Non-masculine perspectives are incredibly important in making sure that that the lived experiences of others are present in discussions on masculinity, but please remember that this is a space to discuss issues pertaining to men and masc individuals; be kind, open-minded, and take care that you aren’t talking over men expressing their own lived experiences.
The post before this one is about protecting our sons from right-wing radicalization.
From what I’ve seen, the mod(s) have taken pains to make this not an aLl LiVe MaTtEr sub.
Not a native speaker here, I would have thought you "drop out" of college not "stop out" of it, is both sounding ok to native speakers or are they different things?
you're correct that the term normally used is "drop out". i think this article may be using "stop out" to specifically refer to people who merely did not enroll in a new semester (vs. people who e.g. failed out, or were otherwise forcibly removed from the school), but i wasn't able to conclude this 100% from my reading
“Survey of men and women who stopped out of community college in the past year shows similar economic motivations across genders, though women were more likely to say that they were having a medical issue or that they had to care for a child, while men were more likely to say that they had a job opportunity or needed to financially support a cohabitating adult.”
Conformity to masculine norms tied to higher levels of harassment in public, and expectation that mental help will be hostile to one’s core identity due to demonization of men for decades.
i can understand the second part of your statement, but the first part confuses me. are you saying that you'll be harassed more in public for being gender conforming vs e.g. wearing a dress? or do you mean something else?
I think these types of conversations are important for men and women alike. I’m a straight white man who is comfortable sharing his emotions with my partner, friends, and co workers. I have a bad habit of putting others and their needs before myself but I also make sure I take care of/pamper myself. When someone challenges me, especially to physical confrontation or some other potentially dangerous behavior, I can easily decline and look “weak”, I’ve never been in a fist fight in my life and I’m happy about that. In my mind and the way I was raised (in WV of all places) these are strong masculine traits: be open and honest with people around you, take care of others and yourself, and don’t do anything overly dangerous just to look tough or more important than you are.
The thing is, all of these a strong qualities that I want in the people I associate with, men and women. There are toxic behaviors on every part of the gender spectrum, the trick is recognizing them, not playing into them yourself, and helping family and friends through open dialogues not meant to shame or embarrass but real conversation.
My post is kind of rambling and I apologize for that but I wanted to put this out there because I saw a few comments about how some women and certain behaviors, like protecting a loved one from a mugger, can perpetuate toxicity. And to that I say, if there are people like that in your orbit, you either need to cut them out or if you love them and want them around, you need to have a conversation with them about their toxic behavior.
I only have time to scan the article, but did they control for cost? That would seem to be a primary deterrent for anyone seeking any kind of medical help in the US. We simply can’t afford treatment even with insurance and can’t risk becoming trapped in our profit-making medical-industrial complex with unstoppable lifetime prescription drugs.
The sample was predominantly white (66.3%), heterosexual (85%), and well-educated, with 41% holding a college degree. Political affiliations varied, with nearly half identifying as Democrats.
Not a demographer much less an American but comparing to the general US populations white is slightly overrepresented (population is 60%), 85% heteros actually checks out if people are identifying correctly, that is, no bi erasure, otherwise heteros are under-represented, 41% college degree is low, 61.28% have an associate degree or higher. Still that doesn't say anything about how much you earn, squinting at it the biases aren't strong enough to discount the results.
If anything the issue is 326 participants on top of that online.
The conformity to masculine norms was measured using the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-30, which covers aspects such as emotional control, winning, playboy behaviors, violence, heterosexual self-presentation, pursuit of status, primacy of work, power over women, self-reliance, and risk-taking.
...that's a very mixed bag, toxicity-wise.
Interestingly, the direct link between traditional masculine norms and depressive symptoms was not significant.
Duh because the symptom descriptions in the DSM-V are female-centric. Same stuff in men first gets undiagnosed because it surfaces as frustration, not lethargy, then at some point you get a burnout diagnosis. Well, either that or you take up farming or something.
However, specific facets of masculine norms, such as heterosexual self-presentation, power over women, and self-reliance, were significantly associated with higher help-seeking self-stigma.
