Extract from: Whitehead, S. (2019) Toxic Masculinity: Curing the virus. Making men smarter, healthier, safer’, Chapter 3. Acorn Books, UK. pp.26-32.
Anyone writing about toxic masculinity is assured of one thing – there is no shortage of examples. During the 48 hours that I began work on this chapter, these were just a few of the international news headlines relating to toxic masculine behaviour:
Saudis ‘tortured female activists by electrocution and flogging’
Teen girl auction on Facebook without company’s bosses noticing
Gunman kills three people at Chicago Hospital
Man deliberately mowed down Chinese children, killing 5: police
Payout over British primary schoolboys’ sex assaults on girl, 6
“Why I send photos of my genitals to women”
One dead and 11 wounded in attack at Chinese College
Six boys arrested for ‘gang sex attack’ at Toronto private school
Allegations of rape and child molestation made against British youth charity volunteers
Man hurled racist slurs and punch at FedEx driver – then died after he was punched back.
Outrage in Paraguay after Brazil cartel boss kills woman in his prison cell
South Korean cult leader gets 15 years in jail for raping followers
Quadruple stabbing in north London linked to minicab shooting
Girl who wrote essay on gun violence is killed by stray bullet
26 year old man charged in ‘biggest sexual offence charge’ in Norway’s history
Mobs attack women near India Hindu temple
On the first day of that week, Monday 19th November 2018, The Gun Violence Archive of America recorded 63 separate shootings, leaving at least 11 dead.
Horrific as that violence is, it was nothing remarkable – just another seven days during which men murdered, raped, abused, violated and exercised their power over women. But by its sheer ordinariness so is revealed its true horror. Male violence and aggression so common, society has become hardened to it.
Femicide is the world’s unseen crisis. But nurse Dawn Wilcox is one woman keeping count. From her home in Texas, she runs Women Count USA, and every day she adds 50 more names of women killed by men in America. As Dawn puts it;
“Violence against women is so ubiquitous that it is invisible. That one nurse in Texas can find 1,600 women that have been allegedly murdered by men in the United States in a single year, that is staggering…Violence against women is normalized. And because it’s normalized we don’t see it as a crisis.”
One reason why we don’t confront the horror of male violence against women, is that too often we’d prefer to assuage our complicity and instead, blame the victims: ‘wrong place, wrong time’, ‘shouldn’t have been wearing a short skirt’, shouldn’t have gone home alone in that taxi’, ‘shouldn’t have stayed out late’, ‘should have checked the lock on that window’, ‘shouldn’t have married him’, should have not been there at all. Just unlucky. How many women have been unlucky? How many more will be unlucky?
Toxic masculinity is without doubt the most damaging and dangerous form of masculinity out there. It is damaging and dangerous not only for society but also for the men who have it. Unfortunately, it is also the most common. It encompasses everything from ritualised hazing in universities, to the macho politics and posturing of men such as Duterte, Trump, Putin, Erdogan and Bolsonaro. It is explicit in video games, many sports, most brotherhoods, and all criminal gangs. The armed forces of every country actively encourage it. It is embedded in the machismo of Central and South American cultures, the tribalism of Africa, the religious hegemonies of the Middle East and the caste systems of South Asia. The toxic masculine virus has infected every region on earth – nowhere has proved immune. Children are expressing it at pre-school, bosses are expressing it at work, the internet is expressing it everywhere.
Are Things Getting Worse?
In which case, one can conclude that as far as global gender politics is concerned, things have never been worse?
Actually, things have definitely been worse. At least according to psychologist, Steven Pinker:
It’s not just violence that one sees progress, but in poverty, in illiteracy, in access to small luxuries like beer or televisions. The percentage of the world getting an education, in gender parity in education – girls are going to school all over the world. Even in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the world’s most retrograde countries, the rate of female education has increased.
Yes, counter-intuitively, the evidence does reveal an unmistakable trend towards less violence, more freedom of expression, higher levels of education, greater gender equality, and more individual empowerment. And that is not just in the West, but globally. Much as it may surprise you to learn, evidence does suggest that, globally, humankind is slowly going through the ‘civilising process’ suggested by the German sociologist, Norbert Elias, many decades ago.
However, it is no coincidence that any ‘civilising process’ as predicted by Elias and now empirically confirmed by Pinker, has occurred in tandem with the emergence of modern feminism. All the points made by Pinker refer to changes in the behaviour of women and a change for the better in terms of their rising expectations and aspirations. This change has fed directly into the emergence of smarter, healthier forms of masculinity emerging globally over the past few decades. For me, that is the single biggest factor in any rise in civilising behaviour. For feminism never was and is not now only about women. The rise in feminism has been increasingly impacting on men at least since the 1970s and that impact is now going mainstream. Increasing numbers of men are waking up to the fact that feminism is liberating for them also, not just for women. We cannot get more civilised by behaving as we’ve done throughout history. There has to be an intervention and feminism has been it. The rise in women’s expectations is percolating through to all the genders and all the sexes.
But while our expectations are now higher than in the past, it needs to be recognised that we are starting from a depressingly low base line. During my childhood, gay men were imprisoned; single mothers risked being put in mental health institutions and having their babies taken away; orphaned children which shipped off to Australia in their thousands, landlords were allowed to put up ‘no blacks allowed’ signs, few people had ever heard the term ‘paedophile’; equal opportunities legislation was not even an aspiration; only 1.2% of women went to university; and the patriarchal family was the norm – for all social classes.
