Spirituality
Masculinity, faith and the strange convergence of
counterculture and hate
I didn’t choose New Age culture. But I grew up in a
college town in Northern California in the 1980s, where the
ubiquitous Grateful Dead stickers, crystal shops and tarot
card readers suggested that the 1960s ethos of
self-discovery never ended. Psychedelic accoutrements and
people who self-identified as seekers were normal to me
— and so I craved mainstream American culture. I
rebelled — mildly — by eating Domino’s pizza
at sleepovers and idolizing the nihilism of 1970s
punk.
It turns out that I didn’t
entirely resist it. In the past decade or so, my fluency in
the world of New Age culture, wellness, woo-woo (whatever
you might call it) became a professional boon as a
journalist. These ideas were taking off once again,
especially among women who are White and middle-class, which
I also am. I understood that world and had a lot to say
about it. While on assignment I’ve gone to menstrual
huts and tea ceremonies; I’ve gotten massaged by boa
constrictors and I’ve meditated at sound baths.
I’ve greeted this all with professional curiosity,
something between an open mind and a world-weary arched
eyebrow.
On Jan. 6, along with the rest of the
country, I followed the news of the insurrection at the U.S.
Capitol and the prominence of Confederate flags, nooses and
other symbols of the far right. Like many others, I took
note of the so-called QAnon Shaman: 33-year-old Jake Angeli,
born Jacob Anthony Chansley, of Arizona. He was bare-chested
and covered in Nordic tattoos, at least one of which, the
Valknot, is a Norse symbol sometimes associated with white
supremacy. But he was also, infamously, wearing a headdress
fashioned from buffalo horns and coyote skin — elements
associated with the American West that seemed to telegraph a
pagan spirituality. I’ve been around a lot of White
people who have adopted a mishmash of pagan and Indigenous
signifiers as a New Age aesthetic. It’s a cringeworthy
and offensive display of appropriation that I don’t
endorse, but it’s common in that world.
After the attack on the Capitol, news
reports unearthed that Chansley was a founder of something
called the Star Seed Academy (in a certain New Age
vernacular, a star seed is a higher being). The Facebook
page for the venture, before it was taken down, read:
“Star Seed Academy creates leaders of the highest
order! We help people to awaken, evolve and ascend! Are you
ready to be a leader? Are you ready to ascend?”
Recently, Chansley’s lawyer, Albert Watkins, told me in
a statement that his client “is deeply spiritual. His
spirituality is serving him well as he traverses the pending
federal charges.” He added that Chansley has “a
personal commitment to Ahimsa,” the principle (found in
Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism) of doing no harm.
As a devotee of QAnon — the
sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an
extremist ideology deemed a domestic terrorist threat by the
FBI — and a freedom fighter for Donald Trump, Chansley
was my ideological opposite; yet there was also a lot about
him that was familiar. It felt shocking and suggested
serious flaws in a culture I thought I understood: a fine
line between the kind of zeitgeist-y, sensitive New Age-guy
version of masculinity, and something more nefarious. The
idea of spiritual lineage is too generous to bestow on
Chansley, but he represents a growing pipeline between New
Age male spirituality, new masculinity movements and QAnon.
This pipeline is one of unlikely connections and strange
bedfellows, of mixed martial arts fighters and poets,
evangelical Christians and yoga teachers.
In 2009, Charlotte Ward, an
independent researcher on alternative spirituality —
religious beliefs outside of conventional groups —
began to notice a hybrid of conspiracy theory beliefs and
New Age culture cropping up online. Two years later, she
co-wrote a paper titled “The Emergence of
Conspirituality” in the Journal of Contemporary
Religion. She and co-writer David Voas, a quantitative
social scientist at University College London, noted an
emphasis on patterns and connections in both conspiracy
culture and alternative spiritual beliefs. Nothing is as it
seems, and nothing is an accident. “These worldviews
make public and personal life respectively seem less subject
to random forces and therein lies part of their
appeal,” they wrote.
Ward and Voas defined
“conspirituality” as a “politico-spiritual
philosophy based on two core convictions” — one
core to conspiracy theories and the other rooted in New Age
belief systems: “1) a secret group covertly controls,
or is trying to control, the political and social order, and
2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in
consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for
dealing with the threat of a totalitarian ‘new world
order’ is to act in accordance with an awakened
‘new paradigm’ worldview.”
In our cultural moment, when baseless
claims about both a rigged election and the dangers of
vaccines hit Americans almost simultaneously, there has been
renewed interest in Ward and Voas’s decade-old paper
and, specifically, the idea of conspirituality. (During the
week I interviewed Voas, he had three other similar
interviews lined up.) With the image of Chansley in animal
horns and fur leading an attack on the Capitol,
conspirituality was more than an idea in an academic paper
or on the Internet. It had become our shared
reality.
When I was about 10 years old, my
mother became interested in the idea of the divine feminine,
specifically centering spirituality on women rather than the
patriarchal notion of a male god. She had never shown
interest in spirituality before but dived in with, well, a
religious fervor. She took me to a screening of the 1989
Canadian documentary “Goddess Remembered,” about
goddess worship in ancient European culture and its
potential as a renewed spiritual movement. Judging from the
attendees of the goddess fairs in hotel ballrooms I was also
taken to, this was a fairly White, progressive and
privileged group of women. It served as a kind of spiritual
extension of the women’s liberation movement of the
1970s, parallel to feminism.
Men soon started to realize that they,
too, had a gender to consider, and the men’s movement
took off in the ’70s and ’80s. It manifested in
three expressions, says Cliff Leek, assistant professor of
sociology at the University of Northern Colorado and vice
president of the American Men’s Studies Association:
“You get pro-feminist [men’s] groups that
do work around reproductive health and sexual violence; and,
on the other end of the spectrum, men’s rights groups
that say, ‘We are gendered and the system is out to get
us.’ The middle way is the mythopoetic: tying
masculinity back to the sacred and
mythological.”
The prevailing figure in the
mythopoetic movement is the poet Robert Bly. In 1990, Bly,
who was in his 60s (he’s now 94), published “Iron
John: A Book About Men,” which includes lines like,
“Where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius
will be.” Bly’s idea, told through Jung-influenced
archetypes and fairy tales, was that men had been robbed of
true masculinity via emotionally withholding fathers who
raised soft sons. With some reflection — and maybe some
banging on drums with other dudes in the forest — they
could reclaim their inner Zeuses and thrive. The book was
sometimes the butt of jokes, but spent over a year on the
New York Times bestseller list. It was so popular and so
part of the New Age canon that I bought a copy as a
teenager. I thought it seemed a bit corny, like the kind of
thing long-haired aging hippie dads of my friends might
enjoy. But I read it because I knew it was an element of a
cultural conversation that I wanted to be a part
of.
The spirit of “Iron John”
can still be found in mythopoetic men’s groups. Take,
for example, Embodied Masculine, a men’s community that
offers retreats and coaching. (A representative of the
company declined to comment for this article.) The retreats
promise a lot. “In this meticulously held circle of
men, you will be both met with compassion and called to
deepen,” one description reads, accompanied by images
of mostly White men patting each other on the shoulder or
sitting atop rocks. “Your embodied presence will
expand, your relationship to consciousness will deepen, and
the sword of your integrity will sharpen. You will be
challenged, nourished, and given the tools and brotherhood
you wish you had found years ago.” Sounds enriching,
but the wording around Embodied Masculine’s retreats
for women has a distinctly anti-feminist flair: “Women,
we’ve reached a point in history in which many of you
are equalling and surpassing men in earning, personal growth
and spiritual capacity. ... And yet, there is a longing deep
in your heart for something more.”
“As soon as we tie masculinity to
spirituality, we turn masculinity into something
‘sacred’ as well as distinct and exclusive of
women,” says Leek. “I’m not entirely sure
that is something that can be done in a way that
doesn’t reinforce or naturalize inequalities.”
These retreats seem to be encouraging strong behavior from a
group — White, ruling-class men — who are already
the most privileged in our society. But you also see this
core message about strong men in socially conservative
packaging. There’s a fear of women getting too powerful
and a veneration of the housewife that, frankly, reminds me
of the Proud Boys, the alt-right group with a history of
violence that believes women are best left at home raising
children.
“The wellness and spirituality
world is very parallel to the evangelical Christian world,
especially when it comes to the messaging around
masculinity,” Leek explains. “The mythopoetic
aspect of the men’s movement is very much rooted in
patriarchal notions of chivalry and men as protectors and
warriors. Evangelical masculinity is basically
identical.” He wasn’t surprised to see the QAnon
Shaman beside evangelical groups at the Capitol. QAnon, with
its fixation on pedophilic conspiracies led by Hollywood and
the liberal elite, can give a certain kind of man in search
of purpose a way to feel like a literal
protector.
Last year, Matthew Remski, a writer
and co-host of the “Conspirituality” podcast, was
reporting a story on QAnon for the Canadian magazine the
Walrus, and he interviewed Lamont Daigle, founder of a
Canadian QAnon spinoff group. During the interview, Remski
noted to Daigle that he talked about his political journey
as if it were a spiritual journey. Daigle responded, Remski
told me recently, that it all started with “Iron
John.”
I emailed Daigle to ask how “Iron
John” had influenced him. He wrote back praising the
book’s view of pre-industrial history, including the
tradition of fathers passing down a trade to their sons.
“?‘Apprenticeship’ was lost and is/was key
for bonding,” Daigle wrote. “As ‘Iron
John’ was suggesting, the love unit most damaged by the
industrial revolution has been the father-son bond.”
His view of society today is much darker: “From what
I’ve seen on the streets and stage of this New World
Order agenda in the last year, fierce protective men have
been noticeably absent, and the women are standing up
stronger and more vocal.”
All of which fits with Remski’s
analysis of this subculture. “There’s a kind of
iconographic romance between swole but New Agey male figures
who are taking supplements and staying disciplined, and
women who have deep connections to the divine,” he
says. “There’s a righteous and holy and sacralized
sexuality, an immunological radiance around the holy
couple.” I know exactly the type of couples he’s
talking about. I see them on Instagram espousing the
know-your-strength relationship consciousness taught at the
Embodied Masculine retreats, and in the vulnerable but
divine masculinity of “Iron John.”
I think of the macho wellness dude as
epitomized by the comedian-turned-podcaster Joe Rogan, who
sells mugs and tube socks that read “conquer your inner
b----” and Hindu-deity-inspired T-shirt designs. (I
reached out to Rogan, but his representative did not
respond.) Then there is the pandemic-era bro upgrade to the
mythopoetic archetype — which is how you find MMA
fighters like Tim Kennedy on the podcast of comedian JP
Sears, with both men arguing that we’ve overreacted to
covid.
A vast landscape of lost people —
who need a belief system to guide their actions —
constitutes promising terrain for someone seeking to attract
believers, proteges or followers (online or otherwise). The
central figures in this subculture “are guys who
don’t know how to manage their charisma,” says
Remski. “They are burdened with unwarranted confidence
amplified and recycled by social media until it’s
habitual but also viral.”
Jules Evans, an honorary research
fellow at the Center for the History of Emotions at Queen
Mary University of London, has investigated the history,
philosophy and psychology of well-being. In an article for
Medium called “Nazi Hippies: When the New Age and Far
Right Overlap,” Evans wrote about how leading members
of the Nazi party in the 1930s and ’40s were followers
of alternative spirituality and medicine. “There was an
idea that western culture has lost its way and we need to
return to traditional sources of wisdom, whether that be
Hinduism or Sufism or traditional gender roles,” Evans
told me. It’s a concept that’s popular today with
the alt-right. “There is an overlap,” he says,
“between New Age and far-right populism in
traditionalist thinking, that the West has lost its way with
feminism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism, and we need a
return to order.”
