Editorial: is masculinity toxic?

In January of this year, the American Psychological Association (APA), released guidelines on working with men and boys, and specifically how to deal with those who adhere to notions of ‘traditional masculinity’. The APA defined traditional masculinity as ‘marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression [which] is, on the whole, harmful’ (Pappas, 2019), characterising it as adherence to a series of gendered attitudes, manifest more frequently in behaviours by men. This, they suggested, was actively damaging to both others (violence, transphobic, misogynistic, homophobic or racist bullying, sexual assault or harassment) and the people themselves who subscribe to such gendered constructs (excessive drinking, physical injuries from fighting, steroids, body dysmorphia, drug-taking, inability to express emotions).

These recommendations were subsequently branded as guidelines on ‘toxic masculinity’ by various media outlets,¹ a term commonly associated with the #Metoo Movement, though one that has been in circulation since at least the late 1980s. The term’s current popularity is easy to understand. Recent mass shootings, white nationalist terrorism in New Zealand, the US, the UK, Europe and Scandinavia, as well as Islamist terrorism, have been committed in the overwhelming majority by men. Media outlets tend to attribute these acts of violence to racism, radicalism, mental health or access to guns. However, gender is the most common, but one of the least discussed, denominators and it is tempting to suggest that some kind of toxic masculinity is possibly the main cause behind such horrific, seemingly unconnected acts.

The etymology and uses of the concept ‘toxic masculinity’ have a mixed history. On the one hand, it was used as an analytical concept to critique strict adherence to masculinised gender norms with the goal of overturning those very same gender norms (Karner, 1996). On the other, it was employed by groups like the Mythopoetic Men's Movement and the Promise Keepers during the 1980s and 1990s (Messner, 1998) in appeals to reject ‘hypermasculine’ and ‘warrior’ masculinity, which was seen as detrimental to the spiritual life of the family (Ferber, 2000, p. 36). These groups instead advocated a return to some a priori ‘eternal masculine’, founded on care and compassion, as well as ‘strength’ (both of character and in terms of physicality). Yet, rather than seeking transformation, they adopted strongly antifeminist politics and overtly reactionary notions of a return gender roles through promoting a vision of the ‘benevolent patriarch’ as the (nuclear) family's economic and spiritual provider.

Whilst the ‘costs of masculinity’ have long been noted (Dell, 1914; Messner, 1997), toxic masculinity seems to suggest that it is certain gendered constructs which are a problem rather than men in general. Indeed, this was the initial promise of separating ‘masculinity’, conceptually, from ‘men’. However, this current discursive framing of toxic behaviours, rather than masculinity itself as toxic is important for two main reasons: first it anticipates the standard critique from figures within the so-called alt-right and masculinist/antifeminist movements, who use the claim that feminism devalues men and masculinity, as an effective means for recruitment (Nagle, 2017). In this way, the focus on behaviours, rather men as a social category, seems to sidestep what has become an easy caricature of feminist approaches to masculinity studies and a common refrain amongst antifeminist movements across the globe (‘NOT ALL MEN’).

At the same time, the APA’s advocacy lends institutional legitimacy to the notion that certain gendered behaviours are socially constructed and can, therefore, be deconstructed. These claims, advocated by psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, cultural studies and gender studies scholars for decades, extends the reach of such ideas to those who are most likely to drawn to idealising such behaviours. Thus the term ‘toxic masculinity’ potentially increases receptivity to the notion that there are harmful and non-harmful forms of masculinity, as well as operating as an analytic tool allowing masculinity scholars to talk in normative terms of what masculinity should be rather than simply describing what it appears to be.

The predictable backlash against the APA guidelines on ‘traditional’ masculinity and the term ‘toxic masculinity’ more generally, has focused largely on the terms’ very existence as evidence that men are being victimised and masculinity devalued.² Antifeminist critics commonly conflate ‘toxic masculinity’ with some historically immutable sense of ‘being male’ or name ‘feminism’ as a singular, active subject (‘feminism does this or that’) which instinctively hates men. Yet the most common is to point to statistics around incarceration rates, wartime, drug or alcohol-related deaths and suicide statistics as evidence that men are now ‘second class citizens’. Popular and academic books have made these claims since the 1980s, mixing data of various degrees of reliability with barefaced speculation (Benatar, 2012; Farrell, 1993; Rosin, 2012; Thomas, 1993; Venker, 2013). Though, paradoxically, some also use these statistics to suggest that masculinity is both under attack and not a cause of such problems.

