16 ms·

My impression is, men are stuck in a world where they are told not to be men. Toxic masculinity is perhaps a thing, but boys are told endlessly how they should

My impression is, men are stuck in a world where they are told not to be men. Toxic masculinity is perhaps a thing, but boys are told endlessly how they shouldn't behave and how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well.

gumby 3y ago
> Girls on the other hand, all is well. This is also far from the case.
- tivert 3y ago
  >> Girls on the other hand, all is well. > This is also far from the case. Yes, all is not well with girls, but I don't think they have to deal with an analog of the condemnation of "toxic masculinity" and messages that "their nature is flawed." I believe their problems are frequently blamed on external actors (e.g. beauty magazines, social media, etc).
  - red_admiral 3y ago
    Depending on the place and time, girls have to deal with being called too fat, too thin, not caring enough about their appearance, caring too much about their appearance, being too prude, being too slutty, and many other things. There is definitely a facet of "your nature is flawed" in a lot of them. You might be right that the question of who exactly is sending and spreading these messages has many answers and external (f)actors definitely come into it. But that too could be said about the claims of toxic masculinity.
    - rich_sasha 3y ago
      That's true actually. I put the "toxic masculinity" bit in a different pigeonhole to the whole "what women should be like". I can see an analogy. One difference is that, I get the impression it's actually women doing a lot of not most of the "too fat/too skinny" bit. Sure, boys/men can be horrible to girls/women but tend not to get hung up on details. The details of "too slutty" etc seems to come from women, peer female friends, women's magazines etc. In that respect I guess it's different, because it's a narrower critique. And it's, hmm, self-inflicted for lack of better word. Whereas with boys, it seems to come from women all around, and woke men too. Girls won't be told by their teachers (you'd hope!) that they are too fat or too skinny, but it's open season to tell boys they have a flawed nature they will have to spend the rest of their lives fixing.
  - EatingWithForks 3y ago
    I think it depends on your culture, but generally women's appearances matter way more than men's appearances and are considered a personal responsibility thing. Simply becoming older and being visibly older is considered a failure of a woman to "age gracefully" or whatever it is that means. But also, I think most of the HN crowd are men, and I don't think we're broadly the populace to discuss with any serious authority whether or not women are raised to blame themselves in some way lol.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    No, women are subject to ridiculous double standards from everything from body shame (too skinny too fat too ugly too pretty too grown too immature) to their clothing, manner of speech, grooming, and on and on. "Toxic masculinity" is a problem because of cultural standards where it is seen as manly to harm others. I know lots of very manly men, who are secure in their manhood where that isn't the least bit toxic. I don't think that, for example, cat-calling is manly. But I would describe it as toxic.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    I think you're gravely misunderstanding the concept of toxic masculinity. It's good that we condemn it, because it directly hurts boys. Toxic masculinity isn't a description of masculinity itself, it's about parts of the social image of masculinity that are toxic. Stuff like "boys shouldn't cry" or "boys should suck up their problems and not talk about them". You don't improve boys' emotional needs by resuming this kind of messaging. Masculinity itself is a wonderful thing and necessary for men to (at least partially) embrace - but not the parts that stunt their development and keep them alone! Instead it should be aspects like reliability, trustworthiness, empathy, confidence, emotional strength - what comes to mind when you think about what makes a good man.
    - rich_sasha 3y ago
      That may be so, but it is totally not the popular image of "toxic masculinity". That would be more like, boys are aggressive, horrible to women, insensitive and their one mission in life is to not act in accordance with their flawed nature.
      - Timon3 3y ago
        Wait, I'm not sure what you're exactly trying to say. The things you've listed: > boys are aggressive, horrible to women, insensitive are parts of toxic masculinity, i.e. they are toxic and they are part of the social image of masculinity. Why is it wrong to say that they are toxic, and that boys shouldn't ascribe to those "goals"? The best thing we can do is tell them "society negatively associates these negative traits with masculinity, but you don't have to be like that to be a man".
    - tivert 3y ago
      > I think you're gravely misunderstanding the concept of toxic masculinity. It's good that we condemn it, because it directly hurts boys. Toxic masculinity isn't a description of masculinity itself, it's about parts of the social image of masculinity that are toxic. Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure you're accurately describing a particular meaning of that term in some jargon, but that jargon doesn't control the meaning of the term. There are certainly people who view masculinity itself as toxic, and I wouldn't be surprised if "toxic masculinity" has been borrowed to describe that view. It's a pretty straightforward application.
  - goodpoint 3y ago
    You can just look up the definition instead, and how it's been distorted by some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity
908B64B197 3y ago
With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, boys with normal needs for physical activities are increasingly labelled as "sick" and medicalized for completely normal behavior by the taxpayer funded school system. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). That's the beginning of the slippery slope toward "toxic" masculinity traits (such as healthy competition). Maybe it's something that female administrators and teachers fail to understand. Or rather, willfully ignore trying to push a certain (extremely liberal) agenda on captive boys. It would also explain the current epidemic of ADHD and especially ADHD medication prescribed to young boys.