Self-reliance is the key thing to address here, I think, the rest I estimate to be correlation, not causation. And it needs to be addressed properly, because it's the one that hivemind doesn't really get: No it's not a bad thing. Also, no, you don't need to be the undisputed master of the universe. It's also the part where even otherwise progressive women promote toxic masculinity to a significant degree, you all know the "I opened up once about my problems and I'm never going to do that again" type of stories. I can't even fathom how much would change if the default reaction instead was "Don't know what to do? Call a male friend of his to take him fishing". In the meantime, let's be self-reliant and take people fishing without their SOs calling.
“From a positive psychology perspective, clinicians are turning to a strengths-based approach to encourage and reinforce positive masculine traits (Englar-Carlson & Kiselica, 2013), which may help to reframe help-seeking as an action of strength instead of weakness, thereby encouraging men to seek support for mental health when they need it.”
Yes! Apes together strong. Tough challenge, though, with the current degree of alienation and, especially in the US, rugged individualism. OTOH we don't need no psychologists or access to therapy to frame things like that.
I don't think the "US sucks at the availability of therapy" angle is wrong, as such, it's definitely a huge factor -- but it's probably also not the most efficient leverage point to change the system. That's always the issue with reductive analysis: You might spot a real issue, a very core issue indeed, but the solution often doesn't lie with the core issue but among factors which enable it. In this case, voter's attitude to availability of care would certainly change if "that's for losers, also, fuck you got mine" wasn't as predominant a social force.
Great points and I agree. The tiny non-representative sample, which I missed so thanks, should make it difficult even to use this for framing the hypothesis of a proper study.
I still suspect that cost is a major barrier in seeking care. Until we address that, it won’t matter what we do about the other factors.
I still suspect that cost is a major barrier in seeking care. Until we address that, it won’t matter what we do about the other factors.
Addressing things on a non-clinical level also reduces the need for therapy in the first place. Bluntly said if you can get someone who's frustrated to delete facebook, get a different job, and deliberately refrain from grabbing butt while hugging his wife (non-sexual body contact works wonders for libido) before they spin out of control they, well, don't spin out of control.
Prevention is always better than therapy and while shit life syndrome is unavoidable under the current material conditions, it's not like this is North Korea we're talking about. There's options to reduce the shit to tolerable levels for most people, no need to dive head-first into the latrine.
This seems more like a promotion for his trip than anything.
Look, making friends is easy AF.
For friendships to form you have to have proximity, a shared experience, and continued interaction.
In school you had these pretty easily, you were stuck there most of the year and experienced the same things, and you interacted all the time. Eventually you found common ground and boom, friends.
Hard to do as an adult, but here's how to do it.
Get a hobby or an interest, then go to a meet up of that stuff. You like anime? Go to a con. Cars? Car show. Whatever.
Then everyone there already has a built in ice breaker! Talk to them about that thing you're all the for! Ask people about themselves, get interested in others! Everyone loves to talk about themselves. You'll make more friends in five minutes getting interested in other people than you will in five years trying to get someone interested in you.
If they seem cool by the end of the event, say "hey you seem cool wanna hang out some time?" And exchange contact info and then talk to them once in a while. Then hang out when you can. Introduce them to other friends you have, they will do the same.
If they suck and are assholes, don't hang out with them anymore
Why tf would you associate with men who would punish you if you don't "live up to a masculine ideal"? You're not out of the "masculinity rat race" if you don't do something that some people see as not manly.
If you're a man, you get to define what masculinity is and means. If that means monster trucks and guns, cool. If that means baking cookies and taking care of a baby, cool. You're a man so by default everything you do is manly.
If someone is being a shithead, fuckem. You go your own way. Sometimes that's hard, sometimes you can't do it right away, but you leave them in the dust.
If I could add one thing to presidential debates it would be making the participants life a 40lb test weight like they do when you interview with a shipping company. People don't have to care about how well they do, I would just like to see it.
One of the most interesting things about Trump is that you never have to mention his name; just describe something third rate or inane and people know.
Right after the 2016 election there was a panel discussion that included the creative teams behind all the biggest political shows on TV. House of Cards; Veep; The West Wing; Scandal, and all the rest.
Every person up there said the same thing; if they'd had a character who said that 'he liked soldiers who didn't get captured' the networks and advertisers would have demanded that the character be shown as being hated by all Americans, and thrown into the gutter.
There are other reasons not to want to. I like being self-sufficient. I like knowing that I could keep myself and those around me more safe if there was a threat. Etc. My environment would probably be fine with me if I did not want those things-- or at least I've never considered whether they would, because it's not repercussions that make me want to be me.
