Toxic Masculinity

In patriarchal societies, there's a particular pattern to how men are brought up as boys. From boys to men. It creates a psychology of competitive striving to beat other men. It works against empathetic relationships with women. It fosters anxiety in men about their claim to be regarded as a real man. So competitive striving is part of toxic masculinity but it's not just that. It also includes physical aggression against women, children, and other men. This podcast talks about how this comes about.

Transcript

Chapter 4: Toxic masculinity

Terry Leahy 2024

This book is on human nature and more especially on aggression. In the last chapter I took on the arguments of sociobiology. That a desire to compete, to dominate and even an urge to kill are central elements of human nature. I counterposed this view with a sociological view. The sociological view sees aggression as a tool of human nature, not a basic drive. The toolbox theory. Aggressive behaviour and motives are sparked off by conflicts with other people. In terms of evolution this makes sense, because aggression may pay off in getting you what you want. Though it can come with disadvantages. This sociological theory mostly works well. Still, there is a niggling doubt that the history of the world shows us a lot more competitive, dominating and aggressive behaviour than the toolbox account implies. The toolbox theory of aggression is hard to square with the huge risks that men take to pursue their conflicts with other men. Often without any obvious advantage to be gained.

Men and violence

The toolbox theory alone does not explain why this aggressive behaviour is mostly initiated by men. There is a huge list of types of violence typically perpetrated by men. Domestic violence, sexual assault. Civil everyday violence between men, like fights in a pub. Duels and feuds, as in pre-capitalist societies. Bullying, as in playground violence. And then there's warfare of course, which is depressingly common. Including genocide against whole populations. All this behaviour denies empathetic identification with the intended victims.

This is not to say that women are incapable of aggression and never have an aggressive thought. In terms of the evolutionary account of aggression suggested by the toolbox theory, this is no surprise. Women also need to defend their interests in conflicts. Following the successes of feminism there is a drift towards women’s participation in authorized violence. At the same time, there is no doubt that throughout history and across cultures, men are the main perpetrators. 

There are some obvious explanations of why this violent behaviour is most typical of men. One is that men control women as an underclass. The motive is to get rewards from another person’s labour. Like someone else doing the housework. Women are working while men are pursuing power and status. Men use aggression and violence to maintain this gendered domination. At the same time, a lot of domestic violence and assaults on women seem excessive. They go way beyond what might be necessary to secure patriarchal advantages. There is a hostility to women that has little rational foundation.  

Another explanation of some of the violent aggressive behaviour typical of men is political violence in the broadest sense. Ranging from control of a subordinate class to wars with other states. You could say that men take on the burden of violence, against other men. Politics is a realm of conflict between different social groups. In a patriarchy, men have control of the political realm. So, when conflicts between groups become violent, it will be men who are taking part. In a patriarchy, it is no accident that men are in control of violence. They do not want the underclass (women) to rebel. So patriarchal cultures give men ownership of weapons such as spears, bows and arrows, guns and tanks. While all this may explain why men are the ones mostly involved in political violence, it does not explain why this political violence is so pervasive, so excessive in relation to any advantage that it may bring. 

Excessive violence and toxic masculinity

I find feminist psychoanalytic theory the most useful account of this excessive aggression. An account that also explains why this emotional pattern is most typical of men. The key writing on this topic is an article by Nancy Chodorow. I will be explaining her view and discussing its implications. So, this chapter is on what has been called ‘toxic masculinity’. The process by which a particular way of being ‘a man’ comes to exist socially. What are the structures which make this happen? The concept of toxic masculinity and much of Chodorow’s analysis have also been taken up by ecofeminists such as Ariel Salleh and Valerie Plumwood. Along with popular feminist writers on patriarchy and male violence. Such as Clementine Ford, Van Badham and Laurie Penny. 

The term ‘toxic masculinity’ does not mean that all masculinity is toxic. What it means is that there are certain ways in which masculinity can be socially constructed to be toxic. In other words, toxic masculinity versus other possible versions of being a man. The construction of toxic masculinity is an uneven and patchy process. Men buy into toxic masculinity to different extents. Versions of masculinity are inflected by social class situation, not to mention personal histories and ongoing life choices. 