- red_admiral 3y ago
  Baden-Powell famously said "A boy is not a sitting-down animal." One might dislike a lot of other things about the man, but he got this one right.
  - GolfPopper 3y ago
    I am not a behavioral psychologist, but both the above posters' comments seem more appropriate as a general critique of America's factory schooling model than how it treats young males specifically. I have a niece and nephew who are being home-schooled (both testing in the top 10% of their respective peer before and after moving to home schooling). While their home schooling encompasses quite a bit more, they cover the traditional material for their age (everything covered by standardized testing), including drills, practice worksheets, and other typical "homework" in about 10% of the time they were previously spending in school. While there are obviously other aspects to school, including social interaction (which their parents are making certain they do get), watching the whole process as an extended family member has really driven home how much of current American schooling is just kid-warehousing.
    - Viliam1234 3y ago
      The factory schooling is not an exclusively American thing. But I agree that sitting the whole day is not necessary to getting education. You can also discuss things while walking outside, or allow kids to walk from desk to desk and observe what their classmates are doing.
rubicon33 3y ago
I think it actually is far deeper than that. I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys. Take as one point the fact that boys brains develop slower and later into life than women. Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know? Take as another point the decline in physical activity in schools and the reduction is recess time. Does this negatively impact boys more than girls? I think so, but it hurts then both to be sure.
- Viliam1234 3y ago
  > Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know? In a perfect world, education would not be a competition at all. Everyone would proceed at their own pace, differently in different subjects. And maybe at the end, where would still be a certification of people who mastered something versus people who didn't. But we would not freak out so much about whether someone understood something e.g. at the age of 12, instead of 13 or 14. The important thing should be that at some age they did.
  - rowanG077 3y ago
    That world is simply impossible. Humans can not help comparing themselves to their.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  > I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys. And that's why most entrepreneurs/successful people are men. System was rough to them since the start, putting them down during every occasion and most boys have learnt how to stand up back on their feet again since early age. The system offered them failure and gave them resiliency. Girls were carried around and when real life come around and they fall down, they now have no idea how to get back up.
  - api 3y ago
    I can’t tell if this is a troll or serious.
fullspectrumdev 3y ago
[flagged]
dauertewigkeit 3y ago
[flagged]
goodpoint 3y ago
> how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well I really doubt this describes the experience of 90% of people on this planet.
michaelt 3y ago
> Girls on the other hand, all is well. Girls, on the other hand, get told their body is flawed. Gotta constantly be on a diet, and spend like an hour a day on beauty stuff. We are all victims of society.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  Do you think millions of gym rats are thinking something different? I think it's weird that you present this as feminine problem when it's men who on average participate in more sports.
  - Viliam1234 3y ago
    Surprised to see this downvoted. Both men and women are told that their bodies are wrong. Maybe using different words, but still. That said, gym and sports (typically recommended to men) seem healthier to me than starving (typically recommended to women).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      Orthorexia can actually be pretty damn harmful as well.
    - anon291 3y ago
      Ummm... If you think men are turning to gym and sports to get some of the male bodies being portrayed in media, then I have news for you. A large portion of young men are turning to steroids and fake hormones in addition to insane diets to achieve those bodies. Look at pictures of strong men or body builders from the early 20th century. The look nothing like the six packed gym bro we're all supposed to look like.
      - glandium 3y ago
        Heck, just look at Hugh Jackman in the first X Men movie vs more recent X Men/Wolverine movies.
closeparen 3y ago
Isn’t the paragon of masculinity in American culture all about “improvise, adapt, overcome”? The idea that men have a fixed nature and can’t thrive outside a particular environment is… not very masculine. Something I think people miss sometimes is that there’s a big market for messages loudly affirming girls’ identities and choices because things are not, in fact, going that well.
- Nemrod67 3y ago
  Good point, we (men) might be oblivious to the fact that pressure has ramped up for women too, they now need to be a woman AND a man to get prestige. It's been an ongoing adventure with my partner, she works very hard for a good salary while I'm the successless indie game dev. We talk a lot about it and our feelings about it, and I realize how privileged/lucky I am to have found her and that she accepts me. She's crazy enough to agree with me on the fact that I might get exponentially more useful in case of a war/disaster, and that I'd make a perfect dad when we get to it :p
neonsunset 3y ago
Wait a second, this is flagged and dead? Wow. But then again, some people are selected against which gives some solace to my heart.