In December, an NPR/Ipsos poll asked
respondents whether they believe the myth behind QAnon: that
“a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child
sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”
Seventeen percent said it was true, and 37 percent said they
didn’t know. It would be easy to write this off as
simply a mass lack of critical-thinking ability — and
that is certainly part of it — but when Jeffrey
Epstein, whose friends were some of the most powerful people
in the world, was charged with sex trafficking involving
underage girls, it’s easy to see how someone might be
tempted to blur the line between real-life corruption and
conspiracy theories.
“Conspiracy theories are going to
attach to how we already see the world,” says Joseph E.
Uscinski, a professor of political science at the University
of Miami who researches American conspiracy theories. They
are representative of people’s concerns at the time:
the Bavarian illuminati of the 18th century, the Freemasons
in the 1930s, the JFK assassination in the 1960s.
I have a sense of how women in the
wellness world can fall down these rabbit holes. Alternative
spirituality “is related to issues that are thought to
be of greater concern to women, such as self-care or
connectedness,” Voas told me. “This is thought to
be upbeat and optimistic in its orientation — which is
a contrast to conspiracy theory, which is darker, more
pessimistic, more political, about secret forces controlling
things behind the scenes.” And yet, alternative
spirituality and conspiracy are, in the end, united by a
narcissistic idea: that there are things in the world crying
out for explanation and that you alone are unraveling the
truth. As Voas puts it, “The central point is that we
have, in our society, competition between trust and
doubt.”
An article last year in the European
Journal of Social Psychology called “An exploration of
spiritual superiority: The paradox of
self-enhancement,” by Dutch behavioral scientists Roos
Vonk and Anouk Visser, found that “the road to
spiritual enlightenment may yield the exact same mundane
distortions that are all too familiar in social psychology,
such as self-enhancement, illusory superiority,
closed-mindedness, and hedonism (clinging to positive
experiences) under the guise of alleged ‘higher’
values.” This spiritual form of narcissism reminds me
of Chansley’s language on Facebook around star seeds.
According to Evans, it’s derived, in a copy of a copy
kind of way, from an idea in Gnosticism — a collection
of beliefs from early Christian sects, popular in
alternative spirituality, that there are spiritual aliens
who are different species: “You are from another
planet, you’ve fallen into this prison of the material
world, and you’re working to ascend to your true home.
It’s an extreme expression of spiritual alienation and
spiritual narcissism.”
I am guessing Chansley probably wanted
to achieve notoriety for his ideas — and that a desire
to stand out is part of the reason he chose such a bizarre
costume to wear to an attempted coup. He is, to use a term
popular on the Internet, a spiritual version of a clout
chaser.
But I don’t want to tease anyone
for their spiritual ideas, even Chansley, who has been
charged with six federal crimes and awaits trial. Rather,
I’m interested in the larger question this raises about
contemporary masculinity. What void is this filling? If
QAnon provides an easy answer for a small but steady group
of men, we should think about what a healthier spiritual
alternative looks like. “Whatever it is, it should be
offline for starters,” says Remski. “It could
focus on community service, but at the very least it should
be built in the neighborhood, not on the consumer workshop
circuit. The last thing the ex-QAnon man needs is a leader
or a group commodifying his recovery or monetizing his
confessions or emotions.” Remski has already noticed a
rise in men’s groups based on spiritual bodybuilding,
sacred real estate and supplement pyramid schemes. “I
guarantee,” he predicts, “that within the year a
pair of bros will start up a [multilevel marketing
business] that sells QAnon recovery products.”
Source: www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/03/29/qanon-new-age-spirituality/?no_nav=true&tid=a_classic-iphone
Thinking
Critically About Rural Gender Relations: Toward a Rural
Masculinity Crisis/Male Peer Support Model of
Separation/Divorce Sexual Assault
Abstract
After decades of neglect, a growing
number of scholars have turned their attention to issues of
crime and criminal justice in the rural context. Despite
this improvement, rural crime research is underdeveloped
theoretically, and is little informed by critical
criminological perspectives. In this article, we introduce
the broad tenets of a multi-level theory that links social
and economic change to the reinforcement of rural patriarchy
and male peer support, and in turn, how they are linked to
separation/divorce sexual assault. We begin by addressing a
series of misconceptions about what is rural, rural
homogeneity and commonly held presumptions about the
relationship of rurality, collective efficacy (and related
concepts) and crime. We conclude by recommending more
focused research, both qualitative and quantitative, to
uncover specific link between the rural transformation and
violence against women.
Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10612-007-9038-0
Older men cling
to 1950s, '60s blueprint of masculinity
Study: Older men adhere closely to an idealized masculinity
script that is incompatible with the realities of later
life
As men age, they continue to follow
dominant ideas of masculinity learned as youth, leaving them
unequipped for the assaults of old age, according to a new
study.
The mismatch between aging and the
often ageless expectations of popular masculinity leaves
senior men without a blueprint to behave or handle emotions,
according to a new literature review from Case Western
Reserve University.
Men who embodied the prevailing
cultural and societal hallmarks of manliness as younger
men—projecting an aura of toughness and independence,
avoiding crying and vulnerability, while courageously taking
risks—are confronted by the development of health
problems, loss of spouses and loved ones, retirement and
needing to be a caregiver for ailing family members in later
life.
"Who you are in the past is embedded
in you," said Kaitlyn Barnes Langendoerfer, a doctoral
student in sociology at Case Western Reserve and co-author
of the review, which mined narrative data from nearly 100
previously published studies. "Men have trouble dealing with
older age because they've followed a masculinity script that
left little room for them to negotiate unavoidable
problems."
"In our study, we hear men struggling
with grief—which is a vulnerable state—and
caregiving, which is associated with femininity," she said.
"If they must cry, men feel it's to be done in the home,
away from others, even when spouse has died. They have to
renegotiate their masculinity in order to deal with what
life is bringing their way."
This masculinity "script" still
embraced by older men was outlined as the four-part
Blueprint of Manhood, first published by sociologist Robert
Brannon when the men in the studies were entering adulthood
in the 1970's. The blueprint included:
No Sissy Stuff - men are to
avoid being feminine, show no weaknesses and hide intimate
aspects of their lives.
The Big Wheel - men must gain
and retain respect and power and are expected to seek
success in all they do.
The Sturdy Oak - men are to be
''the strong, silent type" by projecting an air of
confidence and remaining calm no matter what.
Give 'em Hell - men are to be
tough, adventurous, never give up and live life on the
edge.
"We're all aging; it's a fact of life.
But as men age, they're unable to be who they were, and that
creates a dissonance that is hard to reconcile," said
Langendoerfer, who studies aging in men.
"We need to better understand how
older men adapt to their stressors—high suicide rates,
emotions they stifle, avoiding the doctor—to hopefully
help them build better lives in older age," she
said.
The review, published in the journal
Men and Masculinities, was co-written by Edward Thompson
Jr., an emeritus professor of sociology and anthropology at
the College of the Holy Cross and now an affiliate of the
Department of Sociology at Case Western Reserve.
Most of the data came from studies
with white, middle-class men from the United States, Canada
and Europe who had stable careers. "More research inclusive
of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds is needed
to obtain a more complete picture of how older men adapt,"
Langendoerfer said.
Source: phys.org/news/2016-10-older-men-1950s-60s-blueprint.html?utm_term=OZY&utm_campaign=daily-dose&utm_content=Friday_06.18.21&utm_source=Campaigner&utm_medium=email
If Just This One
Idea About Manhood Is Changing, There’s Hope
7/23/20
It was a competitive nine-year-olds’ baseball game.
Grandson’s team was in the process of experiencing
their first loss of what was so far an eight-game
season.
Watching a grandson thrive as a truly
self-motivated, avid – and grampa would add gifted
– baseball player who is supported without pressure by
parents continued, even on that day, not only to be
thrilling entertainment. It felt as if it were a gifted
connection with a fast-growing boy I had spent cherished
time with from day one.
His own joy in the game, often seen in
his smiles while pitching and fielding, also brought back
forgotten memories of good times with my own dad when he
took me to the old Milwaukee Braves’ games at County
Stadium back when bleacher seats were $5.
That evening’s game began with a
bad night for the Coyote’s starting pitcher. He walked
ten batters so that the top of the first inning ended at the
league’s seven-run per inning limit. His second inning
was hardly better.
His team has some surprisingly good
nine-year-old pitchers whose pitches are quite fast and
accurate. So, you could see that this young guy felt as if
he had let all his teammates down (much less disappointed
the team’s loyal fans) when he was relieved by a friend
who was, instead, in his rhythm that night.
But “the damage,” as the
sportscasters’ say, “had been done.” And when
he retreated to the dugout, even as fans applauded his
effort, this nine-year-old young man was crying.
There’s an old, popular, and I
consider unhealthy, saying that’s repeated by those
stuck promoting destructive, toxic, and shaming masculinity
in sports: “There’s no crying in
baseball.”
But no one, not one coach, and not one
fan I could hear fell back on that. We all felt his
disappointment along with him, but no one added to that
disappointment by shaming him for those tears.
Grandson and his teammates have been
fortunate since they began playing in kindergarten. They
have experienced, so far, positive coaching that has made
them better without masculine shaming.
No coach or parent in my presence has
ever said to these boys that it’s wrong to cry. In
fact, when one of them in first grade was injured and was
carried off the field crying, one coach comforted him with:
“I’d have cried even harder.”
So when I see his coaches walking to
their cars with their fourth-grader sons while holding
hands, I regain a hope for future generations that some of
us are over the “big boys don’t cry”
mentality.
For generations, male gender role
conditioning has included the ridicule and humiliation of
boys for their tears. It’s taught them thereby to
ignore their natural feelings of hurt, fear, and
confusion.
It’s taught them that anger is
the male thing to feel instead. And no male has yet to be
told that anger and violence are unmanly – but they
sure have been told they’re somehow unmanly if they
express those natural human emotions that are buried under
that anger.
And where homophobia and heterosexism
have diminished, at least in public discourse, we hear less
and less of the gay slurs applied to men who openly express
these basic emotions that are covered over with secondary
ones permitted for manhood: anger and sexual arousal. Sadly
often, though, such worn-out slurs are still
voiced.
Putting boys out of touch with their
feelings has been a useful tool of conditioning for
societies for generations. It’s harder to go to war
against another man or fight competitively to make another
man lose, to beat up another man or to destroy him with
ruthless business practices, to step over male bodies on the
way to what will be declared a victory or convince oneself
that the others deserve their unfortunate circumstances, if
you know and do embrace the idea that you and these other
men actually and legitimately feel hurt, fear, and
confusion.
So, the more a man has been put out of
touch with these feelings, the more he’s become
convinced that feeling them is contrary to the rule that
“big boys don’t cry,” the more he’s lost
touch with his emotional connections to his fellow men, the
easier it is to deny that any human damage is done to others
and that he might have contributed to it.
I’m afraid that should grandson
continue on what he’d like to be his career path,
he’ll run into others who are still sold on the old
feelingless manhood (except, of course, again, expressing
all these emotions through anger and sexual desire).
It’s still so much a built-in part of our cultural
norms.
The extent that someone buys into all
this is enforced by both men and women who do. Few men want
to be deemed “unmanly” by the standards of the men
around them.
