A Note About The Toxic Masculinity Thing

"We want our kids to grow up tough!"

Photo by Ashwini Chaudhary on Unsplash

There’s a time to grit your teeth and there’s a time to rest and recover. The hard part is knowing the difference.

I recently read a brilliant post by Pat Wyman on “Bro Culture, Fitness, Chivalry, and American Identity.”

Among other things, one of the topics that surfaces is what Wyman calls “impossibly toxic meathead” advice like this:

If you can’t make it through the whole thing, let me try to break some of it down for you.

Basically, the guy breaks his toe and decided to continue training the way he normally does. No changes.

He claims that by doing this, he is habituating to the pain and training himself to manage pain—which is probably true. He then claims that this is a small injury that he knows he can’t make worse—which isn’t true. He can absolutely make it worse. It’s a bone.

By failing to let the bone reset in place properly and heal, not only is he going to drag the healing process out longer, but it might heal in an unnatural position. Depending on which toe it is, that might mean he has to relearn some foot positioning or balancing.

Chances are, if I said this to this person’s face, he’d respond with some sort of assurance that those things don’t matter.

In fact, he might even argue that it’s better to have the healing process take longer because then he can work on pain management longer, too.

This is where we must audit our values. The culture of toxic masculinity values suffering and “being tough.” I think it’s great to be able to withstand suffering and I think it’s important to be tough. In fact, if you’re at war or in a life/death situation, I could understand how this value system would benefit your survival.

The trouble is knowing when toughness is useful and when it’s not. Toughness is useful when you’re crawling through a trench. Toughness isn’t as useful when your 2-year-old kid is crying. In fact, in that instance, toughness is detrimental to that child’s brain development.

People argue with me on this, they do the John Wayne thing where they say “we want our kids to grow up tough!”

No, you don’t. What you mean is that you want your kids to grow up resilient (and to know the difference).

It’s not always wrong.

The problem with the toxic masculinity thing isn’t that it’s wrong, it’s not always. The problem is when it’s a hammer and it makes every other life problem look like a nail.

These values become toxic when traits like dominance and lack of emotion are used to address problems that should be solved with empathy and diplomacy.

There is a time for aggression. It’s an ancient emotional response that is useful in specific situations, but the problem is when it’s “dialed up to 11” and prioritized above all other responses.

The “toxic” part.

The “toxicity” comes from the imbalance of these values such that they eclipse our ability to see how other values might be useful.

It doesn’t matter if you’re male, female, non-binary, an employee, a leader, a janitor, a CEO, whatever. This applies to you.

The hard part isn’t having the tools, it’s knowing which ones to use in which situations. Sometimes you just need to get mad and walk off the pain so you can keep moving. Sometimes you need to stop what you’re doing and recover.

This isn’t a black and white, right or wrong kinda thing. This involves nuance, which most people hate because it’s very uncomfortable—but its worth understanding.

Practice this.