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

by Liz Plank

If you want to know how our culture feels about two men having emotional intimacy, look no further than the term we use to speak of it: a “bromance.” Male friendship is so fraught that we as a culture have invented a special term to characterize the extraordinary phenomenon of two men having dinner together.

The male affection shortage in America is almost like a kind of post-traumatic homophobia. Society has begun to move on, but the male code hasn’t.

the more a man subscribes to ideas of self-reliance, the less satisfied he is in his friendships.

Loneliness is one of the greatest threats to a person’s health. Similar to cardiovascular diseases, it is associated with weaker immune systems and can cause early death.

What friendships can accomplish for health is unparalleled and can’t even be replaced by a romantic partner.

although marriage is good for men’s health, research is almost unanimous that homosocial relationships between men contribute more to emotional well-being than any romantic relationships can. In fact, study after study has shown that the more socially isolated you are, the more likely you are to die early.

friendships are indispensable, and the fact that women are more skilled at building and sustaining friendships gives them a comparative advantage over men in society.

When men are missing something from their male friendships, they often go looking for it in a romantic partner, but this can set up a tricky dynamic. If men can only access true intimacy with their significant other, it puts an awful lot of pressure on that person to provide support and makes that relationship more challenging if there are no other confidants when it comes time to talk through challenges of the relationship.

Although stoicism is associated with being immune to feelings, its true origin comes from the ancient Greek school of thought that is based on the idea that the highest virtue is knowledge. Epictetus said it best: “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”

“Men have to understand that if they don’t know someone in their life who has been assaulted it’s because they haven’t made it safe enough for them to say they were. The chances are overwhelming that someone that is close to you has had their lives destroyed from sexual violence or abuse.”

although the gender revolution has been so far remarkable, it has been grossly incomplete: while women have been taken seriously as workers, men have yet to really be taken seriously as caretakers.

although men’s increased participation in the home might be popular with feminists, it’s not necessarily popular with a lot of young men.

There’s also a significant and noticeable dip in support for working mothers between 2010 and 2014. Researchers say that drop has mostly been driven by young men. This signals that heterosexual millennial men, although more likely to be married to a working woman, are less supportive of her than their fathers were of their wives.

some men might want to live more equitable lives and blur the lines of gendered expectations within their relationships, but the women they are in partnerships with might not always be interested. After all, they’ve absorbed the same messages about ideal masculinity that men have.

“The use of ‘the’ in describing any role in a mutual relationship is likely dangerous and cheapens what could be a richer, more nuanced collaboration,”

when we make policy changes to parental leave, men like it. When parental leave is available, it shifts male attitudes toward their role as men in their families.

If providing financially is the root of male identity, when men can’t perform it they experience shame, which leads them to abandon or further isolate themselves from their family. The fatherhood crisis cannot be addressed without a fundamental disruption of the state’s intentional and alarming disproportionate incarceration of black and brown American men.

women, across races and ethnicities, have long been expected—and continue—to bear the burden of domestic and reproductive work, or what economists have adorably called unproductive labor. If you ask anyone who’s ever had to grow another human being inside of herself for nine months or change the diaper of a newborn baby after it ate solid foods for the first time, “unproductive” is probably the last word that comes to mind.

Due to changes in trade, globalization and automation, the jobs that were primarily done by men, like mining and manufacturing, have been moved overseas, leaving those men with fewer options. Fewer and fewer jobs require skills that men traditionally brought to the table.

While men have traditionally been expected to provide “brawn skills” (such as physical strength), in this new economy, women have had a comparative advantage. Given their ease with so-called brain skills, like interpersonal abilities and communication, they have experienced a slow spike in working hours, whereas men’s have dropped because their skills are less in demand given the shift to a service economy.

The men who are participating in the labor force often rely on women’s unpaid labor to do so and women still bear the brunt of it and get severely penalized financially when they have children. This explains why the gender wage gap between men and women is smaller than the gender wage gap between mothers and non-mothers.

men with children are viewed most positively by employers, whereas women with children are seen most negatively, despite no evidence that they are less productive.

Because the standard is so low for fatherhood, being a dad is seen as noble and a sign of a good character and work ethic. Mothers, although doing the same or more work inside the home, are not viewed so positively.

one study from Cornell University found that having “PTA” on your résumé if you’re a woman makes you less likely to have a job interview, while for men it makes them more likely to get a callback.

One white female Trump supporter who admitted to me she hated Trump confided that she voted for him because “the white man has been completely forgotten.” Her well-being as a white woman depended on the white men in her household. She said she was worried about her husband’s job and her son being unemployed once he’s out of college.

outdated stereotypes about what a “real man’s” job looks like are keeping men inside a structure that is limiting their opportunities to capitalize on the successes and growth areas of our economy.

because jobs performed by women are consistently devalued, it makes them underpaid, which ultimately makes them less appealing to men, too.

When I ask who has told their son that he can do anything that a girl can do, the room goes silent because almost every single hand goes down. I often ask myself how come we’ve progressed to a point where we don’t think girls should be limited by gender, but boys can be.

in a world where men are shunned for adopting any semblance of a feminine characteristic, it is easy to see why men haven’t rushed to take jobs in female-dominated industries.

there are more behavioral and cognitive differences among boys then there are between girls and boys.

Although a majority of Americans believe that it’s good for girls to be exposed to toys that aren’t traditionally for girls, fewer are comfortable with that idea when the genders are reversed.

The toys marketed to boys have just as many damaging stereotypes about their gender: they tend to be more violent, more competitive and rooted in domination rather than cooperation. In addition to that, boys are often given toys that help them develop spatial and cognitive skills, but they are less often given toys that encourage social and emotional development.

If what women did weren’t so devalued, men would have no problem engaging or dabbling in any of it. If there was nothing wrong with femininity, no one would be worried about men exploring it. In other words, the reason why we as a culture are scared of men acting like women is because we diminish the feminine.

perpetuating stereotypes about what makes you manly doesn’t help men in the long run. It reinforces the idea that empathy and caring for others can only be a driving force for women when of course men have the potential and desire to care for others just as women do.

Having more men in care work, teaching and the health care sector would mean better outcomes for children, the ill and the elderly. When we limit who can work, we limit who can enjoy the fruits of that labor.

while privilege is fixed (it’s based on fixed identities: being white, male, able-bodied), power is relational. It changes depending on situations and the people you are associating with.

Refusing to be in the same room as a woman after dark doesn’t exactly accomplish ending sexual harassment. It’s discrimination. Women are not the problem. The men harassing them are.

Men (and women!) in more gender-equal countries in Europe (Iceland included) are less likely to get divorced, be depressed or die from a violent death.

Although testosterone is often associated with giving men an advantage later in life because it’s associated with muscle development and stamina, it’s associated with many of the factors that put men at higher health risk, like cancer, heart disease and HIV.

The most dramatic effects on health came from male subjects’ association with “self-reliance, pursuit of playboy behavior and power over women.” This led researchers to conclude that “sexism is not merely a social injustice, but may also have a detrimental effect on the mental health of those who embrace such attitudes.”

The paradox is that across the board, men are less likely to seek therapy, but they benefit just as much as women from therapy, and some research shows they may even benefit more.

While men believed they were coping with stress by “resting,” the women described how they were dealing with stress as “avoidance.”

idealizing “high traditional masculinity” is a “risk factor,” especially for men who weren’t able to fulfill their masculine ideal because of illness, disability or the loss of a job. In other words, having a more flexible way of viewing themselves could protect men from the shocks of everyday life.

data shows that gender equality may in fact be an unsuspecting antidote to male suicide, because women’s empowerment may protect men from economic shocks.