Fear that other men judge them as less
than manly and even in subtle or not so subtle ways will
punish them if they don’t come across as manly enough
by the old definitions is one way it’s all kept in
place. Gay men know this fear and are more overtly punished
for breaking that man code, but all men know what it means
to be scared straight no matter what their sexual
orientation.
Parents enforce the man code because
they fear what can happen to their boys if they don’t
live up to its standards. They’ve seen what has
happened to any boy not manly enough in the past.
And women have been conditioned to
somehow “need” a “real man.” Are they
prepared for and secure with his tears, vulnerability, and a
full set of human qualities and emotions when they’ve
been told they need him to love and protect them and prove
to them in the end that they’re lovable?
I want to believe there have been some
changes in all of this, though my book Scared
Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why
It’s So Hard to be Human
continues to explain so much of this for its readers even
today.
I know that as long as for many
it’s somehow less than manly to be gay, or less than
feminine to be a lesbian, this prejudice will continue to be
used to enforce the idea that men shouldn’t show
feelings through tears. I know that as long as transgender
people are humiliated and ridiculed because they defy the
gender boxes that deny some of the human qualities to anyone
based upon binary gender norms, there’ll be further
pressure for everyone to monitor one’s
feelings.
But I still hope that there will come
a day when all emotions matter to anyone regardless of
gender definition and that even in baseball there can be
crying without shame.
Source: whosoever.org/if-just-this-one-idea-about-manhood-is-changing-theres-hope/
War Is the Force
that Gives Masculinity Meaning - 10/1/14
In 2002, when Pulitzer Prize winner, Chris Hedges published
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, he wrote in depth
about the warrior culture that is the USA. “The
communal march against an enemy generates a warm, unfamiliar
bond with our neighbors, our community, our nation, wiping
out unsettling undercurrents of alienation and
dislocation,” he wrote. “It gives us purpose,
meaning, a reason for living.”
In 2014 the American
military-industrial-media complex is still salivating for
war to further line its pockets. And a president elected to
get us out of two wars in which we were mired, displays
caution but finds himself pressured on many sides to do
something warrior-like.
The drumbeat includes the usual:
ramping up of fear against an enemy, claims of a threat to
what’s now called the “homeland,” and images
of cruelty that invoke the sense that “we can’t
let them get away with that, especially when they do it to
Americans.” Few are interviewed in mainstream media who
argue against the whole mindset.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders
appeared briefly on “Meet the Press” in September
for the first time in his career. But no Chris Hedges or
Noam Chomsky is likely to appear as the debate centers on
the best tactics of fighting the bad guys rather than how to
change US policies that spawn terrorist groups.
In our culture, war is still the manly
response; it gives conditioned manhood its meaning. With
women in the military and LGBT people tolerated, a warrior
reaction to any problem still won’t cause mainstream
pundits to question any man’s masculinity, though it
might cause them to question a woman’s
femininity.
Even though there’s been a
history of dissenters – Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr, to name two well-known examples – and a long
history of anti-war movements, America still falls back on a
war model to attack problems from literacy, to AIDS, to
poverty, to drugs, to crime. The tools of war get more
sophisticated, while we sell them to the world to use, even
profiting off of selling them to those who become
enemies
For war to continue to give us such
meaning as well as war-industry jobs, we need more than just
the selling of each new war through exaggeration, lies, and
fears. Those tactics must touch something already within so
the public relations of warmongering will resonate inside
us.
Mainstream conditioning of our
children through our major institutions must still make
warriors and warrior-support personnel out of them through
molding their minds, if the propaganda of each new war is to
be effective. And, sadly, the old gender role conditioning
that enables this hasn’t changed as much as we’d
like to believe.
In fact, the dominant Northern
European/American views of gender and its limitations have
heavily affected alternatives that would have been found
traditionally among Native Americans, Hispanic peoples,
Africans, and Asians. Even in a culture where children are
being told that they can be anything they want to be,
dominant institutions that supposedly provide
“role-models” such as the NFL or Congress, have
failed to move outside genderized boxes, and, as if it
surprises us, failed miserably to challenge the status quo,
as we’ve painfully been reminded recently.
It takes the equivalent of mental
child abuse to take the little boy who was born with his
complete humanity intact, and to convince him that he will
be considered an American masculine hero if he is willing
someday to go off to another country and kill other men or
be killed by them. Notice how the title “hero” is
now applied to anyone who does just that.
It also takes the equivalent of mental
child abuse to take the little girl who was born with her
complete humanity and all its possibilities intact, and
convince her that the solution to her fears, second-place
status, meaninglessness, and hopelessness is to find
fulfillment in supporting one of these male warriors. She
might even stay with an abuser if she’s convinced that
he is her savior from all that she’s supposedly lacks
in life.
But our mainstream culture still does
it. It still defines male bonding and teamwork as a group of
men getting together to beat, defeat, or kill another group
of men. Every male sporting event on television celebrates
it with the most popular often the sports that reward men
for harder hits or knocking the other
unconscious.
Our culture still awards its warriors
for killing another man. A man can get a medal for killing
another man, but still be killed for loving one.
Much of its religion is still in a
fight against the cultural change that threatens to fully
accept lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and transgender
people who challenge gender roles. Mainstream media gives
such religion disproportionate attention, enabling them to
feel like noble, righteous warriors in the “culture
wars.”
And our culture remains stuck in the
old gender roles, with otherwise liberal people still
talking about their masculine and feminine “sides”
as if those categories mean something definite. Or using
supposedly positive comments such as: “You’re too
pretty to be a lesbian.” “But you’re too
macho to be a gay man.” “She’s trans, but you
can’t tell. She’s so pretty.”
Finally, it’s still quite useful
to install the fear of getting close to ones own gender
that’s the heart of homophobia. Without that, it’s
much harder for men to make other men their enemies.
It’s easier to fear them as threatening
competitors.
While walking with my then 2 ½
year old grandson down the street, we passed a gaping open
sewer. He grabbed my hand and pulled me away, saying
“Grampa, be careful. That’s
dangerous.”
To that little boy, holding hands
wasn’t something that men don’t do. It was how
they protect each other in their common humanity.
But you can’t shoot someone when
you’re holding each other’s hand to protect one
another. You’re instead more likely to feel the common
humanity that would make looking for alternatives to war
obvious.
Source: whosoever.org/war-is-the-force-that-gives-masculinity-meaning/
Men are Killing
Themselves
On April 22, 2002, an amazing study done at Johns Hopkins
University was published on young men and anger (Archives of
Internal Medicine 2002; 162: 901-906).
The study followed 1,055 men for an
average of 36 years following their schooling to examine the
risk of premature and total cardiovascular disease
associated with anger responses to stress during early adult
life.
The incredible results of this study
were that young men who quickly react to stress with anger
have three times the normal risk of developing premature
heart disease. Also, these men were five times more likely
than men who were calmer to have an early heart attack even
if they didn’t have a family history of heart
disease!
While it has been clear for a long
time that anger damages relationships, the health problems
associated with anger have never been made as clear. Anger
not only hurts your relationships, it kills you!
Anger damages relationships more than
any other single factor. It hurts people and creates
mistrust. It causes your own children to fear you. And it
perpetuates a way of being that’s a lie.
It’s a lie because there are many
emotions floating around under your anger that are never
discovered as long as the anger hides them. There’s a
part of you that remains a mystery to you and to the world
because it never sees the light of day.
And while there is some information
for men on managing their anger, not many men seem to access
it.
In fact, it tends to remain a very
private matter for many men. A sense of failure and shame
surrounds men who struggle with their temper. These feelings
keep this a private matter, causing the cycle to stay the
same or worsen.
And the simple truth about men
improving their anger is that it’s a matter of choice.
You no longer need to accept the notion that you’ve
“got a temper,” and that’s the “way it
is.”
Here are some options for men seeking
to improve themselves:
- You are the only one who can make
you angry—accept this responsibility and you’ve
a come a long way towards getting better.
- Write down the irrational thinking
that contributes to your anger (people should always
treat me kindly, etc.). Ask yourself where you developed
this thinking and give yourself some alternative thoughts
that are more productive.
- Become more aware of tuning into
your body when you begin to become angry. Deep
diaphragmatic breathing is a great way to do this. The
ideas is to focus on you, not the “target” of
the anger.
- Prepare yourself before a
stressful situation and “practice” your new,
calmer response to it. Be aware that it might take some
time to feel comfortable with this new
response.
- Find the stressors in your life
that might be contributing to your anger—do what you
can to reduce these stressors and add some self-care into
your life.
When we talk about health hazards for
men, we may need to include anger alongside fast food and a
lack of exercise among factors that can shorten men’s
lives.
Managing your anger is a learnable
skill, and it benefits everyone around you.
More importantly, it may save your
life.
Mark Brandenburg writes a
column
for menstuff.org. He has a Masters degree in counseling
psychology and has been a counselor, business consultant,
sports counselor, and a certified life and business coach.
He has worked with individuals, teams, and businesses to
improve their performance for over 20 years. Prior to life
and business coaching Mark was a world-ranked professional
tennis player and has coached other world-ranked athletes.
He has helped hundreds of individuals to implement his
coaching techniques. Mark specializes in coaching men to
balance their lives and to improve the important
relationships in their lives. He is the author of the
popular e-books, 25
Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent
Fathers ,
and Fix
Your Wife in 30 Days or Less (And Improve Yourself at the
Same Time ).
Mark is also the publisher of the “Dads Don’t Fix
your Kids” ezine for fathers. To sign up, go to
www.markbrandenburg.com
or E-Mail
him
Why men are
lonelier in America than elsewhere - 12/29/21
Are isolated men driving American women up the wall? A
recent sketch on “Saturday Night Live”, which
refers to studies concluding that males in America are
increasingly friendless, suggests that they are. A young
woman, frustrated by her boyfriend’s inability to open
up to anyone else, takes him by the hand and leads him to a
“man park” (like the dog version) where, after a
shy start, he finds fellow males to make friends with. Some
viewers disliked the likening of men to dogs, but the
sketch, which went viral online, illustrates fresh concerns
about an old worry: the loneliness of American
men.
As people in rich countries work
longer hours, marry later and spend more time with their
children, not friends, research suggests loneliness is
increasing. A study by the University of Pennsylvania found
a direct link between social-media usage and loneliness.
More time spent online means less time building
friendships.
The problem may be particularly severe
in America. A large international study by British academics
found that people in individualistic countries (a measure on
which America scores highest) reported greater loneliness.
America also has one of the highest divorce rates; men may
be more likely to lose mutual friends after a split. A
strong work ethic and geographical mobility (meaning
friendships are liable to be lost or weakened as people
relocate) is likely to exacerbate the problem.
A survey published in 2021 by the
Survey Centre on American Life, part of the American
Enterprise Institute, a think-tank, found that friendship
groups have shrunk in the past three decades. The decline
has been particularly marked among men. In 1990, 55% of
American men reported having at least six close friends;
today only 27% do. The survey found that 15% of men have no
close friendships at all, a fivefold increase since
1990.
Those who study male loneliness
believe that a particularly American version of masculinity
is in part to blame. Since 1990 Robert Garfield, a
psychotherapist and author of “Breaking the Male
Code”, has run “friendship labs”, men’s
therapeutic groups, which have shown him that men crave
emotional connection. But American boys, says Dr Garfield,
who has also run such groups in Europe, are often taught
that successful men exhibit particular
traits—restraint, independence, competitiveness—at
the expense of others.
As women’s and LGBT rights have
advanced in recent decades, along with more emotional ways
of connecting with others, “men are being asked to
stretch themselves”, Dr Garfield says. Over time, this
is likely to have a positive effect on the way men relate to
each other, but at the moment, “males are in a fighting
phase”.
