Reflections on the Wellbeing of Men
Below, some observations on the ‘wellbeing of men’ at this point in history, taken direct from Dr Stephen Whitehead’s new book, Toxic Masculinity: curing the virus’ AG Books, 2021. (p. 120-128)
Looking at the world from a certain perspective, one might conclude it is not a good time to be a man.
Yet measured by violent deaths, the world has never been more peaceful than it is today. Measured by increases in incomes, health, education and technology, the world has never offered more prosperity, security and opportunity than it does today.
But measured by the rising power of women and the questions they are raising about male behaviour, the world has never been a more insecure place for men.
Should we, then, feel sorry for men caught as they are in the crosshairs of history?
During my research I’ve had many older Western men say to me; “I’m just glad I’m not 20 anymore. I think young men have a tough time of it, nowadays.” Such comments are often followed by observations about modern women: “women seem harder than when I was a youth. They are the strong ones now, not the guys.”
I think there is a lot of truth in this. Living in South East Asia, I see the same gap opening up between the aspirations of women and those of men as in the West. I see the same stark differences between the confident expressions of a new strident femininity, and the ego-shrivelling anxieties of a masculinity that seems to have lost its way but is desperate to carry on as if nothing has changed.
At the same time, I also see something else; disappointed women. They may be pursuing independence, freedom and choice, but it is leaving them alone. Most straight women don’t want a life of singularity. And nor do most straight men. It is best for both sexes if they can live together, in harmony, in intimacy, and with mutual respect and equality.
But humans never have enjoyed that situation and we are certainly a long way from it right now. In fact, depending on how you choose to interpret the evidence, women and men have never been further apart than they are today.
Ever since I began my study of men and masculinities, some 30 years ago, I have tried to see gender dynamics in an historical perspective. It is too easy to get blinded by the spotlight of the present. We need to see not just what this spotlight reveals about this moment, but what it reveals about the past, and might tell us about the future.
The past is, of course, another country, one we can never inhabit except through our imaginations and subjective interpretation, but nevertheless, there can be little doubting the historical trend when it comes to gender relationships. Women are gaining power, and inevitably, men are losing it. Femininity has become a desirable trait, masculinity has become a problem. This is, without doubt, revolutionary both in its effects and in its implications. Indeed, in my opinion and that of many other observers, the gender revolution is the most profound and far-reaching to ever impact on humanity. What is particularly mesmerising is the pace by which it has occurred; its origins can certainly be traced back to the Age of Enlightenment, though it is the last hundred years, especially the last two decades, which have shaken the old gender order to its roots. To be sure, one must factor in a host of variables all of which have a direct bearing on this revolution, including medicine, health, education, technology, post-industrialisation, the media, globalisation, the information society, and so on. And we must not forget the ongoing struggle of millions of women, worldwide, who find it hard just to survive in a male-dominated environment. But looking globally, and historically, we can see an unmistakable trajectory, which is for women to acquire more power, more confidence, more assertiveness and more independence from men.
This trajectory opens up several intriguing scenarios, and these are explored in my final chapter. But before we get to those scenarios, something else must be attempted by global society: We must try to detoxify men from a masculinity which damages women, damages society, and, not least, damages them.
Toxifying Men
Although masculine identity has never looked more precarious than it does today, we should not assume it has never been under a critical gaze. The fear of what men might do, what men might become, has been the sub-text informing much of the human story.
One of the central aims of organised religion has always been to control men and their desires. Militarisation, leading to empire, weaponization, conquest and war, has long been driven by the need to ensure a nation’s menfolk do not ‘go soft’; an ‘heroic male project’ that explicitly excluded women and any behaviour deemed ‘feminine’. [1] The problematic relationship between men and a ‘soft’ masculinity was exemplified in the notion of ‘muscular Christianity’. where ‘manliness was to be more openly ‘not feminine’ and more directly associated with physical strength, physical trial, denial (of luxury) and ‘endurance in the face of death and torment’. [2] This ethos defined the English public-school system and does so to this day. One of Hitler’s over-riding concerns during the 1930s was to physically and mentally prepare the German men for war, so as to become his ‘warriors of the master race’ – he feared they were not sufficiently hardened to fulfil his dream of Aryan supremacy. [3] The Boy Scouts of America, formed in 1910, was designed explicitly to create a new generation of ‘masculine males’. [4] Go forward a hundred years and today we have the Russian Orthodox Church claiming that “real men are being replaced by scrawny chickens” lacking traditional masculine values. [5] We have the US military establishment desperate to meet even a base line recruitment target due to the fact that many young American men are either unwilling or unfit to serve in the military. [6]
And we have the Chinese government openly encouraging schools to ‘train boys to be men’: because ‘the alternative for Chinese boys (aged 7-12) is life in a society where androgynous pop idols, overprotective mothers, and mostly female teachers would turn them into effeminate cry-babies’.
