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!
oh yes this is such a great example of it and even more egregious than the "positive masculinity" framing. A real man respects women, has a ring of "i've never hit a woman in my life" too. Blech. Thanks so much for sharing!
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.
oh thank you! it's great to hear a male perspective on this. And you are so right. William's Doll! that never really caught on. in the same way that some of her messages directed at girls did. It seems like male gender norms are harder to shift than female at this point. Thanks so much for reading.
“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.” Huh? Attractiveness to men? “Sexiness”? Weight? The end of fuckability with middle age? Double huh??
yes so many of these of course and you are so right that society polices women's behavior/ looks etc extremely heavily and in so many ways more than they do men's. By that line I meant one single catch-all concept that was inherently gendered- although attractiveness, ugly, fat , old etc are used in gendered ways of course (and primarily to demean and subjugate women), they aren't inherently gendered in and of themselves. But you are right that I should have made that clearer. thanks for pointing that out.
I think those of us called "dyke" all through our adolescence will vote for that as a pretty powerful defeminizing word -- and one that put us in literal danger in the 80s and 90s. Plenty of women 45+ who lived through this era will probably agree!
This paragraph seemed particularly strange to me as well. I know many women at or near middle age who are struggling to find a graceful middle ground between prize, and crone. My own grandmother underwent both a hysterectomy and a radical mastectomy; she surely wondered what was left. (A tough woman.)
But it mirrored something I've often thought: that it's interesting how society has a traditional concept of a "real man", but not a corresponding "real woman". Manhood is certainly a prescribed role; but men are allowed a degree of self-definition, particularly if they seize it for themselves. We love and reward a self-made man who is willing to break the mold. No such affordance for woman: society decides exactly what she is good for.
I remember a central message of third-wave feminism being that femininity is as valid a choice as any other, for a self-made woman who is free to be true to herself.
There are virtues to stereotypical masculinity and virtues to stereotypical femininity. Why can’t we just allow those to exist instead of pushing back on them? There’s nothing wrong with a traditional wife. There’s nothing wrong with a stoic breadwinner. The fact that many men don’t fit the stereotype doesn’t negate the concept of positive masculinity.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with masculinity or femininity per se . The part that is the problem is holding these two things up as a standard that men and women (or boys and girls) feel they have to meet in order to be worthy.
I agree that there’s nothing wrong with “traditional” gender stereotypes. But as Ruth said, the problem is the pressure to conform to them and the shame that comes when we don’t. Plus, they aren’t actually “traditional” anyway. They aren’t based in historical or biological fact and only a few hundred years old. I wrote about that here: https://makemenemotionalagain.substack.com/p/what-does-positive-masculinity-look
I agree and I'll go a step further: the idea that masculinity is 100% a social construct is both incorrect and harmful, because it leads inevitably to the idea that the best solution for boys is to force them to act more like girls.
There can be fundamental emotional differences between boys/men and girls/women, and some of those differences are rooted in biology, not just society. Masculinity of the positive variety (the bits that valorize things like loyalty, self-sacrifice and stoicism) is an important tool for helping boys/men learn to deal with their emotions in a manner that typically won't work for women. Conversely, trying to force men into emotional structures that work for women--like the current push for men to find talk therapy as useful as women do--just makes everyone more miserable. Men are more than just emotionally defective women.
Thinking that the key to raising a well-adjusted boy is eliminating masculinity is a complete dead end.
Yep there are virtues in each but none of those virtues is the exclusive preserve of any gender. Why can’t we just focus on the virtues themselves rather than the gender stereotypically attached to them?
AMEN! I wrote about this once years ago -- about how I do not feel the same pressure to be a "woman" in the same ways boys & men feel the pressure to be a "man." As a female, I've had far more opportunities to be who I am throughout my life (I'm 51 now) than my boys (currently ages 16, 21, 23, & 26) have had.
thank you! this is so true. I never realized until having sons how restrictive and limiting gender stereotypes for boys can be. Looking forward to discussing it all on your great podcast.
