Toxic ideas about manhood continue to be a massive millstone around the necks of men as a whole
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If you’ve been paying attention to the news, it’s been a hell of a week for talking about sex and toxic masculinity. Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, it’s not entirely unreasonable that you may have been spending time flipping all the tables.
Between teachers raping students, rapists getting off light and an ongoing culture of sexual assault, it’s been an ugly week in the news. That’s why today, we’re going to be talking about toxic masculinity.
Again.
It’s a topic I return to frequently because one of the ongoing themes at my blog is the topic of what it means to be a man and how to be a better man, and quite frankly, toxic ideas about manhood continue to be a massive millstone around the necks of men as a whole. These toxic ideas around masculinity, sex and gender are damaging everybody, men and women alike, and contributing to the plague of rape and sexual assaults we’re seeing in our schools and college campuses.
The Difference Between Toxic Masculinity and Being A Man
One of the things that comes up frequently when we talk about toxic masculinity are the various wags who demand to know why we’re labeling all men as being toxic, evil or otherwise malignant. That, in and of itself, is the problem in a nutshell: for many people, the toxic ideas of masculinity are synonymous with being a man. The problem isn’t about gender, genitalia or identity, it’s about what we allow to be the definition of what it means to “be a man”.
Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly “feminine” traits – which can range fromemotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual – are the means by which your status as “man” can be taken away.
You’ll notice how often sex and sexlessness comes up as an insult when a man wants to insult another man. “Mangina” and “pussy” are about implying that someone has no balls and thus no manhood; they may as well be women. “Beta” and “white knight” are also common, with the connotations that someone is unable to get laid in the first place. “White knight”, in particular, is levied at men who stand up for women – the implication being that they’re only doing so because they think that this might end up with them being rewarded with sex.“Cuck”, the latest in the long line of “ha ha, you’re not a man” insults from various asshats, takes it another step further: you’re so emasculated that you watch other men (especially black men – a vein of racist imagery rich in all kinds of toxic ideas about masculinity) take sexual advantage of what is supposedly “your” property.
Getting your dick wet becomes a way of chasing away the image of being effete or unmanly. As Detroit Lions linebacker Deandre Levy said so well in his piece on consent and sexual assault: “It’s truly astounding how many awful things that occur in this world because men are afraid of appearing weak.”
And so, the “boys will be boys” attitude towards sex contributes not just to toxic masculinity but to the fallout from letting toxic masculinity thrive. We let the damage done by toxic masculinity contribute to a culture where rape and sexual assault are tacitly or explicitly permitted – even encouraged.
Case in point: the case of Stanford University swimmer and convicted rapist Brock Allan Turner.
“Just 20 Minutes of Action…”
The facts in the case of Brock Turner’s rape of a young woman are fairly straightforward.On January 18th, two Stanford grad students riding their bicycles in the early morning discovered Turner laying on top of and thrusting on an unconscious and unresponsive woman behind the dumpster at a Kappa Alpha party. The cyclists tackled Turner as he attempted to flee and held him until the police arrived. The victim – who had a blood-alcohol level three times over the legal limit – didn’t regain consciousness until three hours later, after she’d been taken to the hospital. It was then that she was told that she’d been raped; she had no memory of the assault or anything between being at the party and waking up on a gurney.
The fact that Turner was found guilty was a minor miracle all on it’s own; less 7% of reported rapes lead to an arrest and less than 2% of arrested rapists are convicted or see a day in jail. From that point on, the story played out in an almost distressingly familiar fashion. Despite a jury finding Turner guilty of multiple felonies, including assault with the intent to commit rape of an intoxicated person and penetration with a foreign object, the judge sentenced him to six months in a county jail, plus probation. The judge’s reasoning? Because “a prison sentence would have a severe impact on him”.
