Masculinity and the 'Making' of Men.

Men talking about masculinities, men, and gender equality

There has been considerable talk in the media and across the channels of our social media about masculinity.  Recently, this has been a somewhat febrile concern for young boys being drawn into the dark world in incels as portrayed by Netflix drama #Adolescence, and old school patriarchal laments around the Lost Boys Report by the Centre for Social Justice that mourns the apparent plight of fatherless boys and rails against the fact that for a few short years (16 – 24) the gender pay-gap is reversed.

Equally, Mark Zuckerberg and others have called for a return of ‘masculine energy’ to the workplace and the Trumpian era of ‘presidential diktats’ is creating a context in which the heteronormative, patriarchal family unit with the ‘strong, breadwinning man’ presents the only truly acceptable form of masculinity. There has also been much talk of Male Allies in gender equality work and calls for a healthy masculinity or a positive masculinity and a rejection of the use of the term ‘toxic masculinity’ because it causes men to disengage from gender equity work.

What are we talking about here though? What is ‘masculinity’?

‘Masculinity’ is often thought of as an innate quality of biological males. This emerges in discussions that claim that certain traits associated with being a man, such as being ‘strong’, whatever that means, being rational, or even being aggressive are inborn to men and derived from their biological make up and the wiles of evolution – survival of the fittest, right bucko?  However, what we know from decades of sociological research on ‘masculinity’ is that this is not the case. ‘Man’ and ‘masculinity’, just as with any other gender category and attribute, is, despite what evolutionary psychologists might say, ‘socially constructed’, meaning that what it means to be a man and how a man should behave are constructed within a given socio-cultural and historical context.

This is why we see such wide-ranging performances of masculinity and differing ideals of masculinity in different times and different places across the world. For a Eurocentric perspective, just look at the history of men’s clothing and, indeed, make up and hair styles/wigs in Europe through the centuries, and you’ll see what I mean. Few and far between are the rugged, ripped, and brooding types who adorn the covers of Men’s Health magazine!

The rules of how to be a man, including what to wear and how your body should look, are socially constructed and communicated to us through discourses in the media, advertising, films, and through family, peers, and community within our social context. We are, in effect, socialised into these ways of being a man.

For many years in the Western Eurocentric world, these discourses of masculinity have told us that to be a man we have to be rational and unemotional, we must be courageous, physically and emotionally strong, we must be ambitious, successful and the breadwinner in the family unit. Yes, there have been competing discourses. Those of the ‘new man’, for example, but the predominant one has been this age old ‘strong, successful man who leads’ discourse.

Crucially, within these discourses there are idealised standards that men are told we need to attain, or at least try to, to have value in society. These are often embodied in mythologised and fictional characters, such as James Bond, or ‘Maverick’, ‘Goose’ and ‘Hollywood’ in Top Gun. These ideals are also found in the elite sports stars and hyper successful businessmen of our times – Yes, I’m sorry, that does suggest Zuckerberg and Musk… Alongside these are the fictional, airbrushed impossible physiques of the ultimate man - take a look at the cover of Men’s Health…

Now, it would be bad enough if the ordinary man were being pressured into trying to be just one of these ‘icons’ but the reality is that we are told that we need to strive to achieve all of these ideals at the same time, to be a James Maverick Ronaldo ‘Ripped’ Zuckerberg, as it were, if we are to have value and succeed in being that ‘strong, successful man who leads’. We, of course, are conditioned to believe we should break ourselves trying to do this whilst conveniently ignoring the fact that none of these mythologised icons of masculinity are either real nor, indeed, are the living ones a composite of them all anyway.

The pressure this applies is intense and the penalties of failure, given the value judgements at play, can be severe. The further away a man is from these ideals and the more of the rules he fails to abide by, the more likely he is to experience discrimination at the hands of other men, and society at large. You will have seen how the physically weaker, the less-courageous, the inept at sports, the ill-educated, the poorer, the unattractive to women, the less hetero-, the more ‘effete’, etc, etc, are vilified, ridiculed, and often bullied – You just have to look at Trump’s targets to see how this operates. Alternatively, take a look in most club houses, most shop floors, most open-plan offices, most playgrounds, most ‘Saturday night’s alright for fighting’ city centres and you’ll see the same thing playing out.  The knowledge of potential ostracization simply adds to the pressure to conform to the rules and to strive to achieve those unattainable ideals.

