Teaching Against Toxic Masculinity

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Most teachers today say some variation of the following  two responses when asked why they went into teaching: “I’ve always wanted to do this/I come from a teaching family.” Or something along the lines of “I had a teacher who changed my life and I want to do the same for other people. For me, it was a combination of both; and while I do come from a long line of teachers, it was a handful of my high school teachers that changed my life that cemented what I always knew: I was born to teach. As I come to the end of my fifth year of teaching I have come to the stark realization that we need to drastically change the conversation we are having with boys and young men- literally half of most student classrooms.. If we don’t we will lose yet another generation of boys (and the people who love them) to the normalization of standards that have come to be known as toxic masculinity.

To give a little bit of insight on what toxic masculinity is, let’s back up and discuss how we got here. The coveted age group for most advertising business is 18-35 and specifically the 18-24 end of that range. For several years now, advertisers have realized that the 18-24 year old of tomorrow are the 13-17 year olds of today. More and more ads are geared towards the youngest of the millennials, or Generation Z, for a variety of reasons, but chief among them are: fluidity of personal taste for brands, the number of teens living in high-income homes, and the influence that teens exert on the parents when it comes to making purchases. As advertisers gear more and more towards the youngest among us, the most susceptible are taking notice of the good, the bad, and yes even the ugly ways that advertisers are choosing to market their products. Most of the time I see advertisements that focus on teen insecurities. (Author’s note: as a 28 year old relatively normal function adult, these ads give me anxiety and I have complete control over my emotions and hormones… most of the time).

Once we realized this might actually be harming the future of society we slowly began studying hot to correct the problem. For years the focus has been on what this does to our sisters, daughters, and female friends; males were and oftentimes still are left completely out of the equation. While I applaud Dove for the most recent Like a Girl campaign, we can still do better. Recent studies have shown that boys are just as prone to self-esteem and body issues which can become a catalyst for a host of toxic masculinity issues including anger management issues, drug abuse, and domestic violence.When you add all of that up and then throw in the fact that we live in a country that wants to paint things like gender, or identity, or ethnicity, etc. as simple “black and white” issues it is no wonder we have a toxic masculinity problem.

I have been a teacher in 2 public high schools in the best school district in South Carolina for 5 years. I taught first at a charter school of about 400 upper middle class predominately (for lack of a better term) WASPy ninth graders. Seeking a professional change I moved to a school that was double the size and about 65% minority children and about 80% of those children are part of the free and reduced lunch programs. Even though the children in the schools may come to the table with different life experience, it struck me almost immediately after arriving at my current home that my boy students have the same anxieties that come with toxic masculinity. In the past school year alone, I have been asked to give advice, guidance, or reassurance on the following issues by male students:

• How to act more white, less white, more hispanic, how to be black enough for friends, etc.
• My friend will think I’m gay if I admit to liking Hamilton won’t they?
• Do I sound gay? Should I talk less gay?
• Do you think people notice I have to wear the same few shirts over and over?
• My friends only want to talk about sex at lunch and I am not ready.
• How will I know what I need to choose as my major in college?
• Do you think it would be weird if I took food science and was the only dude in there?

On the inside when I get asked questions like these I bristle with fear because I know that on top of not being a trained  psychologist or counselor to I am always terrified that I am going to give my kids the exact answer they do not want to here. Like most every other teacher in the world, I always smile and give them a confident and supportive answer. One of the more clichéd sayings I like to use is until people start paying your bills, there is no need to worry about them. Cheesy? Yes. Does that adequately answer their question? Nope, definitely not. Will they leave my room still unsure and confused? Most likely. I know this, but it is the best that I can do as a teacher who is human and went through many of the exact same feelings that my kids are going through. I was filled with anxiety in high school trying to navigate my sexuality in a sea of southern conservative toxic masculinity. My family and I are almost convinced that a large chunk of my early 20s was spent in a state of clinical depression as a result of this.  I know all too well the cycle the current teenage boys are going through..This cycle is going to continue to happen until we eradicate toxic masculinity and adjust our expectations for what make a man a man. If we continue to push men into being strong, suppressing their tears, and to push their partners into sexual situations that both may not be ready for we are relegating half of the population to a life filled with a toxicity that is far too ingrained with some of the most detrimental social problems that our society faces.

There are signs that things are changing, but that change is coming at too slow a pace. Many of us have become content at the amount of characters in TV (men in The Big Bang Theory or Cameron and Mitchell from Modern Family), movies (Moonlight– the greatest film of 2016, but that’s a story for another day), and music (Tim McGraw’s new song with wife Faith Hill) that are different from the traditional one that leads to our masculinity problem. This is short sighted and a mistake; toxic masculinity is the lucky beneficiary of years of an oppressive definition of masculinity and the Mad Men type of lifestyle that entails. It is going to take all of us, collectively letting our fathers, brothers, sons, and friends know that there isn’t one definition of masculinity and that by taking,a deep breath, owning your own identity and being truthful to your authentic self boys and young men are going to continue to carry that heavy burden into adulthood as it hurts them and those around them.  

When I was in high school the seniors got to pick a quote to be printed in the yearbook that they thought best represented what they thought or believed in. Although I loathed reading and learning transcendentalism in English class, Henry David Thoreau wrote something that spoke to my core as I scoured AOL looking for a quote on dial-up internet. I firmly believe in it so much I have a framed copy of it at home and in my classroom at school. Thoreau wrote “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” It is now time for men everywhere and the people who love them to use their drumsticks as weapons to beat back the disease of toxic masculinity. That way my students and future students can march – or sashay – to whichever beat they hear from far away.

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Photo Credit: Getty Images