Let those words sink in for a second. Let them roll around in your head. Instead of serving six years for multiple felony counts, he’s sentenced to six months, of which he may serve only three. Because he was such a promising young man. Does that phrase sound familiar? It should. It’s one that comes up frequently when young men have been arrested for rape, the hand-wringing of just how much a rape conviction might hurt these men. The Steubenville rapists had “promising futures” taken away from them. Daniel Holtzclaw was “once promising” too. The rapes that they committed are things that apparently “happened” to themand isn’t this awful. Even Brock Turner’s father lamented how much Brock been affected by this…
“That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.”
20.
Minutes.
Of.
Action.
If there were ever a clearer indication of how toxic masculinity warps men, I’m having a hard time finding one. To the judge and to his father, Brock is the victim here; the fact that he raped an unconscious woman is seen as being an unfortunate speedbump in part of an otherwise promising life. There’s no talk of accepting responsibility, no indication that Turner feels remorse for having raped a woman (rather than for being known as a rapist). His rape of his victim is seen as his “getting some action”, while the responsibility is being deflected onto “binge drinking” and “sexual promiscuity”, as though beers grabbed Brock by the back of the neck, frog-marched him out to the dumpster, pulled down his pants and forcibly shoved his penis into a woman lying unresponsive in the dirt.
You know.
That 20 minutes of “action”.
But the issue is more than just Turner or his raping one woman – it’s the belief that men want and should get sex by any means necessary.
Toxic Masculinity, Hypermasculinity and The Campus Rape Epidemic
In a disturbing coincidence, a study of college students at a southeastern university found that over half the athletes and more than a third of the non-athletes at one university had committed sexually coercive acts that met the legal definition of rape. Among the many acts that the students confessed to were:
- I insisted on sex when my partner did not want to (but did not use physical force)
- I used threats to make my partner have oral or anal sex
- I made my partner have sex without a condom (no force)
- I insisted my partner have oral or anal sex (but did not use physical force)
One significant finding was the correlation of the acceptance of rape myths; the more that a person believed that, say, if a woman who is raped was drunk, she was at least partially responsible, the more likely the individual was likely to use coercive tactics in trying to get her to give in and get some “action”.
When these attitudes about aggression and hypermasculinity are encouraged, the idea that men are not only entitled to sex but that how they get it is unimportant. It becomes about how sex glorifies them – so much so that there can be competitions as to who can get more. With attitudes like these in place, ideas about consent or concern for the women’s mutual interest in sex tends to fall to the wayside.
But just as toxic masculinity leads to a culture where rape is acceptable (especially if you don’t actively use the r-word), it leads to a culture where we don’t recognize that men can be victims as well.
The Rape That Wasn’t
Alexandra Vera, a middle-school teacher in Texas, was having an affair with a young man. It had started off with some crude flirting – he tried to contact her on her Instagram account, which she refused – but soon her resistance crumbled. She gave him her phone number, accepted an invitation to hang out. When they met up, they drove around and kissed in her car. Their relationship quickly became sexual – they were having sex almost every day, and she became pregnant. There was just one catch.
Vera’s lover was a 13 year old boy. Her student, in fact. And after Child Protective Services began an investigation of her relationship with the boy, she was soon charged with continual sexual abuse of a minor.
What’s significant about this, however, is the fact that nobody is willing to call it rape. Every news story and headline follow the same pattern: Vera “had a sexual relationship” with a student. She was accused of “having sex with” her student. Words you don’t see associated with her in those headlines? Rape. Sexual abuse. Molestation.
Why? Well, let’s be honest: because it was a female teacher having sex with a 13 year old boy. And because Alexandra Vera looks like this:
Not surprisingly, comment after comment about this story follows the same pattern: “hot for teacher”, “I wish I could go back to high-school”, “lucky son of a bitch”, etc. And why shouldn’t people celebrate his luck? He’s a horny 13 year old, living the dream! Sure, it’s a crime, but hey, what 13 year old didn’t dream about boning his hot teacher?
