Toxic Masculinity? Some Questions and Answers
(taken from my recent interview on www.boredpanda.com)
Q.1: Why do you think toxic masculinity is so deeply rooted in society?
Quite simply because since modern humans first evolved some 300,000 years ago, one half of the species has used its physical strength to dominate the other half. It’s not used its intelligence or sought to develop its emotional depths, it has dominated by virtue of brute force or the threat of it — which has been easy for men to do because biologically, most men are physically stronger than most women.
Reinforced by the biological imperative (women are the ones who bear children), this immediately created a gender binary which then creates patriarchal conditions that position women as ‘natural’ carers, nurturers with men as ‘natural’ warriors, leaders, providers, hunters, etc. We shouldn’t therefore, be surprised that 300,000 years of such social conditioning has resulted in one half of the species believing it is naturally superior to the other half.
In reality, this belief in male superiority is a load of codswallop and anyone with a brain can see that. It is an illusion, a myth, all based on a history mostly written by men which purports to reduce women and females to a secondary sex which requires protecting and is inherently weak and vulnerable. As Simon de Beauvoir put it, women are reduced to being ‘the Other’. By having women as the other, men then get to put themselves at the centre.
We are still living with the consequences of this problem, which is that throughout human history males have been sold the idea of masculinity as violence, aggression, conquest, dominance, selfishness, competitiveness, combined with repression of their deepest emotions.
As I say in my TM book, this myth (of natural male superiority) was sold to your father, my father, and all their fathers before them. Its consequences are all around us, from religious fanaticism to denial of global warming, from corrupt capitalism to the extinction of species, from rampant weaponization to misogyny, from racism to homophobia, from empire building to genocide, and from domestic violence to male suicide. We have built a world on toxic masculinity, and humanity has paid the price. Humanity continues to pay the price.
In effect, society toxifies men. It does this through its rigid education systems, through its brutal judicial systems, through its uncaring political systems, through its divisive class systems, through its inherent militarisation, through its discourse of empire, through the myth of ‘superman’, through to the prevailing stereotypes of race, sexuality, and gender; it is embedded as much in the competitiveness of the global capitalist system, as it is in the authoritarianism of modern Russia and China. We see it in the machismo of South America, and the brutal conflicts which continue to infect Africa. We see it in youth knife crime and in football hooliganism. We see it in the intolerant and radical versions of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism. We can see it surface in America, a weaponized ‘liberal democracy’ that apparently needs to incarcerate over two million of its citizens and keep another 4.7 million on parole (93% of whom are male) in order to feel safe. And we see it in China, now desperate to stop its young males ‘becoming sissies’.
The toxification of males starts early. From the moment they are born. It takes root in language and in practice, and feeds into men’s expectations, self-perceptions, and how they relate to women. We know this, but still we seem unable, or unwilling, to stop it.
Q. 2: Do you personally experience it on a regular basis? Can you expand on that just a little bit?
I live a quiet, reflective life in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, with my wife and step-daughter. I write, read, communicate with people online, family, friends and colleagues, around the world on a daily basis. I’m 71. I meditate every day (I am a practicing Buddhist) and I exercise a lot. Like everyone else this past 18 months, I’ve been living with the consequences of Covid-19. Thailand was barely affected up until early this year when infections suddenly went from a few hundred to over 50,000 rising at 4000 a day, with hundreds of deaths. The Thai government immediately locked-down infected areas and ruled that if you went out of your house you had to wear a face mask. Pretty much every Thai person followed that ruling. In fact, Thais have been wearing face masks since early last year. No problem. Who hasn’t been wearing face masks in Thailand? A lot of Western male expats — with many Thai press reports about this problem.