And that was the UK during the 1950s and into the 1960s. Go back to the first half of the last century, which saw countless millions slaughtered in the name of empire, fascism, communism, religion or simply because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and one can see very clearly that life was pretty frightful for most people. And this violence was led by men, executed by men, done in the name of man, and carried with it the expectation of being manly.
It is not too difficult for an educated 21st century man or woman to spot the gender in history, but throughout history few people have identified war and violence as a particular problem of men. I am not aware of anyone back in the 1930s accusing Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini of having toxic masculinity. Which tells us that perspective is everything, as is hindsight.
Men have been performing toxic masculinity for as long as there have been men. And for the most part this form of masculinity has gone unchallenged – it has rarely been analysed as problematic male behaviour. Humanity assumed this was how men behaved; it was in their nature. Much of humanity still believes this myth. Masculinity didn’t suddenly become toxic with the introduction of the MeToo movement. The dominant form of masculinity has always been toxic. The difference today is that many women and increasing numbers of men are not accepting this as the ‘norm’ for males. They are, quite rightly, challenging this gendered condition and expecting something better from men.
In other words, masculinity only become recognised as being ‘toxic’ when society labelled it so. And since 2016, society has done just that.
However, labelling ‘toxic’ that which has historically been accepted as ‘traditional male behaviour’ creates some problems. There are now a lot of very confused, fearful, and angry, men – left stranded with a masculinity which once was valued, once was the norm, once was aspirational, but which is now recognised for what it is: damaging and corrosive.
The Definition
Societal change can be overwhelming, especially in the age of social media, but it is neither neutral nor benign. It operates through so many unforeseen variables that predicting the future is impossible.
Who could have predicted the term ‘toxic masculinity’ becoming so ubiquitous that Oxford University Dictionaries would make ‘toxic’ the 2018 Word of the Year? Certainly not I. When myself and my fellow authors introduced the term into the academic lexicon, in 2013, we certainly recognised its potency though perhaps not its potential.
Within many masculine cultures and value systems, male aggression is not considered problematic; indeed, it is actually lauded. Criminal gangs, the armed forces, militaristic and totalitarian societies are where we are most likely to witness and experience “toxic masculinity”: that is, aggressive male behaviour that is fundamentally corrosive to society and to individuals, including those who perform it: such behaviour continues to be expressed by, indeed attracts to it, males of all ages, cultures, ethnicities and social statuses.
The key word in that quotation is ‘aggressive’. Toxic masculinity is nothing if not aggressive in essence, and as I discuss below, that aggression can be both externalised and internalised by the person performing it.
But many years before the publication of that definition, gender sociologists like myself had already recognised dominant masculinity as a major problem affecting global society. And the name we gave that problem was ‘hegemonic masculinity’.
Hegemonic masculinity
Hegemony refers to the ability to impose a particular culture, value system, social system on a group, organisation, or society. The word originates from Antonio Gramsci and is used especially by Marxist and structuralist theoreticians. The term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ was first devised by Carrigan et al but is mostly associated with gender sociologist, Raewyn Connell .
Hegemonic masculinity [is] a form of male behaviour and expression of male identity that seeks to reinforce men’s power and patriarchal values. Based on characteristics such as competition, ambition, self-reliance, physical strength, aggression, and homophobia.
The image of masculinity that is perpetrated [by hegemonic masculinity] involves physical toughness, the endurance of hardships, aggressiveness, a rugged heterosexuality, and unemotional logic…
Toxic masculinity is, in effect, the mainstream term for hegemonic masculinity, with the latter being the concept adopted by sociologists and psychoanalysts since the late 1980s.
For over thirty years, as a theory of male power, hegemonic masculinity has been used extensively by gender theorists to examine male behaviour in countless social and organisational settings. And in that regard, it has proved very useful. However, as an explanation of male identity, the term has also been subject to critique, not least because we must not assume a simple or linear relationship between how men act, how men perceive themselves, how men want to behave, and the naked pursuit of male power exemplified in the term hegemonic masculinity.
It is clear that not all men perform hegemonic masculinity, nor seek to. Many men actively resist the behaviours which hegemonic masculinity personifies. Many men recognise they are emotionally and mentally damaged by trying to always be stoical, strong, inexpressive – powerful. Many men have little or no power at all in society. And it is very difficult to find an exemplar of hegemonic masculinity. In the past it might have been typified by John Wayne, Mike Tyson and General Patton. But was it ever clearly exemplified by Cary Grant, Pele, J.F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela or Mohammed Ali?
What hegemonic masculinity does is alert us to the fact that men, of whatever race, ethnicity, religion or culture, may strive for power and dominance over women and other men, and even though they may never achieve it, there is always the element of competition, of wanting to be one up on the other guy. This macho behaviour is embedded in so many societies and cultures that it is extremely hard to eradicate. It has come to define what it means to be a ‘proper’ man.
Secondly, hegemonic masculinity explains the pre-occupation, if not fear, that many straight men have towards the feminine, especially when expressed by gay men. Straight men will desire the feminine in order to possess it and gain pleasure from it, but most certainly do not want to be identified with it, personally or culturally.
Thirdly, hegemonic masculinity creates emotional constipation in the man. He is not permitted, under this toxic regime, to express emotions other than those which traditionally correspond with maleness; he has to be stoical or aggressive, angry or withdrawn, unwilling to communicate or shouting at the top of his voice. He is unable to reflect on his deepest feelings, unwilling and fearful of delving into his true motives and desires. Hegemonic masculinity emotionally castrates a man even while it purports to pump up his libido.