We’re willing to cut him slack because he’s a 13 year old boy. If this were a 13 year old girl, we’d be having a very different conversation right now, with correspondingly different headlines.
Yeah, 13 year old boys are frequently horny. 13 year old boys, in the throes of puberty, frequently fantasize about sex with any number of people – celebrities, teachers, babysitters, etc. But there are reasons why we have age of consent laws, and that’s because children rarely have any idea what the fuck they’re doing. The fact that they may want something with their heart, soul and gonads doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to actually achieve them. They certainly don’t have the life experience or the maturity – hell, even the brain development – to handle an adult relationship, doubly so with someone who is not only nearly twice their age but in a position of authority over them.
And let’s be honest for a second: would we even be questioning that this were a crime if Vera looked like this?
Vera’s victim was in the position of being a father before he had even left the eighth grade. No matter how badly he wanted to bust a nut, he was in no position to handle the responsibilities or consequences that come with sex. And Vera, despite being 11 years his senior, is clearly not a person of responsibility or good judgement herself… something he might recognize were he older. She is a grown woman who by her own words, couldn’t resist the “charms” of somebody who had barely outgrown playing Yokai Watch.
But no matter how hot she may be, Vera raped a child. While not every victim of sexual assault or molestation will behave the same way – there are women out there who have been abused or assaulted who brush it off as “no big deal” – the fact is that these tropes of toxic masculinity mean that we’re unwilling to acknowledge his abuse. That unwillingness to call sexual abuse for what it is means that other victims have similarly difficult times coming forward, admitting that they’d been abused or getting the help that they need.
The Path To De-Toxifying Toxic Masculinity
With all this in mind, we’re forced to ask just how we can start fixing men and repairing the damage done by toxic masculine ideals. And the answer is to speak up. The answer is to push back. The answer is to take responsibility. The answer is education.
Our attitudes towards sex, towards consent and towards rape are defined by mistaken ideas and misaimed education. The popular idea of a rapist is still the “stranger from the bushes” rather than someone the victim knows, The image we have of rape is that rape looks like a fight or a struggle. We still believe that rape victims are almost exclusively women, that it has to be reported to be “valid” (7 in 10 rape victims never come forward to the police) or that a rape victim is in some or any way responsible for her own victimization. We still allow the myth of “gray rape” to define coerced sex or rapes that don’t line up with the popular stereotype and exaggerate the dangers of falsified charges of rape, diminishing the impact it has on the victims and survivors and adding yet another layer of doubt that discourages victims from coming forward.
Similarly, men need to be given the responsibility of reclaiming manhood from those who see sexual assault as no big deal. As has been pointed out many times over, women are taught that the responsibility is on them to avoid getting raped (often with tactics where the implied message is to seem less vulnerable so the rapist will target someone else). Men are almost never taught to not rape; it’s assumed by other men that we’re going to. Even in the current bullshit laws against transgender rights, the dominant narrative is that all men are latent sexual predators who will go to absurd lengths to attack women if given half a chance.
We need actual lessons that differentiate a lack of consent, coerced consent and teaching a standard of enthusiastic consent. That consent can be withdrawn at any time, what healthy sexual relationships look like and that nothing obligates a person to have sex with someone else. We need to teach that manhood isn’t tied to sex, that men can be victims of sexual assault and abuse and not view them as being weak for not fighting harder or “lucky” for having been raped by a woman. We need to not dismiss or deflect responsibility for rape onto external factors – not binge drinking, not “hookup culture”, not sexual promiscuity.
We need more men to step up and be counted. We need more men to call out others for their shitty behavior, to refuse to let sexual assault be “get some action”, to intervene when we see harassment or assaults going down regardless of the gender of the victim.
And we need to develop some empathy. To quit wringing our hands about the fate of the poor, poor rapists and concern ourselves more with the ones who’ve been raped. And to that end, I want to cap this with a link to the powerful, heartbreaking statement that Brock Turner’s victim read to him in court.
