When it comes to defining what masculinity really means, and teaching boys how to be men — the subject of SheKnows’ recent “Be a Man” series — much of our current narrative needs to be flipped on its head, because it’s doing a disservice to our sons. There’s too much “toxic” in the modern definition of what it means to be masculine, and in fact, true masculinity is actually quite the opposite of toxic.
Scott Galloway, NYU professor, author, and host of the “Prof G” and “Pivot” podcasts, highlighted this point as part of his “Media and ‘Masculine Energy’” discussion with SHE Media CEO Samantha Skey at the SHE Media Co-Lab at SXSW.
“‘Toxic’ and ‘masculinity’ are oxymorons,” he said. “There’s cruelty, there’s violence, there’s criminal behavior. Those are the least masculine things in the world.”
In Galloway’s opinion, true masculinity is rooted in self-sufficiency and a sense of responsibility towards others. It’s about being able to take care of oneself, and then extending that care to loved ones, including family and parents — a perspective that emphasizes the importance of independence, resilience, and nurturing qualities in defining healthy masculinity.
“As a man of masculinity, I’m trying to figure out how we give men a code. … Because I think masculinity is a wonderful thing,” he said. “You’d never say ‘toxic femininity,’ because femininity is a wonderful thing.”
“Toxic masculinity” is a term that was first coined during the Mythopoetic Men’s Movement of the ’80s and ’90s. According to writer Daniel Penny for GQ, “Mythopoets were a hugely influential hippie-adjacent collection of male therapists, activists, writers, and healers led by the poet Robert Bly.” And according to Bly, says Penny, “[T]he solution for male malaise lay in the mythic past and getting in touch with one’s inner ‘Wild Man.’ This became the central metaphor of Bly’s 1990 bestseller Iron John: A Book About Men, which argues that the stresses of 9-to-5 jobs and demands of domestic life require men to suppress their inner Wild Man. Either they succeed in caging him and become emasculated ‘soft males,’ or the Wild Man escapes in fits of rage and violence — what the Mythopoets called toxic masculinity.”
Labeling all masculinity as “toxic” can lead to young men feeling stigmatized, making them feel ashamed or embarrassed about their masculinity. This isn’t to say that there aren’t toxic men out there, of course — but the message we’re sending to our sons shouldn’t be that masculinity is bad by default.
Unfortunately, “toxic” and “masculinity” are two words that seem, all too often, irrevocably linked. Even when SheKnows played a word game with a group of teens from our Gen Z Council, asking them to rate words as “feminine” or “masculine,” the word “toxic” was seen as overwhelmingly masculine. Interestingly, “emotional” and “nurturing” — arguably two of the most important traits of true masculinity, if you’re looking at it from Galloway’s point of view — were ranked by all the participants as feminine traits.
But as Galloway pointed out onstage at SXSW, there are elements of masculinity that are, at their very core, caring. “Think about the most masculine jobs in the world, someone in the military, a cop or a fire person. What are they doing? Their default system is, ‘If there’s a fire on the 17th floor, my job is protection through risking my own life in the service of protecting others,’” he said. “Someone’s talking sh*t about anybody else, real men automatically defend that person — anyone who feels unsafe. Your default system is protection, right? That is a wonderful attribute of masculinity.”
