Why "Positive Masculinity” is part of the problem.
How did the conversation about the future of boys and men become a conversation about the “the future of masculinity”?
“What Does Healthy Masculinity Look like?” asks the New York Times. The Washington Post looks for solutions on how to fix the Crisis of Masculinity. “Masculinity” is the frame they - and almost everyone else who is currently thinking about the future of boys and men- have chosen to ask what is actually a very different, and possibly antithetical question: How do we break down gender stereotypes and give boys and men a healthier, more expansive model for how to live? Perhaps a good start would be ditching the masculinity framework altogether.
Across the political spectrum, initiatives aimed at boys are talking in similar terms. Post #Metoo, masculinity got an unfairly bad rap, they argue, becoming permanently shackled to the word “toxic”. Now they are attempting to rebrand and reinstate it as “Positive Masculinity” or “Healthy Masculinity.” These programs- often targeted at adolescent boys- attempt to break down unhealthy stereotypes by folding traditionally feminine-coded virtues- emotional vulnerability, nurturing, relationship building, intimacy and the like- into the definition of masculinity. (although the logic can easily get a little fuzzy- it’s unclear if these experts are saying that boys can be masculine despite these behaviors or because of them.)
“Healthy or positive masculinity is the idea that men can be emotionally expressive, have female friends or mentors, and express their emotions without feeling emasculated,” says the website of one such program in North Carolina. Former football player Don McPherson uses the branding “Aspirational Masculinity” for groups he runs for boys and young men that focus on violence prevention and emotional vulnerability. When three psychologists from the American Psychological Association’s Society for the Psychological Study of Men and Masculinity set up a similar initiative for middle and high school boys, their stated goal was to, “preserve the positive in traditional masculinity while jettisoning the bad parts.”
“While keeping men strong, we want to remove the aspects of strength that get us in trouble,” the psychologists wrote, not quite able to get on board with any conception of manhood that did not involve strength at all.
These groups are doing good work, helping boys to embrace less rigid roles and healthier behaviors . So why do I feel myself pushing back? After all, if well-meaning experts choose to label emotional vulnerability or caregiving or healthy relationships as masculine in order to entice boys to embrace them, then what is the problem? Surely anything that gets them to buy into these values has to be a good thing?
It’s partly that it all feels like a slightly infantilizing branding exercise- like blending your toddler’s broccoli into a cake. Boys aren’t dumb, and this feels patronizing. But beyond that, somehow the whole framing feels as though it is actually reinforcing stereotypes rather than challenging them. It’s hard to imagine the New York Times publishing a piece about the future of women with the headline “What does Healthy Femininity Look Like?” or the APA sponsoring a program that branded itself as “Aspirational Femininity” and told girls that they could be a scientist/CEO/ rugby player/ the President and “still be feminine and dainty”at any time since say, 1955. We would instinctively read this as either laughably quaint or tradwife-style oppressive. But somehow, in 2024, we still find ourselves unable to talk about men and boys without using masculinity as the basic conceptual structure. At some level we view masculinity as innate and immovable rather than a social construct,, and are unable to conceive of a vision for maleness outside of it.
It’s not just that there is a lurking sexism in the idea that we have to attach the label “masculine” to a behavior before it can have value to men. This subtly reinforces the belief that for boys to embrace anything associated with women would be a humiliation, an idea that is subtly demeaning to women and girls.
I also believe that the main material harms of this model are to men and boys themselves. Somehow this attempt to expand the definition of what can be considered masculine only ends up reinforcing the idea that masculinity itself is a non-negotiable. This in itself sends a clear message to boys and men that appearing masculine is so fundamental to male worth that they must never reject it all together.
But it is this basic belief system, and the impossible pressures it carries with it, are actually at the very root of boy’s problems in the first place. The pressure to meet some arbitrary standard of masculinity is the very thing that is making boys sick and insecure, emotionally repressed and socially isolated.
When I was researching my book, BOYMOM, I interviewed boys of all types about their lives- macho jocks and lonely incels, cool kids and socially awkward, gay and straight, rich and poor. Over and over, boys from wildly different backgrounds expressed surprisingly similar sentiments. In these interviews they talked either implicitly or explicitly about how the pressure to be masculine weighed on them, keeping them locked in a box and creating a constant background noise of fear and shame. The perceived costs of straying from these expectations were high. These boys felt that they were constantly one wrong move away from being branded a wuss or a pussy.