We can be better. We need to be better.
This article originally appeared on Dr. NerdLove
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Photo credit: Getty Images
A sign of toxic masculinity is also when you subtle suggest that men cannot be raped by women because men are powerful and always want sex.
You had me until ” Even in the current bullshit laws against transgender rights, the dominant narrative is that all men are latent sexual predators who will go to absurd lengths to attack women if given half a chance.” Do you really think that most people who are against transgender men using women’s bathroom are really worried about men who are truly transgender? You see, this is where liberals lose me. You don’t listen. The most vulnerable in our society are our children, and in case you people haven’t noticed there are pedophiles out there who will go to extreme… Read more »
Exactly.
As a Liberal, I can honestly say that I didn’t know that. I’ve never heard the conversation framed in a way where people against trans men in women’s restrooms separate “predator” from “trans men”. It’s always discussed as if you believe they are one in the same. You are worried about a man pretending to be trans. That makes sense. I’m trying to ignore the disgust I see expressed when Conservatives discuss transgender at all. You still have a valid point. And if you open a transgender bathroom, that puts them at immediate risk. And the current situation is already… Read more »
We do listen. But first. Trans men are people born assigned female and transition to male. So some DO argue that trans people don’t belong there, that they are perverts, that women and children should have to be exposed to them. It wasn’t until there was outrage, followed by statistics that show this is virtually none existant danger, that they pivoted to perditors… who are apparently just waiting for a loophole in the law to break it.
(Sorry about the typos my keyboard is acting up)
I just tell my 14 year old son, and he said that many of his friends are coming the same conclusion, that sex just isn’t worth it. It is called the most overrated activity for a reason. Have fun, ladies, with your vibrators, because that’s your future, that and artificial insemination to keep the species going.
It doesn’t make sense, does it? It’s very confusing. Along with the feminist movement that tells us that women should behave any way that they want, dress any way that they want, hell..to let everything hang out and run around naked if they like! comes the emasculation of the men in our society. The denial that there is a difference between girls and boys will end up being the most confusing issue of all. When everyone is told to resist their natural impulses and shamed for it if they don’t, lets see how badly we screw our kids up when… Read more »
So sad. And all b/c some of the fellow men couldn’t control themselves. Women had to start protecting themselves since some of the men failed to. Maybe things can get better if instead of giving up, they help each other learn how to better understand and deal with women. Either way, it’s sad. Men ruined this. But the good news? Men can fix it too!
Men can fully control themselves. It costs 49.9 $ including delivery. It’s called fleshlight.
Problem for women being that when men start to fully control themmsleves then women have to do much more work if they wish to get into a relationship with a man: when men fully control themselves then women have to have a bright conversation, have a decent job, to be assertive…
So life goes.