Finally, hegemonic masculinity validates a man’s physical strength. Men are built with muscles and expected to be strong, along with all the behaviours which can arise from that. Therefore, it can be no surprise if a dominant masculinity reinforces their sense of needing to express their physical power over others.
So, what about the estimated 15% of males who are gay or bi, how do they relate to hegemonic masculinity? Sociologists have identified diverse gay masculinities operating in various locales, and these can include a version of hegemonic masculinity. Gay men too can be bullies, violent and sexual abusers. However, for the most part, gays remain excluded from those male cultures which pursue hegemonic (toxic) masculinity, because for straight men with toxic masculinity, the gay man remains ‘the other’; the antithesis of himself.
Whether one wishes to the use the sociological term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ or the mainstream term ‘toxic masculinity’ in effect they refer to the same thing: males striving to be powerful, desiring to appear macho, wanting to look ‘strong’, behaving competitively, negatively, aggressively, often violently, while at the same time being unable to emotionally empathise with others nor recognise their own emotional vulnerability and dysfunctionality.
Externalising Toxic Masculinity
While gender sociologists have been researching masculinity for decades, it took one person who was definitely not a sociologist to unwittingly throw the problem open to the global gaze. That person was film mogul, Harvey Weinstein. At time of writing, Weinstein has not been convicted of any offence, though he has been charged with rape. More than 80 women in the film industry have made accusations rape, sexual abuse and sexual harassment against him, some going back 30 years. Weinstein’s exposure, on 5 October 2017, by the New York Times and the New Yorker was the trigger. Within days, the fall of powerful men began. By early February 2018, the New York Times had recorded 71 men ‘accused of sexual misconduct’ and who had ‘fallen from power’ as a consequence. They included Kevin Spacey, Mark Halperin and Roy Price.
However, we need to go back a year, to 2016, to see the emergence of the term ‘toxic masculinity’ in the media. In October of that year, The Representation Project produced a short video titled ‘How Toxic Masculinity Dominated 2016’:
“This has been a tumultuous year. Whether because of high-profile campus sexual assault cases, mass shootings and the harmful language used by the President-elect, these are all the result of a hyper-masculine culture that values traits such as dominance, aggression, and control, over empathy, care and compassion. The result is a culture of toxic masculinity that permeates society. Whether it’s bullying others, demeaning or degrading women, or placing a value on money and power above all else, these ideas and expectations are dangerous and need to be addressed at the dinner table, in our local communities, and on the national stage.”
In some respects, Harvey Weinstein’s exposure reflected what was already emerging in the zeitgeist, at least in America. From the early noughties, the UK had experienced similar sexual abuse and harassment scandals by high profile men, notably Jimmy Savile, the MP Cyril Smith, Gary Glitter and Rolf Harris, though no critical discussion emerged about their masculinity. For the most part, their abusive behaviour was simply put down to their paedophilic tendencies.
The moment paedophilia, male sexual harassment and a host of other lethal and harmful behaviours caught up with toxic masculinity and went global was 16 October, 2017, when the #MeToo hashtag was born on Twitter by Alyssa Milano. A year later and the world had changed and it is not going back to what it was. What has now emerged is a new gender consciousness in women that wasn’t apparent even a few years ago. It is global and cuts across lines of class, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion and age. It is born out of anger and frustration at the behaviour of men. The recognition that this behaviour is not new but historic only serves to drive women’s will to confront it, resist it, and name it.
To recognise how men’s toxic masculinity is expressed as practice is challenging, not least because while I have identified it under the generic heading ‘aggressiveness’, placing that as the primary impulse, in reality that impulse can manifest itself in any number of ways. Here are the main ones:
Bullying
Racism
Physical Violence
Verbal Violence
Physical Abuse
Verbal Abuse
Repeated Threatening Behaviour
Misogyny
Sexism
Sexual Objectification
Assault
Harassment
Homophobia
Ritualised Male Bonding
Male-Only Brotherhoods
Machismo
Rape
Paedophilia
Clearly, toxic masculinity encompasses a wide range of behaviours and is not exclusive to any one class, sexuality, ethnicity nor race. Some men who exhibit it will be vehemently anti-racist but also paedophiles and sex abusers. Other men may be anti-racist, but verbally violent and bullying towards people. Lots of men with toxic masculinity may simply enjoy being members of a men-only brotherhood, not violent at all, but ignorant of how their masculine practice feeds into sexism and, ultimately, misogyny. Some will be boys and teenagers, searching for peer approval, thereby leading them to conform to toxic masculine behaviours – even if so doing damages their life possibilities. Toxic masculinity can be further linked to drinking cultures which not only reduce male inhibitions but strengthen male bonding and sexist behaviour.
The externalisation of toxic masculinity is where men’s individual practice visibly impacts on an individual and on society. The moment an aggressive act is committed by a man so we can see toxic masculinity in action. It is not difficult to identify toxic masculinity when it expressed as random shootings by men in America, men attacking children with knives in Chinese kindergartens, or men jailers committing atrocities against prisoners in a Syrian prison.
Nor is it difficult to equate toxic masculinity with the fact that, worldwide, over one third (35%) of women who have been in a relationship report experiencing some form of physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner in their lifetime. Millions of women are at risk of death and injury from men on a daily basis. Indeed, based on the global evidence, it is reasonable to assume that perhaps 70% of women will experience a pattern of repeated abuse from a male partner at some point in their lives. The United Nations recently reported that an average of 137 women a day are killed by their partner or family member. Of the 87,000 women killed in 2017, half were reported as dying at the hands of those closest to them. In the UK, 76% of the 139 women killed by men in 2017 knew their killer. This data confirms something gender sociologists have long known; “that the home is the most likely place for a woman to be killed”.