Nancy Chodorow gives the best account of toxic masculinity, though she does not use that term. There is a particular pattern to how men are brought up as boys. From boys to men. This socialisation creates a psychology of competitive striving to beat other men. It works against empathetic friendships with women and children. It fosters anxiety in men about their claim to be a ‘real’ man. Their claim to the entitlements of patriarchal power. Do I measure up? A constant worry. Aggression and aggressive desires are an aspect of this psychological pattern. Toxic masculinity creates situations of conflict out of nothing. Along with the aggressive feelings to go with that.

To understand the way this happens, we need to look at how childhoods play out in a typical patriarchal context. Men, being the ruling gender class, are concerned with affairs of state, with the public world. They embark on undertakings that can provide them with status and social power, not to mention more directly material benefits. What they avoid is the work of the household that takes you away from this public world. The work of caring for infants and small children. Women end up doing most of that work. This division of labour is by no means a biological necessity. It makes sense for men in patriarchy. This is broadly true of any patriarchal society and of any rung of the ladder in class societies. For example, in a hunting and gathering society it is women who take the infants with them when they go looking for food. 

The care work that women do with infants creates emotional ties. The person who is looking after the small child ends up with an emotional tie. Part of the reason men avoid this work is that these emotional ties hamper your free action in the public arena. 

How does this pattern affect the experience of the boy growing up? It creates the puzzle of masculine identity. Most nurture in early childhood come from women. The young infant boy identifies with women in answering the question. What is it to be human? These close women must be the model of an adult human person. At a certain point, boys are urged to give up this identification with women and to become men. The common phrase ‘separating the men from the boys’ reflects our understanding of this social process. But in fact, becoming a man is a very puzzling task. What is a man? For the boy, with a lifetime of close contact with adult women and little contact with men, what does this demand require? The men in the boy’s life are out there in the public world, doing things that are regarded as important but are not part of the child’s everyday experience. Boys are not in daily affectionate relationships with these men.

One way that boys are urged to solve this problem is by rejecting femininity. Everything you associate with the women who have looked after you, you must reject. The common phrases that express this understanding in English are that you must stop being a ‘mummy’s boy’ and ‘cut the apron strings.’ Not to be a ‘sissy’, or cry ‘like a girl’. What is identified with femininity is the nurturing empathetic relationship between infants and their female carers. 

The second thing is that boys are encouraged to validate their adult male identity through competition with other men. You prove that you really are a man by beating some other man. One way or another. The competition that men are involved in is not just physical aggression. It is expressed in a variety of ways. From violence in wars, to aggressive driving in traffic, to shouting at the children, to competition through artistic achievement. Taken as a whole, the key characteristic is a blunted lack of empathy for those lined up to be competitors. Along with the women and children you must control to retain your identity as a man. 

The insecurity occasioned by the relative absence of men in childhood never actually goes away, even if these two strategies to validate masculine identity are employed. The adult man is insecure. They cannot find allies in women and distrust other men. They worry constantly whether they are man enough, that they make the grade and cut it as a man. 

Initiations

In many cultures, this entry to manhood and exit from childhood is marked by a ritual initiation. Looking at societies as they were in their precolonial condition, we can readily see examples that suggest this underlying dynamic. The Munduruçu of the Amazon basin, the Mbuti of the Congo and the Aranda of Australia had initiation ceremonies for boys that are remarkably similar. The adult men adopt the role of terrifying spirit beings. They are blowing a sacred flute or making a thunderous booming noise with a bullroarer. They are hidden in the forest. They enter the camp dressed as magical and terrifying figures. In the Mbuti and Munduruçu, women hide in their huts and are not permitted to look — on pain of death. The men drag off the boys to be initiated. They are subjected to painful and scary tortures. Such as being laid on a smoking fire. Back at the village, the women are weeping. Our sons are being taken away from us. Then the boys return as adult men to the village and adopt their adult male role. We can look at this as quaint. As a wonderful acknowledgement of the boy’s rite of passage to adulthood. But we can also see it as structured to summarize and reinforce the construction of toxic masculinity. As a moment that reveals more basic truths about how this process takes place over the whole life cycle. 

These examples should not be read as evidence of the naivety of pre-enlightenment cultures, something now thankfully passed away. Instead, versions of these initiation rituals for boys are equally present in the ‘rationalized’ social environments of the present. Examinations. The driving test. The first legal drink. Scoring, the first sexual ‘conquest’. The sports field. Getting a job. Extreme sports. Participating in wars. It is no accident that Australia is said to have ‘come of age’ at Gallipoli. Some of these rituals are not evil in themselves. But they are read as a successful passage into toxic masculinity – as scary competitions with other real men, as a rejection of childish effeminacy. I remember I was taken by my father to play football when I was ten years old. It had been one of his passions as a young man. At the end of the first session, the coach said to my dad. I am sorry but your boy has no ‘tiger’! 

