BEING “MAN ENOUGH”
What makes a man, “a man”? Toxic masculinity and the harm it does to young boys growing up.
“Boys don’t cry.”
“Be a man.”
“You fight/run/sound like a girl.”
“Stop being such a sissy/pussy/b*tch!”
The concept of being “man enough” is something a lot of males are taught from a very young age. Most commonly, they are taught by their father or by another male figure. Being told not to cry because “boys don’t cry” could be the start of bringing out the worst in a boy.
Imagine being a child and crying because you either got your toy taken away, or you got hit by another kid, or simply because you’re showing emotion and being told you should NOT show any type of emotion because that shows weakness and it is “sissy” of you to do so. This is basically teaching these young kids to bottle up their emotions and that crying and showing feelings is only for girls. See the problem here?
Actor and entrepreneur Justin Baldoni presented a Ted Talk named “Why I’m Done Trying to Be “Man Enough’” recently where he talked about the topic of what masculinity means and what it means to be “man enough”. In his Ted Talk, he explains how toxic masculinity could be for men who grow up surrounded by it. The actor describes his TV roles as roles that play machismo, to that he says, “I’ve been pretending to be a man that I’m not my entire life. I’ve been pretending to be strong when I felt weak, confident when I felt insecure and tough when really I was hurting. I think for the most part I’ve just been kind of putting on a show, but I’m tired of performing. And I can tell you right now that it is exhausting trying to be man enough for everyone all the time.” He adds,
“Now, for as long as I can remember, I’ve been told the kind of man that I should grow up to be. As a boy, all I wanted was to be accepted and liked by the other boys, but that acceptance meant I had to acquire this almost disgusted view of the feminine, and since we were told that feminine is the opposite of masculine, I either had to reject embodying any of these qualities or face rejection myself. This is the script that we’ve been given. Right? Girls are weak, and boys are strong. This is what’s being subconsciously communicated to hundreds of millions of young boys and girls all over the world, just like it was with me.”
Ah, the infamous quote everyone has heard at least once in their lifetime: “girls are weak and boys are strong.” Many boys around the world grew up hearing that quote and believing it. They were told that so many times that they began to believe that showing emotion was a feminine quality and like Baldoni says, it is either boys conform to that stereotype or they are rejected by other boys.
Toxic masculinity can lead to harm not only to boys’ lives, but to everyone’s lives as well. It is a fact that men are more likely to commit almost any kind of violence. In 2012, the FBI found that 88.7% of reported murders were caused by men.
When boys express anger, they express it much more openly than girls. While women tend to internalize their anger, men externalize it, and take it out on other people.
The anger that school shooters express often relates to masculinity. On a study by Portland State University, Kathryn Farr found a pattern of school shooters who would avenge actions that they saw were a slight on their masculinity.
This recommends part of the solution which is that we need to make more efforts to avoid masculinity to be passed to future generations in order to reduce the likelihood of these atrocities.
Michel Foucault was a philosopher during the mid 1900s who talked a lot about power, the concept of having it, and the negative things it carries with it. Foucault grew up disliking his dad for being abusive towards him and most of his distress came from keeping his homosexuality hidden for a long time. In his book Discipline and Punishment, Foucault says, “Napoleon did not discover this world; but we know that he set out to organize it; and he wished to arrange around him a mechanism of power that would enable him to see the smallest event that occurred in the state he governed; he intended, by means of the rigorous discipline that he imposed, ‘to embrace the whole of this vast machine without the slightest detail escaping his attention’ “ (141). This excerpt talks about power and control. He says Napoleon was in control of the people and tried controlling them. He also later talks about how there are institutes where people are not allowed to cry as if they were a machine. The individual cannot show any type of emotion and they are not seen as human. This ties up to masculinity. Having institutes with these types of mindsets, when people have the cravings of power and control, and toxic masculinity all have some things in common: they’re dangerous and they are taught.
Our emotions, thoughts, and conscious thinking are being manipulated on a daily basis. Most of the time, it starts during childhood. Gender roles are given to us when instead, we should figure that part ourselves. What exactly does it mean to be male? Or female? Why are such negative qualities (e.g. aggressiveness, toughness) pushed onto men instead of positive qualities like humbleness or kindness?
I’m going to end this article with suggestions that are on the path of ending toxic masculinity and control.
- Raise boys and girls the same way. Baldoni wrapped up his Ted Talk with something I couldn’t agree more with. He said, “Instead of teaching our children to be brave boys or pretty girls, can we maybe just teach them how to be good humans?”
- Stop telling kids it’s not okay to show emotion. Let them cry. Especially boys. Boys need to be taught how to express their anger appropriately and in a healthy way.
- Men shouldn’t be socialized to chase dominance over others (like Foucault says) as a way of affirming masculinity.
And to officially wrap it up, here is yet another quote by Baldoni to men:
“Will you be man enough to stand up to other men when you hear ‘locker room talk,’ when you hear stories of sexual harassment? When you hear your boys talking about grabbing ass or getting her drunk, will you actually stand up and do something so that one day we don’t have to live in a world where a woman has to risk everything and come forward to say the words ‘me too’?”
Think about it. It’s time for change. We can all stop this. Don’t let the next generations continue the cycle, instead, let’s break it.