Raneem (19) met Janbaz (20) when they were both studying at Solihull College, Birmingham, UK. She (Raneem) quickly fell in love with the swarthy, handsome young man from Afghanistan. They married in a Muslim ceremony a year later. Within weeks of the marriage Janbaz was being abusive to Raneem, threatening to kill her if she ever left him. However, when Raneem discovered her husband had a secret wife and children in Afghanistan, she did leave, in July 2017. His threats towards her then become more terrifying and she applied for a non-molestation order against him. Janbaz flouted that order and spent two days hunting for his ex-wife. He eventually found her, at her mother’s home, on 27 August. He attacked Raneem, stabbing her twice in the chest, when her mother tried to save her daughter, Janbaz stabbed her too. In December, 2018, Janbaz was sentenced to life imprisonment for double murder.
This is just one tragic and terrifying example of the externalisation of toxic masculinity in relationships. And it is an example that gets repeated every single day in every single country.
But we also need to recognise how toxic masculinity informs our everyday world: organisational cultures, leadership and management practices, sports fandom, social media, politics, educational under-achievement, and how it gets strengthened by ideologies promoting racial, sexual and national superiority.
Toxic masculinity is so engrained in society we interpret it as a ‘progressive act’ when urban planners start focusing on how to design cities so as to make the streets safer for women, enabling them feel more secure when moving around a city. We applaud when trains and subway cars start having ‘women only’ carriages. We consider it a sensible move when cities such as Seoul find it necessary to introduce women-only taxis. And we look with some incredulity when a quarter of a million Japanese women feel it necessary to download an app designed to stop men groping them on rush-hour trains. This is how bad it is. So bad we have stopped seeing it. A terrible indictment of modern man and for which every man should feel some shame and take responsibility for seeing it doesn’t continue.
The unpleasant reality is, global society is infested with toxic masculinity to the extent that it has become the primary definer of human society.
Recognising toxic masculinity when it does get externalised is, however, becoming easier. For the first time in human history, there is a global critical conversation taking place about men and their masculinities, something unthinkable just a few years ago. We are now making the crucial connect between masculinity and violence. We are awake to it. The MeToo movement is a key aid to this process, enabling women around the world to speak out and identify male abusers, rapists, bullies, and harassers.
That conversation is the essential beginning. But it is not the end, by any means. We need to look beyond the physical and verbal expressions of toxic masculinity and into how the virus gets internalised in men’s brains.
Internalising Toxic Masculinity
Long before Stephen Paddock went to the Mandalay Hotel on the Las Vegas strip on 1 October, 2017, aimed his .223-caliber AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle at Harvest Music Festival concertgoers, and shot dead 58 people and left another 851 injured, he had fully internalised toxic masculinity. We know this because his actions are inexplicable. They are those of an angry, confused, and emotionally dysfunctional man. But a man sane, rationale and determined enough to have spent months preparing for this moment; planning the slaughter of many people, with the intent of killing himself at the end of it. Toxic masculinity is, in such cases, motive enough. Any other motive, e.g. racism, money worries, social isolation, divorce, misogyny, is just peripheral; an ‘excuse’ to vent the hatred that already festers within the man. There can be no rationale justification for such an act. Toxic masculinity is the only explanation we need.
But what drives toxic masculinity to take root in a man’s brain? There will be numerous answers, but most will come back to power; the desire to acquire it, the fear of losing it, or the need to hold on to it. And, of course, behind the power issue is the ever-present question of identity; a male requiring validation of his manliness, a masculine subject in search of the ever-elusive masculine in himself. A man in fear of who he might be and forever dissatisfied with who he thinks he is.
One very clear but tragic result of men internalising toxic masculinity is depression and suicidal feelings. Suicide has, for some years now, been the leading cause of death in UK men under 50 years of age. In Australia, men are three times more likely to die from suicide than women and four times more likely in Russia and Argentina. World Health Organization data reveals that 40% of countries have more than 15 suicide deaths per 100,000 men; only 1.5% show a rate that high for women.
Mike was always a man’s man. He was born into a London (East End) family that was led by a father who encouraged all the laddish behaviours in his son; drinking, sport, lots of girlfriends, fancy cars and ambition; playing hard, working hard. What Mike never learned to do was reveal his feelings, show his emotions. By the time he was 35 he had, on the surface, the ‘perfect life’: loving wife, two small children, lots of mates, and high-flying career as a successful financial advisor. “I felt I had to be one of the lads to fit in. But in the end, it did me in. I had suffered bouts of depression and anxiety while at university, but reckoned I could get over it. But I was kidding myself. Then I got promoted at work but handed a lot more pressure, one of my kids got taken ill and suddenly I was bottling up all this emotional stuff. I felt stressed and adrift but couldn’t admit it to anyone. I never really believed in myself, it was all just an act. Trying to always ‘man up’ was actually killing me. I started drinking more, doing some drugs, staying out at night with my pals, coming home in the early hours. By the time I finally faced up to my depressive state, my marriage was almost over. I remember the first time I went for therapy. I just cried my eyes out. For me, therapy had always been a dirty word. But in the end, it saved my life.”