Marc Schapiro, a 24-year-old English
teacher from Maryland, agrees. He says he was taught male
friendship is “stoic and lacking outward
affection”. But now he sees a different portrayal of
friendship on social media, particularly by women and LGBT
people. He would love, he says, to be able to “show
more affection and drop the constant snide comments and
ribbing”, but he finds the disconnect between what he
grew up believing about friendship and how he sees other
people relating to each other unsettling. The
“quasi-socialising” he and his friends do online,
via games and various message boards, meets no real need, he
adds.
All this comes at a heavy cost.
Suicide is more common among young men than young women.
Niobe Way, a psychologist at New York University who studies
adolescent male friendship and is the author of “Deep
Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of
Connection”, says it is no coincidence this divergence
begins to happen around the age that many boys move away
from close friendships. In childhood, she says, boys tend to
be as open as girls about their need for friends. As they
get older, they “feel they have to get into a gender
straitjacket” and define their masculinity primarily as
not being feminine. By the age of 15, many boys start saying
they don’t need friends and worrying that close
friendships will make them seem “girly”. This
“clash of culture and nature”, Dr Way says, is
much more marked among white boys than black
ones.
The effects are far-reaching. Research
has linked loneliness to poor health. It can make men angry
and violent. Male loneliness also affects women. Dr Garfield
observes that two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women,
many of whom complain their husbands are emotionally
incompetent. “There’s nothing new about that, but
women are increasingly unlikely to put up with it,” he
says. ¦
This article appeared in the United
States section of the print edition under the headline
“Oh man!”
Source: www.economist.com/united-states/2022/01/01/why-men-are-lonelier-in-america-than-elsewhere
Ozy: TODAY
1/27/22
It’s an interesting time to be a man. Expectations
are changing. Bad actors are being held accountable for
their toxic behavior. Powerful men are recognizing that they
can’t always get away with unacceptable actions.
“In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with
anyone, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the
line has been redrawn,” former New York Gov. Andrew
Cuomo said as he announced his resignation last summer after
a probe commissioned by the state attorney general concluded
that he had sexually harassed a large number of women.
“There are generational and cultural shifts that I just
didn’t fully appreciate.”
So how do we teach the next generation
of boys to be better stewards of the changing times? From
toxic masculinity to sexual fluidity, today’s Daily
Dose explores the future of manhood, introducing you to the
societal shifts and faces of change redefining the male
identity.
TROUBLING
TRENDS
1 - Sound of Silence
Hush. Don’t talk about it.
That’s long been one of the trademarks of toxic
masculinity when it comes to a subject that’s often
swept under the carpet across the world: male victims of
sexual violence. Nearly a quarter of American men experience
contact sexual
violence during their
lifetime. And 1 in 4 men who are victims of rape or
attempted rape first experience it when they’re between
the ages of 11 and 17. Yet while sex crimes against women go
underreported, men are even less likely to speak
up about sexual violence
they’ve faced, according to the World Health
Organization.
2 - Mental Health
Pandemic
But it isn’t just sexual
violence. Some 6 million American men battle
depression every year,
according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But
they’re much less likely to seek help compared to
women. Instead, men struggling with mental health often try
to self-medicate, turning to drugs and alcohol to hide their
problems. But the problems don’t go away. Deaths from
suicide in the U.S. are four times higher for men compared
to women.
3 - The Underlying
Problem
The COVID-19 pandemic has only
underscored how deep-seated gender identities can hurt not
just individuals who subscribe to them but entire societies.
Multiple studies have shown that men are less
likely to wear protective
masks or to maintain social distancing compared to women. In
Hong Kong during the SARS
outbreak and in Mexico City
during the H1N1 crisis, similar scenarios were observed. To
some, it’s just not cool. To others, any sign of
vulnerability runs counter to their idea of masculinity. Yet
having good friends can help counteract toxic masculinity, a
recent Australian study suggests. It found a direct
correlation between decreased positive support from friends
and traits that foster bullying and misogynistic and
homophobic behaviors.
FACES OF
CHANGE
1 - Jason Rogers
A romance book club . . . for men?
That’s what former Olympic fencer Jason
Rogers started in 2019 after
getting inspired by Lyssa Kay Adams’ novel
The Bromance Book Club . The idea is to get men together,
discussing romance, love, intimacy — subjects that have
traditionally been seen as feminine — through books.
“It’s an interesting mechanism to get guys to
question their ideas and perceptions of gender norms,
especially gender norms in relationships,” Rogers tells
OZY. “It has served as a bridge to get us into really
important discussions about love, sex and intimacy that guys
aren’t really having.” It’s the opposite of
locker room talk. And it’s about time.
2 - William Jackson
Harper
Emerging faces in Hollywood are doing
their part to change societal assumptions of masculinity.
Harper, best known as Chidi in the Emmy-winning NBC sitcom
The Good Place, takes the stereotype of a male lead and rips
it apart in his role as an indecisive philosophy professor.
“I think realizing that there are certain ideas of
Blackness and certain ideas of maleness that sort of pervade
a lot of art and media, I like to subvert that when I
can,” Harper told OZY on The Carlos Watson
Show.
Watch
now
3 - Adebayo
Oke-Lawal
The Nigerian designer is defying his
conservative country’s deep-rooted traditional views of
masculinity with a gender-fluid clothing brand that has
become wildly popular — in a nation where same-sex
marriages are banned and gay groups are criminalized. Orange
Culture deliberately embraces styles and fabrics perceived
as effeminate to challenge mainstream notions of what men
should wear.
4 - Thomas Page
McBee
What about trans men? As he started
pumping his body with testosterone in 2010, Thomas
Page McBee knew he wasn’t
a woman, and transitioning to a man was something he had to
do. But he was scared: He associated men with violence, and
that’s not what he wanted to become. More than a decade
later, McBee is a leading trans voice using that unique
perspective of transitioning to not just spotlight toxic
masculinity but to address it with sensitivity. He has even
been in a boxing
match at New York’s
Madison Square Garden in a bid to understand the need for
violence that many men feel. It’s an unconventional
approach. Maybe that’s what we need.
A SOCIETAL
SHIFT
1 - Genderless
Language
Can changing the way we speak alter
the gender stereotypes we otherwise grow up with? Yes,
suggests a growing slate of research. According to a 2011
study,
societies with genderless languages — such as Finnish,
Chinese and the Bantu language system of Africa — have
less gender inequality than countries with languages in
which gender is central. That’s why Spain’s
socialist
government has proposed
rewriting its constitution in gender-neutral language, while
Argentina’s Parliament is debating whether to make such
words mandatory for its proceedings. But it’s a
divisive subject, with similar initiatives in France and
Germany facing pushback.
2 - It’s Good to
Cry
From the American Psychological
Association through powerful public service videos to the
emergence of academic programs focused on masculinity
studies, there’s a
growing movement working to destigmatize the need for mental
health care among men . . . and the need to cry. While the
taboos around gender and mental health are problematic in
the U.S., they’re even more entrenched in several other
parts of the world, including the Middle East and South
Asia. There is a good reason for those stigmas to be torn
apart: They’re unhealthy. Research has shown a direct
correlation between repressive coping mechanisms like
holding back tears and cardiovascular
diseases.
3 - And Bathe
It’s also about having fun while
breaking down stereotypes. That’s what a growing number
of groups are doing, reimagining activities traditionally
considered feminine. Take Men
Who Take Baths, a group
founded in 2017 amid the #MeToo movement. It facilitates
conversations on how to become better men . . . through
interviews conducted in bathtubs.
4 - Men Teaching Men
If the examples of Jason Rogers,
Adebayo Oke-Lawal, Thomas Page McBee and William Jackson
Harper tell us anything, it’s that men need to —
and can — lead the way in redefining masculinity. Men
need to rethink what to teach boys moving forward.
Thankfully, a growing number of organizations,
initiatives
and programs — including at universities
— are trying to help men do just that through
peer-to-peer learning.
5 - Sexing It Up
If the problem is the misguided notion
that seeking mental health care is weak, effeminate and
unattractive to an intimate partner, why not flip that
script? From TikToks to women publicly speaking
up about how they’ll
only
date men who seek self-help
and therapy when needed, the conversation is changing.
Source: mail.aol.com/webmail-std/en-us/suite
Olympian Vincent
Zhou on masculinity, skating, mental health and
‘strict’ parents 2/3/22
“There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging your
deepest thoughts or your deepest emotions,” he said in
an interview before a positive Covid test forced him to drop
out of the men’s competition at the Beijing
Olympics.
Olympic figure skater Vincent
Zhou’s career has no shortage of memorable
performances, but among his most celebrated is a stunning
2019 routine set to Joji’s “Slow Dancing in the
Dark.” At one point, Zhou, dripping with angst, drops
down to his knees and slides across the ice as the song hits
its climax.
“I recall receiving plenty of
messages on Instagram about just how emotionally impactful
that performance was,” the athlete said of the routine
that went viral and earned him a shoutout from Joji himself.
“That made me really, really happy to see that people
could relate to it and find something to embrace in
it.”
The performance remains an example of
Zhou's skating style, one that draws upon vulnerability and
emotion as a source of strength. It’s something he
hopes to convey as one of 16 skaters competing on Team USA
at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which officially begins
on Friday.
Since the story was published, Zhou
tested positive for Covid-19 and won’t be able compete
in the men’s individual competition.
Now 21, Zhou was the youngest athlete
on Team U.S. at the last Winter Games, in PyeongChang, South
Korea, in 2018, where he finished sixth. Since then, he has
grown up in the public eye, having weathered the world stage
against the backdrop of an immigrant family upbringing.
Going into his second Olympics, Zhou has some reflections
that come from confronting the intense pressures and joys of
his art.
“There’s nothing wrong with
acknowledging your deepest thoughts or your deepest
emotions,” Zhou told NBC Asian America.
“There’s nothing wrong with being an honest
person, you know?”
The athlete, who made history as the
first person to land a quadruple lutz at the Winter Games,
has been skating since he was 5, first stepping onto the ice
at a friend’s birthday party. Though the art form
quickly evolved into a fierce passion, with Olympic dreams
in his mind’s eye from a young age, Zhou acknowledged
that some dismiss his sport, driven by the overemphasis on
masculinity in society.
“There’s that stereotype
where people look at skaters and they’re like,
‘Oh, they’re ballerinas in tutus,’ or stuff
like that or, ‘all guys who do figure skating are
gay,’” Zhou said. “I think those are all
pretty ignorant perspectives.”
Experts have said that Asian men, in
particular, must deal with emasculation, or being cast as
effeminate and weak. Even Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese hitter
and pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels who has excelled in
baseball, a sport that’s traditionally recognized as a
masculine by Western standards, was seen as an insufficient
representative of the sport by some, like ESPN’s
Stephen A. Smith. Constancio Arnaldo Jr., an assistant
professor of Asian and Asian American studies at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, previously told NBC Asian
America that it’s likely that some felt Ohtani’s
Asianness contested age-old ideas of what a dominant,
powerful athlete looks like.
“It’s about masculinity,"
Arnaldo said. "Asian and Asian Americans are always seen as
not masculine enough."
But Zhou, who was born in San Jose,
California, to Chinese immigrants, said he believes that
tremendous strength and fortitude is required to produce the
beauty and emotion in ice skating, and that often gets
overlooked. And perhaps it’s time to stop judging the
legitimacy of sports and the ability of its athletes through
this lens of Western masculinity.