This is very true - girls can wear jeans but boys can't wear dresses, however where this intersects with queerness it becomes much LESS true. If you were queer (as I am) you probably were faced with a similar threat of violence when you didn't conform to the femininity straight men expected of you (and it was likely sexual violence). And that's where the violence comes into play with masculinity as well - where it intersects with queerness. For the last 40 or so years, their intersection of perceived queerness and gender was just much wider than ours and caught a lot more boys in it.
I think the work of trans activists really highlights the point you make here: to stop making people in general conform to gender expectations of any type because the expectations are where the harm is. For men, women, trans folks, and other genders. The more we get away from rigid categories, the better.
For sure- these activists have shifted our entire understanding of gender. Although sometimes it can feel that gender norms are opening up for almost everyone except cis boys
I think that just speaks to how powerful traditional masculinity narratives are, as they start early and often with cis boys. I talk about this somewhat in my piece https://vivmit.substack.com/p/episode-5-my-fathers-rage?r=fu609 where I reference bell hooks' work and how important it was for me to challenge patriarchal norms.
I really enjoyed reading this. The other challenge to the languaging you object to is that it sets up a binary of positive vs negative, a clear line when gender is anything but (as with male and female). Much of it is a social construct as you say. Maybe we could instead talk about male agency and initiative versus “conquest” or “scoring” for instance, in the realm of dating. I have to add that so many of my young male patients are very confused about this, wanting to show interest in women but terrified of being seen as a creep. Esp if their dad was insensitive or boorish with women, or worse, and they came to identify more with mom; they start to see almost any aspect of their agency or maleness as suspect or negative. Anyway….Complex issues, good piece!
This is a really interesting way to look at it. The boys I interviewed for BOYMOM felt similarly re feeling like a creep vs wanting to approach girls/ women. And they are also still expected to be masculine and dominant and assertive - they told me that sometimes the contradictory expectations felt impossible to navigate. Thanks for reading!
"Contradictory expectations" is a good way to put it. On the other side you have young women who want to pursue boys but are afraid of being too "masculine". Oy! I think these terms are really binding, and often either/or--which I think is part of your point. As we learn in psychoanalysis, much of our language comes with heavy baggage. Thanks for your response. I look forward to reading your book.
Yes yes yes yes! I’ve been wanting to write something exactly like this and you nailed it. Thank you so much! I’ll likely write my own version for my audience, but I’ll definitely be quoting you.
As someone who has been doing this work/writing for ... oh god, 14 years now ... and studied masculinity in college four billion years ago, I think part of the issue is that without reframing in a way that is appealing to men and boys, we are really just doing it for ourselves. Which is fine - we can do it for ourselves. But I'm not sure it gets us anywhere. We need all sorts of examples of breaking free form the prescriptives, from Harry Styles wearing a dress 5 years ago to Terry Crews talking about having been sexually assaulted during the MeToo conversations to Jason Kelce crying multiple times in public.
What I think most women writing about and thinking about masculinity reframes miss is that prescriptive masculinity comes from trauma - especially in elder Millennials, GenX and older. Literally, their idea of what it means to perform masculinity is shaped by physical violence or the fear of physical violence - from parents, other adults or peers, as well as emotional violence and isolation. We cannot separate out our conversations with men and older boys from this trauma. Prescriptive (and restrictive) masculinity is so tied to fear, shame and trauma that trying to reframe it without considering their trauma reactions doesn't get us very far.
Every time I post publicly about helping men and boys feel safer in a wider expanse of masculinity(especially on Twitter) I get women ENRAGED at me for pandering to men. They really want the conversation to solely focus on women and girls -- and I get why, I think these reactions also come from trauma (I have serious trauma from men and boys myself over my 46 years of life!) that causes them to think of men and boys ONLY as perpetrators (or potential perpetrators) and women only as victims -- even if they intellectually understand that making the world safer for men's varied experiences and expressions of masculinity will make the world safer for women and girls.
