Should We Call It Wounded Masculinity Instead of Toxic Masculinity?

How often have you heard the term toxic masculinity?

We hear it said almost daily in the online world, and it's quickly gaining ground in media circles. And certainly, there are good reasons why many people feel that today's performance of masculinity is often toxic.

However, it's not a very helpful term, because by using toxic masculinity as a term we are creating sort of broad brush stroke that suggests that masculinity is inherently toxic. And nothing could be further from the truth.

What people refer to as toxic masculinity, are the performances of masculinity that align with patriarchy, align with oppression of others, and misogyny. And these qualities are not aligned with mature masculinity, and the archetypes of mature masculinity.

The other problematic thing about using a term like toxic masculinity, is it suggests that there's something fundamentally wrong with the man who is engaging in that performance.

In my many years of working with men and studying men's mental health, I think that it's probably better to refer to it as a performace of wounded masculinity rather than toxic masculinity,

These performances happen in response to men going through some difficult things in their life. Sometimes. They're hurt at a deep level and that is why they engage in these performances, these actions that are oppressive, because they feel less than as a person and a man.

Another way that you can frame this might be to call it immature shadow masculinity, because it is an immature form of masculinity that engages in oppression and control. These shadows are often formed in response to difficult conditions. They are survival strategies based on adversity and trauma in our past. Let me explain a little bit why I'm saying that the origins of toxic masculinity are actually based on wounds, and hurt, and trauma.

As men we're often raised that we're supposed to be invulnerable. We're supposed to be highly independent. From early on in our childhoods, we're told that we're not supposed to have emotions. How often do you hear parents or somebody else saying to a child, don't cry, be a big boy.

The problem with this is that we inherently are not recognizing the need for emotion in men's lives. Men are not devoid of emotion, and nor should they be. We're asking men to totally eliminate their emotional lives, except when they are supposed to be expressing things like love and affection for their partner or family.

But, because we create this unrealistic idea of masculinity, this mythopoetic ideal that is not really achievable, and if we really thought about it, we wouldn't want to achieve it. What it means is most men are wandering around feeling like they don't measure up.

And if they have experienced traumatic socialization, where they've been bullied or treated like there's something wrong with them for having emotions then they bury these things down, and it creates problems for them. But it doesn't necessarily take away the fundamental issues that they're dealing with, which is that they often feel vulnerable and insecure. They don't feel that they measure up. They feel less than as a man.

They may be experiencing things like depression or sadness or fear. They're afraid to show it, but it's still affecting them, and because they've been told that they're not supposed to have these feelings as men, they experience this as shame.

Now shame means basically that the man feels that there's something fundamentally wrong with them.

Guilt is, I did something wrong. Shame is, I am wrong.

And so when shame arises for men, they will often engage in something that Connell talks about as protest masculinities.

Yhey may externalize their emotions and engage in a protest masculinity performance of anger and violence, and we actually see this a lot in men who are experiencing shame related to sadness, or they feel threatened as men in some way, and so, they engage in anger and violence to prove that they're a real man, because that's what a protest masculinity is. It basically says not only am I a man, I'm more of a man than you.

The other thing that happens is men will often engage in protest masculinities by leveraging what resources are at their disposal.

For a poor man , who doesn't have a lot of resources. They may externalize and use protest masculinities related to physicality and size. Which might be in the form of violence or, physically restraining somebody, or trying to present themselves in a threatening manner.

For men who have a lot of economic success, or lots of money at their disposal, they may engage in a protest masculinity by displaying that economic success. So it could be that they go around driving a really fancy car, or that they have a really wonderful house, or they throw money around and let people know about how much money they have to prove that they're, man enough. And this is also linked to that whole idea of being a breadwinner, and the idea that, a real man is successful in his career and has lots of money.

For some men, they may exert power, or oppression, on those people that they do have influence on. And so this could be a case where, a man's engaging in controlling their wife or their kids, or their family. Or maybe they're in a position of leadership somewhere and they oppress the people that they are leading. So they create fear and oppression in a workplace for example.

And certainly performances like patriarchy, which is essentially a more immature form of masculinity because it is about oppression and controlling, is part of this, as is misogyny where men make out that somehow they are better than women in some way, or that they have an entitlement to women's bodies or sex. This, in and of itself, is another way of exerting control. And sexuality and access to sex is also highly aligned with traditional masculinities and patriarchal power and dominance.

Sometimes that shame. Gets a redirected into numbing activities or compulsive activities. So you can look at numbing as a means of self-medication. And certainly, this fuels addictions. It fuels. Excessive porn use in some cases. People pursuing relationship after relationship, or engaging in affairs, but sometimes it also manifests in more socially acceptable ways, like workaholism, working all the time to dissociate or numb, or eating a lot. Or, it could even turn into things like working out all the time.

Another thing that some men may do is to engage in seeking affection, because the affection helps them regulate, but it also helps them feel valued. One thing that we have to recognize when we think about men and seeking affection is they are actually socialized that they're not supposed to seek affection, they're not supposed to want to be hugged or held. Because they're supposed to be strong and independent and not need those kinds of things.

That's the way they've been socialized so some men will seek connection and affection through sex. because this is often the only time they're allowed to ask for affection.

And obviously this is partly what leads to those compulsive behaviors like porn addiction, and compulsive sexuality, and affairs.

Now, considering things this way, we can see that sometimes some of these behaviors that men are engaging in that are get labeled as toxic, and certainly are they problematic? Absolutely. But the origins of that toxic behavior, the origins of those oppressive, aggressive, and controlling behaviors is actually wounds. Is actually feeling less than.

And I think it's a more helpful way to think about in terms of being wounded masculinity, because then we can recognize that, all right, it's not necessarily that everything is wrong with the man, and that he's not recoverable, it's that he needs to work on some things in his life. And that's where engaging in men's work, counseling, therapy, those kinds of things, can really make a difference to men's mental health and wellbeing, but also have massive impacts on the relationships in their lives and how will they interact with the world.