@ Erin How do you inspire men to talk about female victims of male sexual violence. That depends on your goal. If you’re goal is to have men vilify other men as a gender then I’d submit that there are already several men willing to do that. All you need to do is continue to give them the approval they crave. If you want men to become partners in a solution to end male sexual violence against women I suggest approaching them as partners. For example, the concept that “toxic” masculinity involves the idea (and assume the resulting pressure) that… Read more »
Steve, what does inspire men? What inspires men to not just care about the issues that directly affect them when they become the victims of events, but to also care about the victims of the people men choose to victimize? How do you inspire men to care about the entire range of experiences? Even on GMP, people here don’t want to talk about men when they commit crimes. They don’t want to talk about what it means for society, what it may reveal about entitlement or even how responsibility for these actions affects society. Any mention that any individual man… Read more »
@ Erin “How do you inspire men to care about the entire range of experiences?” You certainly don’t do it by only using the word toxic when talking about masculinity. You certainly don’t do it by making men the enemy. “You can see that the only part of this article that was taken seriously was the one of the female teacher raping the 13 year old boy,” What makes you think that? There are tons of articles talking about male sexual victimization that have ZERO comments by women. Does that mean women don’t care about male victims? I suspect the… Read more »
“There are tons of articles talking about male sexual victimization that have ZERO comments by women. Does that mean women don’t care about male victims?” Australian womens’ magazines have regularly run stories about women molesting boys. In every instance they interview the woman concerned and publish what amounts to a romance. Never any implication of wrong doing or potential harm. I have no doubt the women concerned were paid for their “storys”. Oprah Winfrey had a habit of doing something quite similar. In every instance these media outlets are successful because they research their target audiences. There is no way… Read more »
You don’t get it, Erin, and are demonstrating exactly why the argument exists. Brock is not men, men are not brock…and the reason that the men are speaking about the boy is because, first, this is a project dedicated to that, and no one else is talking about the boy. No one is t talking about the 14 year old rape victim that now has to pay child support to the pedophile that raped him so that she can raise her own victim. No one is talking about men’s issues at all, which is why this is the conversation that… Read more »
See, I could write a whole dissertation on how the women who are posing for porn, through toxic femininity, are luring our boys in and harming their potential for better health and healthy relationships. I could create an entire illusion that holds men as victims and the evil womenz as perpetrators…but I’m not a dic, and not willing to attack women for a social problem that we’ve created. I’d rather see us come together, put all the cards on the table, see what both our boys and girls are doing to harm themselves and each other, but I don’t see… Read more »
Zemus
Maybe I misunderstand this comment,
But I am shocked that the moderators permitted this comment to be posted.
I sincerely hope I misunderstand what message you give to Erin here.
in fact I will report it.
@Harris “Men are almost never taught to not rape; it’s assumed by other men that we’re going to.” Women are taught FAR FAR FAR less than men not to rape, nearly all anti-sexual violence material disproportionately focuses on males as the perp, females as the victim. @Erin “Any mention that any individual man has done harm is seen as an act of aggression against all men who are always the real victims of any situation. I am sure you see this yourself. I can’t be the only person here that sees that.” You are intelligent enough to know your argument… Read more »
@Archy “Many men are also burned out on how often we discuss how bad men are” This is occurring in a global culture that also dismisses male suffering at every opportunity. Boys and men can be butchered in their hundreds or thousands and institutions and media will do everything they can to obscure the sex of those harmed if not hiding the butchery all together. They can die in large numbers without ever openly being identified as explicitly human. So not only are boys and men responsible for every ill in the universe that same universe constantly demonstrates it doesn’t… Read more »
“In a conversation I had here with another poster, he told me that maybe the reason Brock took a naked picture of the woman he raped “… Erin, I think you missed that “maybe” is the operative word here… One poster shares an uninformed hypothesis with you, and you take it and run with it as the gospel and truth. Why? Because that’s what you want to believe? So basically this site rubs you the wrong way because you don’t want us to actually have “the conversation that noone else is having”. You want us to be bullied into submission… Read more »
Hi Flyimgkal I just reported a commend to Erin in this debate that was so cruel and actually far more seruiuos than harassment . I gues you did not read it. It is removed finally . But if you think Erin bully then you should have seen that comment. And one more thing . If you see Erin as a bully that can dominate and silence a man that has something to say, well then you have no experience with bullying , She see things differently from you men here. Women often do in so many areas of life because… Read more »
Hi Iben, I think the point is this. If a man shares his experience of how men are virgin shamed, how other men sometimes demand “proof” that a guy isn’t a “virgin”, if they report that other men have shown pictures of women as “proof” in the past even if they’ve never participated in sharing such pictures and then are accused of justifying a rapist’s actions, how many men will volunteer their experiences? How would we work towards finding solutions. You’re right women and men have different experiences and you know why men recognized that whether Turner was virgin shamed… Read more »
Ibem (Iben?)
“If you see Erin as a bully that can dominate and silence a man that has something to say”
Just for clarification: I don’t see Erin as a bully.