Invariably, the process of internalising and conforming to toxic masculinity starts early, certainly before adulthood.
Early adolescents’ (boys and girls) conformity to traditional masculinity (at middle school) links with depressive symptoms and academic engagement…One developmental milestone for early adolescents is the need to develop a shared social identity with one’s peers. This development brings with it a collective conformity to specific masculine scripts.
The medium through which toxic masculinity inculcates the subjectivities of males is language. Language is a central definer of the self and consequently has serious political dimensions attached to it. When young males are told “boys will be boys”; that “boys don’t cry”; that it is important to “man up” and “don’t be a sissie”, they are being fed the discourse of toxic masculinity. They are being infected by a way of thinking and self-identification which pardons, if not lauds, their aggression, emotional distancing, sexual violations, and renders their subjectivity separate from that of the female. This is the drive which forces them to seek male identity validation through a hegemonic masculine culture of compulsory heterosexuality, male honour and pride, and ultimately leads to the subordination of women. This, in turn, creates a masculinist culture which feeds and translates into university hazing rituals, date rape, sexual assault, attempted rape, bullying, homophobia and misogyny and emotional repression. Recognising this fact makes everyone responsible, especially the parents.
“Accountability is not just about taking the famous wrong-doers to court. It’s about identifying and stopping toxic masculinity at our kitchen tables.”
The desire to be accepted by one’s peers is a central force behind the internalisation of toxic masculinity. It can drive gay men to want to appear straight; straight men to sexually abuse women; and hundreds of thousands of men to suicide.
Anton is a 30-something former professional ice-hockey player who lives in Montreal. He is black and gay. Both his parents are highly religious and homophobic. Anton never felt able to come out as a gay man, and his sporting abilities meant that he was always surrounded by men exhibiting toxic masculinity. He was lauded as an athlete, but marginalised as a black man and as a gay. For years he pretended to be straight; “dressing in straight men’s gear, going to strip clubs with my teammates, appearing to like girls, and drinking a lot. I was trying to perform masculinity like the others”. This performance, driven by shame and fear, cost Anton his mental health and he succumbed to depression, eventually attempting suicide. Only after he came out as a gay man and began the journey of self-acceptance did he overcome the toxic masculinity which had effectively crushed him. “I had to learn to love myself. All parts of me, not just the bits that society valued the most.”
Anton spent much of his early life, terrified. Terrified of being exposed as a ‘lesser man’ than his peers. This is toxic masculinity internalised and emotionally felt as shame and disgust. Not until he was able to overcome this self-rejection could Anton move on and become the man he was always capable of being.
The stereotypes that have historically surrounded boys and men are now under question. They are increasingly recognised as falsehoods, myths, lies and fictions we tell ourselves. But they remain potent and there won’t be a boy in the world, to this day, who is not exposed to them in some way or another.
If society claims that ‘boys will be boys’ when they behave badly, that same society invariably says ‘men will be men’ when they too behave badly; badly behaved boys growing into dangerous men. Overcoming this self-fulfilling prophecy is essential to reducing the likelihood of males internalising toxic masculinity. And that internalisation is evidenced by the following:
Compulsive domination
Inability to empathise
Resentfulness
Low emotional intelligence
Addictive behaviour
Quick and habitual anger
Possessiveness
Emotional illiteracy
Obsessive identification through work
Jealousy
victimhood
Unreflective
Fear of showing weakness
Inability to communicate
Unwillingness to learn
Fragile masculine pride
Feelings of emasculation
Negativity towards feminism and women’s and LGBT+ rights
All the above traits have one thing in common: they indicate a lack of maturity. Any man with toxic masculinity will not be able to fully mature until he makes the journey out of that cave (see chapter 10). My own research suggests that most men do not mature at least until their 40s, and many do not mature at all. They remain rooted to boyish pastimes, childhood memories, juvenile behaviours; often re-enacting episodes from their schooldays, especially those concerning rejection, shame, guilt, embarrassment and disappointment.
These men fail to adapt and develop. And what holds them back is the fear of doing so. To mature as an individual, one must be comfortable in one’s skin and take emotional risks with one’s identity. Toxic masculinity denies that possibility. The reason being, is it essentially an externally validated model of male identity. It requires, as in the example of Anton, not self-validation but external validation by other men, and, to a lesser extent, women. Anton was only able to overcome the imposed limitations of toxic masculinity once he began to love himself for who and what he was.
It is important here to recognise that while toxic masculinity desires the female, it does so primarily as an accompaniment, an adornment of the masculine ego. For most such men, the women in their lives are not the ones who validate their masculinity. It is other men who serve that role. We can see the importance of this in male brotherhoods, in male bonding rituals, in male-only environments, and in the culture of ‘bromance’, with increasing numbers of men admitting they prefer the company of their male friends to that of any woman. This trend might be seen as a challenge to homophobic behaviour, but it can also be seen as further evidence of the erosion of intimacy between men and women.
The male who has internalised toxic masculinity has, in essence, denied himself the chance to become his own man. Instead, he is on a hopeless quest for a male myth, a masculine archetype, be it ‘warrior’, ‘king’, ‘hero’, ‘adventurer’, ‘lover’, ‘wizard’. As I examine in Chapter 9, this quest is all too often the result of the male’s toxic relationship with his father.
Stephen Paddock was none of these archetypes, and he knew it. Every day of his existence only served to reinforce his isolation, his sense of failure, his acknowledgement that he was, in his own mind, a loser. He was living in a world where he had little self-worth. Eventually, the disconnect between how he saw himself and how he wanted others to see him, was too much. He chose suicide, but not before a final, deadly, kick at society.