As with most antifeminist backlashes (Faludi, 1992) the idea that men are facing some kind of existential threat is not a novel one, but it has a renewed importance given the current global populist moment we are facing. Recent scholarship has increasingly shown how a discourse of the ‘men under threat’, circulates within the ‘Manosphere’ online as well as in popular polemical texts as effective recruiting tools (White, 2019; Wilson, 2018). Such discourses have been mobilised effectively by masculinist groups, which subsequently operate as a gateway to other right-wing politics (Kelly, 2017; Mellström, 2016). How to deal with the resurgently popular discourse of the ‘war on men/masculinity’ across the globe (Chowdhury, 2014; García-Favaro & Gill, 2016; Johansson & Lilja, 2013; Wojnicka, 2016), is a pressing challenge for feminist scholars and particularly those engaged in studies on men and masculinities. In this way, thinking about how the concepts we use are potentially coopted for antifeminist ends is important.

Yet, in couching their critique in terms of men as victims, antifeminist and right-wing activists often conveniently ignore the fact that men are often the ones who send other men to war, kill and imprison other men, are quantitatively more likely to be embroiled in both the drug trade as well as the ‘war’ against it at all levels and are overrepresented as executives in the very industries which fuel drug addiction. Here, there is a deliberate unwillingness to reconcile the equally true notions that some groups of men could be both more likely to be perpetrators of structural and interpersonal violence whilst others are more likely to be affected by that same violence.

The notion that men are now victims has been dubbed (with no hint of irony as to the militaristic language), ‘the war on men’. Yet sticking with this metaphor, it is clear that militarism itself is inextricably bound to notions of masculinity at all levels (Christensen & Rasmussen, 2015). Crucially, understanding the intersections of militarism and masculinity clearly demonstrates how particular groups of men are often physically and economically exploited by the very systems from which other men benefit. In fact, Karner’s (1996) use of the term ‘toxic masculinity’ was in direct response to returning Vietnam war veterans, suffering from PTSD, who felt betrayed by the very government officials who sent them to war. As Stoltz demonstrates in this issue, understanding militarism as a gendered force, necessitates thinking about complex intersections of geopolitical privilege rather than understanding the actions of soldiers as the actions of inherently good or bad people. Taking a different approach, Lin, also in this issue, demonstrates that migrant rural men in China are economically marginalised by, but aspire to, the same neoliberal logics which are so firmly gendered (Cornwall, Karioris, & Lindisfarne, 2016). They experience fatherhood and familial responsibility as the key to their identities and in so doing are economically constrained by ‘traditional’ gendered expectations. In this sense adherence to ‘traditional’ masculinity is perhaps more harmful than helpful.

Much like ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell, 1995) before, ‘toxic’ and ‘traditional masculinity’ attempt to name problems of behaviours rather than intrinsic identities; to place emphasis on acts rather than individuals. Yet unlike structural concepts like hegemonic masculinity, they instead pathologise a cluster of behaviours under a decontextualised, ahistorical label. In this way, they individualise social problems and tend to ignore the contextual nature of various performances, presuming a certain essence to these constructs. Gun violence and terrorism are overwhelmingly the preserves of men and boys but perpetrators are celebrated as heroes openly on ‘libertarian’ web forums by other men. The majority of these men may never be perpetrators themselves. Nevertheless this ‘hero-worship’ legitimises militaristic ideals and notions of violence against others as desirable which are instilled in many boys from an early age and provide the foundation for such acts.

At worst, however, much like the concept of ‘hypermasculinity’, toxic masculinity risks racialising a concept with its roots already deeply founded in colonialism. Evaluative accusations of being ‘too’ masculine are more commonly directed toward men of colour, resting as they do on assumptions that the ‘ideal’ is the attributes most commonly discursively linked to white, cisgendered, heterosexual, bourgeois and able-bodied men in the West. Men of colour, by contrast, are frequently judged as ‘too masculine’ or ‘not masculine enough’ (Kalra, 2009; Segal, 1990). As Maloul notes in this issue, in the US the ‘myth of the Arab Muslim masculine evil’, applied frequently to young men of Palestinian heritage, becomes something against which many US men define ‘virtuous’ masculinities. Traditional masculinity similarly evokes ageist and racist spectres of ‘tradition’, despite the fact that young, white men are often more likely to be involved in extremist acts.