I just wonder why people sometimes question men standing up for themselves, and not just for women being bullied.
Hi Flyingkal
I obviously misunderstood you.
Sorry about that.
And of course men have the right to stand up for themselves.
“We’re willing to cut him slack because he’s a 13 year old boy.”
Willing to cut HIM more slack? He’s the rape victim; why shouldn’t we be “cutting him more slack”? The problem is how people are cutting Alexandra Vera–the rapist–slack, and society’s tendency to downplay the crimes of female rapists. Partly because of it’s tendency to deflect the blame from the woman onto other people and other external factors…
Guys don’t bother, Harris probably is only vaguely aware of when his stuff gets posted here. You’re talking to a wall
“Alexandra Vera, a middle-school teacher in Texas, was having an affair with a young man. It had started off with some crude flirting – he tried to contact her on her Instagram account, which she refused – but soon her resistance crumbled. She gave him her phone number, accepted an invitation to hang out. When they met up, they drove around and kissed in her car. Their relationship quickly became sexual – they were having sex almost every day, and she became pregnant. There was just one catch. Vera’s lover was a 13 year old boy. Her student, in fact.… Read more »
Sometimes it just amazes me how some of this stuff just gets by the editorial staff.
Thats because if I recall these articles are literally copied and pasted from OMalley’s own site when no attention paid to actually reviewing the content.
Although I’m trying to give the benefit of the doubt here and think that he would not genuinely think that a teacher raping a kid was because “her resistance crumbled”. I think he is speaking from the perspective of people that give such rape a free pass and not that he is giving her a free pass himself.
That’s not toxic masculinity though. That’s rape culture. There are women who believe a woman can’t rape a man. Is that “toxic masculinity” as well? Heck, his parents assuming the mother too were supposedly OJ with it and of course Vera herself is asserting that it wasn’t rape, but that’s probably toxic masculinity too.
Conflating toxic masculinity with rape culture on;y serves to excuse female rapists of men and boys. O’Malley should know better, but if he doesn’t hopefully he knows now. That doesn’t mean the BS shouldn’t be called out.
What I’m beginning to see, I guess I saw it before but couldn’t put my finger on it, is that “toxic” applies to male behaviors only. Aggression, sex, violence, status etc. are only behaviors that apply to men. I get it now!!!
Here’s the issue. Your piece here and most of the pieces here on “toxic masculinity” (I’ve always wondered why behavior that is damaging to a group is only called toxic when its about men…..) are trying to fix men by only looking at one thing. How men treat women. Name another group where you would fix what ails them by asking them to focus on another group of people first and foremost. Its okay if you can’t name one because there isn’t. If we are to fix men we have to focus on men. You have to realize that there… Read more »
So when a boy is raped by an adult woman, it’s toxic masculinity? talk about victim blaming. Why don’t you put the blame where it belongs, on the adult woman, but then we’d be holding women accountable for their actions and we can’t have that, can we?
Hey Harris, I agree with your point which I take to be: “A ‘man” should be aware enough, bold enough and strong enough to lead other men away from destructive mindsets and behaviors.” Even that is telling what men “should be”, but I’m willing to defend my opinion based on the fact that it’s hard to live a fulfilling, “impactful” life if you don’t develop that awareness, boldness and strength…no matter the topic is. But….I don’t believe we put the word “toxic” in front of any other words these days but “masculinity”. “Toxic shame”, maybe, but that doesn’t indict half… Read more »
I dunno, Steve, I was on board until he glossed over the part about the aliens coming down and eating our male brains.
I don’t even know how to reply to it, but i”ve been reading trying to come up with something to write about. Your reply has given me a great idea for an article.
Steve, I think you were right on the money on that one; no one could ask for a better or clearer summation of why using the designator ‘toxic’ is so, well, toxic. Thank-you, and I hope Harris reads it.