Incel: The Male Fundamentalist
Like most people, the first time I came across the term ‘incel’ was in April 2018. On Wednesday 25th April, newspaper reports revealed that the man accused of carrying out the Toronto van attack the day before, killing 10 and injuring 15, allegedly had links to ‘involuntary celibate’ online communities.
The realisation that there were men out there, misogynistic, anti-feminist, right-wing, emotionally unhinged, and full of self-loathing was not new to me. What was new and disturbing was waking up to the fact that these men were out to kill people for no other reason than the fact no woman apparently wants them.
Incels obsess over their own unattractiveness – dividing the world into alphas and betas, with betas just your average, frustrated idiot dude, and omegas, as the incels often call themselves, the lowest of the low, scorned by everyone – they then use that self-acceptance as an insulation. They feel this makes them untouchable in their quest for supremacy over sluts.
The misogynistic mentality of the incel is not new. It didn’t suddenly emerge in 2018. It has been around ever since men have. What is different today is that social media has provided a ‘safe’ space for such men to connect and mutually articulate what is in their heads. In effect, they have ‘come out’ as women haters. They no longer feel compelled to hide in shame, stay concealed, pretend to like women.
“women are the cause of our suffering. They are the ones who unjustly made our lives a living hell. We need to focus more on our hatred of women. Hatred is power.”
The twisted hatred that festers in the mind of an incel is the most extreme example of toxic masculinity to date. But their behaviour does have its own sour logic.
- They are isolated and rejected, through as they see it, no fault of their own. Quite simply, no one wants them, they no longer fit into society, certainly they cannot find a woman to love them or desire them. This means they are ontologically adrift. Their desirability as men is reduced to zero. They have no emotional support.
- Having internalised toxic masculinity, they are then prone to externalising it through verbal, and possibly, physical violence. This enables them to reassert their masculine potency, which in turn reinforces their toxic masculine identity.
- These men overcome the terror of isolation through use of social media. They quickly realise there are other men out there, also ‘suffering’ from the same issues, and who have the same fears, angers and hatreds. By connecting with like-minded men, they can then claim to be a social movement, this gives them a spurious credibility, not least in the media.
- Being involuntary celibate becomes its own self-fulfilling motif. It provides a rallying point, a name, an identification. These men overcome the humiliation of being undesirable by being unified; they unite around the label. Being a self-declared ‘incel’ not only gives an existential value to men who otherwise have little of value in their lives, they can have a voice. They instil fear in society; their rage, together with any random acts of violence, gives them a platform. They become a toxic brotherhood.
Whatever the typical incel feels about black men, gay men, handsome men, rich men, men who have lots of girlfriends, or simply men who are happily married and getting laid regularly, the primary focus of their hatred is women, and especially feminists and feminism. Their discourse is fundamentally misogynistic, but also draws nourishment from white supremacy, fascism, and the alt-right. Four years before the Toronto attack, self-confessed incel, Elliot Rodger, stabbed and shot six people in California. He left behind ‘a 141-page manifesto expressing his frustrations over his virginity and his hatred of women’. Another ‘celebrity’ of the incel community is mass-murderer, Chris Harper-Lee: ‘a reclusive figure, obsessed with Nazis and the IRA and without a girlfriend.” Harper-Lee went on a shooting rampage at a college in Oregon in October 2015, killing 10 people. Other murderous men self-identifying as incels, include Scott Beierle (two women murdered, five injured at a yoga studio in Florida) and George Sodini (killing spree at a fitness centre in Pennsylvania ‘because of his struggles to find a girlfriend’).
For the vast majority of people confronted with the bizarre rationale and terrifying behaviour of the incel, it is like being plunged into a dystopian Margaret Atwood novel, with yourself as a reluctant participant. But are all incels uneducated, unintelligent, lacking even a rudimentary understanding of civil values and codes of behaviour? Are they all monsters intent on the subjugation of women? No. And nor is every incel going to be dangerous and violent towards others. Many such men retreat into themselves. Indeed, a significant number of incels commit suicide. However, most will be externally aggressive and likely seek some solace from intense harassment campaigns of women, especially prominent ones, trolling, and doxing of individuals.
One aspect of the incel psychology is their internalisation of limited notions of male beauty. There is a dominant discourse with incels that claims their physical unattractiveness, maybe aligned with low income, means they cannot compete in what they imagine to be the Darwinian struggle to reproduce, to have sex, to find a woman who loves them.
Many incels claim to be the ‘nice guy’, the one who would treat their girlfriend like a princess if she could only overcome her biological obsession with physical attractiveness.
“I have failed to be worthy in the female eyes, that’s the main thing. Life has proven to me that because I look a certain way, no one likes me. That’s a fact. You should know that everything is about looks, money and status, and don’t try if you don’t have it. Give up…I don’t blame women, it’s evolution. Women have to choose this way, they have to choose who can protect their children because they have this need to create, to reproduce. They have to choose carefully and the criteria is this….I’m not sex deprived, I’m love deprived.” (Mo, self-confessed incel,)
Mo is not unintelligent. He is currently completing a PhD in Quantum physics in Leipzig, but he is decidedly limited in his understanding of the shift in the gender order. He lacks reflexivity, and is emotionally immature. Feminism would help him understand better, though he now sees that as the arch enemy. Mo is probably beyond recovery, unless, that is, he can change his sense of masculinity. Right now, he is unable to see how his very performance of masculinity is the problem.