All of this to make the point that I think you are correct in theory, but that there are plenty of men and boys who will best receive these messages in a "lowest common denominator" packaging and that has to be alright. The goal, in my opinion, will be to deliver these messages in a variety of styles that can appeal to various groups of men and boys and "meet them where they're at", as the social workers say. My feeling is this is probably the best way to make serious systematic change.
I believe that "healthy masculinity" is simply a counter movement for "toxic masculinity."
I don't understand why progressives think that getting rid of something will solve the problem. It won't. If you remove something without providing something better, there will just be a void that gets filled.
We see that already by figures like Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate. The "progressive left" has no modern role model for the average man. Harry Styles can't be the answer because, let's be honest, he is everything the average man is not. He's blessed with good looks, a womanizer, a millionaire, a singer and songwriter, the highest social status, and so on. He can wear whatever he wants. He doesn't need any concept of masculinity for his identity because his identity is his own brand. His own creation.
Boys and young men are driven by their sex drive and want to get laid or find a girlfriend. They too, need a modern man as an aspirational role model to help them navigate and move forward in life. Telling the average guy that there is no such thing as masculinity and that he just needs to be a bit more like Harry Styles is ridiculous.
Concepts, stereotypes, roles: These boxes we put ourselves (or others) in provide us with easy answers, guidance and stability during an age where there are many insecurities. We might grow out of them and eventually are ready to leave them behind but I don't think we can get rid of them (there will always be new boxes). We should create better ones or adjust their values which closes the circle where I would say "positive masculinity" is better then what you would leave boys or young men with, which seems to me: nothing?
Thank you so much for this comment. It really blew me away. The financial aspect is such a huge part of this that I didn't include. Thank you for highlighting it. Would you mind if I shared this comment?
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!
oh yes this is such a great example of it and even more egregious than the "positive masculinity" framing. A real man respects women, has a ring of "i've never hit a woman in my life" too. Blech. Thanks so much for sharing!
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.
oh thank you! it's great to hear a male perspective on this. And you are so right. William's Doll! that never really caught on. in the same way that some of her messages directed at girls did. It seems like male gender norms are harder to shift than female at this point. Thanks so much for reading.
Amen
Wow. I had not thought of that record since forever and you made the tune pop right in my head!
You had me until
“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.” Huh? Attractiveness to men? “Sexiness”? Weight? The end of fuckability with middle age? Double huh??
Try UGLY, FAT and OLD, and you will have the the basic defeminizing concept - undesireable to men.
yes so many of these of course and you are so right that society polices women's behavior/ looks etc extremely heavily and in so many ways more than they do men's. By that line I meant one single catch-all concept that was inherently gendered- although attractiveness, ugly, fat , old etc are used in gendered ways of course (and primarily to demean and subjugate women), they aren't inherently gendered in and of themselves. But you are right that I should have made that clearer. thanks for pointing that out.
Thank you for your thoughtful response
Thank you for reading and engaging so deeply
I think those of us called "dyke" all through our adolescence will vote for that as a pretty powerful defeminizing word -- and one that put us in literal danger in the 80s and 90s. Plenty of women 45+ who lived through this era will probably agree!
This paragraph seemed particularly strange to me as well. I know many women at or near middle age who are struggling to find a graceful middle ground between prize, and crone. My own grandmother underwent both a hysterectomy and a radical mastectomy; she surely wondered what was left. (A tough woman.)
But it mirrored something I've often thought: that it's interesting how society has a traditional concept of a "real man", but not a corresponding "real woman". Manhood is certainly a prescribed role; but men are allowed a degree of self-definition, particularly if they seize it for themselves. We love and reward a self-made man who is willing to break the mold. No such affordance for woman: society decides exactly what she is good for.
I remember a central message of third-wave feminism being that femininity is as valid a choice as any other, for a self-made woman who is free to be true to herself.
Yes the real man vs real woman thing is interesting. Definitely prescriptive roles for both, which are rigid and freeing in different ways
There are virtues to stereotypical masculinity and virtues to stereotypical femininity. Why can’t we just allow those to exist instead of pushing back on them? There’s nothing wrong with a traditional wife. There’s nothing wrong with a stoic breadwinner. The fact that many men don’t fit the stereotype doesn’t negate the concept of positive masculinity.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with masculinity or femininity per se . The part that is the problem is holding these two things up as a standard that men and women (or boys and girls) feel they have to meet in order to be worthy.