Furthermore, whilst certain expressions are of course obvious manifestations of personally or interpersonally destructive behaviours, the line becomes increasingly blurred when seemingly non-toxic sources of pride are toxic in their consequences. For instance, as Hultman and Pule (2018) have demonstrated, notions of masculinity are firmly tied to climate change and behaviours which men take pride in, ranging from a fierce commitment to meat-eating, gendered forms of mechanophilia (Balkmar & Mellström, 2018) which in turn impact on climate change. Increased carbon emissions through international business travel are gendered in many ways. ‘International business masculinities’ (Connell & Wood, 2005) or even ‘good fathers’ who work internationally, including us as academics whose identities may be founded on feminist principles, contribute disproportionately to climate change. The global military-industrial complex, too, potentially one of the most ‘masculine’ industries in the world, is one of the world's largest carbon emitters.

The geopolitically uneven effects of climate change are already being felt in those countries with the fewest economic resources to mitigate its worst effects (Sealey-Huggins, 2018). Whilst climate changes affect all of us, its effects are acutely felt by those in the global South. This is an issue which is fundamentally gendered and racialised in terms of who has the biggest impacting on contributing to climate change, who has the power to affect change, and who is most affected by it. When these existential problems are so fundamentally gendered, it makes less sense to discuss whether men practice ‘good’ or ‘bad’ masculinity as individuals without also paying attention to systemic inequalities.

As others have argued, instead of toxic masculinity maybe the idea of masculinity itself is toxic. In this way, as Allan (2018) has suggested, the concept of masculinity itself might be a form of ‘cruel optimism’ (Berlant, 2011) whereby the very promise of an attainable masculinity becomes an obstacle to its own fulfilment. Yet, here again, the focus is often self-directed at the individual's psychological wellbeing which ignores the consequences of those decisions which give one pleasure. What happens when belief in the types of behaviours associated with multiple cultural constructs of Western masculinity, despite being virtuous in terms of their interpersonal characteristics, become barriers to ecological and existential survival? Perhaps instead, as others have suggested, this conceptual confusion perhaps means abandoning the concept of masculinity altogether in favour of a focus on what men do rather than what masculinity is (Hearn, 2004). However, this entails the same strategic problem, in that such narratives are easily coopted by those with distinctly antifeminist motives.

In part, the debate over toxic masculinity mirrors the longstanding conceptual debate in critical studies on men and masculinities; is masculinity a series of traits, a psychological correlate, a specific historical construct with little basis in lived experience or all of the above? Are masculinities plural or is it singular? If the former, which are the good ones and which are the bad ones? Are they ‘bad’ in all contexts or just some? Who gets to decide? On the one hand, the question of whether masculinity is itself toxic is a strategic question of naming. The cooptation of the narrative that masculinity is inherently toxic is remarkably effective precisely because of its affective value for those who are already invested in masculinity as a character attribute. Toxic masculinity, however, too, feeds into this narrative whilst reducing systemic problems to decontextualised, interpersonal acts.

For those of us working in critical studies on men and masculinities, it is important to continue to account for the evidence that certain groups of men are likely to be exposed to certain types of risk, whilst on the other, acknowledging the gendered dynamics which lead to men being more likely to be perpetrators of interpersonal and structural violences. Taking seriously issues facing men, in feminist research, is needed to combat masculinist extremism. Yet rather than separating toxic from non-toxic masculinities, this requires a sensitivity to the potential implications of how the interplay of history, biography, discourse and geopolitics might be better integrated into our own conceptual frameworks rather than falling too easily into ready-made typologies which provide reductive answers to wider problems.

Notes

1. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/metoo-age-apa-guidelines-psychologists-talking-masculinity/story?id=60453218

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/1/22/18188776/toxic-masculinity-gillette-ad-apa-guidelines

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/toxic-masculinity.html

2. https://www.rt.com/usa/448410-apa-masculinity-bad-psychology/

https://spectator.us/war-masculinity-men/

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-its-ideology-vs-science-in-psychologys-war-on-boys-and-men

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/jordan-petersons-broadside-against-the-war-on-men/