The warped world of the incel is framed around a gender order that is fast disappearing. He sees the world through a biologically deterministic, Darwinian, gendered order but one which has subsequently tilted in favour of females; leaving men like him marooned in a world of male fundamentalism; directionless, purposeless, and angry, with only other incels to connect with. Incels like Mo are living out the macho male codes of yesteryear, an outdated Hollywood exemplar of gender relations, which makes them look sad. And it is leaving them lonely. Their masculine model is less Justine Trudeau, more John Wayne. Their isolation is wholly self-imposed and the tragedy is they cannot see that. They have not been rejected because they are physically unattractive. They have been rejected because of how they think.
The incel has put women on a pedestal, but it is a pedestal most women don’t want to be on. Not if it means them behaving like Stepford Wives or Barbie Dolls. The incel rages against feminism, but in so doing totally fails to understand modern femininity. They cannot relate to women, other than seeing women as oppressors of men like themselves. This understanding of themselves as ‘victims of feminism’ creates a vast subjective gap between themselves and most women. It is a gap that cannot be bridged by treating women as ‘princesses’.
Into this gap plunges male fundamentalism: an extreme version of toxic masculinity. That is, a belief in the natural supremacy of men and an inability to co-exist with those who do not share in the ideology. In that respect, male fundamentalism is like any fundamentalism; it is fed by its own ideology and invariably ends badly. During the past 24 months we have seen this ideology of hatred demonstrated not only by incels but also by ISIS, by the alt-right, and in places as geographically apart as Charlottesville, USA and Christchurch, NZ. Male fundamentalism is nourished by emotional dysfunctionality, and it is this lethal combination which brings us male rampage violence and the autogenic (self-generated) massacre that is so tragically common not only in America but many other parts of the world; from Hungerford to Sinasa, from Beijing to Utoya, the same patterns are apparent, regardless of any publicly declared motivation. Male fundamentalism thrives anywhere men form brotherhoods with the intent of reinforcing misogynistic patriarchal conditions, expressing their communal physicality, sense of grievance, and imposing their omnipresent sense of manliness.
Male fundamentalists such as the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, experience an acute sense of powerlessness and they live with this sometimes for years before they snap. As I discussed in the previous chapter, power is unstable, insecure, not everyone can feel powerful and for many men, the 21st century is definitely an age when they do not. They feel left behind by modern society. They do not fit. They are uprooted, emotionally adrift, they are the ‘left behind’, with no feeling of belonging. Indeed, society becomes their enemy. Their value system, attitudes, whole approach to humanity has become lethal, both for them and for us.
In effect, these men experience a critical and fatal disconnect between how they see themselves and how they imagine society sees them. Their masculine self-image may never have been very robust, but for whatever reason, it crumbles. And in that moment so the resentment, anger, frustration, and hatred, explode.
Although Paddock was one of the most lethal solo-mass shooters in American history, he was by no means unique. It is overwhelmingly men who undertake mass killings. Between 1987 and 2018, only 3 out of 102 mass shooters were female.
The vast majority of males who have toxic masculinity will not go out and kill, maim, rape and abuse, but they definitely have the capacity to do so. The margin between how they think as men and how they may react violently, is distressingly thin. We have seen through history how men, once released from the strictures of dominant moral, legal and social codes, can quickly go on the rampage, and rape is invariably part of their arsenal of oppression and terror.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, particularly the eastern region of the country, has been branded the rape capital of the world. Which is an onerous title to have given the heavy competition from countries such as South Africa, Sudan, India, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria. Even the United States makes it into the top 10 most dangerous countries for women in terms of rape, sexual harassment, coercion into sex, and a lack of access to justice in rape cases.
What is especially telling about rape and its close association to dominant ways of being a man, is the way it inevitably gets used as a weapon of war by men against women, and often against other men. This is nothing more than the expression of brutal male power; the need to feel powerful over others and to express that power through terror, humiliation, pain, sex and violence. As we have seen throughout history, it doesn’t take much for your nice neighbourly man to turn into a rapine monster – all it needs are the right conditions:
Azra was married and had three children before the start of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995):
“These boys they were my neighbours. I remember them as young boys when we got married. One day he (the rapist) came to my house during the war and asked me to show him all the room in the house…He raped me. He beat me so I could not breathe, and he kicked me in the stomach.”
Ana lived in the Croatian town of Vukovar when the war broke out:
“The rapists were people I knew. There were six of them…I had to watch what they did to my daughter and she had to watch what they did to me.”
Crimes against humanity can be analysed as arising from racial, religious, ethnic, political, territorial, historic, cultural, tribal causes. They may simply arise out of a need to survive. But these crimes are always carried out by men. Sure, some women may sometimes collude, but it is men who invariably deliver.
In chapter 6, I describe the three main types of men who are in relationships with women. One of these types is the ‘resister’. I first identified male resisters 15 years ago, when I was researching emerging patterns of masculinity in response to new gender dynamics. I predicted that although there would be an inevitable shift in gender power, and towards women, globally, I claimed this shift would not go unchallenged, especially by those men who cling on to a traditional but increasingly unwanted form of masculinity. The incel is just one of the more disturbing expressions of this resistance and we shouldn’t expect him to disappear anytime soon.
Male fundamentalist attitudes linger just below the surface of many men’s psyche. Which makes the declaration by Andrea Dworkin that “all men are potential rapists” terrifyingly apposite. This suggests that for many men, all that stops them being killers and rapists are any sanctions imposed by their social environment.
