For the Love of Men: From Toxic to a More Mindful Masculinity

by Liz Plank

If we were to give men more freedom to be or love who they wanted, could it make a dent in one of the deadliest epidemics of our time?

“sexism is not merely a social injustice, but may also have a detrimental effect on the mental health of those who embrace such attitudes.”

researchers have found that identifying with macho and traditional masculinity was correlated with more pronounced alexithymia, an inability to properly describe emotions, across different demographic groups of men.

It’s not that men objectively experience less stress; women and men have different interpretations of whether they are coping with it correctly.

“Health programs often view men mainly as oppressors—self-centered, disinterested, or violent—instead of as complex subjects whose behaviors are influenced by gender and sexual norms.”

the results showed that black men were 50 percent more likely to agree to preventative diabetes screening when it came recommended by a black doctor rather than a white or Asian doctor.

violating the toxic code of masculinity can be such a point of stress for men that it negatively impacts their overall health.

Oddly, the policy conversations around guns hardly ever focus on how guns are most often used to self-inflict violence, especially given that suicide is on the rise.

The more a man identifies with traditional masculinity beliefs, the more vulnerable he is.

Sociologist Émile Durkheim’s theory of suicide stems primarily from a disconnection from institutions such as marriage, employment and social networks.

Look it up

The most common way Native men say they experience reproductive violence is being forced to have children they do not want, most often with non-Native women. That heavily complicates the narrative of reproductive and domestic violence being a woman’s issue,

There is something about masculinity once it becomes racialized that justifies that violence.”

“Gender itself is a violence,” he said. “We all suffer from gender; the only difference is that men are rewarded for that violence.”

“To say we’ll fix the problem together is not the same as saying you’re wounded and I’m not, because the reality is that there needs to be a recognition that it’s killing you, too. Patriarchy is killing men, too.”

Gender inequality becomes hard to solve when it’s both a product and a consequence of extreme poverty.

freeing women from gendered constraints might be as important as freeing men from them, too.

Whether it’s in Zambia or anywhere else, when our approach to gender equality is exclusively focused on women, we cannot effectively solve anyone’s problems.

Although they had all repeated to me that boys aren’t supposed to cry, the very first emotion they could think of was the one they had been instructed to avoid.

we didn’t just allow the squeezing of emotion out of men; we institutionalized it.

The patriarchal beliefs that pressure men to take risky jobs with little protection are the same ones that underpin the pressure for women to be protected and kept inside the home against their will.

Ranking our pain is unproductive because it gets us away from the fact that our afflictions are all connected.

Interetiaityy

it seemed like no boy was born free.

masculinity wasn’t something that was intuitive or intrinsic; it was carefully learned, delicately transmitted and deliberately propagandized.

he dismissed what Sammy did, not who Sammy was.

would we start paying attention to it? If we started seeing idealized masculinity as a radical ideology rather than inevitable, would we approach it differently?

“toxic masculinity” is not just a phrase that feminists use—it’s a war tactic.

it’s curious that so little attention is paid to the way that men are more vulnerable to recruitment.

justify violence through that messaging. Violence can easily be explained away if you’re doing it for the common good.

“The insecurities and fears of white men are projected on white women’s bodies, and the antagonists typically make people of color shown as rapists, sexual beasts, so the protectors of women’s bodies are archetypal white males,”

While it may seem logical to deem any man who joins an extremist group bad to begin with, what if we assumed that they were vulnerable to begin with instead?

Because there is such a high value on appearance, any kind of deviation from that model is seen negatively. “People don’t want to be associated with that,” D’Arcee explained.

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us walk together. —LILA WATSON

The conversation we need to have about men is not distinct or separate from the one we’ve had and will continue to have about women.

Those oppressions aren’t only connected; they’re born out of the same ideology.

This requires a fundamental shift in the framing of our conversations about gender, where we don’t assume whether someone is the victim or perpetuator based on their gender.

be split between those who recognize that gender is made up and those who do not.

We don’t know enough about what a world without toxic notions of masculinity could look like to be pessimistic about it.

mindfulness is really about getting in touch with the intentions behind your actions.

In the process of becoming more conscious of what drives us, we may encounter pain and even trauma, and that can be one of the most difficult challenges,

especially if you’ve been trained to avoid it.

whatever pain you don’t transform, you will transmit. Indeed, what you don’t become conscious of ends up controlling you.

it’s clear that the characteristics associated with a “good man” come from a place of strength and that characteristics associated with a “real man” come from a place of fear. “Standing up for the little guy” requires bravery. “Integrity” necessitates audacity. But be aggressive and never cry don’t originate from a place of courage; their birthplace is shame.

gender is a lot like our closet: there’s some stuff back there just collecting dust and no longer assisting us that’s taking up a whole lot of space. I’m not going to tell men, or anyone else for that matter, what they need to get rid of; I’m just asking all of us to think deeply about what we’re holding on to and consciously let go if it’s not aligning with the person we want to be.

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