“Mascupathy is a mental health disorder, a pathology of masculinity, stemming from a socialized exaggeration of genetic masculine traits — aggression and invulnerability — and a reduction of inherent feminine characteristics — openness and sensitivity.”
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This relatively new term helps us understand toxicity in gender roles.
There has been a lot of talk about domestic violence over the past few weeks. Healthy conversation that came from horrific events. Except, there was a big problem in this dialogue: for a reason unbeknownst to many, blame was put on the victim instead of the abuser.
“Why did she stay?”
“Why did she still marry him?”
“She must be a gold-digger.”
“Well, what did she do to provoke him?”
Questions like these are damaging to domestic abuse victims and survivors because they reinforce the idea that the abuser was right in their actions. These phrases also make it more difficult for the victim to step forward and report the abuse.
The question we should be asking is “Why aren’t we holding the abuser accountable?”
Charlie Donaldson LLP, LPC and Randy Flood, MA, LLP are trying to do so by recognizing that in a term they created called Mascupathy. They define the term as:
“Mascupathy is a mental health disorder, a pathology of masculinity, stemming from a socialized exaggeration of genetic masculine traits — aggression and invulnerability — and a reduction of inherent feminine characteristics — openness and sensitivity.”
This isn’t just the case for domestic violence, either. While three in 10 women and one in 10 men will face domestic abuse in their lifetimes, there are more factors that point to Mascupathy at work. Think about this statistic:
According to Mother Jones magazine, between 1982 and 2013, 66 of the 67 mass shooters were men.
Yes, men can be victims of violence, but what this information shows is that men are causing these violent acts on a much larger level.
“If women were shooting at the rate of men, we would ask what is going on with women,” said Flood, who started conceptualizing the term Mascupathy with Donaldson in 2010.
Both Donaldson and Flood have more than two decades worth of experience working and studying the effects of masculinity, specifically in court-related and clinical services.
“We started asking questions,” Flood said. “Why is it mostly men who are getting in trouble with the law? … Are men born brutes and beasts to commit these acts of violence? Is it in their genes, their DNA? kind of that notion that ‘that’s just the way guys are’ or ‘boys will be boys.”
Once they were cognizant of the issue, they started to notice a trend, that trend being an unwritten “man-pack,” which “is a code of conduct that demands toughness and invulnerability,” according to their book, Mascupathy: Understanding and Healing the Malaise of American Manhood.
“There’s a toxic arrangement we’ve had in gender roles,” Flood said. “Society pummels emotionality out of men and they learn to disrespect [emotions] in themselves, so they disrespect that in women.”
The book, which was published in May this year, goes into detail about Mascupathy, its characteristics and how we can help men to recover from it. Flood and Donaldson mention that the effects of Mascupathy take hold early on in a man’s life. They can be taught by a father or father figure, told to ‘take it like a man’ as part of parenting or enforced on the schoolyard.
“The names that boys get called are virtually always feminine,” the book reads. ” Sissy, bitch, girl, pussy — and boys learn not only how to avoid feminine behavior, they also incorporate the mascupathic principle that the feminine is inferior, to be disrespected and ridiculed.”
Because society tells men and boys not to show weakness, not to show emotion, the result is externalizing anger, pain, sadness, shame and other negative emotions. While men externalize their emotions, Flood uses self-harm as an example of how society teaches females to internalize their emotions. This, Flood says, is where the connection between men and violent acts begin.
“There wasn’t a real emphasis on treating them as a special population of men,” Flood said. “Kind of like if you were to be running a clinic for eating disorders and that was your specialty and you were seeing a group of women who were anorexic or bulimic. Perhaps, if you’re savvy, you’d ask the question, ‘What is it about female socialization that creates this common problem they struggle with?’
While Donaldson and Flood have recognized these patterns and given the disorder a name, they also recognize the paradox between given men the help they need and how Mascupathy works against men asking for that help.
“There’s permission in female socialization to ask for help,” Flood said. “There’s not an assault on your womanhood to ask for help. … whereas a guy will say, ‘I’m seeing a therapist because I need help’ and they might get [negative responses] from their peers, who may say, ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you weak?'”
To fight that paradox, Donaldson and Flood work with court-related services and referrals from probation officers to get men the help they need. They also provide workshops and help educate marriage therapists and ministers around the issue of Mascupathy.
“It’s not a way of denigrating men, it’s not anti-male. It’s a way to invite society, to invite people into talking about how we can actually raise boys differently so we’re not socializing them into Mascupathy.”
“It’s a way in which it gives new language to talk about an old problem,” Flood said.
Photo: Flickr/PinkMoose
its a serious mistake to associate personality traits by gender. that’s doing a disservice both to you, and whatever gender you are referencing. to the point it can even be insulting to one, the other or both.
stop it. stereotypes yes, were created for good reasons. but they are by and large, inaccurate for a very large many of any group that it is covering.
It’s an interesting topic and I’ve started thinking about how my socialization has affected my decision making. I won’t quibble over the name. I would like to point something out though. Male killers most often kill males. Female killers most often kill males. What message about men has been socialized in both men and women when both genders view a man’s life as worth less than a woman’s?
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl06.xls
Males killed by males 3,872
Females killed by males 405
Males killed by females 1,698
Females killed by females 148
Sorry, got the columns mixed up
Males killed by males 3,872
Females killed by males 1,698
Males killed by females 405
Females killed by females 148
I was wondering why my numbers didn’t match up. It doesn’t change the overall point, but didn’t want to leave the impression that women killed 4 times as many men as men killed women. That would be incorrect.