I agree that there’s nothing wrong with “traditional” gender stereotypes. But as Ruth said, the problem is the pressure to conform to them and the shame that comes when we don’t. Plus, they aren’t actually “traditional” anyway. They aren’t based in historical or biological fact and only a few hundred years old. I wrote about that here: https://makemenemotionalagain.substack.com/p/what-does-positive-masculinity-look
I agree and I'll go a step further: the idea that masculinity is 100% a social construct is both incorrect and harmful, because it leads inevitably to the idea that the best solution for boys is to force them to act more like girls.
There can be fundamental emotional differences between boys/men and girls/women, and some of those differences are rooted in biology, not just society. Masculinity of the positive variety (the bits that valorize things like loyalty, self-sacrifice and stoicism) is an important tool for helping boys/men learn to deal with their emotions in a manner that typically won't work for women. Conversely, trying to force men into emotional structures that work for women--like the current push for men to find talk therapy as useful as women do--just makes everyone more miserable. Men are more than just emotionally defective women.
Thinking that the key to raising a well-adjusted boy is eliminating masculinity is a complete dead end.
Yep there are virtues in each but none of those virtues is the exclusive preserve of any gender. Why can’t we just focus on the virtues themselves rather than the gender stereotypically attached to them?
AMEN! I wrote about this once years ago -- about how I do not feel the same pressure to be a "woman" in the same ways boys & men feel the pressure to be a "man." As a female, I've had far more opportunities to be who I am throughout my life (I'm 51 now) than my boys (currently ages 16, 21, 23, & 26) have had.
thank you! this is so true. I never realized until having sons how restrictive and limiting gender stereotypes for boys can be. Looking forward to discussing it all on your great podcast.
This is very true - girls can wear jeans but boys can't wear dresses, however where this intersects with queerness it becomes much LESS true. If you were queer (as I am) you probably were faced with a similar threat of violence when you didn't conform to the femininity straight men expected of you (and it was likely sexual violence). And that's where the violence comes into play with masculinity as well - where it intersects with queerness. For the last 40 or so years, their intersection of perceived queerness and gender was just much wider than ours and caught a lot more boys in it.
Same!
Truly cannot wait for your book!
Oh thank you so much Maggie! So glad to have found you on here!
I think the work of trans activists really highlights the point you make here: to stop making people in general conform to gender expectations of any type because the expectations are where the harm is. For men, women, trans folks, and other genders. The more we get away from rigid categories, the better.
For sure- these activists have shifted our entire understanding of gender. Although sometimes it can feel that gender norms are opening up for almost everyone except cis boys
I think that just speaks to how powerful traditional masculinity narratives are, as they start early and often with cis boys. I talk about this somewhat in my piece https://vivmit.substack.com/p/episode-5-my-fathers-rage?r=fu609 where I reference bell hooks' work and how important it was for me to challenge patriarchal norms.
Well-said. Thanks a million! Rigid gender roles, with or without life hacks, are poison, plain and simple.
so true. Thanks so much for reading.
You're very welcome :)
I really enjoyed reading this. The other challenge to the languaging you object to is that it sets up a binary of positive vs negative, a clear line when gender is anything but (as with male and female). Much of it is a social construct as you say. Maybe we could instead talk about male agency and initiative versus “conquest” or “scoring” for instance, in the realm of dating. I have to add that so many of my young male patients are very confused about this, wanting to show interest in women but terrified of being seen as a creep. Esp if their dad was insensitive or boorish with women, or worse, and they came to identify more with mom; they start to see almost any aspect of their agency or maleness as suspect or negative. Anyway….Complex issues, good piece!
This is a really interesting way to look at it. The boys I interviewed for BOYMOM felt similarly re feeling like a creep vs wanting to approach girls/ women. And they are also still expected to be masculine and dominant and assertive - they told me that sometimes the contradictory expectations felt impossible to navigate. Thanks for reading!