A crisis of masculinity
Toxic masculinity emerges as a direct consequence of males’ need for self-validation. Something that males (and females) are always going to require. To expect males to stop seeking self-identification with the society around them is unrealistic. It will never happen. The drive for existential validation and ontological grounding are natural human impulses. We come into this world devoid of an identity and the rest of our time here is spent searching for, acquiring and developing one. Everything we do is, ultimately, orientated towards this single goal; whether it be love, marriage, sex, money, relationships, social status, conflict, a career, or simply, writing a book.
In the past, men had clearly demarked avenues through which they might achieve a sense of being a ‘man’s man’. The sexual division of labour, the public and private divide, industrial work patterns, these all reinforced patriarchal conditions. And arising from these were openings whereby men could strive to ‘be manly’: educational opportunities, leadership and management, the armed forces, building ships, mining coal, the professions, even being a bus driver, all these activities and more like them were available to men and validated traditional masculinity. The societies of yesterday were arranged, primarily, for the benefit of men, not women. But that was yesterday. Very few men will live that existence today, even in developing countries. And those that do risk being displaced by Artificial Intelligence; robots taking their jobs.
The future of men is going to be very different to their past. And if you look at ordinary men today, one can have a lot of sympathy for their predicament. Yes, it is a little scary.
So how are males going to find that masculine validation which seemed so easily achieved for their male ancestors? They are not going to find it in male dominated work environs, because they are in decline. They are not going to find it in educational achievement, because they are now seriously outperformed by females. They are not going to find it marriage, because women are opting out of that arrangement. They are not going to find it being fathers – women are opting out of that also, plus increasing numbers are getting pregnant without a male partner. Men nowadays are not even going to find it as seducers, because women too use Tinder.
The traditional minded man with toxic masculinity has only two options: unlearn toxic masculinity or be marginalised by society.
The crisis of masculinity that was predicted by sociologists through the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, is now with us – but only in part. This crisis is not universal for all men. Many males are not in any state of existential crisis whatsoever. The ‘crisis of masculinity’ thesis too neatly generalises about men and fails to recognise the fact of multiple masculinities. Not all masculinities were in crisis fifty years ago, and nor are they today. It is also important to recognise that fears of a ‘male rabble, a threatening sub-stratum of society’, and men in retreat from ‘feminization and consumerism’ have been a key theme of writings by and on men for centuries.
I do believe there is a crisis of masculinity, but it is a crisis of toxic masculinity. And that is to be welcome. Society needs to go through this process in order to help men change. Those men, such as the incel, who have invested in toxic masculinity are confronting a terrifying existential reality: they feel unwanted. And in that regard, they are correct. They aren’t wanted. These men are very aware that they are living in the wrong era. Mentally and emotionally, they are living in the past, but physically they are living in the 21st century. They do not fit. They have become marginalised, and they sound what they are: frightened and displaced, male refugees from a world which started disappearing around 1960.
In other words, the gender changes we are experiencing today are less a crisis and more a necessary readjustment which society must undertake in respect of its values. Certainly, it is triggering negative and aggressive reactions in many men and the incel is but one example of male fundamentalism trying to fight back. But it is hopefully a process that cannot be halted, and nor should we fear it. It is, in my view, part of an historic civilising journey which humanity has begun, and as Steven Pinker’s research shows, is already resulting in a positive change in behaviour and a heightening of human values.
Importantly, this social revolution it is configuring and enabling the emergence of a new way of being a man: progressive masculinity.
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/science/steven-pinker-future-science.html
[3] Elias, N. (1969) The Civilizing Process. London: Blackwell.
[4] Whitehead, S.M., Talahite, A., Moodley, R. (2013) Gender and Identity. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press (p.246)
[5] Carrigan, T., Connell, B. and Lee, J. (1985) ‘Toward a New Sociology of Masculinity’, Theory and Society, 14, pp.551-604.
[6] Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity.
[7] Gender and Identity (201 (p.22)
[8] Barrett, F.J. (2001) Hegemonic Masculinity: The US Navy in Whitehead and Barrett (eds) The Masculinities Reader, Cambridg: Polity. (p.81)
[9] Whitehead, S.M. (2001) Men and Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity. (Chapter 3)
[10] See Nardi, P. (2000) Gay Masculinities. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
[11] http://therepresentationproject.org/2016-toxic-masculinity/
[12] https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures
[14] https://www.shethepeople.tv/top-stories/home-likely-place-woman-killed
[15] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-46017400
[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Paddock
[17] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190313-why-more-men-kill-themselves-than-women
[18] Rogers, A. A., DeLay, D. and Martin, C.L. (2017) ‘Traditional Masculinity During Middle School Transition: Associations with Depressive Symptoms and Academic Engagement’, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 46:4, pp. 709-724.
[22] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/raw-hatred-why-incel-movement-targets-terrorises-women
[23] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rage-of-the-incels
[24] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/05/25/us/shooting-document.html
[27] https://www.statista.com/statistics/476445/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-shooter-s-gender/
[28] https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/24/world/africa/democratic-congo-rape/index.html
[30] https://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2010/12/systematic-rape-of-bosniak-womens.html
[31] https://www.thejournal.ie/rape-vukovar-croatia-2078516-May2015/
[32] Whitehead, S. (2004) The Many Faces of Men. London: Arrow.
[33] See Whitehead, S. M. (2002) Men and Masculinities: Key Themes and New Directions. Cambridge: Polity.