Dear T.G.M.P – I’m not sure my last note submitted properly. I’m an easy-going guy, and so not prone to fire and brimstone commentary, and will be consistent with that here. The more familiar I become with this ‘project,’ the less I find it resembles such. Today’s example of an article premised on a created construct, that is to say, the conversation that opens it didn’t happen, yet is in quotes and is not followed with ‘although that conversation didn’t occur as stated, there may be those taking place like it’ is really not adhering to anything close to a… Read more »
I agree with Amy that alot of this is heavily reinforced by women and that one may be the hardest to break. I think the author is on the right track and that when she says “society” it means the collective ideas of both men and women. However on this topic it is generally easier to think just men reinforce and perpetuate the code. To really change this will require a huge PR campaign, consistently aimed at women through cosmopolitan mags and the like that start to redirect the shallow view of men. Of course men’s messages about women also… Read more »
Mascopathy, I like it. I think I’ll get that tattooed somewhere. Also I doubt those 66 guys were getting laid a whole lot and were what the red pill guys refer to as betas. That’s probably why they did it to assert power that they felt was being stripped from them by society, a common beta thing to think. No one strips you of your power, you give it away piece by piece. You read an article like this and become scared that you’ll never get laid unless you act the way the author seems to want you to act.… Read more »
Mascupathy – writing articles like this.
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“genetic” and “inherent,” hm?
With respect to mass shootings – The most basic understanding of statistics should point up that very small differences in mean value of a dimensional trait between two groups can result in huge differences in group membership if the group is defined by extremes of the trait.
This is naming, not explaining. Creating a category for a behavior seldom sheds any light.
I agree with what just about every other comment writer here has written: Girls and women STRONGLY and I believe more powerfully encourage mascupathy. When I was younger, I had no success with women. I shared my tears, my feelings, all of that. My biggest and most profound heartbreak was that — not just did the women I like not like me back, but none of the women liked me. I cried once in 5th grade out loud about how sad I was that all the girls liked Danny (who was with it, in control, performed confidence and stoicism,) but… Read more »
As evidence of that bias of attention on women abused, just look at the Ray Rice case. His girlfriend struck at him twice, once outside the elevator and when inside, as she appears to be verbally abusing him, Rice moved to the other side of the elevator. She aggressively followed him, arms flailing, striking again. If she had been a similar sized man attacking him, everyone would say Rice was acting in self-defense. They would have said how stupid the man was for attacking. No one asked why Rice stayed. Why he still married her. No one asked Ray Rice… Read more »
“Yes, men can be victims of violence, but what this information shows is that men are causing these violent acts on a much larger level.” No, it doesn’t. It shows that 66 of 67 mass shooters were male. I concede the point that most perpetrators of violent crimes are males, but it’s a bit disingenuous to throw in this stat immediately following the lead-in context of domestic violence, where there is much greater parity in the gender of the perpetrator. Beyond that, though, the above sentence is very misleading – especially with “can” italicized. I think it’s trying to say… Read more »
““If women were shooting at the rate of men, we would ask what is going on with women,”
Bull. Otherwise why are we not asking “what is wrong with women” wrt child abuse? Women are by far the most likely to abuse children. No, instead we blame it on the father, or stress, or PPD or any number of other causes to the point where the perpetrator becomes the victim.
Brian, I’m not missing any point. Even though further into the article, she talks about an overall societal paradigm shift that needs to happen, the only example she gave of people enforcing mascupathy is of “fathers or father figures or other males in the playground” doing it. That is disingenuous given the fact that mothers are by far more influential and prominent in shaping their sons’ perception of acceptable masculinity and imparting in them the narrow constraints of rigid masculinity. Besides mothers, women in the dating market also enforced mascupathy by weeding out “undesirable” men often based on whether they… Read more »
I also have a problem with the ‘father or father figure’ statement. I read not too long ago (I think it might have been on this very site) that 85% of violent convicts grew up in fatherless homes. Kind of contradicts that statement, no?
I think you’re missing the point, Amy. As Randy Flood said in the article, “SOCIETY pummels emotionality out of men” (emphasis mine). If it is society’s problem, it stands to reason that it is also up to the broader society to work on solving it. There are many agents of socialization we could talk about. Randy mentioned fathers and father figures, but I think the problem of mascupathy is broad and embedded in our discourse in lots of overt and subtle ways.
Your article is accurate except for one major caveat. Mascupathy is NOT something that only fathers or father figures or males in general enforce against each other as you so simply put it. Women are just as, if not more guilty, of enforcing mascupathy. Mothers are more likely to be influential in shaping their sons’ perceptions of what is acceptable and allowed for a male and what is not. Mothers freak out and can turn violent when they observe their sons breaking gender norms in a way they never do with their daughters. They (mothers) are the ones who refuse… Read more »
Isn’t the notion that male victims of female violence- be it domestic violence or rape- should be given less attention or have their victimization minimized part of the problem that you describe. This attitude tells males that victimhood is the sole purview of women and they have no right to feel pain and vulnerability. During this domestic violence awareness month- all the attention is on female victims of male violence leaving out male survivors as well as female survivors of female violence (lesbian relationships have a 44% domestic violence rate). Men who are abused by women are expected to not… Read more »
Amy, you are so right, but being the author is published on Jezebel and X O Jane, I’m not the least bit surprised by her conclusions.