Toxic Masculinity

The rules of toxic masculinity suggest that to be a real man you should never lose, have no needs, suffer in silence, show no emotions except bravado and anger, be independent, show no weakness.
It’s an impossible code to live by and it hurts everyone.

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And hello to you, and welcome to the Richard Nicholls podcast, the personal development podcast series that's here to help inspire, educate, and motivate you to be the best you can be. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls, and today you'll learn all about toxic masculinity. And if you are ready, we'll start the show. Hey there, happy fans. How are you all doing? I do hope you've been able to handle the news this month. It's not been good has it? I do hope that my podcast episodes can help dilute things down a bit for you. I know that I can be annoyingly cheerful and that might sometimes feel a bit incongruent when compared to what's going on everywhere else, and I'm not gonna apologise for that. If you follow me on social media, you'll know that every Friday I post a little video of someone dancing. It could be a Muppet, it could be a clip from a Madness video. But every Friday without fail, there's something happy shortly after 7:00 AM plopping onto your social feed. And I remember once someone replied to my little dance video with, Hey, just wondering what your thoughts on the war on Palestine is, as you don't seem to have posted about it. And I thought, no, I don't need to. And it wasn't the first time either. A couple of years ago, somebody replied to a happy dance video with Unfollowed hashtag Ukraine, as if to suggest we can't possibly try and be happy when horrible things are happening. And sadly, they're wrong. And I say sadly because horrible things always happen. And although I want to be able to do something about it, we can only do what we can. I'm equally as sad for Ukraine, Iran, and Palestine as I am for Israel, Syria, and Yemen. War is awful. Humans can be both gloriously beautiful and frighteningly cruel. I know that, but it's not gonna stop me from trying to spread some positivity if I can. There's enough negativity around as it is. Whether that's big conflicts between countries, or little conflicts within families. Solving it is never easy. It means doing a lot of thinking, a lot of negotiating, and putting aside our pride by admitting that we've made mistakes. And that's not easy for anyone, especially men. It seems it is getting better, but as anyone who watched the Louis Theroux documentary earlier in the year knows, we do still have this culture where admitting our mistakes is a sign of weakness rather than strength to a lot of men. Back in the early nineties, an educator named Paul Kivel published a book called Men's Work, How To Stop The Violence That Tears Our Lives Apart. It was all about the work he'd been doing for about 10 years, working in colleges in high schools in San Francisco, and before that he was working on what's called the Oakland Men's Project. Which Kivel and others started up to figure out how best to support the women campaigning against domestic violence and sexism. Their idea is very much like the phrase you might see on social media sometimes that says, Protect Your Daughter, but it's crossed out and replaced with Educate Your Son. The idea obviously being that if there's a problem with men beating up their wives and girlfriends, you don't fix it by only supporting the women. You need to fix it at the source, which might seem obvious now, but not so much in the eighties and nineties because there was a pushback from men. Lots of men felt that their masculinity was being threatened, you see. And that their sons could be feminised if they were taught that it was okay to break away from what they called the act like a man box. Nowadays, it tends to be just called The Man Box, which is this rigid set of ideas and behaviours that if you stray out of, then you are not a proper man. It's a social construct, meaning that it's not driven by genetics or anything. It's got nothing to do with your chromosomes or the shape of your genitalia. It is totally created by culture and it's dangerous. Like I say, have you seen the news? I'm not saying for definite that if more women were in charge, then there'd be fewer wars. There's nothing that's definite in this world is there, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the chances are a bit slimmer. Did Putin plan the Ukraine invasion because he felt that Russia lost Ukraine in the nineties rather than seeing it as Ukraine gaining independence? Possibly. And don't get me started on the psychology of Donald Trump, we'd be here for years. And it's all part of this toxic masculinity that creates these rigid rules of the man box, you see. Never losing. If you're a man, you have to win at all costs. You have to have the upper hand. Now, don't get me wrong, women can feel like that too, but not as a culture, it's just individual, so it's nowhere near as toxic. Kivel and his colleagues found that the man box has these following rules. Never lose. Have no needs. Suffer in silence. Show no emotions, except bravado and anger. Be independent. Show no weakness. These are findings that come from asking men over the years, lots of different questions about what it is to be a man. And even now, it still shows that the man box still exists. When you ask men questions like how strongly they agree or disagree with statements such as Society as a whole tells me that a man who talks a lot about his worries, fears, and problems shouldn't really get respect. Now, I wish everyone listening to this would tick the strongly disagree box, but as a population, it's a 50 50 split in the UK. Half disagree, but half agree. And it's even worse in the US. It was 57% agree. Yucky, yucky. What about Society as a whole tells me that a man should always have the final say about the decisions in his relationship or marriage? Now, in the US it was 55% agree, only 46% agree in the UK, but it's still higher than the 0% that it should be. It is