“It’s a beautiful thing to
have the athleticism to be able to do quadruples, which are
essentially the limit of what’s physically possible in
skating right now, but also to be able to give a beautiful
performance and have great lines on the ice and have an
appreciation for artistry,” Zhou said. “It’s
just a sport. It’s just a thing that we all enjoy. I
don’t think there’s a reason to make it about,
‘Guys have to be guys and girls have to be
girls.’”
Zhou, who’s also a student at
Brown University, speaks with a wisdom that he said has come
after moments of significant triumph, but also struggle.
Zhou said he and his mother packed up their bags and moved
to Colorado when he was 8 so he could train with
“better coaches and better conditions,” and he
spoke openly about the mental health struggles he contended
with in his adolescence.
Zhou said that he spent three years
skating on a torn meniscus, which eventually required
surgery. Recovery was particularly difficult, he remembers.
At the time, Zhou was confined to his house, isolated from
friends and kept off the ice. The athlete was subsequently
left alone with his thoughts, feeling as though he had lost
an opportunity of making the Olympic team one day and
“achieving greatness,” Zhou explained.
“I would say I had pretty severe
depression. I never had a formal diagnosis because back
then, 10 years ago, resources for that weren’t readily
available, especially for kids,” Zhou said. “I
wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemies. It’s
really a struggle, and my heart goes out to anybody
who’s going through that.”
At the time he also felt trapped, he
said, by some of the rules imposed by his “strict
Chinese parents” — a common gripe among many
children of immigrants who find themselves navigating the
pressures of adolescence through both American culture and
their heritage. But Zhou got himself not only back on the
ice, but in a healthier mental space by turning to nature
and proactively looking for inspiration. He also said he
reassessed the tensions he felt with his parents. Many of
the clashes were communication breakdowns, sometimes
cultural ones, that required empathy to unpack, he said.
“If your parents are trying to
set you on the right track, even if they have a different
way of going about it than you … sometimes try to see
what they’re actually saying,” Zhou said. Parents
will say emotional things, but look under that. What are
they actually trying to say to you? They’re trying to
say, ‘We want you to succeed, we want you to have the
best chance at getting a good job and starting a family one
day,’ or whatever it may be. There’s always
something to be grateful for.”
He emphasized that though his parents
have come off as demanding in the past, their devotion to
him has remained unquestionable. And ultimately, whenever
he’s succeeded, they are the first people he thinks
of.
“Achieving a certain level of
success gives a person some perspective on how things
are,” Zhou said. “And when I am standing on a
podium, hearing the national anthem being played and having
a medal placed around my neck, my thoughts … always go
back to the people who helped me along the way.”
However, Zhou also wants to dispel the
myth that strict Asian parents are the sole fuel to his
success, rather than his own love of the sport. The trope,
he explained, removes agency from the athlete themselves.
And at the end of the day, if “we truly don’t want
to do it, we’re not going to do it.”
“No matter what, it always takes
a village to bring an athlete to the Olympic level. And
it’s impossible to keep going at that level if you
don’t love what you’re doing,” Zhou said.
“While people might say, ‘This person’s
parents forced them to do this,’ … when we’re
on the ice, we’re the only people in control of our own
bodies and minds.”
Zhou added: “I hope that people
watching skating can see the passion that we have for the
sport.”
Source: www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/olympian-vincent-zhou-masculinity-skating-mental-health-strict-parents-rcna14663?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=27170b3f-fc65-454c-84fc-450f2e0edf22&sl_gr=grp_youthandyoungadultissues
8:19
Man in a Box
Man in a
Box – The Traditional Definition of Masculinity -
10/10/12
Keith Edwards October 10, 2012 Blog, Men &
Masculinities, Sexual Violence Prevention, Social Justice
Education 14 12553
I’ve often used the Man in the
Box activity, which I believe was created by Paul Kivel, to
help participants in workshops
illustrate the social expectations on men. Below is a video
of this activity using the responses from my
research participants and
highlighting the role of misogyny and homophobia in policing
the expectations of men and the intersections of other forms
of oppression.
Traditional Hegemonic Definition of
Masculinity (THDM) is a wordy way of describing the external
expectations of men that society places on us. This
definition is “traditional” in that it is rooted
in long held cultural ways of defining what it means to be a
man. It is “hegemonic” in that is places men above
people of other genders AND some men above other men. It
defines some men above other men in the ways it intersects
with classism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and other
forms of oppression. One of the ways racism works is trying
to emasculate men of color for their skin color and culture.
One of the ways classism works is by emasculating working
class men for the status of their job, the cars they drive,
and the clothes they wear. And so on.
Man in a Box
Homophobia, misogyny, racism,
classism, ableism, antisemitism
Traditional Hegemonic Definition of
Masculinity
This definition of masculinity is
reinforced in many ways, but two primary was are through
misogyny and homophobia. Misogyny is the hatred of women and
homophobia is the hatred and gays and lesbians or those who
label in that way. Now that sounds academic and complicated
but two five year old boys can illustrate this for you on
the playground. One five year old boy throws the ball and it
doesn’t go very far. The other five year old boy yells,
“Man you throw like a girl!” That is misogynistic
because if being a girl weren’t bad it wouldn’t be
an effective insult. The boy who was called a girl responds
by yelling something homophobic at his friend. Now, it is
likely that this five year old boy has no idea what that
word means, let alone the history of hatred, violence, and
aggression associated with that word. However, he knows that
when he feels emasculated by misogyny, that responding with
homophobia is a way that he can try and prop up his
masculinity according to the traditional hegemonic
definition of masculinity.
If that is what we know about
masculinity at five years old, imagine how well we are
trained to call each other “girl” and
“gay” by the time we are 18 years old and in
college. Imagine how we have to constantly escalate the
violence and aggression in calling each other
“girl” and “gay” in order for that to
have an effect if we’ve been calling and been called
that all of our conscious lives. This definition of
masculinity is part of creating a patriarchal system that
perpetuates, contributes to, and reinforces patriarchy. This
is how the traditional hegemonic definition of masculinity
oppresses people of other genders, marginalizes some men,
and limits all men.
Source: www.keithedwards.com/2012/10/10/man-in-a-box-the-traditional-hegemonic-definition-of-masculinity/
“Putting
My Man Face On” – College Men’s Gender
Identity
Keith Edwards March 20, 2013 Blog, Leadership, Men &
Masculinities, Sexual Violence Prevention, Social Justice
Education, Student Affairs 8 2455
For nearly 15
years I’ve been studying,
analyzing, and researching how college men experience their
gender identity. Specifically I’ve been looking to
better understand how they identify as men, how that changes
over time, and what influences those changes. This research
is both empirical, grounded in data, and personal, grounded
in my own experiences as a man.
I conducted a series of in-depth
interviews with 10 college men who represented a variety of
social group identities (particularly race, class, and
sexual orientation) and a variety of college experiences
(e.g. RA, Black campus leadership, scholarship football
player, LGBT campus leadership, service focused, sexual
assault prevention educator, fraternity men, and Latino
campus leadership).
Each participant shared with me how
they felt they were expected to behave according to
outside
expectations of them as men
and their own personal definition of manhood. Eventually,
each participant shared with me their secret. The secret was
that they didn’t feel that they always measured up to
those expectations and so they faked it by putting on a
performance or wearing a mask. Each participant thought they
were the only one who did this and that it came naturally to
other men.
They put on this mask for two
reasons.
The first was to cover up who they
really were because they didn’t feel that it would
measure up to others expectations. Because of the impossible
and unrealistic expectations society has for men they felt
insecure for just about any reason – too big AND not
big enough, not smart enough AND too smart, etc. The second
was to portray an image to others that would meet these
external
expectations – an image
that was confident, stoic, unemotional, strong,
etc.
As college men they summarized the
specific expectations of them in one word –
“partying.”
This included drinking to excess, doing drugs, breaking
rules, having competitive heterosexual sex, and not
preparing academically. Those of us who work on college
campuses see the ways these performances play out in
individual incidents and over time.
As educators we can easily be
frustrated with men’s behaviors, especially when we
have been hurt by men and these behaviors in the past. The
challenge for us is to do what we can to reach the man
behind the mask and hold him accountable for his behavior
while affirming who he really is. This is especially
challenging when he won’t show you who is behind the
mask.
Men’s
performances while wearing the mask has consequences for
people of other genders, our relationships with other
men, and our own humanity and
authenticity.
The most obvious of these are the
consequences for people of other genders – women,
trans, and gender non-conforming folks. Interacting with men
who are feeling insecure and who get messages that proving
their manhood is often about heterosexual sexual conquest
affects relationships with women at best and leads to sexual
and other violence at worst. It also affects our
relationships with other men, becoming an obstacle to our
relationships with friends who are men and our
fathers.
Finally, when we perform to external
expectations that aren’t who we really are we lose our
authenticity. When we deny aspects of who we really are
because it doesn’t fit with external expectations
(crying when moved, being vulnerable, etc.) we sacrifice our
own humanity.
The college men I interviewed did
describe times when they were able to remove the mask and be
their full selves. Some things that helped them be able to
temporarily remove the mask were critical academic courses,
facing major life decisions, experiencing and surviving
emasculating trauma, and even the interviews themselves
helped them better live their lives as the men they aspired
to be.
I began my research thinking that we
needed to teach college men a different way of being a man.
What I learned instead is that they already know a different
way – it is who they really are under the mask. What we
need to do is give men permission to stop being the man they
feel they have to be and grant them permission to be who
they really are. That’s what the data tells me.
That’s what my own life experiences have told me as
well. How about you?
Source: www.keithedwards.com/2013/03/20/putting-my-man-face-on-college-mens-gender-identity-development/
Work is broken.
Can we fix it?
The Future of Work issue of the Highlight looks at the
workers Americans dubbed “essential” and then
largely left behind in the work revolution. Can we make work
better for the nation’s crucial workforce?
“We often begin to understand
things only after they break down. This is why, in addition
to being a worldwide catastrophe, the pandemic has been a
large-scale philosophical experiment,” Jonathan
Malesic, author of The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us
and How to Build Better Lives, writes
in this month’s issue of
the Highlight.
What has broken down, of course, is
work, and what American workers, policymakers, and employers
now can see plainly are the countless truths the pandemic
laid bare: that productivity does not actually require an
air-polluting, hourlong daily drive to a soulless downtown
office building; that a fair and just society ought not put
the poorest, most vulnerable Americans in danger in the name
of capitalism; that the entire economy might just be held
together by a rapidly dwindling sea of people — child
care workers — earning roughly $13 an hour, with no
benefits.
In this month’s Future of Work
issue, the Highlight and Recode
teamed up to explore the precarity faced by those workers
whom the Great
Resignation did not offer much
in the way of increased power or security. We look beyond
simply what is broken about their working lives, asking
policy experts and workers themselves: What could make work
better?
In our cover
story, Rani Molla and Emily
Stewart talk to those whose jobs, in this supposedly
revolutionary time for worker power, haven’t changed
for the better. For many who don’t have the luxury of
working from home — farmers, food servers, truck
drivers, teachers, home health aides, housekeepers, bank
tellers, and others — slightly higher wages are masking
more difficult and dangerous working conditions they expect
will only continue into the so-called future of
work.
The pandemic also showed Americans
just how reliant the economy is on child care, and how
incredibly fragile that industry is. Turnover is high.
Making ends meet is impossible. The very people who need
child care to allow them to work often are those without the
means to afford it.
Vox shadows one care worker
over the course of a day that proves both joyful and
exhausting in order to better understand the work that
ensures other Americans can do their jobs.