Masculinity’s basic story creates impossibly punishing expectations for boys of what a man should be- invulnerable, physically tough and emotionally bulletproof and ideally faintly superhuman. Actual boys and men, with human flaws and vulnerabilities will always fall short. Most of the boys I interviewed had all in their own ways, fallen prey to these pressures, internalizing a low-level shame at their inability to live up to the impossible demands of the masculine ideal. Masculinity comes with built-in inadequacy.
Operating under these impossible expectations, boys are almost doomed to failure, forever trying to outrun the stony dread of emasculation.
Matt Englar-Carlson is a psychologist and professor specializing in boys, and part of the team that drafted the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for working with boys and men. As he put it to me in an interview, “Shame is the core emotion for men. Men are pretty aware when they don’t meet gender expectations. Then there’s a shame cycle that occurs”
This shame cycle has wider consequences too. Evidence suggests that it is not innate aggression that makes men violent, but the internalized belief that they fall short of society’s perceived standards for masculinity. Psychologists call this phenomenon, “masculine discrepancy stress” and research shows that the more acutely a man suffers from this, the more likely he is to commit almost every type of violence, including sexual assault, intimate partner violence and assault with a weapon.
Although society loves to police women’s behavior in almost any way it can, there is no real equivalent of the word ‘emasculation’ for women, no single gendered concept that has the same power to strip a woman of her basic dignity and worth. Men work overtime to avoid the possibility of feeling emasculated, because the social price they pay for it is so high.
It is perhaps because we instinctively understand just how significant the costs of emasculation are for boys, that our knee jerk reaction is to protect them with hacks like “positive masculinity” or “healthy masculinity.” But in doing this, we are only subtly bolstering the status of masculinity itself, and the idea that reject it would be unthinkable. “Positive masculinity” does not challenge the basic terms, or the idea that a boy needs to be masculine in order to see himself as worthy. Instead it reinforces the idea that masculinity itself is sacrosanct.
None of this is to say, of course, that there are not many positive qualities that are traditionally associated with masculinity. Strength, bravery, heroism, physical toughness, even emotional stoicism in the right contexts, can all be wonderful qualities, even life saving ones (though of course they are not exclusive to men.) No one is trying to take these away or minimize their value to the world. But the idea that there is a standardized social expectation for manhood- “masculinity” that boys must use as a reference point for their own value, is restrictive and harmful to them and others.
What boys need are not tweaks to the definition of masculinity, but for the important adults in their lives to grant them freedom from that paradigm all together. The “positive masculinity” messaging still keeps men and boys locked inside a box, using their own masculinity as a constant touchstone for their worth, rather than giving them real freedom and social permission to break free of stereotypes and restrictive roles.
If we really want to challenge the oppressive pressures that masculinity places on boys, and help them to break free of rigid and limiting stereotypes, we need to question the basic framework at a more fundamental level. We should be pushing for a world in which “healthy masculinity” rings as sexist and oppressive as “healthy femininity.” In which a boy can identify as a boy, but is able to embrace a wide range of ways to be, and feels no external pressure to be masculine at all. In which he has the social permission and the vocabulary to call out and challenge society’s expectations around masculinity in the same way that girls are learning to challenge the idea that femininity should be the key measure of worth for a woman. It is only then that he, and all of us will really find freedom.
I sent this essay to my husband because it is a topic he’s brought up quite often. A lot of men talk about the concept of being a “real man” and he sees some trying to make it more positive by saying “real men respect their wives” “real men do dishes” etc. But at the end of the day, it is still emphasizing that the most important thing is to be a man, and a manly man, and the most real man, and that all your actions as a human reinforce or delegitimize your manhood. Sounds awful, to be honest. Just passing along some of his thoughts since I’ve found them interesting. Thanks so much for this!
Thanks so much for writing this! As I 63 year old man, I agree completely. I was raised by a feminist Mom and realized by about age 13 that paying attention to what society says about the proper way to be a man (or a woman) was a trap to be avoided. It is liberating to approach all circumstances and relationships as the person I am, or want to be, without worrying about how this will reflect on my masculinity. Honestly, after listening to Marlo Thomas’s record “Free to be you and me” in the early 1970’s I am surprised we are still talking about this fifty years later.