Real men do cry
It will be a while yet before the last glass ceiling is breached, but women’s star in western society has gradually been on the rise. At the same time we find men are overrepresented in statistics on crime, suicide, homelessness and heart disease. In depression diagnoses on the other hand they stay perilously low under the radar.
At first sight it does seem a bit strange to be worrying about men’s well-being in a time when women, after centuries of second-rate citizenship, are finally beginning to come into a position of equality. Aren’t men just having a hard time making space and surrendering part of the territory that was always considered theirs by right, for no other reason than because they were male?
This line of reasoning might have a nice ring to it, but it is too simplistic. There are alarms being raised by sociologists, psychologists and men themselves — if they allow themselves to do so. And it would be unwise to shrug off these distress signals and go back to business as usual.
Out with the trash
Our society has changed more drastically in the last one hundred and fifty years than in all the centuries since the discovery of agriculture combined, BBC documentary maker Tim Samuels writes in Who stole my spear. And a number of those changes are putting vast amounts of pressure on an increasing number of men. For research purposes Samules was allowed a glance in places not commonly frequented by lesser mortals. (We, at least, had never been to a workshop on ‘how to approach a woman and ask her out’, or sat behind the scenes of a porn movie set for day.) At other instances Samuels taps into his personal experience, showing himself quite vulnerable. All in all, his book makes for an enriching tour of the heads (and bellies) of ‘men’ — although we should be careful with generalizations, for nothing applies equally to everyone in a category.
Aren’t men just having a hard time surrendering part of the territory that was always considered theirs by right?
In western society the ‘old’ patriarchal values of superiority, dominance, success and respect as a reward for hard work have been thrown out with the trash. Men find themselves chased from their perch at the top of the food chain, and it doesn’t stop there. According to Samuels the mental and physical well-being of men is being assaulted from every possible direction. The endless buffet of faces on dating sites has turned his quest for a suitable partner to start a family with into a needle-in-the-haystack search, rigging him with immobilizing fear and doubts (isn’t there an even better catch out there, if I wait just a little longer?). The mind-numbing routine of the utterly impersonal office environment and the searing lack of healthy ways to vent pent-up physical energy are putting pressure on a lot of men. The growing unemployment eats away at the self-esteem of those who are told they have to be able to provide for their families. The disgusting debauchery of the contemporary porn industry is destabilizing the sexual health of an entire generation.
Just to be clear — as Samuels himself points out several times as well: throwing a light on the problems faced by men and making them a topic of conversation is in no way a crusade against women or women’s rights. The feminization of diverse aspects of society is not up for debate. At the same time it is true that the presence of ever more strong, eloquent women, in leading positions as well, is an extra destabilizing element for some men. The solution is of course not to send women back to their hearths. But it does mean that a different set of answers needs to be given to the question of how men today can satisfy their ambitions and needs. And right now these answers often aren’t available. Caught between the ever more confining norms of society on the one side and a stream of endless choices on the other, men lose track of themselves, Samuels asserts. The results are disastrous and are becoming ever more clear.
Shock wave
‘Suppressed masculinity on an individual level can lead to male self-destructive behavior like heavy drinking, being kicked out of school and refusing psychological help, but I dare to suggest that the current rise of IS can also partly be traced back to it. To a gruesome toxic mix of male estrangement and a bastard form of religious extremism,’ Samuels writes. ‘The young man in Portsmouth, trading his Primark uniform for a military one in Syria, leaving his dull executive existence (and no doubt his sexual frustrations as well) in some suburb to take up arms alongside his brothers, is quite probably chasing an illusion of masculinity. In all European countries where men don’t have the economic means to assert themselves as men, we see a rise of extremist parties.’
A rather similar profile — which of course differences in every specific context — can be seen among the British Brexit voters, and among the impoverished and embittered supporters of America’s president-elect Donald Trump. At times the latter seems to be some sort of poster boy of the old patriarchal dogma of the white male as the dominant and superior center of the universe. This doesn’t only gain him the approval of movements like the Ku Klux Klan; a number of his remarks also raise the impression that he is not — putting it mildly — very concerned about women’s rights either.