Two weeks ago, I was at my local ATM getting some cash out. Up walks a white male (aged around 35 with an English (Essex?) accent) accompanied by his young son (aged around 6). He’s not wearing a face mask and nor his is child. It’s clear he’s heading for the ATM next to mine. I politely ask him not to come close to me because he’s not wearing a mask. He looks at me incredulously, demands I repeat myself (which I do) and he then storms past me to the ATM and starts ranting about how “people like you are the reason why we have this fucking problem. I should smack you in the mouth. Give you a good thumping! You miserable piece of shit!, etc, etc” Emotionally, he has gone from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds. I am shocked and genuinely scared that he may attack me so I say nothing more, simply get my money out the ATM and leave. Though I had every right to call the police not only over his threatening behaviour but because he was breaking the law by not wearing a mask. The point is, he could barely control his anger — he was on the edge of violence — and that was in a very public place, broad daylight, accompanied by his son. And he’s in a foreign country. I immediately recognised how violence and aggression was, for this man, a normalised response. He is a walking timebomb. As a psychologist/sociologist I know toxic masculinity when I see it and this was it, full frontal, stark, vicious, senseless, selfish, aggressive and very dangerous. As the American Psychological Association recently pointed out, toxic masculinity is a mental health issue which needs dealing with urgently.
I cannot remember the last time I was physically threatened by a man, probably back in the 1970s when I was a pub landlord in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see TM all around me — just read any newspaper any day of the week and you’ll see all the evidence you need that TM is very much with us, though to be honest you’re more likely to see it in the West than in Asia, where I live.
Q. 3: Do you think we as a society have contained toxic masculinity? Or is the problem still growing?
The first way to address a problem is to name it. It is like going to hospital with an illness. And that is where global society is right now. We are diagnosing the illness, the virus. Just 30 years ago, when I did my doctorate on men and masculinities in the UK I was one of only a handful of sociologists researching this area. Now critical debates about men and masculinity have gone global. Me doing this interview for boredpanda is evidence of that and this is just one of many such interviews I’ve done. So we have recognised, identified and named toxic masculinity. There is open and informed discussion about it. That is the good news. This is the direction we need to go in. The bad news is that there is the inevitable backlash — incels; religious fundamentalists; all the ‘anti-woke’ brigade; male leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Putin and, alas, most of the US Republican Party. Over 40 million Americans voted for Trump in the last election. Did they realise they were voting for toxic masculinity? Probably not. Did they care? Probably not. But they will care when they personally experience gun violence, male aggression, domestic violence, and male mental health problems.
We certainly haven’t contained toxic masculinity but I venture to say that it is now on the defensive — MeToo, BLM, all the media discussion about the behaviour of men is pushing back at TM. However, there is a rump of male society which is now going to kick hard against any critical discussion about masculine identity, (and against anti-sexism, gun control, anti-racism, LGTB+ rights) but these men (and some women) are increasingly on the fringe. They do not represent the future, they represent the past. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be a problem going forward. We need to educate them. But then I think of the bloke who threatened to ‘punch my head in’ because I asked him not to come close to me because he wasn’t wearing a face mask. How do we educate him and the millions of men like him? We cannot. We have to therefore educate his young son. And that can only happen in schools because there is a big danger that boy will become infected by the TM virus also — he’ll catch it from his dad.
Education (developing emotional intelligence, compassion, emotional control, and empathy) is the antidote to TM and it needs to start in kindergarten.
Q. Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Try not to think in terms of masculinity (singular) but in terms of masculinities (plural). There are multiple ways of being a man (whether straight, gay, or bi) and toxic (traditional) masculinity is only one of them. In my book I explain and detail the other two dominant forms of masculinity now circulating in men around the world: progressive and collapsed. I won’t go into detail about these two masculinities here, but just to be aware that progressive is probably going to overtake toxic masculinity eventually (if human society is lucky) while collapsed will take us very likely into an age of androgyny — we are already seeing signs of this in Japan, South Korea, China and its emerging globally in men.
And this is how it will always be — new and dominant ways of being a male emerging in cultures, societies. Hopefully, as this evolution takes place the toxic version will disappear or become confined to a few dangerous places.
And what is behind all this? The rise of women. But that’s another story.
Toxic Masculinity, curing the virus: making men smarter, healthier, safer (AG Books, 2021)
