Toxic masculinity describes the negative aspects of traditional male gender roles. So, for example, the expectation that men should be strong, dominant, and un-emotional. That men should not show vulnerability. Toxic masculinity is a destructive caricature of male attitudes and gender roles that tend to harm women and society. Instead of consensus and working together, toxic masculinity spreads discontent and division.

Toxic masculinity in the media

The Netflix drama, Adolescence, explores the toxic online world of the manosphere and it has made everyone from the prime minister down pay attention.

Just what are our children being exposed to through social media? The timing of the TV show has been extraordinary, it aired as the notorious crossbow killer Kyle Clifford was being sentenced. The themes of the show look like fiction but they are not, they are a comment on our time and culture.

Is social media amplifying toxic masculinity?

Social media that amplifies relationship themes can tend towards being overly deterministic and appears to be particularly influenced by masculine anxiety. In this field ideas become taken as fact and our problems are seen as relating to fixed things. So for example, an issue in our relationship, often relating to female partners’ past relationships, becomes something that male partners pin all of their discontent to. The partner is seen as bad rather than there being anything wrong with the male’s experience.

So we come to blame our partner for things that may not be to do with them. Reddit is full of threads that amplify these themes.

In Adolescence, Jamie has become caught up by misogynistic influencers and has been cyber-bullied as an ‘incel’. His parents are aware that he has been shut in his bedroom on his computer late into the night, but they didn’t realise he was being radicalised.

Jamie’s story highlights the destructive impact of social media on young and vulnerable minds and has resonated with audiences.

What does toxic masculinity mean?
Is it gender specific or can women express toxic masculinity too?

Toxic masculinity refers to a set of traits and behaviours;

bullying
arrogance
feeling self-entitled
omnipotent and omniscient

Toxic masculinity wants the centre stage

Toxic masculinity is an ideology in which dominance is based on:

power
competition between sexes
on limiting the potential for co-operative, sympathetic feeling between men and women, parents and children

Toxic masculinity only sees value in itself

It is easy to say you should just push the bully aside and assert yourself, but it is seldom so simple. Bullies and bad leaders tend to pick on weaker people, people who aren’t able to fight back. As a consequence, your potential and creativity tend to wilt under the pressure of the dominant power that is toxic masculinity. In the office toxic masculinity wrecks creative collaboration, it dominates talented but less self-promoting team members.

Feminists argue for an alternative view of these gender-based politics.

The #metoo movement may have been criticized because of people who have jumped onto the bandwagon and blurred the sense of what constitutes assault. There is a backlash against the #metoo movement. But he #metoo movement means men have to think twice about how they relate to others.

In some ways it feels like the world is now a more enlightened and balanced place. Then you witness the assault on a woman’s testimony, the uncomfortable viewing of Brett Kavanaugh versus Dr Christine Blasey Ford, the shameful news footage of Donald Trump mocking Dr Ford. You see a president mock the same woman at a convention and it is hard to think any progress is being made.

Gareth Southgate’s Dimbleby Lecture

The debate that Adolescence has started was amplified when former England football manager Sir Gareth Southgate delivered the Richard Dimbleby lecture.

These are reminders that if we are complacent the balance is quickly taken away. It is a reminder that there is always the potential that the bully will come again, spreading division, dominating conversations and homes.

Toxic masculinity; the personal agenda is the only agenda

This is a version of masculinity that does not look for balance or to impose any restraint or self-checking mechanism, instead the emphasis is on maintaining forward momentum. There is no sense of consequence or discretion. Toxic masculinity promises everything with no consequence for what can be delivered or given. This is a way of getting your agenda of self-interest through without any kind of reality checking.

Toxic masculinity involves a lack of sense-checking, a lack of a superego to keep the more wilful and self-interested side of the personality in check.

Toxic masculinity is a throwback to a world in which men think they can have what they want, when they want it. A time in which men were assured of their place at the top. It is a descent into an unbalanced world.

Toxic masculinity is an ancient theme

These themes of toxic masculinity can be seen throughout history. In Homer’s Iliad where the invading Greek army are caught up in Agamemnon and Achilles’ toxic and hubristic feuds.

Women can express ideas that echo toxic masculinity too

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth pleads to the spirits of the underworld:

Come you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here.

And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

Of direst cruelty…(Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5)

Lady Macbeth wants to be free of her femininity so she can pursue ambition and have King Duncan murdered. Lady Macbeth gets her way, but it costs her her sanity. Perhaps one of the morals of the story is that toxic masculinity can drive you crazy.

What is masculinity?

Robert Webb’s autobiography How Not to Be a Boy questions what masculinity means. Webb’s book questions the unemotional, undeveloped men (starting with himself) who struggle to find their place within a more gender balanced world. You can be masculine without being toxic. There are alternatives to toxic masculinity, fathers who stay at home and share the childminding and the chores. Couples who share the work / life balance and manage to create more gender balanced families.

Psychotherapy, toxic masculinity and the unconscious

Man or woman, the unconscious may fit more with our feminine side. Toxic masculinity may be limited to a particular narrow type of consciousness.

If our masculine sides represents a conscious reaching for power and control, then our feminine side is more the domain of the unconscious, of spontaneity and creativity. The feminine is where our ideas are born and emerge from into the world. Being able to bring the spontaneous creative impulse into the world is one thing, once there we have to work to enable them to develop constructively.

Contact me

I have twenty-five years experience of helping people regain their confidence and self-belief so that they can break free from the bullying world of toxic masculinity and find more satisfying ways of expressing their creativity, and enjoying more satisfying relationships.