Though Malesic has become a well-known
voice calling for an overhaul of work — he’s
called it a “bad bargain” for many — he has
found, perhaps surprisingly, that many Americans want to
find their jobs meaningful, even if that meaning has lately
come with stress and exploitation. In this issue, he
explores what it might take to create a future in which we
aren’t so reliant on work to live and could instead be
freed to derive satisfaction from it.
Perhaps no employer in the past 50
years has transformed consumer expectations quite like
e-commerce giant Amazon. Those changes have begun shifting
what work is like, too, not only for the 1.1 million people
Amazon directly employs, but also for its vast network of
contractors — and for people working for the
many
companies that want to emulate Amazon’s
methods for making its
workforce and workflows hyper-efficient.
Finally, the Future of Work issue
looks at Gen
Z and its penchant for fearlessly posting
about capitalism, labor, and
employer behavior online, and we ask journalist and author
Eyal Press about the nation’s worst, most exploitative
jobs and just how complicit the rest of us are when others
must do our “dirty work” for us.
A mirror reflection shows the same
woman, one young and one older, mopping a checkered floor.
In the background a french fry container transitions from
red to blue and has a circuit board pattern on it.
Source: www.vox.com/features/23013380/work-is-broken-can-we-fix-it
Why is the
Idea of Privilege so Controversial? 9/1/2018
It seems so difficult for people in dominant groups to
recognize the privileges their group has.
Though the concept of the privilege of
the dominant group that’s based on culturally accepting
their characteristics as the norm and others as deviants
from a norm that’s somehow considered more natural,
American, and human has been around for decades, its very
mention to a person in those dominant groups often raises
the level of a discussion’s seat.
People not a part of those dominant
groups are regularly, and often silently, aware of what
those phrases mean to their daily lives, but the dynamics of
our culture’s intersection of the categories we use to
divide people complicates the discussion.
And when government or other
institutions act to mitigate privilege, those actions often
evoke complaints of reverse discrimination. We see this in
the stereotypical attacks on affirmative action – the
often misunderstood but most conservative attempt to correct
historical discrimination that the government could come up
with – or the mainstream but inaccurate images
we’re supposed to carry around about who receives the
most “help” from the government.
Why is it difficult, then, for people
in dominant groups to recognize the privileges their group
has just for being the right color, sexual orientation,
gender, class, religion, or body-type? Why is it almost a
knee-jerk reaction to go into anecdotal-justifying
denial?
First, we’d like to believe that
we’re self-made people who’ve earned by our
actions alone all that’s implied when the concept of
privilege is raised. That’s, as historians point out,
one of the most
It’s so ingrained, and so used by
American leaders, that to point out all the help we’ve
gotten – from the roads we ride on to the tax money
others have paid into our education – is often
interpreted as evidence of some sort of personal failure.
Part of the loss of sense of community is the amnesia that
forgets that we’ve benefited from that
community.
And it’s a sad self-concept that
can only accept one’s value if they’re
“self-made” when everyone is a combination of
their own achievement and what’s been handed to them.
It not only negates one’s own reality, but teaches that
any help we give someone is a sign that they’re
actually failures.
Second, group identity is installed in
us emotionally and with the fear that we might be isolated
from that very group. We come to need the identity that the
group gives us because we rely on it to define who we
are.
So, when the privilege of that group
is pointed out, our reaction is less likely to be a
thoughtful consideration of the idea but an emotional
response that could include guilt, shame, fear, and
threatened loss. We can diminish those feelings quickly with
anger, offense, denial, and a search for the opinions of
others who reject the concept.
It’s often the case that the
response is to go into one’s own victim talk, reciting
how we of the dominant group have been victims of this
person or that. We might even claim that the other group has
it better – though few would thereby be willing to wake
up the next morning with the identity of that non-dominant
group.
I’ve often challenged people who
say that LGBTQ people aren’t really discriminated
against to try an experiment – for the next six months
tell everyone around you that you’re LGBT or Q. But
even assuring them that it’s only an experiment and six
months later they can say “Just kidding,” no one
who’s denied that there’s discrimination has yet
taken me up on it.
Third, because our society is an
intersection of multiple oppressions that each privilege a
certain group, most people experience more than one. So when
one privilege is pointed out, they’re often able to
respond by how they’re the victims of another privilege
as if that other non-privilege negates the original
observation.
The most pervasive of these are the
privileges of economic class. So if someone points out my
white privilege, I can respond with examples about how class
privilege has treated me and – here’s the
misunderstanding – act as if I don’t have any
privileges just because people identify me as
white.
“Well, I’ve had it hard
too” is often a response of how much more difficult
everything is in our culture if you’ve not come from an
economically upper-class family. And one of the functions of
many of the other privileges is actually to keep the class
system in place by dividing people from each other in terms
of these other identities.
The American cultural system has a
long history of preferring that we keep these arguments
going so that the majority – working class people
– doesn’t ever unite to bring down the powers that
be who make money off of our divisions.
So, if I might get personal with a few
everyday examples: I’m a white, non-heterosexual,
ablebodied, man from a working class background. My white
privilege means, for example, that when I walk around a
store I don’t have to wonder if someone is following me
expecting me to steal something or ever have to think about
anything in terms of the pinkish-cream color of my
skin.
As able-bodied, my privileges include
that I never have to determine if a place I visit is
accessible.
My male privileges include that people
often pay attention to me when I say the same thing a woman
has just said that listeners had let go or that I don’t
have to respond to questions about my objectivity as a man
when I write about gender issues.
Yet, I don’t have the privilege
of never worrying about how someone will respond when I tell
them about my partner. And I don’t have the privilege
of not worrying about budgeting or falling into
debt.
And I haven’t even touched on
privileges that come with identifying with the right
religion that’s afraid it’s losing those
privileges and claiming they’re the ones being
persecuted. But that’s another story.
Source: goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-is-the-idea-of-privilege-so-controversial-phtz/
War on Masculinity
- 6/23/22
"If you don't initiate the boys
they will return to burn down the village." -African
Proverb
"A harmless man is not a good man. A
good man is a very dangerous man who has it under control."
-Jordan Peterson
We live in unprecedented times. Men,
boys, and the very essence of masculinity itself are under
direct fire. The phrase "toxic masculinity" has seeped into
the common vernacular in the past half-century in such an
insidious fashion that it has taken control of how we define
manhood publically and privately. Frankly, I'm sick of it.
In the process of establishing much-needed equality between
men and women, certain groups have taken these
individualistic arguments to the extreme. They have thrown
out traditional, tried-and-true gender qualities and
replaced them with chaos instead. In the wake of the latest
wave of feminist and gender non-binary movements, we are
left with more confusion and destruction than ever before.
The second leading cause of death for young people is
suicide. The majority of these young people are male.
Something needs to change in how we all (women and men) view
masculinity.
One in three children from divorced
families is estranged from their fathers. This is an
extremely depressing statistic. Fathers provide essential
elements in a child's development that mothers alone cannot.
The masculine energy is like a river's banks. It provides
the necessary structure for a child's character. Children
preferentially emulate the exercise and self-care habits of
their fathers. They rely on their fathers to feel safe and
more self-reliant. They learn how to regulate their own
interactions with other children better because of their
fathers. If you want to create anti-social, violent
children, you need only deprive them of their fathers. Given
the latest national news, it is important to note that
almost every perpetrator of a mass shooting had a poor
relationship with his father. I say 'his' because every mass
shooter you can think of was male. If we want fewer Sandy
Hooks or Robb Elementary Schools, then we need more fathers
in the lives of our children.
We have to stop the hatred of men. We
have to stop blaming societal troubles on white male
privilege. The social norms that exist in our cultures are
much older than the history of Western civilization or the
patriarchy. Norms, rituals, customs, languages, etc. are all
ways to understand the forces that surround us and to gain
some kind of harmony and utility in the process. One of
these forces is the biological differences between males and
females. Separate cultures developed around male and female
identities in response to these blatant sexual dimorphisms.
It is of the utmost importance that we learn to understand
and respect them.
Femininity and masculinity are two
different and essential parts of life. Equally important and
intertwined. Yin and Yang. Whatever one pole does affects
the other. For all intents and purposes, they are the same
force. So what happens when you blame the patriarchy for all
of today's inequalities and woes? You are simultaneously
blaming the matriarchy. All of those who shame males for
their behavior are also shaming mothers and daughters. This
is why attacking toxic masculinity is unhelpful. It is
actually a form of self-hatred. It is time for us to wake up
to the destructive message we are sending to our boys.
Instead, they need the positive message of noble
masculinity. Boys need initiation rites. They need to be
honored and encouraged to be strong providers and leaders.
They need a group of fathers to help them navigate these
transitions and to better understand the emotions involved.
Mothers simply cannot do these things alone, nor should
they.
Men who grow up with respectful models
for fathers are less likely to mistreat women. The
relationship is reciprocal, as women with good fathers are
less likely to mistreat men. The key to establishing a
healthy binary is honoring the strengths of that binary and
accepting its weakness. Men are evolutionarily and
biologically made to be more taciturn, more logic-based,
more competitive, and more driven by sex. Women are made to
be more communicative, more intuitive, more risk-averse, and
more driven by safety. There is a little wiggle room in what
these differences look like, but those are differences of
degree, not kind. Men will make more money on average than
women because men are naturally more competitive. Women are
naturally more nurturing and biologically more inclined to
child-rearing. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the
last century of feminism is the pressure it has put on women
to act more like men and on men to act more like women. As a
result, we all lose.
I challenge each and every one of you
to think long and hard today about your relationship with
the masculine energy in your life. There are bad men out
there who have done terrible things, but the fewer new ones
we can create the better. The future will be a hard-fought
battle for both men and women, but we must endeavor to fight
it. We must restore our trust in traditional gender roles by
focusing on more cohesive family dynamics. Women need good
men to support them financially and emotionally so that they
aren't under the impossible modern pressures to be both
mothers and providers. Men need respect from good women so
they don't abandon their family and benevolent natures and
use their powers for destruction. This is a call to all men
to step up to the challenge of being better providers,
fathers, sons, and husbands. It is also a call to all women
to engender and invite these characteristics in men. If it
is a monster that we want to fight, then it is a monster
that we will get. That is what happens when you declare war
on masculinity. It fights back.
Source: www.chattanoogaholisticmedicine.com/post/soulful-sundays-war-on-masculinity
If just this
one idea about manhood is changing, there's hope
t was a competitive nine-year-olds’ baseball game.
Grandson’s team was in the process of experiencing
their first loss of what was so far an eight-game
season.
Watching a grandson thrive as a truly
self-motivated, avid – and grampa would add gifted
– baseball player who is supported without pressure by
parents continued, even on that day, not only to be
thrilling entertainment. It felt as if it were a gifted
connection with a fast-growing boy I had spent cherished
time with from day one.
His own joy in the game, often seen in
his smiles while pitching and fielding, also brought back
forgotten memories of good times with my own dad when he
took me to the old Milwaukee Braves’ games at County
Stadium back when bleacher seats were $5.
That evening’s game began with a
bad night for the Coyote’s starting pitcher. He walked
ten batters so that the top of the first inning ended at the
league’s seven-run per inning limit. His second inning
was hardly better.
His team has some surprisingly good
nine-year-old pitchers whose pitches are quite fast and
accurate. So, you could see that this young guy felt as if
he had let all his teammates down (much less disappointed
the team’s loyal fans) when he was relieved by a friend
who was, instead, in his rhythm that night.
But “the damage,” as the
sportscasters’ say, “had been done.” And when
he retreated to the dugout, even as fans applauded his
effort, this nine-year-old young man was crying.
