Skip to main content

What's the deal with Toxic Masculinity?

Toxic masculinity is a concept that I'm sure is not foreign to many of us. We hear about it and its prominence in television, movies, commercials, and other forms of media. Here, I plan to really dissect what exactly constitutes toxic masculinity, and offer some of my thoughts on it.

Toxic masculinity is the acceptance and normalization of actions and norms/actions deemed appropriate for men to take within society that often prove to be detrimental in other aspects of their lives, or detrimental to those around them. A common and modern example of men practicing toxic masculinity would be men bragging about how many women they've slept with or how sexually active with women they are; the more, the better.

As of recent, I've noted 3 pieces that touch of the topic of toxic masculinity, with the first being a documentary by the name of Tough Guise 2. The other two being NY Times articles, one by the name of "The Boys are Not Right", and the other being named "Not Your Father's Masculinity". I feel each piece did a great job touching on the subject, and really giving people insight to toxic masculinity. I especially feel in "Not Your Father's Masculinity", it gave me a new perspective to view toxic masculinity from, or really just masculinity in general. In short, it touched on how many men are confused with what it means to be a man, or be masculine, and really showed me how diverse masculinity is and how the definition varies from person to person. In Tough Guise 2, it goes into depth about how women and men share many difficulties like mental health issues and such, however acts of violence (like school shootings, for a more extreme example), are more prominent and commonly seen among men than women. Personally, I feel this boils down to the fact society has shaped men to suppress their emotions, whereas women are given more leeway when it comes to expressing their emotions, as society commonly regards women as "emotional beings".

Our society as a whole has a lot of work to do in regards to addressing the issue of toxic masculinity, and coming to a resolve about what it means to be a man, or be masculine.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice.

  The Blacker the Berry           1,127 people were killed by police officers in 2020. Of those 1,127 people, black people made up 28% of those people, despite only making up 13% of the population. There were only 18 days in 2020 where police went without killing someone. This alone is enough evidence to come to the conclusion police brutality and inequality still exists, and black people and other people of color are still forced to face such inequality on a day to day basis. Award-winning music artist Kendrick Lamar has touched on the topic of inequality and police brutality through the poetic lyricism in many of his songs. One of these songs, The Blacker The Berry really focuses on this. He talks about how he came to an epiphany at the age of 16 how he is distinguishable based on his race, and looked down upon/oppressed for his race and being black. In his lyrics he includes traits that many oppressors and uneducated stereotypers use to attribu...
Post a Comment
Read more
  In this TED talk, Celeste Headlee touches on the topic of how to be a better communicator and have better conversations with others. As she states at the beginning, we live in a world "...in which every conversation has the potential to devolve into an argument...".  She begins by posing the argument we are more divided than ever before, which I could not agree more with. She poses another argument, saying if we are paying attention, there is no reason to learn how to show this. The more important thing is to learn how to properly respond to what it is you are paying attention to. My favorite point she makes at the end of the TED talk in order to be a better converser is to just listen. I feel this is so important, because everyone is so quick to begin talking about themselves, that they often nullify or tune out what it is the other person is saying, until it is their turn to speak. This results in a conversation being one way, which ultimately is arguably not a conversati...
Post a Comment
Read more