gumby 3y ago

> Girls on the other hand, all is well. This is also far from the case.

tivert 3y ago
>> Girls on the other hand, all is well. > This is also far from the case. Yes, all is not well with girls, but I don't think they have to deal with an analog of the condemnation of "toxic masculinity" and messages that "their nature is flawed." I believe their problems are frequently blamed on external actors (e.g. beauty magazines, social media, etc).
- red_admiral 3y ago
  Depending on the place and time, girls have to deal with being called too fat, too thin, not caring enough about their appearance, caring too much about their appearance, being too prude, being too slutty, and many other things. There is definitely a facet of "your nature is flawed" in a lot of them. You might be right that the question of who exactly is sending and spreading these messages has many answers and external (f)actors definitely come into it. But that too could be said about the claims of toxic masculinity.
  - rich_sasha 3y ago
    That's true actually. I put the "toxic masculinity" bit in a different pigeonhole to the whole "what women should be like". I can see an analogy. One difference is that, I get the impression it's actually women doing a lot of not most of the "too fat/too skinny" bit. Sure, boys/men can be horrible to girls/women but tend not to get hung up on details. The details of "too slutty" etc seems to come from women, peer female friends, women's magazines etc. In that respect I guess it's different, because it's a narrower critique. And it's, hmm, self-inflicted for lack of better word. Whereas with boys, it seems to come from women all around, and woke men too. Girls won't be told by their teachers (you'd hope!) that they are too fat or too skinny, but it's open season to tell boys they have a flawed nature they will have to spend the rest of their lives fixing.
- EatingWithForks 3y ago
  I think it depends on your culture, but generally women's appearances matter way more than men's appearances and are considered a personal responsibility thing. Simply becoming older and being visibly older is considered a failure of a woman to "age gracefully" or whatever it is that means. But also, I think most of the HN crowd are men, and I don't think we're broadly the populace to discuss with any serious authority whether or not women are raised to blame themselves in some way lol.
- klyrs 3y ago
  No, women are subject to ridiculous double standards from everything from body shame (too skinny too fat too ugly too pretty too grown too immature) to their clothing, manner of speech, grooming, and on and on. "Toxic masculinity" is a problem because of cultural standards where it is seen as manly to harm others. I know lots of very manly men, who are secure in their manhood where that isn't the least bit toxic. I don't think that, for example, cat-calling is manly. But I would describe it as toxic.
- Timon3 3y ago
  I think you're gravely misunderstanding the concept of toxic masculinity. It's good that we condemn it, because it directly hurts boys. Toxic masculinity isn't a description of masculinity itself, it's about parts of the social image of masculinity that are toxic. Stuff like "boys shouldn't cry" or "boys should suck up their problems and not talk about them". You don't improve boys' emotional needs by resuming this kind of messaging. Masculinity itself is a wonderful thing and necessary for men to (at least partially) embrace - but not the parts that stunt their development and keep them alone! Instead it should be aspects like reliability, trustworthiness, empathy, confidence, emotional strength - what comes to mind when you think about what makes a good man.
  - rich_sasha 3y ago
    That may be so, but it is totally not the popular image of "toxic masculinity". That would be more like, boys are aggressive, horrible to women, insensitive and their one mission in life is to not act in accordance with their flawed nature.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      Wait, I'm not sure what you're exactly trying to say. The things you've listed: > boys are aggressive, horrible to women, insensitive are parts of toxic masculinity, i.e. they are toxic and they are part of the social image of masculinity. Why is it wrong to say that they are toxic, and that boys shouldn't ascribe to those "goals"? The best thing we can do is tell them "society negatively associates these negative traits with masculinity, but you don't have to be like that to be a man".
  - tivert 3y ago
    > I think you're gravely misunderstanding the concept of toxic masculinity. It's good that we condemn it, because it directly hurts boys. Toxic masculinity isn't a description of masculinity itself, it's about parts of the social image of masculinity that are toxic. Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure you're accurately describing a particular meaning of that term in some jargon, but that jargon doesn't control the meaning of the term. There are certainly people who view masculinity itself as toxic, and I wouldn't be surprised if "toxic masculinity" has been borrowed to describe that view. It's a pretty straightforward application.
- goodpoint 3y ago
  You can just look up the definition instead, and how it's been distorted by some: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity

908B64B197 3y ago

With shrinking recess time and PE disappearing from some schools, boys with normal needs for physical activities are increasingly labelled as "sick" and medicalized for completely normal behavior by the taxpayer funded school system. Energy has to go somewhere so it ends up manifesting itself in behaviors that are deemed "disruptive" (really, not sitting still and being unable to concentrate on tasks). That's the beginning of the slippery slope toward "toxic" masculinity traits (such as healthy competition). Maybe it's something that female administrators and teachers fail to understand. Or rather, willfully ignore trying to push a certain (extremely liberal) agenda on captive boys. It would also explain the current epidemic of ADHD and especially ADHD medication prescribed to young boys.