not good for a boy to be taught how to cook, sew, clean the house and take care of younger children. Again, it should be zero. Of course it's good to learn how to be a fully functioning human, but no. Men still say that society tells them that it's not good. In the UK, only 46%, which is slightly low within the US's 52%, but again, still higher than the zero that it should be. So the man box still exists and creates toxic masculinity leading to many men not admitting when they've made a mistake, never learning from the mistake, not asking for help. Now these figures change when you ask them in a different way. Remember, I started each of those statements with Society as a whole tells me that. When you ask them the same questions, but you start it with, In my opinion, the figures are healthier, they're still bad, but it shows that there is a mismatch between what people think for themselves and what they think others are thinking. It's part of what we call pluralistic ignorance, which is the term meaning to assume that your own attitudes are in the minority when they're actually the majority. We see it in first year university students a lot. You can do these simple studies asking about binge drinking. If you ask students how drunk they would like to get, it's almost always lower than how drunk they think everyone else is going to get, which makes them deliberately drink faster and drink more, in order to fit in. Except everyone else is trying to fit in as well. And it's only a minority that say they actually want to get staggeringly drunk. That's pluralistic ignorance, and it causes men to assume that most men around them are more sexist than they are, and so at best causes them to not challenge sexist attitudes, and at worst, actively encourage it to try and fit in. Yet they're trying to fit in with a minority rather than a majority. Causing this toxic culture to stay dominant. And it's the same for all things that make up toxic masculinity. Like the bravado thing. Men should use violence to get respect if necessary was one of the statements. When asked about their society's view in the US 51% of men said it was the case, but when asked about their own opinion, it was only 23. Same story in the UK, 40% for society and 25% for their own views. Still crappy though. But it shows that men are trained through culture to act in a particular way, even if they don't want to. But that if they don't, then they're not real men. So this causes two problems. Either men contribute to the toxic culture and cause anxiety for everyone, or they don't contribute, but they feel that they're supposed to, so they cause anxiety in themselves. Either way, the only ones who win are the men who reject this rigid man box and just be themselves. And the only way to do that is for men to know that it exists. To see evidence that it's okay to not fit in with these rigid rules that define what being a real man is. To counteract the pluralistic ignorance. We know through loads of studies that if men see other men acting in healthy ways, whether it's about talking about wearing condoms, not drinking when driving, quitting smoking, asking for help. When men see proof that other men do actually act in these ways, it gives them permission to do the same, like the old phrase, so often attributed to Gandhi, Be the change that you want to see in the world. He never actually said that, by the way. It's certainly the sort of thing that he would say though. He did prescribe to that attitude, definitely. And it's one of the ways that men can make a difference, not just to the next generation of men growing up, but the current one too. One group of words that crops up a lot when you ask men to pick words to describe what it is to be manly are things like passionate, eager and enthusiastic. Which is all great, but It can keep men in their man box when it's only okay to be passionate about sport, say. It's only okay to be eager to take charge or enthusiastic about digging a hole. 'cause when you are out of the man box, you can be passionate about everything. You can be eager to take part in anything you want. Enthusiastic about life. There lies a happy life folks. But men do need to break away from those rigid rules first. Someone recently told me that their boyfriend isn't doing too well. He knows it. She knows it. Everyone in his life knows it. He's not been thinking straight probably for decades, maybe all of his life. Who knows? And she has often suggested that he talks to someone about his problems and not for the first time he screamed at her. You will never get me to go and talk to someone ever. And stormed out of the room. And he's not alone in that attitude. 'cause admitting you have an issue ticks so many on the not a real man list. The man box rules might as well just say reject therapy. Never lose. Have no needs suffer in silence. Show no emotions except bravado and anger. Be independent. Show no weakness. It's nonsense. And absolutely needs to be rejected as a concept. We need to rewrite the man box rules so that real men lose. Real men have needs. Real men open up. Real men cry. Real men ask for help. Real men are vulnerable. Because denying this reality means men are less likely to seek any sort of help, whether that's around the house, about that weird lump they've found, or about their mental health. It means they're less likely to admit that they'd like a hot chocolate for a change in the coffee shop, or they'd like to tickle that puppy behind the ear or put on a coat when the temperature weirdly drops 10 degrees outta nowhere like it did last week. All the silly, little, simple things that mean that life is better. But if those simple things aren't on the real man list. Then they're gonna fear rejection from their peers. And of course, avoiding rejection is a primal instinct in all of us. Being part of a tribe kept our species going when times were tough. So whilst there's nothing inherently toxic about wanting validation, respect, and acceptance. It causes problems when men are taught through society, that the only way to be validated, respected, and accepted