China’s preoccupation with strong men has taken on a political dimension, feeding concerns about whether young Chinese males are in trouble. State media has said video games, masturbation, and a lack of exercise have made many young men ill-suited for the military. “Erasing the gender characteristics of a man who is not afraid of death and hardship is tantamount to a country’s suicide’. [7]
Whether the discourse circles around notions of ‘feckless, white working-class males’; a ‘dangerous, criminalised sub-strata of ethnic minority men’, the growing number of ‘hapless men who are now the ‘disposable sex’, male ‘religious fanatics’, or simply ‘hardening men up so they can be warriors’, the reality is males are seen as a problem. Their ‘natural energies and impulses’ need to be directed, and the direction society has chosen is toxic masculinity. But this trait is not natural to men, it has to be learned. And throughout history, males have been taught it. They are still being taught it. The appalling fact is, males have been sold the idea of masculinity as violence, aggression, conquest, dominance, selfishness, competitiveness, combined with repression of their deepest emotions.
This myth was sold to your father, my father, and all their fathers before them. Its consequences are all around us, from religious fanaticism to denial of global warming, from corrupt capitalism to the extinction of species, from rampant weaponization to misogyny, from racism to homophobia, from empire building to genocide, and from domestic violence to male suicide. We have built a world on toxic masculinity, and humanity has paid the price. Humanity continues to pay the price.
In effect, society toxifies men. It does this through its rigid education systems, through its brutal judicial systems, through its uncaring political systems, through its divisive class systems, through its inherent militarisation, through its discourse of empire, through the myth of ‘superman’, through to the prevailing stereotypes of race, sexuality, and gender; it is embedded as much in the competitiveness of the global capitalist system, as it is in the authoritarianism of modern Russia and China. We see it in the machismo of South America, and the brutal conflicts which continue to infect Africa. We see it in youth knife crime and in football hooliganism. We see it in the intolerant and radical versions of Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism and Buddhism. We can see it surface in America, a weaponized ‘liberal democracy’ that apparently needs to incarcerate over two million of its citizens and keep another 4.7 million on parole (93% of whom are male) in order to feel safe. And we see it in China, now desperate to stop its young males ‘becoming sissies’.
The toxification of males starts early. From the moment they are born. It takes root in language and in practice, and feeds into men’s expectations, self-perceptions, and how they relate to women. We know this, but still we seem unable, or unwilling, to stop it.
Reflections on a Journey
It is May, 1991, and I am lecturing to a class of 28 Professional Football Association apprentices (16-17) at a Further Education College in Leeds, UK. [8] The apprentices are signed up with top regional football clubs, including Leeds, Sheffield, York and Bradford.
Every FA club in the UK has such apprentices.
This group comes to my college one day a week, to do a BTEC Sport and Leisure programme. I am the programme director. The lads, most from working-class backgrounds, are always boisterous, full of energy, into practical jokes, and only interested in kicking a football. They’d rather be anywhere than in my class, studying sport and leisure. But they have no choice, it is a compulsory part of their two-year government-sponsored apprenticeship. Each is hoping to get a full contract with their club at the end of two years, and go on to become a pro footballer.
Great life if they can manage it, but no more than 1 in 100 will do.
Their culture is heavily macho, with aggression and assertiveness precisely the traits the football clubs are looking for and indeed, which they encourage.
They exist in a culture dominated by men; from the pro footballers to the club manager; from the physio, to the club scouts; from the club owner, to the club fans. These young men are already well imbibed with toxic masculinity; homophobic, competitive, physical, casually sexist, bullying of anyone showing any sign of weakness or femininity, even the lecturer.