The election of Donald Trump sent a shock wave of dismay through the western world, and not only because of how this president-elect is behaving. The fact that half of the American voters don’t seem very bothered by his racist and misogynous remarks is at least as much cause for concern.
Who stole my spear came out well before the American election, but Samuels words have a prophetic ring to them: ‘Failure, or the idea that you have failed, doesn’t only lead to an inner ‘crisis’, it also has an element of energy propelled outward: anger. And this anger is currently very present among white men, who have always taken for granted that society and success were theirs by right. It is an anger that blames the Other, often those considered obstacles or rivals for one’s own professional success — immigrants, women, the hair-splitters of political correctness — an anger that often feels attracted to extreme politics.’
‘Act like a man!’
The patriarchal hierarchy, of which someone like Trump at times seems the very embodiment, is not only harmful to women and minorities — those who are targeted by the ‘angry white male’ asserting his dominance — but also to men.
Scientists speak of toxic masculinity. This ‘poisonous manhood’ doesn’t only play out in the cliché ideals about men we hold up until today (the tough, independent, dominant breadwinner), but also in the way we treat boys differently from girls, often without consciously realizing it. The American psychologist and family therapist Terry Real refers to research showing how parents have the tendency to interpret the exact same behavior differently according to the child’s gender. Being shown a crying baby and being told it was a girl, the adults taking part in the study would usually describe the child as ‘afraid’. However, if they were told the baby was a boy, they considered the crying to be ‘angry’. A fearful child will find itself more easily comforted by a parent than an angry one. From the earliest possible age boys will often get, totally unconsciously and undeliberately, less cherishing and empathic signals from parents and caretakers, and this is shaping their emotional and social development.
Add to that the conditioning that seeps in with remarks like ‘Act like a man!’ or ‘Boys don’t cry!’, and we see the contours of an upbringing in which every trait that passes for ‘feminine’, like being in touch with one’s emotions, expressing one’s feelings and having the courage to talk about them (Real calls these human traits) is made taboo for boys. As soon as boys’ behavior deviates from the stereotypical norm, their ‘manhood’ is threatened, and up until today boys are therefore taught to suppress a fundamental part of themselves.
The only emotion men in a genderstereotypical education or society are allowed to express is anger or aggression. It shouldn’t surprise us then, that men turn to violence far more often than women. Real even suggests that a part of the violence committed by men is an acting-out of underlying feelings of depression for which they have no other outlet; feelings which they often, due to years of social conditioning, are unable to access.
Boys are still taught to suppress
a fundamental part of themselves
In a gripping TED Talk the American author and educator Tony Porter, an activist working to advance the rights of women and minorities, described the process of ‘socialization’ he experienced in the macho culture of the poor neighborhood he grew up in as a black kid. Years later he caught himself treating his own son and daughter in different ways, passing on a number of the same unhealthy stereotypes that had marked him as a kid to his son, and changed his approach. Toxic masculinity tells us, Porter says, that men are in charge, which means women are not: that men lead and that you should just obey and do as they say; that men are superior and women are inferior.’ Other characteristics are the encouragement of violence (which is found at its most extreme in gang culture), the taboo on showing weakness and reaching out for help, the demonization of all traits considered ‘feminine’, and the disdain for those who show them. This goes a long way to explaining the deeply ingrained and recurrent phenomena of both homophobia and rape culture, which are still claiming victims in our society today. Toxic masculinity, then, is dangerous for all parties: boys are emotionally dehumanized by it, women and minorities are threatened by it.
What can we as a society offer as an alternative? Tim Samuels advocates concepts and activities that will grant men a positive kind of dignity and self-esteem, which at the same time also make them healthy role models for their children. Allowing boys the space to get in touch with their emotions, for instance. Putting an end to the social and financial discrimination of fathers taking paternity leave or staying home to take care of the children. Creating opportunities for boys and men to develop healthy bonds of ‘brotherhood’ and to vent their physical needs through sports, work or hikes in nature or useful physical activity.
These are things men need to become aware of, but women (as mothers and partners) can play an important role as well. If we are serious about the fight for a society of equal rights and equal opportunities, tearing down the toxic stereotypes surrounding men is one of the most important things we can do.
This story first appeared in Dutch in ‘De Bond’, december 2016
