'toxic masculinity' isn't how most guys live their lives, so why are men who behave badly so newsworthy?
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file photo: will smith (r) hits chris rock as rock spoke on stage during the 94th academy awards in hollywood, los angeles, california, u.s., march 27, 2022. reuters/brian snyder/file photo/file photo
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macho movies (top gun: maverick), soldiers at war (russia), mass shootings (mostly the u.s.), domestic abuse trials (depp-heard), female rcmp members’ sexual assault cases, and that stubbornly lingering vision of will smith’s “performance” at the academy awards. they all have one thing in common: men behaving badly.
it’s a disturbing phenomenon, and even more so that it persists in 2022. you’d have thought men would have evolved by now. and they mostly have.
dr. ronald levant, psychologist, professor emeritus, author and men’s studies expert, noted that 15 per cent of men do bad things, but those bad things are reported — and often amplified — in the media, giving the impression all men are jerks (or worse). a common catch-all for this kind of behaviour is “toxic masculinity,” but to at least one expert, that’s a loaded term, and largely unfair to most men.
“i don’t think [the term is] helpful because it’s not how most guys live their lives,” says dr. john oliffe, professor and tier 1 canada research chair in men’s health promotion at ubc’s school of nursing, as well as lead investigator of its men’s health research program. “there are a lot of good blokes out there who are doing good things, who are honourable and have good masculine values and virtues, and it’s a pity that the newsworthy story is will smith.”
and while no rational person would excuse mass shooters, sexual offenders, domestic abusers or onstage smack-downs, unacceptable behaviour overall is rightly being called out, thanks largely to the me too movement.
“the fact that we’re having this conversation is a sign of progress, even though it could be disheartening to think we’re still here in 2022,” says alyson schafer, a speaker, podcaster and author of three bestselling parenting books. “we’re shedding a spotlight on a situation that needs to be improved because we find it untenable.”
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oliffe’s work at ubc and online men’s resource portal heads up guys focuses primarily on mental health, including depression and suicidality, and suggests there’s more going on beneath the surface of some men’s misdeeds.
“there is evidence that male depression can present with externalizing symptoms including aggression, substance use and risk-taking,” he says. “there is also evidence that male exposures to adverse childhood events, [such as] physical and/or sexual abuse, can manifest mental illness challenges and/or maladaptive behaviours. we may be missing a lot of male depression in clinical practice because [of these other issues]. not to excuse the behaviours, but if you have a man in your life who’s drinking heavily, negative and angry, it might be that he’s carrying some depressive symptoms that might benefit from some therapy.”
what makes a man?
“we have a long history of [a certain] narrative in cultures,” says schafer. “and different cultures have different narratives — we call them gender guiding lines — around what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. and that may be different in afghanistan, australia, canada, china. but culture also speaks to the culture of your high school, your family, your community. it’s in [kids’] social media, the movies they watch, the toys they got for christmas, the way their father [portrayed] manhood, the way their mother [portrayed] motherhood. and every child is tasked with coming up with a story, a representation and understanding of what it is to be these genders.”
and depending on how stable and healthy those portrayals were can affect how men navigate their adult relationships. reaction to a break-up, in particular, can manifest in frustration, anxiety, depression and suicide.
“when an intimate partner relationship breaks up, guys are eight times more likely to [commit] suicide than a woman who’s had a break-up,” says oliffe, whose team conducted a survey of about 50 men in canada and australia to find out why that is, and what they felt caused the break-up. overwhelmingly, the respondents cited a lack of communication in the relationship about the relationship, and that, in future, they would make a real effort to keep those lines of communication open.
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and despite the common belief that men are less likely to seek help than women, oliffe says that’s not always the case. in fact, 60 per cent of men in canada who were suicidal had been in health care in the previous 12 months. it’s more that they may not always stick with therapy long enough to be effective.
“it’s the guys who do the introspection work — often with counselling — to understand what they can do better, that can help them grow,” says oliffe. “often they will have emotions that might be discordant — happy and sad at the same time, for example, and they try to make sense of emotions too quickly. a lot of anger comes from feeling they can’t make sense of it.”
he adds that men are encouraged to sit with their emotions to understand where their anger is coming from, and then think of alternate ways of expression.
“behaviours are usually patterns, and those patterns are hard to correct,” he says. “but if you have a good foundation, some ground rules and boundaries, your chances [for growth are better].”
what does healthy masculinity look like?
we know what unhealthy masculinity looks like — lack of emotion, stoicism, dominance, aggression, sexism, homophobia — what does healthy masculinity look like? according to oliffe, masculine values encompass selflessness, openness, kindness, supportiveness, authenticity, vulnerability.
“i interviewed a guy who lost his 18-year-old son to suicide, and he said he wished he’d shown more vulnerability,” he says. “it’s one of the things we need to show, because everything’s not perfect; adults don’t always have it together, and it’s okay to ask for help. when you’re struggling with something, it’s okay to let your kids see some of that and how you deal with it.”
raising boys to have those healthy traits and attitudes as men starts with everything they’re surrounded with from an early age. schafer says, when you walk into a toy store, it’s still strikingly obvious which aisle stocks “boys” toys — trucks, soldiers, tool belts — and which aisle stocks “girls” toys — dolls, pink kitchen sets and make-up bags. she says your playroom should have a variety of options for all kids, to allow boys the freedom to play with the dolls and the girls to play with the trucks.
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“ask all of them if they’d like to learn how to bake muffins or to sew, give [boys] permission around those things and behaviours [like showing emotion],” she says.
as for the images and messages that bombard them about gender roles, communication is key.
“you can’t change the lack of representation in movies and storybooks, but you can change the conversation around it,” says schafer. “you might say, ‘isn’t it interesting that in this movie all the men are saving all the women? do you think it’s true that men have to be the heroes and women have to be the victims?’
she adds that children create their blueprint for understanding life in the first five to six years of life, a time when they are bombarded with lots of subtle messages like mostly male voices in cartoons, dialogues around men saving the day and the fact that boys don’t cry. and though each of these alone seem harmless, schafer says that, together, what kids learn can set the stage for future behaviours.
“[these messages] in totality don’t send a good message for what it is to be a human being who also happens to be of the male gender,” she says. “we are culturally bound, but boys pay the price for subscribing to an unhealthy dictum or cultural stereotype of what it is to be male and we’ve got to let go of that.”
robin roberts is a vancouver-based writer.
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