There’s an old, popular, and I
consider unhealthy, saying that’s repeated by those
stuck promoting destructive, toxic, and shaming masculinity
in sports: “There’s no crying in
baseball.”
But no one, not one coach, and not one
fan I could hear fell back on that. We all felt his
disappointment along with him, but no one added to that
disappointment by shaming him for those tears.
Grandson and his teammates have been
fortunate since they began playing in kindergarten. They
have experienced, so far, positive coaching that has made
them better without masculine shaming.
No coach or parent in my presence has
ever said to these boys that it’s wrong to cry. In
fact, when one of them in first grade was injured and was
carried off the field crying, one coach comforted him with:
“I’d have cried even harder.”
So when I see his coaches walking to
their cars with their fourth-grader sons while holding
hands, I regain a hope for future generations that some of
us are over the “big boys don’t cry”
mentality.
For generations, male gender role
conditioning has included the ridicule and humiliation of
boys for their tears. It’s taught them thereby to
ignore their natural feelings of hurt, fear, and
confusion.
It’s taught them that anger is
the male thing to feel instead. And no male has yet to be
told that anger and violence are unmanly – but they
sure have been told they’re somehow unmanly if they
express those natural human emotions that are buried under
that anger.
And where homophobia and heterosexism
have diminished, at least in public discourse, we hear less
and less of the gay slurs applied to men who openly express
these basic emotions that are covered over with secondary
ones permitted for manhood: anger and sexual arousal. Sadly
often, though, such worn-out slurs are still
voiced.
Putting boys out of touch with their
feelings has been a useful tool of conditioning for
societies for generations. It’s harder to go to war
against another man or fight competitively to make another
man lose, to beat up another man or to destroy him with
ruthless business practices, to step over male bodies on the
way to what will be declared a victory or convince oneself
that the others deserve their unfortunate circumstances, if
you know and do embrace the idea that you and these other
men actually and legitimately feel hurt, fear, and
confusion.
So, the more a man has been put out of
touch with these feelings, the more he’s become
convinced that feeling them is contrary to the rule that
“big boys don’t cry,” the more he’s lost
touch with his emotional connections to his fellow men, the
easier it is to deny that any human damage is done to others
and that he might have contributed to it.
I’m afraid that should grandson
continue on what he’d like to be his career path,
he’ll run into others who are still sold on the old
feelingless manhood (except, of course, again, expressing
all these emotions through anger and sexual desire).
It’s still so much a built-in part of our cultural
norms.
The extent that someone buys into all
this is enforced by both men and women who do. Few men want
to be deemed “unmanly” by the standards of the men
around them.
Fear that other men judge them as less
than manly and even in subtle or not so subtle ways will
punish them if they don’t come across as manly enough
by the old definitions is one way it’s all kept in
place. Gay men know this fear and are more overtly punished
for breaking that man code, but all men know what it means
to be scared straight no matter what their sexual
orientation.
Parents enforce the man code because
they fear what can happen to their boys if they don’t
live up to its standards. They’ve seen what has
happened to any boy not manly enough in the past.
And women have been conditioned to
somehow “need” a “real man.” Are they
prepared for and secure with his tears, vulnerability, and a
full set of human qualities and emotions when they’ve
been told they need him to love and protect them and prove
to them in the end that they’re lovable?
I want to believe there have been some
changes in all of this, though my book Scared Straight: Why
It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So
Hard to be Human continues to explain so much of this for
its readers even today.
I know that as long as for many
it’s somehow less than manly to be gay, or less than
feminine to be a lesbian, this prejudice will continue to be
used to enforce the idea that men shouldn’t show
feelings through tears. I know that as long as transgender
people are humiliated and ridiculed because they defy the
gender boxes that deny some of the human qualities to anyone
based upon binary gender norms, there’ll be further
pressure for everyone to monitor one’s
feelings.
But I still hope that there will come
a day when all emotions matter to anyone regardless of
gender definition and that even in baseball there can be
crying without shame.
Source: whosoever.org/if-just-this-one-idea-about-manhood-is-changing-theres-hope/
The
Red Pill
When feminist filmmaker Cassie
Jaye sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing
world of the Men's Rights Movement, she begins to question
her own beliefs. Jaye had only heard about the Men's Rights
Movement as being a misogynist hate group aiming to turn
back the clock on women's rights, but when she spends a year
filming the leaders and followers within the movement, she
learns the various ways men are disadvantaged and
discriminated against. The Red Pill challenges the audience
to pull back the veil, question societal norms, and expose
themselves to an alternate perspective on gender equality,
power and privilege. Watch
here.
Been called a
'snowflake'? The 'it' new insult
Apparently a snowflake is not just a little white speck
of a winter flurry that we wish for on Christmas day. Lately
the term has been used as a slang insult, often used in a
derogatory way to suggest that people -- often, but not
always, young people -- who take offense to anything from
political policy changes to offensive comments are as weak
and vulnerable as a speck of snow.
But the slang term isn't new -- and
its use has evolved quite a bit.
In Missouri in the 1860s, a
"snowflake" was a person who was against the abolition of
slavery, according
to Merriam-Webster.
Snowflakes during that time period
valued white people over black people and wanted slavery to
continue after the Civil War.
During the 1970s, snowflake was used
as a derogatory term for white or black people who were
perceived as acting white. It was also slang for cocaine,
"snow" for short.
Chuck Palahniuk's 1990s Fight Club
novel and the movie adaptation have often been credited as
the originator of using this feathery ice crystal in a
metaphorical way.
The novel contains this grim reminder:
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the
same decaying organic matter as everyone and we are all part
of the same compost pile."
Today, snowflake is used to describe a
person perceived as overly sensitive and fragile, often in a
mocking way.
And today's youth is sometimes derided
as "Generation Snowflake."
Soource:
www.usatoday.com/story/college/2017/02/01/been-called-a-snowflake-the-it-new-insult/37427267/
Hikikomori
A young Japanese man living as a hikikomori in
2004
Hikikomori (Japanese:
lit. "pulling inward, being confined"), also known as severe
social
withdrawal,[1][2][3][4][5]
is total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees
of social
isolation and
confinement.[6] Hikikomori refers to both the
phenomenon in general and the recluses themselves. The
concept is primarily recognized only in Japan, although
similar concepts exist in other languages and cultures.
Hikikomori have been described as loners
or "modern-day hermits".[7]
Estimates suggest that half a million Japanese youths have
become social recluses,[8]
as well as more than half a million middle-aged
individuals.[9]
Definition
The Japanese Ministry of Health,
Labour, and Welfare defines hikikomori as a condition in
which the affected individuals refuse to leave their
parents' house, do not work or go to school and isolate
themselves away from society and family in a single room for
a period exceeding six months.[10] The psychiatrist
Tamaki Saito defines hikikomori as "a state that has become
a problem by the late twenties, that involves cooping
oneself up in one's own home and not participating in
society for six months or longer, but that does not seem to
have another psychological problem as its principal
source".[11]
More recently, researchers have
developed more specific criteria to more accurately identify
hikikomori. During a diagnostic interview, trained
clinicians evaluate for:[12]
- spending most of the day and
nearly every day confined to home,
- marked and persistent avoidance of
social situations, and social relationships,
- social withdrawal symptoms causing
significant functional impairment,
- duration of exceeding six
months,
- no apparent physical or mental
etiology to account for the social withdrawal
symptoms.
The psychiatrist Alan Teo first
characterized hikikomori in Japan as modern-day
hermits,[7] while the literary and communication
scholar Flavio Rizzo similarly described hikikomori as
"post-modern hermits" whose solitude stems from ancestral
desires for withdrawal.[13]
While the degree of the phenomenon
varies on an individual basis, in the most extreme cases,
some people remain in isolation for years or even decades.
Often hikikomori start out as school refusers, or futoko
(???) in Japanese (an older term is tokokyohi
(????)).
Hikikomori has been defined by a
Japanese expert group as having the following
characteristics:[14]
Spending most of the time at
home
No interest in going to school or
working
Persistence of withdrawal for more
than 6 months
Exclusion of schizophrenia,
intellectual disability, and bipolar disorder
Exclusion of those who maintain
personal relationships (e.g., friendships)
Common traits
While many people feel the pressures
of the outside world, hikikomori react by complete social
withdrawal. In some more severe cases, they isolate
themselves in their bedrooms for months or years at a
time.[15] They usually have few or no friends. In
interviews with current or recovering hikikomori, media
reports and documentaries have captured the strong levels of
psychological distress and angst felt by these
individuals.[16]
While hikikomori favor indoor
activities, some venture outdoors occasionally.[17]
The withdrawal from society usually starts gradually.
Affected people may appear unhappy, lose their friends,
become insecure and shy, and talk less.
Prevalence
According to Japanese government
figures released in 2010, there were at that time 700,000
individuals living as hikikomori within Japan, with an
average age of 31.[18] (Population of Japan in 2014
was 127.3 million.) Still, the numbers vary widely among
experts. These included the hikikomori who were at that time
in their 40s and had spent 20 years in isolation. This group
is generally referred to as the "first-generation
hikikomori". There is concern about their reintegration into
society in what is known as "the 2030 Problem", when they
will be in their 60s and their parents begin to
die.[18] Additionally, the government estimates that
1.55 million people are on the verge of becoming
hikikomori.[18] Tamaki Saito, who first coined the
phrase, originally estimated that there may be over one
million hikikomori in Japan, although this was not based on
national survey data. Nonetheless, considering that
hikikomori adolescents are hidden away and their parents are
often reluctant to talk about the problem, it is extremely
difficult to gauge the number
accurately.[19]
A 2015 Cabinet Office survey estimated
that 541,000 recluses aged 15 to 39 existed. In 2019,
another survey showed that there are roughly 613,000 people
aged 40 to 64 that fall into the category of "adult
hikikomori", which Japan's welfare minister Takumi Nemoto
referred to as a "new social issue".[9]
While hikikomori is mostly a Japanese
phenomenon, cases have been found in the United
States,[20] the United Kingdom, Oman, Spain,
Germany,[21] Italy, India, Sweden, China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, South Korea, France and
Russia.[15][22][23][24][25][26]
Hypotheses on cause
Developmental and psychiatric
conditions
Hikikomori is similar to the social
withdrawal exhibited by some people with autism spectrum
disorder. This has led some psychiatrists to suggest that
hikikomori may be affected by autism spectrum disorder and
other disorders that affect social integration, but that
their disorders are altered from their typical Western
presentation because of Japanese sociocultural
pressures.[27] Suwa & Hara (2007) discovered
that 5 of 27 cases of hikikomori had a high-functioning
pervasive developmental disorder (HPDD), and 12 more had
other disorders or mental diseases (6 cases of personality
disorders, 3 cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder, 2 cases
of depression, 1 case of slight intellectual impairment); 10
out of 27 had primary hikikomori. The researchers used a
vignette to illustrate the difference between primary
hikikomori (without any obvious mental disorder) and
hikikomori with HPDD or other disorder.[28] Alan Teo
and colleagues conducted detailed diagnostic evaluations of
22 individuals with hikikomori and found that while the
majority of cases fulfilled criteria for multiple
psychiatric conditions, about 1 in 5 cases were primary
hikikomori.[29] To date, however, hikikomori is not
included in the DSM-5 (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders), due to insufficient
data.[30]
According to Michael Zielenziger's
book Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost
Generation, the syndrome is more closely related to
posttraumatic stress disorder. The author claimed that the
hikikomori interviewed for the book had discovered
independent thinking and a sense of self that the current
Japanese environment could not
accommodate.[31]
The syndrome also closely parallels
the terms avoidant personality disorder, schizoid
personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder,
agoraphobia or social anxiety disorder (also known as
"social phobia").