red_admiral 3y ago
Baden-Powell famously said "A boy is not a sitting-down animal." One might dislike a lot of other things about the man, but he got this one right.
- GolfPopper 3y ago
  I am not a behavioral psychologist, but both the above posters' comments seem more appropriate as a general critique of America's factory schooling model than how it treats young males specifically. I have a niece and nephew who are being home-schooled (both testing in the top 10% of their respective peer before and after moving to home schooling). While their home schooling encompasses quite a bit more, they cover the traditional material for their age (everything covered by standardized testing), including drills, practice worksheets, and other typical "homework" in about 10% of the time they were previously spending in school. While there are obviously other aspects to school, including social interaction (which their parents are making certain they do get), watching the whole process as an extended family member has really driven home how much of current American schooling is just kid-warehousing.
  - Viliam1234 3y ago
    The factory schooling is not an exclusively American thing. But I agree that sitting the whole day is not necessary to getting education. You can also discuss things while walking outside, or allow kids to walk from desk to desk and observe what their classmates are doing.

rubicon33 3y ago

I think it actually is far deeper than that. I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys. Take as one point the fact that boys brains develop slower and later into life than women. Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know? Take as another point the decline in physical activity in schools and the reduction is recess time. Does this negatively impact boys more than girls? I think so, but it hurts then both to be sure.

Viliam1234 3y ago
> Should then boys be competing against women of the same age given what we know? In a perfect world, education would not be a competition at all. Everyone would proceed at their own pace, differently in different subjects. And maybe at the end, where would still be a certification of people who mastered something versus people who didn't. But we would not freak out so much about whether someone understood something e.g. at the age of 12, instead of 13 or 14. The important thing should be that at some age they did.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  That world is simply impossible. Humans can not help comparing themselves to their.
TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
> I believe our entire school system is setup to offer success to women, and failure to boys. And that's why most entrepreneurs/successful people are men. System was rough to them since the start, putting them down during every occasion and most boys have learnt how to stand up back on their feet again since early age. The system offered them failure and gave them resiliency. Girls were carried around and when real life come around and they fall down, they now have no idea how to get back up.
- api 3y ago
  I can’t tell if this is a troll or serious.

fullspectrumdev 3y ago

[flagged]

dauertewigkeit 3y ago

[flagged]

goodpoint 3y ago

> how their nature is flawed. Girls on the other hand, all is well I really doubt this describes the experience of 90% of people on this planet.

michaelt 3y ago

> Girls on the other hand, all is well. Girls, on the other hand, get told their body is flawed. Gotta constantly be on a diet, and spend like an hour a day on beauty stuff. We are all victims of society.

KptMarchewa 3y ago
Do you think millions of gym rats are thinking something different? I think it's weird that you present this as feminine problem when it's men who on average participate in more sports.
- Viliam1234 3y ago
  Surprised to see this downvoted. Both men and women are told that their bodies are wrong. Maybe using different words, but still. That said, gym and sports (typically recommended to men) seem healthier to me than starving (typically recommended to women).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    Orthorexia can actually be pretty damn harmful as well.
  - anon291 3y ago
    Ummm... If you think men are turning to gym and sports to get some of the male bodies being portrayed in media, then I have news for you. A large portion of young men are turning to steroids and fake hormones in addition to insane diets to achieve those bodies. Look at pictures of strong men or body builders from the early 20th century. The look nothing like the six packed gym bro we're all supposed to look like.
    - glandium 3y ago
      Heck, just look at Hugh Jackman in the first X Men movie vs more recent X Men/Wolverine movies.

closeparen 3y ago

Isn’t the paragon of masculinity in American culture all about “improvise, adapt, overcome”? The idea that men have a fixed nature and can’t thrive outside a particular environment is… not very masculine. Something I think people miss sometimes is that there’s a big market for messages loudly affirming girls’ identities and choices because things are not, in fact, going that well.

Nemrod67 3y ago
Good point, we (men) might be oblivious to the fact that pressure has ramped up for women too, they now need to be a woman AND a man to get prestige. It's been an ongoing adventure with my partner, she works very hard for a good salary while I'm the successless indie game dev. We talk a lot about it and our feelings about it, and I realize how privileged/lucky I am to have found her and that she accepts me. She's crazy enough to agree with me on the fact that I might get exponentially more useful in case of a war/disaster, and that I'd make a perfect dad when we get to it :p

neonsunset 3y ago

Wait a second, this is flagged and dead? Wow. But then again, some people are selected against which gives some solace to my heart.