In American culture, as well as other cultures around the world, young boys are taught how to be men. They are taught how to think, act, and behave in a particular way that is seen as manly. As norms are taught and passed on to the next generation, do we consider the outcome?
For the past few years, I have been attending a regional conference, the New England Fathering Conference. The focus is on fatherhood as a crucial part of building healthy families. At this conference, there is always so much wisdom and spirit to be found and a sincere engagement around the social movement to build up and lift up fathers and men. Through workshops and keynote speakers, we are encouraged to think about what messages men are being taught that keep them in a cycle of behaviors that are often ostracized by the community at large as well as by those in the human services field. Instead of seeing men as the problem, fatherhood work approaches how society has problematically educated us to view and teach men to be a version of human that we do not like and that is toxic to our culture as whole. Through this lens, we are given a call to action: how we can engage boys and men to help make the world more nurturing for all of us?
There are many things that make us who we are; we have needs, feelings, vulnerabilities, strengths, passions, interests, ways of acting and interacting. Many of these develop over a lifetime as we have experiences, but much of us is molded based on the societal norms subscribed to by an individual’s culture. There are some things innate to us as humans, and then our culture decides what will stay and what will go. However, we will never truly be rid of our need for safety, connection, and community.
Let’s explore our culture around masculinity.
What defines masculinity?
What are some of the messages taught about what it means to be a man? In work done by Merge for Equality, presenting workshops on masculinity all over the world, they came up with similar results cross-culturally when asking this question of male and female participants. Boys are taught to fit inside “the man box” in order to be seen and accepted as a man. Here are some of the things being taught across the world.
- don’t cry
- fight back
- don’t ask for help
- provide
- be strong
- control your woman
- protect
- deal with it
- don’t be a victim
What is harmful about this?
Much of what is taught about being a man is detrimental to the development of boys. Boys are taught that they should suppress their feelings and express themselves through violence. There are problematic aspects of teaching boys that if they are a victim of someone else then they are weak and less of a man. Masculinity prides men on retaliating, intimidating, and competing. All of this reinforces domination and power struggles. There is a level of abuse that exists within our culture of masculinity that even if on the verbal level creates and perpetuates pain which leads to more abuse.
What happens when men don’t or can’t fulfill these expectations of what it means to be a man?
As humans, we are much more complex than the gender roles defined by our society. We feel a range of feelings determined by individual physical and chemical make-up, circumstances surrounding our relationships to others, our ability to succeed at the things that we place value on, and much more. When men don’t live up to the expectations placed before them on how to act and react, instead responding based on their individual make-up, there are negative consequences. They are ostracized, bullied, beaten up or even killed. Further, there is little to no guidance on how to act in any other way than inside the box of masculinity.
There are advantages of acting within the norms of the culture in which they live. These include acceptance, belonging, safety, friendship, money, power and strength. However, there are also disadvantages to conforming to these norms such as loss of self, lack of identity, failure, depression, trauma, suicide, and abusing your body and spirit.
We all know the advantages to participating in the norms expected of you. But there is a problematic side as well. It is important for us to examine this.
In American culture, as well as other cultures around the world, young boys are taught how to be men. No one teaches the costs.
How can we change these norms?
What if the box didn’t exist?
The advantages would be freedom, connection, health, presence, ability to discover/create the self, emotional literacy, better understanding of unconditional love, and better relationships with themselves and others. But we have to expose the fact that there is a better option. Each of us deserves the option to explore our emotions and sense of self beyond the norms laid out for us.
Being a good father starts with being a healthy man, a whole man. Having a healthy world starts with teaching half of our population how to process their feelings and work collaboratively and with empathy for one another. By teaching that power comes from acting detached or learning to dominate, we are just perpetuating isolation and pain. We must engage men and fathers as humans because they want connection just as much as the next person. We need to show dads that there are services that will help them succeed, that will strengthen and support them. The healing power of love and connection are so essential to making the world a safe place. Our children need to be nurtured, and so do we. So let’s ask ourselves, what are we teaching our children? How are we supporting the men in our lives?
Where do we start?
- Realize that we are the agents of social change
- Acknowledge the struggle of men and fathers
- Practice prevention, teach next generation a new way
- Understand that dad’s want to be involved with their kids but need to be taught how
- Train offices like DCF, courts, judges, family serving organizations to see the bigger picture
- Change the policies in place that give more services to moms than to dads
- Educate the heart- teach emotional literacy
- Engage the human in us- if we can see each other as human, we can treat each other better
The fight for positive masculinity is about more than men, but about humanity as a whole. A lot of what we take for granted and perceive as normal is actually deeply socialized into who we are. Some of the key aspects of what it means to be a man are intrinsic to our culture around violence, in that men are told to push down their emotions and are taught to be strong and tough. A huge segment of the population is being taught to act in contrast to their human nature, and thus influencing the culture of humanity. For these reasons, this conversation must go beyond the topic of men and be looked at as something for all of us to examine about ourselves and our relationship to masculinity. I ask you to look at the world around you and begin to see men, fathers and boys as people, in need of nurturing, in need of connection.
Two+ comments, largely in support of what Rachel is saying, from a long-time attendee and sometime-presenter at NEFC.
First, Part A: One of the ways in which the New England Fathering Conference stands as an important model is that it has NEVER been about “oppositional binaries.” That is to say, the headline often privileged by media is: “X & Y Fight!” In many ways, the backbone of NEFC, this conference focused on fathers, is women (including the Founding Mother). It is NOT a place where people play “The Gender Blame Game.” Rather it is a place where people get together to MAKE THINGS WORK.
Which—Part B—is good for children, top line. We know the phrase “best interests of the child” either from television or from court; it’s a phrase often used but too often not implemented in real terms and on the ground; it is a phrase that NEFC participants take very seriously—both providers and fathers. Whatever the relationship between the adults, “Respect the child’s mother!” is one of NEFC’s primary commandments.
Part C: “Supporting Fathers” is not about “taking anything from” mothers, very much the opposite. Gloria Steinem has famously written, “Women will never be completely equal in the workplace until men are completely equal in the home.” Empowering fathers empowers mothers.
Finally, point number two, which Rachel addresses glancingly: What constitutes “healthy” or “constructive” masculinity is obviously vexingly complicated. Social science data, for example, argue compellingly that women say they want “softer” men but then, the data tell us . . . that’s not who they choose to date or marry.
My only child is a daughter (now 23 YO). That’s what I wanted. I do not at all idealize the present situation of American women, but I would argue that they are granted more “flex” than men of the same age. You can raise your daughter to be a physician or a steelworker or a boxer and find support for those roles. Raising a son to be a nurse or a daycare worker or a manicurist is a harder sell.
Part of the resistance to men in “traditionally female roles” comes from the “gender policing” of other men and from society at large. But part of it also comes from women—as it does in many parenting contexts—who, while interested in doing “gender-door-busting” for themselves, remain “maternal gatekeepers” shooing men away from both the parenting roles and the “helping professions” that we often chide men for “shying away from.”
“Bring Equity to Male Bastions!” remains a compelling battle cry for many women—and their egalitarian male allies.
Not always but often, that is dissonantly twinned with: “We need to preserve women’s spaces!”
In addressing “toxic masculinity,” we need to confront that contradiction.