Traditional Masculinity Isn’t The Problem. The Attempt To Dismantle Traditional Masculinity Is The Problem.

There’s no shortage today of articles on “toxic masculinity.” In fact, a full-length CBS documentary titled “Speaking Frankly: Raising Boys” asks if there is “a better way to raise boys to avoid toxic masculinity?”

The documentary details the trials and tribulations of parents who want to protect their sons from the horrors of traditional masculinity. The main thrust is that boys in our culture are broken, and it’s our outdated and “disturbing” notions of masculinity that broke them.

This is all wrong.

The people interviewed for the article, along with the author herself, are perpetuating the very problem they say they want to solve. The real toxic thing is the attitude and approach they embody. Traditional masculinity is not at fault here. What’s at fault is the confused and contradictory attempt to dismantle it.

A few points. First, you’re starting on the wrong foot if you’re using a phrase like “toxic masculinity.” In practice, it seems that toxic masculinity can either refer to traditionally masculine traits that are now wrongly regarded as harmful, or actually harmful traits that are often associated with men. If it’s used in the first sense, it’s obviously degrading and damaging because it tells men that their natural masculine dispositions are somehow disordered. I’ll get back to that in a moment.

In the second sense, it unfairly blames masculinity for bullying or narcissistic behavior that has no gender. If you don’t understand why men might take issue with this approach, just imagine how almost any woman would react if I said that gossipy, materialistic bimbos have “toxic femininity.” That would be, at the very least, an unnecessarily inflammatory way of addressing the problem of materialistic bimbos. But worse than that, it would suggest that femininity, taken to a toxic extreme, results in dumb bimbos who spend their husbands’ money on shoes and purses. It seems to say: “It’s okay to be a woman, but don’t be too womanly.” Of course, nobody ever does talk about toxic femininity. And the reason we don’t talk about it is because we recognize how insulting and demeaning the concept is. We have simply decided that it’s okay to be insulting and demeaning toward men.

Second, there is nothing wrong with telling boys that men “behave a certain way.” There’s nothing wrong with telling them to be strong or encouraging them to exercise control over their emotions. Obviously these messages can be delivered the wrong way, but the fundamental point is good and important. The problem in our culture isn’t that boys are being thrown in a “box” or forced to conform to some strict notion of masculinity. In fact, our problem is exactly the opposite.

Too many boys are given no instructions on how to be men, no example to follow, no guidance on how to grow and mature in their masculinity. The folks over at A Call To Men seem to think we’re living in the 1940s. They haven’t noticed that the era of the Strong and Stoic Man ended a long time ago. We’re living now in the era of drag queens and feminism, of gender fluidity and fatherless homes. Most boys these days have no clue how to be men, no idea about what to do with their masculine energy, because nobody has ever told them or shown them.

The fact of the matter is this: most boys are born with a propensity to “behave a certain way.” There’s a reason why nearly every civilization throughout history and across the world has come to remarkably similar conclusions about what men are supposed to do and what role they are supposed to fill. They didn’t all arbitrarily and coincidentally invent the same “social construct.” No, they noticed that men are naturally aggressive, and so they said that men should be warriors. They noticed that men are naturally stronger than woman, and so they said that men should be protectors. They noticed that men have a greater propensity and desire to leave their homes and go out into the wild, and so they said that men should be hunters and providers. They noticed that boys have lots of physical energy, and so they came up with sports for the boys to play. The point is that societies, until recently, have not invented masculinity but harnessed it. They said to boys: “This is how you naturally are, and that’s good. Now here is how you can best put those tendencies and abilities to use for yourselves, your families, and your communities.”

Now we insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that boys are not naturally inclined to act in any particular way. Or worse, we say that their natural inclinations are toxic. This results, in the best case scenario, with boys who are given no road map to follow into adulthood; no direction for becoming well adjusted and contributing

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