But they are likeable, despite all that.
They have a youthful innocence around them, one not yet totally erased by the harsh demands of professional sport and its ruthless culture of winning above all else, with losers nowhere.
And these lads mostly definitely fear being seen as losers.
As a lecturer, you have to be above that culture, but in order to engage with the lads you cannot be too aloof. There is a fine balance to be struck and not every lecturer can handle it.
I can handle it, mostly, and the lads respect me not least because I am the director, with some influence over their future. But I am also at that time studying gender; men and masculinities, for my MA, so my lecturing becomes an opportunity for participant observation in hegemonic masculinity in sport. The lads definitely don’t want to discuss their masculinity. After all, this is only 1991; it is twenty-five years before MeToo and the term ‘toxic masculinity’ gets invented and goes mainstream. But one afternoon, masculinity does come to the fore, with astonishing consequences.
During this particular lecture one of the lads mentioned how his father had encouraged him to go into sport, especially football, but how he was also an absent dad, having left his mother when he was just 10 years old, leaving his mum to raise a family of five on her own, living in a back-to-back terraced house in a depressed part of Sheffield. I spotted an opportunity in this unbidden remark. I opened the topic up, asking the group how many of them had encouraging fathers, and what role their fathers played in their lives. It was if I had pressed some invisible button in the group.
It began hesitantly, cautiously, and with some reservations, but eventually most every lad contributed. And as the topic developed, so the theme went from encouraging fathers, to absent fathers, to abusive fathers, to violent fathers, and finally, with several lads, to tears.
The tears shocked me.
I was wholly unprepared for this, for these were lads who only cried if they missed an open goal. Though I did sense how emotional their responses were becoming the more they opened up about their, mostly toxic, relationship with their dads. The group drove the discussion, not I. I didn’t discourage it, but nor did I engineer it. They merely reflected on their dad’s involvement in their lives and in so doing, they felt sad, they experienced pain.
One of my young apprentices from a previous year’s group was a lad called Gary Speed.
Gary was different to the norm.
He was intelligent, sensitive, quiet, handsome and a gifted footballer. Not aggressive or macho in any way, other than on the football pitch. Leeds United gave him a full-time contract when he was 18, and he went on to play professional football with Everton and Newcastle, on the way becoming the captain of the Welsh national football team. In 2010, he was appointed manager of the Wales team, the pinnacle of his professional career. He committed suicide a year later, at the age of 42.
It was eventually revealed that Gary was one of four soccer players who killed themselves in later life, all of whom, as children, were coached by Barry Bennell, a ‘devious paedophile’ who preyed on young footballers. Bennell’s toxic masculinity, combined with his sexuality, left many young boys “destitute, suicidal and addicted to drugs and alcohol.”
Gary was one of his victims. [9]
Over the course of the next two decades, as I went from being a college lecturer to a university professor, many opportunities for male reflexivity opened up with my students. And when they did, I invariably took them – so long as the individual and group appeared comfortable to do so.
But I never pushed it.
I had learned that here was a button of Emotional Mass Destruction, at least for men with toxic masculinity. And once that button got pushed, there was no going back.
The button wasn’t the cause of these men’s anguish, it was simply the trigger. And the words which trigger the emotional response are very simple indeed:
“tell me about your childhood”.
Dr Stephen Whitehead’s new book is available via: Toxic Masculinity: curing the virus’
[1] See Whitehead, S.M. (2002) Men and Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity. Chapter 2 [2] Newsome 1961, quoted in Whitehead, 2002, Chapter 2 [3] Stargardt, N. (2015) The German War. London: Vantage. [4] Whitehead, S.M. (2002) Chapter 2 [5]https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/15/weakling-chicks-are-replacing-real-men-russian-church-official-says-a65235[6]https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2018/09/21/the-army-is-supposed-to-be-growing-but-this-year-it-didnt-at-all/[7]https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2171040/inside-chinas-training-camps-where-boys-are-learning-how-be-men[8] Thomas Danby College, Hunslet, Leeds. Between 1987 and 1996 I was Programme Area Manager for Leisure, Sport and Tourism. [9]https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jan/17/gary-speed-one-of-four-players-coached-by-barry-bennell-to-have-killed-themselves