The Myth of Toxic Masculinity

The lead article in APA’s flagship journal this month (Di Bianca & Mahalik, 2022) calls for a redefining of masculinity from what it calls “hegemonic masculinity” (meaning toxic masculinity) to something more, well, feminine.

Oppression and violence are blamed on toxic masculinity, and boys, according to the article, should be raised in “relationships of empathy, mutuality, and empowerment.” No, they don’t mean sports teams, dojos, or the military, although it’s unclear why not, since those organizations certainly provide relationships of that sort. What they mean is that boys should be less, you know, boyish.

Examining the definition of masculinity

The desirability of masculinity, like anything else, depends on how you define it. If you think it means beating up defenseless victims (and I get the distinct impression that this is exactly how APA sees masculinity), then it seems like a bad thing. If you mean standing up for what’s right, it’s a little harder to see how there can be too much of that.

Here’s one description of masculinity (from my detective novel, Little Things): “I like providing for my family. I like being right, and I like sex. I’m proud of my success and I don’t feel guilty about other people’s suffering unless I caused it. I think it’s more important to be funny than to be tender. I don’t think ‘you-hurt-my-feelings’ is a valid argument.”

When people talk about toxic masculinity, they don’t mean masculinity at all. Usually, they mean paranoia, sociopathy, malignant narcissism, or some form of self-righteous vindictiveness. These are as common in women as in men, although in men, these ills are more likely to be expressed as physical violence (though still at a low rate). But to blame the violence on the maleness rather than, say, the paranoia of the perpetrator is like blaming robbery and murder on the race of the perpetrator. When faced with the image of a school shooter, if you hate men, you see a man. If you like men, you see a paranoid person. If you hate Black people and look at violent crime data (a disproportionate number of robberies and murders are committed by Black people), you see race when you look at perpetrators rather than rage.

Masculinity is a good thing in both men and women but is not well-suited to every situation. But that is not the fault of masculinity any more than it is the fault of negotiation, rationality, or democracy that they are not well-suited to every situation. You wouldn’t call it “toxic democracy” when majority rule insufficiently protects the rights of the minority. Instead, you might call it a problem with humanity, a species that tends to abuse and exploit power in any group or individual that has it. Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

If you hate democracy, you might call the problem of protecting the minority “toxic democracy” and you might suggest that democracy could learn something from dictatorships. If you love democracy (self-rule), you might remind people that, according to our founding document, the whole purpose of government is to secure our natural rights.

Another example: Wokeness is about waking up to injustice. The article in question is wokeist; it’s about perpetrating further injustice on a class of people perceived as privileged, in this case by attributing bad behavior by some members of the class to all members of the class. You wouldn’t call similar efforts “toxic wokeness.” You’d say they have nothing to do with wokeness, that they’re yet another example of using power and hate for social and political advantage.

Currently, in psychology, it seems to be culturally allowed and even expected to hate men and therefore to blame all ills perpetrated by men on masculinity and to attribute the capacity to perpetrate similar ills to all men. Or, intersectionally speaking, organized psychology blames straight, White, cis-gendered, able-bodied men for what’s wrong with the world.

And yet, here’s an interesting fact hidden among all the memes about men making rules about women’s bodies: A court composed of nine men (eight of them White and, as far as we know, straight, cis-gendered, and able-bodied) created or discovered a right to privacy for women over their own bodies by a 7-2 vote in the case of Roe v. Wade.

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Implications for child-rearing

What are the implications for child-rearing? No, don’t raise children to hate their own aggression. Instead, teach them to own it, accept it, and master it—you know, like masculine people do.

Don’t overly tie masculinity and femininity to whether the child is a boy or girl. Many boys are more feminine than many girls, and many girls are more masculine than many boys. The same is true for other mistakenly sex-coded attributes such as shyness, height, sexual attractions, and sports enthusiasm.

Finally, and most importantly, stop telling kids how special they are and emphasize instead how special they are to you. The more kids feel good about being ordinary, the less likely they will be to aggrandize themselves, villainize others, or exploit others to compensate for the ubiquitous sense that they are not as special as they think they are supposed to be.