"Contradictory expectations" is a good way to put it. On the other side you have young women who want to pursue boys but are afraid of being too "masculine". Oy! I think these terms are really binding, and often either/or--which I think is part of your point. As we learn in psychoanalysis, much of our language comes with heavy baggage. Thanks for your response. I look forward to reading your book.
Yes yes yes yes! I’ve been wanting to write something exactly like this and you nailed it. Thank you so much! I’ll likely write my own version for my audience, but I’ll definitely be quoting you.
Oh thank you so much! I look forward to reading your essay too!
Lee Shevek blew my mind with this post awhile back on the same topic: https://butchanarchy.medium.com/masculinity-contested-territory-ad94621032b
As someone who has been doing this work/writing for ... oh god, 14 years now ... and studied masculinity in college four billion years ago, I think part of the issue is that without reframing in a way that is appealing to men and boys, we are really just doing it for ourselves. Which is fine - we can do it for ourselves. But I'm not sure it gets us anywhere. We need all sorts of examples of breaking free form the prescriptives, from Harry Styles wearing a dress 5 years ago to Terry Crews talking about having been sexually assaulted during the MeToo conversations to Jason Kelce crying multiple times in public.
What I think most women writing about and thinking about masculinity reframes miss is that prescriptive masculinity comes from trauma - especially in elder Millennials, GenX and older. Literally, their idea of what it means to perform masculinity is shaped by physical violence or the fear of physical violence - from parents, other adults or peers, as well as emotional violence and isolation. We cannot separate out our conversations with men and older boys from this trauma. Prescriptive (and restrictive) masculinity is so tied to fear, shame and trauma that trying to reframe it without considering their trauma reactions doesn't get us very far.
Every time I post publicly about helping men and boys feel safer in a wider expanse of masculinity(especially on Twitter) I get women ENRAGED at me for pandering to men. They really want the conversation to solely focus on women and girls -- and I get why, I think these reactions also come from trauma (I have serious trauma from men and boys myself over my 46 years of life!) that causes them to think of men and boys ONLY as perpetrators (or potential perpetrators) and women only as victims -- even if they intellectually understand that making the world safer for men's varied experiences and expressions of masculinity will make the world safer for women and girls.
All of this to make the point that I think you are correct in theory, but that there are plenty of men and boys who will best receive these messages in a "lowest common denominator" packaging and that has to be alright. The goal, in my opinion, will be to deliver these messages in a variety of styles that can appeal to various groups of men and boys and "meet them where they're at", as the social workers say. My feeling is this is probably the best way to make serious systematic change.
I believe that "healthy masculinity" is simply a counter movement for "toxic masculinity."
I don't understand why progressives think that getting rid of something will solve the problem. It won't. If you remove something without providing something better, there will just be a void that gets filled.
We see that already by figures like Jordan Peterson or Andrew Tate. The "progressive left" has no modern role model for the average man. Harry Styles can't be the answer because, let's be honest, he is everything the average man is not. He's blessed with good looks, a womanizer, a millionaire, a singer and songwriter, the highest social status, and so on. He can wear whatever he wants. He doesn't need any concept of masculinity for his identity because his identity is his own brand. His own creation.
Boys and young men are driven by their sex drive and want to get laid or find a girlfriend. They too, need a modern man as an aspirational role model to help them navigate and move forward in life. Telling the average guy that there is no such thing as masculinity and that he just needs to be a bit more like Harry Styles is ridiculous.
Concepts, stereotypes, roles: These boxes we put ourselves (or others) in provide us with easy answers, guidance and stability during an age where there are many insecurities. We might grow out of them and eventually are ready to leave them behind but I don't think we can get rid of them (there will always be new boxes). We should create better ones or adjust their values which closes the circle where I would say "positive masculinity" is better then what you would leave boys or young men with, which seems to me: nothing?
Thank you so much for this comment. It really blew me away. The financial aspect is such a huge part of this that I didn't include. Thank you for highlighting it. Would you mind if I shared this comment?
thank you!