We can see this psychological framing of masculinity in the story of Abraham and Isaac. God tells Abraham to sacrifice his eldest son, Isaac on a stone. He draws the knife ready to kill him. And an angel comes down and says, ‘Stop, now I can truly see that you fear God.’ So go and sacrifice a goat instead! The story shows us a hierarchy of dangerous, terrifying men, showing no empathy for their sons. A project of recruitment into patriarchy.

Lines of flight

I hate the phrase, ‘not all men’, because it can be used to sidestep the problems of patriarchy. Nevertheless, it is true that not all biological men are equally inducted. Men don't necessarily take this on. These escapes from patriarchal masculinity are happening all over the place in current society, as it is so thoroughly influenced by feminism. If you are a man and get offended by the term ‘toxic masculinity’ I would advise you to get over it. For a start, toxic masculinity is everywhere, do not pretend that it is a minority affliction of some bad guys. Secondly, if you do not want to be a toxic male, do something about it.

One of the ways in which biological men (amab) have opted out of toxic masculinity is through the construction of other gender options beyond the binary. That is why drag queens and trans people are so threatening to the far right. In Native American society, the berdache are biologically male with a woman’s social role. Other third genders are the fa’afafine of Samoa, the waria of Indonesia, the hijra of South Asia, the sister girls of Aboriginal Australia.

We are also seeing more low-key defections from toxic masculinity. More nurturing men, encouraged by feminism to realize some advantages in having good relationships with women. We're seeing more equal parenting. There's more awareness of the problems that this lack of empathy is causing us. In Australia a scandal about war crimes in Afghanistan has erupted. The fact that these crimes have been revealed and are causing political problems is itself a sign of change. Leaders of Australian combat groups in Afghanistan were shooting unarmed civilians, executing people who posed no threat. In the past, such incidents would never have come to light and would never have been judged by the public as a crime. A chilling incident from family history. A grandfather on a troop ship to the Middle East during the first world war. It was common practice to throw men overboard if they were discovered to be homosexuals. Our coming of age at Gallipoli.

Conclusions

This has been the first part of The System Change Handbook. I have been intent on developing a theory of human nature that can make sense of human history and cultural variety. I have indentified six basic motivations that make up human nature. 

1.     Hunger and appetite. 

2.     Health and physical comfort. 

3.      Sociability. 

4.     Creativity. 

5.     Sexuality. 

6.     Autonomy

Despite claims that human nature is socially constructed, these six basic motives are very frequently used to explain human conduct — by disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history. 

The issue of aggression is the most contentious one within this debate. The right wing usually claims that aggression is a basic drive. Along with this, inevitable competition between individuals and groups. The outcome of this competition in dominance hierarchies. This claim has been most recently anchored in evolutionary explanations. This chain of argument has been driving the social sciences into a social constructionist view of human conduct as an alternative picture. 

I doubt whether it is possible to explain everything as a social construction. Explanations founded in ideas about human nature are usually assumed. Even as we are explaining how social construction takes place. In the case of aggression, the most common assumption in the social sciences is that aggression is a tool of human nature. Sparked off by conflicts between people. But not a basic motive, a drive that must be satisfied to enjoy the good life. 

I have examined the fine print of the evolutionary argument for a basic aggressive drive. I do not find it convincing. On the other hand, the evolutionary argument for a cooperative human nature can fail to explain the excessive aggression we find in our history. Likewise with the toolbox theory of aggression. If aggression is just a rational response to threats to your wellbeing, why is there so much irrational aggression?

To answer this question, I have turned to feminist psychoanalytic theory and cross-cultural analysis. In particular, to the theory developed by Chodorow. The patriarchal construction of toxic masculinity sets boys up to see aggression as the path to adult gender identity. This is a hidden downside of the socialisation of children in patriarchy. It is not all a great boon to men — who suffer from lifelong insecurity about their gender identity. They must constantly prove themselves through competition with other men and through the control of women. 

Two questions remain at the end of this part of the handbook. One is the puzzle of why patriarchy is so common. My explanation of excessive aggression has taken patriarchy as a given but has not said anything about why this may be the case. The other question is about the way in which toxic masculinity impacts on politics in its broadest sense. These topics will be addressed in the next two parts of this handbook.