The era of #metoo has led to a reckoning on what it means to be a man in modern society. The words “toxic masculinity” have left the academy to become commonplace in our daily lexicon. There exists a greater comfort to “call out” behaviors by men that silence and diminish the power of women and gender minorities. We are asking for more men to recognize their privileges and the advantages that society bestows upon masculinity. For women, this has been a positive shift, one that allows women to progress without fearing policing by men that shames them into submission.

 

#metoo also comes at a time when men are slowly losing their grasp of dominance on society. Economically, young men are falling behind young women in terms of earnings. More women than men pursue higher education, all but ensuring better earning potential as a college degree is necessary for most white-collar jobs. As the promise of dominance in all spheres of society becomes ever more elusive to modern men, we are seeing a crisis of masculinity. With the rule of order shaken, men are finding themselves in a place of weakness, without the preparation to handle the resulting vulnerability in a healthy way.

 

Men from a young age are taught to avoid any signs of weakness. Strength of body and mental fortitude are the ideals that young boys are taught to strive to, even if we recognize that they can never reach that perfect hegemonic masculinity. We shame men who drift from the pursuit of “being a man”, who beliefs, personalities, wants, and desires are unacceptable due to their sex defined at birth. This shame follows men throughout their lives as they strive to uphold masculinity, to be on-top, to dominate. Shame can often build up to an unhealthy breaking point when it is then translated into violence – against women, other men, oneself. And the “good men” out there must find ways to distance themselves from these violent behaviors or find themselves implicated by their silence. This only leads to an additional pile-up of shame. Therefore, we are creating cycles of shame, where men are damned if they aren’t acting masculine enough by their peers and damned if they do act overtly masculine by greater society.

 

This shame is damaging to men. We are seeing upticks in depression and anxiety, especially among white men who make up the most dominant masculine group, due to the shifting role of men in society and the resulting shame of losing power. Shame from masculinity can even kill, such as in the case of David Bucci (the case that inspired this blog post), former chairman of the department of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth University, who took his own life after being accused of enabling abuse of several graduate students by three professors in the department. While men are starting to critically examine their shame through therapy, we still have a long way to go before we can fully grapple with past toxic behaviors in a healthy way that promotes growth towards a more positive masculine identity.

 

I have seen the impacts of shame on the men in my own household. My father grew up in a military household with three older brothers, all of whom policed each other and shamed those who did not live up to the masculine ideal. My father then went to school at the Naval Academy and was again immersed in an environment where the vulnerability was beaten out of you in order to make you a better soldier. Growing up, my father upheld traditional masculinity as it was taught to him, building nice and neat gendered boxes for my brother and me and expecting. But, as my mother began to grow a business and my father’s job started cutting back his hours, his status as the head of the household was challenged. My family’s economic status soon revolved around my mother’s success as a business owner, with my father now having to pick up much of the household tasks or “women’s roles”. I saw the impact that losing dominant status had on my father, as the shame of not being on top led him to double down on masculine ideals and assert power through verbal and emotional abuse. Through these actions, he performed his status as the head of the household even if he no longer holds it in certain economic regards. Research on the shame brought on by threatened masculinities has shown that interpersonal violence is a common response, and is done as a way to externalize blame for the loss of control and power. He also began to expect more traditionally feminine roles for myself and masculine roles for my brother and policed our actions with more extreme vigilance. Such actions, I believe, were done to keep vulnerability and weakness at bay for my father. And now, I still see the impacts of this overt assertion of masculinity on my brother, as he wrestles with the trauma of such verbal attacks and the shame inherent to these attacks while trying to be a “better man” for his partner. 

 

Counteracting shame is a community effort – one that requires us to think beyond an “us vs them” mentality that pits feminism against masculinity. We must band together in our effort to develop healthy masculinity as we strive towards a gender-equal world. To do so, we must dialogue about several questions. How do we build up “good men” as is expected nowadays when so much of the way we treat young boys is entirely backward? While we are starting to ask more of older men to shed toxic behaviors that have been used to dominate women, the baggage of shame from childhood persists and still influences men’s actions. Thus, it is critical to analyze the ways we develop and influence young boys, such as supporting healthy expressions of emotions, encouraging and supporting men interested in more “feminine” careers, and creating and distributing media that displays men as responsible, caring, and competent rather than aggressive and abusive controlling. How do we discuss privilege and systematic advantage in a way that includes men in the conversation, rather than pushes them away? We have to acknowledge the daily anxiety for men that comes with existing in a world where you were never given the language to grapple with vulnerabilities and emotions. There has to be support and space for men to be wrong and learn from that failure without being excommunicated from society. While forgiveness for harm is not expected, an openness to a dialogue where men can be given the empathy to grow is critical for healing. This work is difficult and painful, as we have to grapple with past oppression wrought by undeniable privilege, but will help us move forward and mitigate the toxic impacts of shame.