I think the difference between "I can't" and "I don't wanna" is big enough to be worth splitting. For instance, when trying to think of reasons for men that "can't" abandon masculinity, you're looking for externalities (pressure). If you think about why don't men "want to", you'll find plenty of self-serving reasons and rationalization, which in my opinion is a more realistic framing.
A large percentage of women actively prefer many of the behaviors we're describing as "toxic". The majority of my casual partners have explicitly requested, or discussed how attractive they find, borderline abusive behavior: physical aggression, jealousy, catcalling and infantalizing language, relentless pursuit, etc. My first girlfriend told me to be less respectful with her, and lost a lot of attraction toward me the first time I was emotionally vulnerable with her.
So a big problem is that while a vocal portion of women are telling men that certain gender norms are toxic and they need to stop, they're watching the women they're pursuing choose the men who exhibit this toxic behavior. At the end of the day, without any guidance from feminists, they have to choose between what the feminists tell them, and what the pick-up artist types tell them. The pick-up artists promise them romantic success, the feminists call them toxic for feeling entitled to romantic success.
With sexual/romantic success being the primary motivator for young men, is it really a surprise that they make the choices they make?
This is absolutely true and I'm always surprised there isn't more acknowledgement in progressive women's circles. Simple polling shows that roughly a third of women hold all men to these standards but there are significantly more who exclusively apply it to potential partners (speaking from a very US-centric perspective).
The honest solution is that women who think this way are simply not good partners, and should be avoided to whatever degree is possible.
I guess it becomes a matter of strategy. Maybe progressive women aren't the ones who need to hear it the most, and they may feel offended at the suggestion that other women could be part of reinforcing the patriarchy. It mirrors the way men are asked to shut down other mens sexist remarks and actions. I'm sure such behavior is prevalent, but I never witness it. So the question to me is, how do we communicate this whole thing to women as a group? The ones willing to listen aren't the ones who need to hear it, and the ones who need to hear it are probably not willing to listen.
There's a confusion happening. I think people are thinking "toxic masculinity" means all masculine traits are toxic, and I feel that's not the case.
It's not that masculine traits are good or bad, it's that they become "toxic" when they become dysfunctional.
For example, a masculine trait is being able to endure hardship, to be kind of stoic. This can be a positive trait when working out, instead of whining to everyone about how heavy weights are you keep going and finish your set. It can be negative when you feel like you can't cry at a funeral, trying to be manly when you're sad.
The solution, in my opinion, isn't to act less manly but embrace other aspects of manliness. Instead of refusing to cry, you can embrace the idea that men will do as they want regardless of the negative opinions and doubts of others, and cry as much as you want at a funeral.
It's not effeminate to cry at a funeral, and is now a manly thing to cry at a funeral.
So yeah, women like masculine traits (at least the women who like men tend to), but they don't like it when people use the excuse of masculine traits hurt them, people around them, or the men they love.
I feel like external pressure is only half the problem. It is important but IMO the role model is also a problem. Non toxic masculinity is often describe in the negative of the toxic masculinity : you're good when you are not toxic, not when you are something positive.
In some way it is less restrictive, but in other way it is missing the model.
The other side of this coin is the corruption of the ideal that lead to nihilism. Toxic masculinity corrupts ideals. Violence is strength. Protecting is necessarily the destruction of the threat. Independence is power. Smart is manipulation and deception. Everything is to be seen through a lens of domination and power. And that is the core of the problem.
Instead, a model is to be seen with any quality, but through another lens. Strength can help the weak. Smart can disarm an explosive situation. Power is to be shared and used wisely. Basically, a model opposite to the toxic masculinity can be many things with all the qualities of the virility, but the difference is that they will be used and targeted differently. And for many people, it is to be learnt through a model.
This is a core problem because for many people, if you tell them to drop the toxic behaviour, there will be nothing left to aim for, nothing for them to transform into.
And this goes back to the social validation you're talking about. Going from toxic to positive requires a transformation so that the qualities someone has can be positive instead of negative, but as qualities they can still be praised and admired.
My problem with this is these new qualities are just as likely to be used to build a toxic hierarchy. The problem seems to me to be not just the qualities themselves but the competitive nature that is more or less beaten into boys at a young age.
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