It took me a very long time to actually realize that while women have a very distinct gender experience, men do too. Literally everyone does. I think that a great deal of work could be done to deconstruct patriarchy by showing just how oppressed men are by hegemonic masculinity, alongside everyone else. I remember a conversation I had in high school where the teacher probed the male students in class about where and when it was acceptable for them to cry. One of the male students said something that surprised me. If my memory serves, he said something along the lines of, “I mean I understand it if your family member died, but if you’re just crying for something else stupid it’s like, come on.”

Feminism and gender studies have revolved so much around women and the oppression of non-cis-hetero-men has done a disservice to these movements. Looking the highly constructed nature of masculinity and the ways in which men are harmed as they try to measure up to masculine ideals demonstrates that what one could call the “gender problem” of the United States or other regions of the world is not at all the problem of women and other marginalized people but of everyone in society.

Several studies illustrate this point. Nadeau et al. (2016) and Parent et al. (2019) both link toxic masculinity to poor emotional health in men. At this point it is common knowledge among some circles of the U.S. population, but I keep going back to the comment my classmate made, that his peers seemed to agree with. I cannot imagine stiffling my emotions that much. While this much 

 

Nadeau, M. M., Balsan, M. J., & Rochlen, A. B. (2016). Men’s depression: Endorsed experiences and expressions. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 17, 328–335. https://doi-org.ezproxy.rice.edu/10.1037/men0000027

Parent, M. C., Gobble, T. D., & Rochlen, A. (2019). Social media behavior, toxic masculinity, and depression. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 20(3), 277-287. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.rice.edu/10.1037/men0000156