Social and cultural
influence
Sometimes referred to as a social
problem in Japanese discourse, hikikomori has a number of
possible contributing factors. Alan Teo has summarized a
number of potential cultural features that may contribute to
its predominance in Japan. These include tendencies toward
conformity and collectivism, overprotective parenting, and
particularities of the educational, housing and economic
systems.[32]
Severe social withdrawal in Japan
appears to affect men and women equally. However, because of
differing social expectations for maturing boys and girls,
the most widely reported cases of hikikomori are from
middle- and upper-middle-class families; sons, typically
their eldest, refuse to leave the home, often after
experiencing one or more traumatic episodes of social or
academic failure.
In The Anatomy of Dependence, Takeo
Doi identifies the symptoms of hikikomori, and explains its
prevalence as originating in the Japanese psychological
construct of amae (in Freudian terms, "passive object love",
typically of the kind between mother and
infant).[33] Other Japanese commentators such as
academic Shinji Miyadai and novelist Ryu Murakami, have also
offered analysis of the hikikomori phenomenon, and find
distinct causal relationships with the modern Japanese
social conditions of anomie, amae and atrophying paternal
influence in nuclear family child pedagogy. Young adults may
feel overwhelmed by modern Japanese society, or be unable to
fulfill their expected social roles as they have not yet
formulated a sense of personal honne and tatemae –
one's "true self" and one's "public façade" –
necessary to cope with the paradoxes of
adulthood.
The dominant nexus of hikikomori
centres on the transformation from youth to the
responsibilities and expectations of adult life. Indications
are that advanced industrialized societies such as modern
Japan fail to provide sufficient meaningful transformation
rituals for promoting certain susceptible types of youth
into mature roles. As do many societies, Japan exerts a
great deal of pressure on adolescents to be successful and
perpetuate the existing social status quo. A traditionally
strong emphasis on complex social conduct, rigid hierarchies
and the resulting, potentially intimidating multitude of
social expectations, responsibilities and duties in Japanese
society contribute to this pressure on young
adults.[34] Historically, Confucian teachings
de-emphasizing the individual and favouring a conformist
stance to ensure social harmony in a rigidly hierarchical
society have shaped much of East Asia, possibly explaining
the emergence of the hikikomori phenomenon in other East
Asian countries.
In general, the prevalence of
hikikomori tendencies in Japan may be encouraged and
facilitated by three primary factors:
Middle class affluence in a
post-industrial society such as Japan allows parents to
support and feed an adult child in the home indefinitely.
Lower-income families do not have hikikomori children
because a socially withdrawing youth is forced to work
outside the home.[35]
The inability of Japanese parents to
recognize and act upon the youth's slide into isolation;
soft parenting; or codependency between mother and son,
known as amae in Japanese.[36]
A decade of flat economic indicators
and a shaky job market in Japan makes the pre-existing
system requiring years of competitive schooling for elite
jobs appear like a pointless effort to
many.[37]
Role of modern technology
Although the connection between modern
communication technologies (such as the Internet, social
media and video games) and the phenomenon is not
conclusively established, those technologies are considered
at least an exacerbating factor that can deepen and nurture
withdrawal.[38] Previous studies of hikikomori in
South Korea and Spain found that some of them showed signs
of Internet addiction, though researchers do not consider
this to be the main issue.[38] However, according to
associate professor of psychiatry at Kyushu University in
Fukuoka, Takahiro Kato, video games and social media have
reduced the amount of time that people spent outside and in
social environments that require direct face to face
interaction.[38] The emergence of mobile phones and
then smartphones may also have deepened the issue, given
that people can continue their addiction to gaming and
online surfing anywhere, even in bed.[39]
Japanese education system
See also: Kyoiku mama
The Japanese education system puts
great demands upon youth. There is high competition to pass
entrance exams into the next tier of education in what could
be termed a rigid pass-or-fail ideology, which could induce
a high level of stress. Echoing the traditional Confucian
values of society, the educational system is viewed as
playing an important part in society's overall productivity
and success.[40]
In this social frame, students often
face significant pressure from parents and the society in
general to conform to its dictates and
doctrines.[41] These doctrines, while part of modern
Japanese society, are increasingly being rejected by
Japanese youth in varying ways such as hikikomori, freeter,
NEET (Not currently engaged in Employment, Education, or
Training), and parasite singles. The term "Hodo-Hodo zoku"
(the "So-So tribe") applies to younger workers who refuse
promotion to minimize stress and maximize free
time.[citation needed]
Beginning in the 1960s, the pressure
on Japanese youth to succeed began successively earlier in
their lives, sometimes starting before pre-school, where
even toddlers had to compete through an entrance exam for
the privilege of attending one of the best pre-schools. This
was said to prepare children for the entrance exam of the
best kindergarten, which in turn prepared the child for the
entrance exam of the best elementary school, junior high
school, high school, and eventually for their university
entrance exam.[42] Many adolescents take one year
off after high school to study exclusively for the
university entrance exam, and are known as
ronin.[43] More prestigious universities have more
difficult exams. The most prestigious university with the
most difficult exam is the University of
Tokyo.[44]
Since 1996, the Japanese Ministry of
Education has taken steps to address this 'pressure-cooker'
educational environment and instill greater creative thought
in Japanese youth by significantly relaxing the school
schedule from six-day weeks to five-day weeks and dropping
two subjects from the daily schedule, with new academic
curricula more comparable to Western educational models.
However, Japanese parents are sending their children to
private cram schools, known as juku, to 'make up' for lost
time.[45]
After graduating from high school or
university, Japanese youth also have to face a very
difficult job market in Japan, often finding only part-time
employment and ending up as freeters with little income,
unable to start a family.[46]
Another source of pressure is from
their co-students, who may harass and bully (ijime) some
students for a variety of reasons, including physical
appearance, wealth, or educational or athletic performance.
Refusal to participate in society makes hikikomori an
extreme subset of a much larger group of younger Japanese
that includes freeters.[44][45]
Impact
Japanese financial burden
Some organizations, such as the
non-profit Japanese organization NPO lila, have been trying
to combat the financial burden the hikikomori phenomenon has
had on Japan's economy.[47] The Japanese CD and DVD
producer Avex Group produces DVDs of live-action women
staring into a camera to help hikikomori learn to cope with
eye contact and long spans of human interaction. The goal is
to ultimately help hikikomori reintegrate into society by
personal choice, thereby realizing an economic contribution
and reducing the financial burden on parents or
guardians.[48]
"80–50 problem"
The "80–50 problem" refers to
hikikomori children from earlier days now entering their
50s, as their parents on whom they rely, enter their
80s.[49] It was first described in Japanese
publications and media in the late 2010s.
In 2019, Japanese psychiatrist Tamaki
Saito held a press briefing at the Foreign Press Center
Japan on the subject of hikikomori. In view of their rising
age, he recommended practical advice to parents with older
hikikomori, such as drawing up a lifetime financial plan for
them, so they will be able to get by after the parents are
gone. He also recommended that parents should not fear
embarrassment or be concerned about appearances as they look
at the options, including disability pensions or other forms
of public assistance for their children. Tamaki emphasized
the urgency and necessity for families in these situations
to plan ahead; the Japanese government failed to see the
urgency of the problem and demonstrated no motion toward
developing substantive policies or systems like special
safety nets related to the ageing group of
hikikomori.[50]
Treatment programs
When it comes to psychosocial support,
it is hard for therapists to attain direct access to
hikikomori;[51] research to find different and
effective treatment plans to aid hikikomori has been
ongoing. One such treatment plan is focused on the families
of hikikomori. Such focus primarily includes educational
intervention programs (e.g. lectures, role-play, etc.) that
are geared towards reducing any averse stigma that family
members have towards psychiatric disorders like
hikikomori.[52] These educational programs are
derived from other established family support programs,
specifically Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) and Community
Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT).[53] CRAFT
specifically trains family members to express positive and
functional communication, whereas MHFA provides skills to
support hikikomori with depression/suicidal like
behaviour.[53] Studies so far that have modified the
family unit's behavioral response to a hikikomori has
yielded positive results, indicating that family behavior is
essential for recovery, however further research is still
needed.[51][53]
Although there has been a primary
emphasis on educating family members, there are also therapy
programs for the hikikomori themselves to participate in,
like exercise therapy. The individual psychotherapy methods
that are being stressed in current research are primarily
directed towards cultivating self-confidence within the
hikikomori.[54] However, studies have delineated
that efficacious treatment of hikikomori requires a
multifaceted approach rather than the utilization of one
individual approach, such as individual psychotherapy or
family therapy.[55][56]
COVID-19 pandemic impact
Based on prior outbreaks (e.g. SARS,
MERS, etc.), studies have shown that due to increased
loneliness, quarantined individuals have heightened
stress-related mental disturbances.[52] Considering
that political, social, and/or economical challenges already
bring people to express hikikomori-like behavior,
researchers theorize that since all the aforementioned
factors are by-products of a pandemic, a hikikomori
phenomenon may become more common in a post-pandemic
world.[52][56] In fact, people who do
experience mental disturbances in Japan generally view
seeking the help of a psychiatrist as shameful or a reason
for them to be socially shunned.[52] Experts predict
an increase in focus on issues such as the mental health
problems now affecting youth, and specifically through
effective telemedicine services to either the affected
individual and/or their respective family
unit.[52][57]
Furthermore, with hikikomori becoming
more prevalent amid a pandemic, experts theorize that it
will bring out more empathy and constructive attention
towards the issue.[52]
See also
flag Japan portal
Psychology portal
icon Society portal
Acedia
Asociality
Avolition
Fushugaku
Herbivore men
Jouhatsu
Monasticism
Recluse literature
Tang ping
Tokyo!, 2008 movie in three parts, the
third part of which, Shaking Tokyo, shows the life of a
hikikomori
Welcome to the N.H.K., a Japanese
novel, manga, and anime series about a young man who is a
hikikomori
References
Notes
Bowker, Julie C.; Bowker, Matthew H.;
Santo, Jonathan B.; Ojo, Adesola Adebusola; Etkin, Rebecca
G.; Raja, Radhi (2019). "Severe Social Withdrawal: Cultural
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Goodman, Roger; Imoto, Yuki; Toivonen,
Tuukka, eds. (2012). A Sociology of Japanese Youth: From
Returnees to NEETs. Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese
Studies Series. Vol. 83. Abingdon, England: Routledge. ISBN
978-0-415-66926-9.
Kuhn, Kevin (2012). Hikikomori (in
German). Berlin: Berlin Verlag. ISBN
978-3-8270-1116-9.
Toivonen, Tuukka; Norasakkunkit,
Vinai; Uchida, Yukiko (2011). "Unable to Conform, Unwilling
to Rebel? Youth, Culture, and Motivation in Globalizing
Japan". Frontiers in Psychology. 2 (207): 207.
doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00207. ISSN 1664-1078. PMC 3171786.
PMID 21949510.
Media
"Japan's modern-day hermits: The world
of hikikomori". France 24. 18 January 2019. Archived from
the original on 17 November 2021.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Hikikomori.
"'Rental sisters' for Japan's
Reclusive Young Men". People Fixing the World. BBC World
Service. 16 October 2018. Retrieved 19 October
2018.
Butet-roch, Laurence (14 February
2018). "Pictures Reveal the Isolated Lives of Japan's Social
Recluses". National Geographic. Photographer: Maika Elan.
Archived from the original on 13 December 2018. Retrieved 13
April 2019.
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