Notes from here:
“Let’s talk instead about the psychological concept of toxic masculinity. Let’s talk about our pushing boys into dominance, suppressing emotions, devaluing women and obsessive self-reliance, often interlinked with violence.
“A couple of weeks ago, CMS teacher Justin Parmenter wrote an article objecting to carrying a gun as a teacher and pushed for increased socio-emotional support in schools. He got a response from a father mocking his physique, challenging his manhood, dismissing Justin’s thoughts and calling him a “wuss.”
“What was ironic about this father’s response, however, was that this limited perspective of manhood and attempts at shaming Parmenter are symbolic of the toxic masculinity linked with these shootings.
“Be clear, masculinity is not automatically problematic. Wanting to take care of one’s family, sports competitiveness and being devoted to work are some traditional traits that can be positive.
“Yet toxic masculinity is often linked with substance abuse and domestic violence…
“I imagine there are men reading this who are thinking that the traits I mentioned are what makes them successful. And that is the seduction of toxic masculinity. It can “work” in our society, until it doesn’t.
“…The thing about emotion suppression is that if you don’t tell on your disease, it will eventually tell on you.
The push to mask pain, shame, fear and insecurity with limited responses like anger or intellectualization is lethally toxic.”
Other stereotypically masculine traits, such as self-reliance and emotional repression, are correlated with increased psychological problems in men such as depression, increased stress, and substance abuse.
I suppose the name for it comes from the fact that it is the traits that are traditionally considered masculine (or “macho”) that are toxic: toughness, dominance, self-reliance, and the restriction of allowable emotion to one dimension, which is anger.
These lead to misogyny and promote violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence, which are mostly performed by men against women.
So “toxic masculinity” doesn’t just apply to men attacking other men for perceived weaknesses. It might not be so bad if they limited their stupid aggression to each other — but toxic masculinity leads men to attack women too.
The concept of toxic masculinity explains a lot about our family situation, as well as the end of my engineering career. Men who feel entitled to treat women as decoration, as tokens, as things to leer at in the office — those men are the reason I left engineering, and leaving was the only option I had. When you are being treated poorly by someone who will not change, leaving is your only healthy choice. I learned that the hard way, twice: once in engineering and once in my FOO.
(I suppose there was a third event, actually, in my leaving the Catholic Church — an organization that treats women and children poorly and will not change — although that was far less traumatic for me since I never fully bought into it in the first place.)
But it’s not only men who can be toxically aggressive toward someone they consider “less than” or “not one of us”. I came to recognize that that “family” is full of men — and one woman — who feel entitled to belittle a younger sister when she says she has been hurt; to tell her how wrong she is about everything; who write angry, attacking comments and emails, instead of asking or listening; and go behind her back to others to make her look bad.
I have brothers AND a sister who have made nasty remarks about my looks; challenged my womanhood (I am wrong and a failure since I chose not to have children); dismissed my thoughts, reasoning, words, emails, blog; and while I didn’t exactly get called a “wuss” because I’m not actually male, I did get told things like “you gave up too easily” on the career, and I should have just “gotten over it” and buried all that pain that Joe and Susan deliberately caused, for the sake of the family.
In other words, I wasn’t strong enough. Maybe I wasn’t “man” enough. But it’s not only men who can behave this way.
I have one brother that I know of who abused his wife: and lo and behold, the cycle of pain and unaddressed issues continues to the next generation.
“If you do not transform your pain, you will with 100 percent certainty transmit it to others.”
His daughter called me almost three years ago, wanting to get away from her own domestic violence situation. Her husband had repeatedly held a gun to her head, knocked her down, and finally kicked her out of the house without her phone.
Fortunately she had my phone number in her wallet, and she called me, instead of anyone else in the family, because she didn’t want to listen to a bunch of judgemental bullshit. I just sent her some cash, and told her she needed to go to a battered women’s shelter.
She said in surprise, “That’s not what I am.”
Of course not. Because fish don’t know that water is wet.
A long time ago I learned this truism from a knitting friend: “When you’re in it, you can’t see it.”
I thought I had a loving, supportive family — until I didn’t. Until it was painfully clear, even to me, that I was no longer in it, I was not “in the club” — what I was, was a useful scapegoat.
And even then it took me 10 years of repressing my pain, and another 5 of working through it, until I got to that truth, and fought with it, and argued with it, and finally accepted it — and a life that is now free of that scapegoating, undermining, criticism, and rejection.
The next day my niece’s husband “wanted to talk” and she went back to him. And that’s not at all uncommon: battered women generally make 5 or 6 attempts to leave before they finally succeed.
I haven’t heard anything from her since. I’m guessing he told her something along the lines of, if she really loved him, she would cut off contact with me, as I was obviously trying to break up their marriage by supporting her.
Well yes, I suppose I was.
When you are being treated poorly by someone who will not change, leaving is your only healthy choice. But it’s a hard, hard lesson to learn — especially when it involves people you loved, and who you thought loved you.
I hope she’s OK, wherever she is now.