is to dominate in some way, and those things aren't linked. I think we should be teaching men that it's manly to be passionate about anything. It doesn't have to be sport. It doesn't have to be winning and fighting in some way, whether that's fighting in a boxing ring or fighting some cultural difference. Be passionate without seeing enemies. I guess this is about emotional education as well. If men are told that the only emotion they have is anger, then when, that happens, they won't see what's underneath it. And if they can't even see their grief or guilt or embarrassment, how the hell are you supposed to process it and move on from it? You can't. So by redefining masculinity away from all those toxic components we can create not just a better place for men but a better place for everyone. But if someone has grown up in what we are calling the man box, where stepping outside of the box means ridicule or rejection, then even a healthy relationship skill can feel threatening. The box says, don't cry, don't need, don't bend, don't lose, don't let her have the final say, don't look soft. And then we wonder why some men feel lonely in the relationships they're in, that they desperately want to keep. It's tragic when you think about it because underneath a lot of controlling behaviour is not confidence. It's fear. Underneath a lot of bravado is insecurity. Underneath a lot of emotional distance is a boy who's learned that closeness was costly. And none of that excuses hurtful behaviour, by the way. Understanding is not the same as excusing. Boundaries still matter. If someone is rude, controlling, frightening, manipulative, or violent, then the reasons why do not erase the impact on the people around them. They just help explain how the pattern got there in the first place. That distinction matters because this isn't about bashing men. It's about freeing them from a system that damages them and then damages everyone around them as well. In fact, women will never be truly free from the patriarchy until men are. That's the irony of it. The same set of beliefs that tells women to stay small also tells men that they must stay emotionally amputated. Nobody wins. So what do we do about it? Well, first we name it properly. We stop pretending that stoicism is always strength. Sometimes it's just fear in a nice suit. We stop praising emotional shutdown as resilience. Sometimes it's dissociation. We stop treating boys as if their emotional world is somehow simpler than girls. It isn't. It's often just less welcomed. Second, we teach emotional language early, not just happy, sad, angry. More than that. Disappointed, embarrassed, rejected, powerless, ashamed, left out, guilty, lonely, overwhelmed. The more words someone has for their internal world, the less likely they are to act it out sideways. And that's true for everyone, but especially for boys who have been raised in environments where emotional vocabulary was seen as a bit cringe. Thirdly, we need to model better versions of strength. A strong man can apologise, A strong man can be gentle. A strong man can hear the word no without falling apart. A strong man can ask for help before he breaks. A strong man can cry at a funeral and still change a tyre and still protect his family and still be fully himself. Those things are not opposites. They never were. And fourth, we need to get more comfortable with discomfort. Because challenging toxic masculinity doesn't always feel nice at first. It can feel clunky, embarrassing, exposed, a bit fake, even. If you're not used to saying, I'm hurt or I'm anxious. Then the first few times you say it, you'll probably feel ridiculous. That's okay. Most new things feel awkward before they feel natural. Bit like dancing, really. Most dads at a wedding look as if they've been electrocuted for the first two songs, and eventually they loosen up a bit. It's the same principle, really. So if you are someone listening to this and you're thinking, oh hell, this is me a bit, then please don't turn it into another reason to attack yourself. That would just be the same old pattern in a different outfit. The point isn't to feel ashamed for having learned these rules. You didn't make the culture, you inherited most of it. The point of all of this is to notice it, question it, and decide what sort of man you actually want to be from here. That's where the power is. Not in pretending you were never affected. In being honest that you were and changing anyway. So you might ask yourself a few things. What emotions do I allow myself to feel? What emotions do I judge in myself? What do I do when I feel helpless? What did I learn growing up about what makes a man respectable? Whose voice do I hear in my head when I'm struggling? Now, perhaps most importantly, what would be different in my life if I no longer believed that vulnerability was weakness? Sit with that one for a little while. 'cause I think for a lot of men, the life they actually want is on the other side of that question. Better friendships, better relationship, better parenting, better mental health, better sleep, maybe less alcohol, less rage, less loneliness, more peace. And that's not about becoming less masculine. It's about becoming less frightened of simply being human. That's all this is really. So whether you're raising boys, loving a man, working with men, or trying to unpick this in yourself, remember that change doesn't begin with humiliation. It begins with safety. People don't open up because they're shamed into it. They open up because something finally feels safe enough. Safe enough to tell the truth. Safe enough to feel. Safe enough to not know. Safe enough to say, I need a hand with this. And honestly, that might be one of the bravest things anyone can say. Anyway, I've overran a bit today. Gotta go things to do. I'll be back on Friday, of course, with my short weekly bonus episode. In the meantime, don't watch too much news. Take some social media breaks if you like. Listen to some happy tunes and some good podcasts. Join me on Patreon if you like, and I'll be back before you know it. See ya.