This pressure to attain, to have traditional masculine value in society, to be the winner, to be at the top of the proverbial tree, to be ‘always on’ at work, to earn more than others, to be more in the gym, to be just MORE is often discussed as a causal factor behind the rates of mental health issues for men, at least, for those men who acknowledge they are struggling with their mental health. This is, of course, true. That level of pressure cannot fail to cause mental health issues in those men for whom failure is not an option. It can also lead to alcohol and drug abuse to alleviate the stress. Failure itself can lead to men seeking to prove their masculinity in more overt and violent ways, whether that be towards perceptibly weaker men or towards women and children. Whilst men’s violence against women and girls is more complex than a blanket attribution to masculinity, there is no counter argument to the one that asserts that these forms of masculinity are damaging to everyone.

Even those very few who reach the closest position to the unattainable ideals contained within the discourses are masculinity’s Icarus, although the journey to that burning sun is often just as damaging to these men as the realisation of what they lost, what they sacrificed in flying that high, whether that be friends, loved ones, or just themselves. It is, ultimately, this realisation of loss that melts the wax that enabled them to fly so high.

Of course, all this testosterone and masculinity doesn’t operate in isolation from other discourses of identity that impose value hierarchies onto people. They intersect with discourses about race, about class, about sexual orientation, about age, about physical and cognitive differences as well to create an intersectional matrix (there ain’t no red or blue pill here, my friend) that determines your place in society.

So, in the midst of this debate about masculinity, boys and young men, and the need, or otherwise, for ‘masculine energy’, we need to be mindful that not only will a White, middle-class, heterosexual man who isn’t disabled by society be afforded exponentially more social value that a Black or Brown man or a White working-class man, it is often not the masculinity element of his identity that leads to any disadvantage a man experiences. Indeed, the muscular, youthful, articulate and intelligent Black man will experience disadvantage because of how he is racialized, just as the White, working -class boy will experience disadvantaged because if his class status, whether that be socio-economic or class as culture determinations of those who discriminate.

This is an important point when we are engaging in dialogue about men, about boys and young men, and about masculinity and about gender equality, and engage in dialogue we must. Many young boys and men feel excluded from the conversations about gender equity. Many also feel that they are blamed and continually casts as at fault for a situation that they do not see as of their making. Equally, whilst the narrative around gender equality talk about how the world needs to be for women and non-binary people, it rarely describes or articulates what men’s place in that equal world will look like. This uncertainty can only exacerbate fear and resistance and is itself a clarion call for engaging men in dialogue that ultimately leads to us all cocreating a future that is inclusive and equal for all regardless of gender identity.

However, if in these conversations, we don’t take the intersectional reality of men’s lived experience into account, we run the risk of missing the real reasons certain men are disadvantaged and creating a sense that it is simply because men are men that we are in some way disadvantaged. This can result in the argument morphing into a zero sum game position that pits men against women in a fight for equality in which the losers are denied access to the ‘equality’ that the winners win…

The flaw in this position is evident, no? However, we see it in much of the rhetoric that surrounded the screening of Adolescence, the launch of the Lost Boys Report, Zuckerberg’s proclaimed need for more masculine energy, and all the criminalization of DEI legislated by Trump and his ‘boys’. All of these say, in essence, that working towards gender equity/parity/balance benefits women to the detriment of men and that this is itself iniquitous. Consequently, we now need to return to traditional patriarchal norms and structures so that men can be treated equally which, in case you hadn’t noticed, requires women to be marginalised…more flawed logic, if equality is the real target, less so, if White, middle-class, heterosexual, male supremacy is the aim…

So, masculinity, how to be a man, how men have value in society is socially constructed. It shuifts and changes over tome and across socio-cultural contexts. It intersects with othr identities toi create unique, intersectional experiences of being a man. Its dominant, traditional forms oppress and marginalise women and non-binary people whilst also apply such pressure to perform and be a certain way onto men as to create mental health issues. alcohol and substance abuse, and viilent be4haviours in some.

But wait, masculinity is socially constructed, right? It operates thriough discourses, through narratives, through conversations and talk. Well, this being the case, surely, dialogue with each other, engaging in conversations, creating different narrartives and discourses is a way to address both of these effects of 'masculinity'? This is one of the unpinning principles of what we do at Wide Open Voices. It's about dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, to coin a phase....sort of.