“Toxic Masculinity” is now an epithet thrown at American men as scathing condemnation. I’ve heard women criticize little boys running and playing as suffering from “testosterone poisoning.” So now I have to apologize for my genetic code? Should little boys sit down, shut up and act like little girls? Should they be ashamed of their God-given XY chromosomes?
“Sugar and spice, and everything nice – that is what little girls are made of,” goes the old nursery rhyme. In contrast, “What are little boys made of? Frogs and snails, And puppy-dogs tails; That’s what little boys are made of.” Nasty stuff, indeed.
Where did the concept of “toxic masculinity” come from? Michael Flood, an Australian sociology professor, writing in The Conversation, says, “Toxic masculinity is represented by qualities such as violence, dominance, emotional illiteracy, sexual entitlement, and hostility to femininity.” All bad qualities, which to me seem defined by women as the opposites of what they want men to be: gentle, compliant, talkative about their emotions, waiting for sex instead of initiating seduction, and adopting feminine traits (such as noticing subtle color shades: magenta and Victorian plum. I’m a guy, so I see in primary colors: purple.)
Manly vs. Toxic
One of the manly virtues is providing for your family. You work, buy a home, put groceries on the table, clothe your family, spend time with your children, and protect them from harm. You pay the mortgage, and you lock the doors at night. You might put a baseball bat where you can grab it if you hear strange noises inside your home in the middle of the night so that you can protect your family from intruders.
Toxic vices of men include speaking disparagingly of women (many men learn to avoid this because they have daughters), hitting them, or treating them like sexual objects.
Root Causes of Toxic Vices Among Men
Where do we mostly find these vices? In communities where most are on welfare, public Section 8 housing, and single mothers. Why? After President Lyndon Johnson started his Great Society program and War on Poverty, welfare payments were easier to get, especially for single mothers in the form of Aid to Dependent Children. The regulations forbade payment if a man was living in the house. Therefore, not only did these mothers not need a man to provide for their children, they were penalized if they had a stable enough relationship with a man that he would live in the household. The message to men was, “We don’t need you, and we don’t want you living here with my children. You are not providing for us; you are costing us money.” Just visit occasionally so that a new baby could add to the income stream.
How did this affect men’s attitudes in these communities? Told they were worthless, they retaliated with scorn towards women, denigrating women as “hoes” and practicing gratuitous violence towards women. This can be heard in popular hip-hop songs where words like “bitch” and “hoes” are frequently used to describe women. It is men who write these lyrics.
No longer valued as caring husbands and providers for their families, the men of these communities sank into resentment and violence against women. Truly toxic, but not true masculinity. Deprived of their masculine roles, they lashed out. Why? To get revenge on a world where they served no valuable role, to get revenge on a community that told them they were worthless except as sperm donors.
Toxic Fruit of a Toxic Welfare System: Fatherless Boys
Boys born into these households have no father figures to teach them how to be men. In his book Iron John -A Book about Men, Robert Bly describes how every society has a ritual for boys to become men. In Judaism, it is the Bar Mitzvah; in some Christian denominations, it is Confirmation; in the Boy Scouts, it is achieving badges and Eagle Scout status; in some tribal cultures, it is the separation into the men’s hut and ritual scarring. The traditional speech of the thirteen-year-old boy at a Bar Mitzvah is “Today I am a man.”
The common element to all these rituals is that boys pass a symbolic test and receive the acceptance and affirmation of older men. They no longer have to prove anything. They are accepted as men and expected to fulfill the manly roles: get a job, get married, provide for their family, and protect their family.
In the welfare communities bereft of fathers, boys still seek the acceptance and affirmation that “today I am a man.” In the absence of fathers, they seek this acceptance from male gangs. Gangs composed of other teenage fatherless boys who have no traditional cultural norms for adulthood rituals. So, they make up their own coming-of-age rituals. “Take this gun and rob the bodega.” “Take this knife and car-jack the next car with an older driver.” Stupid teenage bravado stuff. Foolish “hold my beer” stuff. But, it fulfills a need for the young boy: a ritual passage into manhood that wins the acceptance of other males. Preferably something that takes daring to pull off.
Needed: Fatherly Manliness
In our society today, we need to revive and honor the ideal of fatherhood. Fatherhood with the manly virtues: Get a Job. Marry your girlfriend. Provide for your family. Spend time doing things with your children. Protect your family from harm. And especially, spend time doing things with your boys. Do carpentry projects, camping, mowing the lawn, and repairing the leaky faucet. The things real men do. Lead your sons into manhood with manly virtues. Not fatherless toxic faux masculinity.
Michael McCarthy is the author of a trilogy of Christian thriller novels: The Noah Option, The Rainbow Option & The Timshel Option. Check them out in the America Out Loud Bookstore!
