Toxic masculinity is used in psychology and media discussions of masculinity to refer to certain cultural norms that are associated with harm to society and to men themselves. Traditional stereotypes of men as socially dominant, along with related traits such as misogyny and homophobia, can be considered "toxic" due in part to their promotion of violence, including sexual assault and domestic violence.
A recently released American Psychological Association’s first-ever guidelines for working with boys and men does not directly refer to toxic masculinity but instead to traditional masculinity. The report suggests traditional masculinity is associated with a variety of (mostly negative) outcomes such as anti-femininity, risk, adventure, achievement, violence, and avoidance of appearing weak.
It appears that traditional masculinity is often toxic and harmful. To be fair, such a view can be stereotypical. It creates a binary around an imaginary “good man” vs “bad man” that isn’t altogether useful. Just as not all men perpetrate acts of masculinity, not all fit a standard mold of manhood. And, of course, both men and women can be victims as well as victimizers.
Not all standards of manliness are negative. Traditional norms include winning and well-being. Such traits encourage males to strive toward success and accomplishment, and they may enhance a positive sense of mastery and competence.
But how about the “bad guys” – aberrations and deviations who use their maleness in abuse of power, possession, aggression, and entitlement?
We live in a society that advertises increased testosterone as treatment for every red-blooded man, not to mention pills for penis enlargement to help those who feel anxiety with regards to the size of their member.
Aggression can result when a man experiences stress deriving from self-perceived failure to live up to masculine expectations (discrepancy) or when he maintains normative masculine expectations (dysfunction). Both may result in a man’s expression of negative idealized characteristics of masculinity, such as violence towards others.
My view is that violence as it relates to traditional masculinity, hyper behavior, and the male heart is out of control.
Violence pervades this culture. Every day, 100 Americans are killed with guns and hundreds more are shot and injured. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Global Study on Homicide in 2013, an astonishing 95 percent of homicide perpetrators and 79 percent of homicide victims were male. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this adds up to more than 10 million women and men.
Not only do American males engage in violence, also they are entertained by it. Children and youth are exposed to violence daily in television, social media, and video games. When a child becomes a legal adult, he or she will have seen 16,000 assassinations and 200,000 acts of violence on television. I know many authorities deny that such exposure accounts for violent youth; however, children become numbed to all the violence and, certainly, some traditional males accept it as a means to solve problems.
Some scientist's also point to men's evolutionary tendency toward risk and violent behavior. 17th-century thinker Thomas Hobbes famously described the lives of humans in their “natural condition” prior to the development of civil society as “nasty, brutish, and short.” Men in particular bear the marks of “an evolutionary history of violent male-male competition.” You and I know these toxic 21st century attitudes all too well:
“When I bleed, I don’t cry. I’m no sissy.”
“Women are conquests. Men are threats.”
“There’s power in my stride, intensity in my stare and furor in my fists.”
“I carry an emotion-proof veneer with distant abandon.”
“I must hide the hollow fear and lonely isolation destroying me from within.”
Much violence is familial. Everytown for Gun Safety (2018) found that in mass shootings, in which “mass shooting” is defined as a situation in which at least four people are killed with guns, 54% were committed by intimate partners or family. In other words, domestic violence plays a pivotal role in over half of those cases.
The overwhelming victims of domestic violence are women. The Violence Policy Center reports 85% of domestic violence victims are female, and 15% are male. Today, an average of three women are killed every day. More often than not, women are shot. Over half of all women killed by intimate partners between 2001 to 2012 were killed using a gun. The firearm is a convenient tool for extreme male violence.
In their comprehensive study of homicides, leading evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson note that most homicides between men originate from what is known as “trivial altercations.” A typical homicide in real life is not premeditated, well planned, and nearly perfectly executed by a meticulous and intelligent murderer. Instead, it begins as a fight about trivial matters of honor, status, and reputation between men (such as when one man insults another or makes moves on another’s girlfriend).
Fights escalate because neither is willing to back down, until they become violent and one of the men ends up dead. And, because women prefer to mate with men of high status and good reputation, a man’s status and reputation directly correlates with his reproductive success; the higher the status and the better the reputation of the man, the more reproductively successful he is.
“There’s not a sense of accountability. So they settle a fight with a gun because it doesn’t matter if they get caught because they’re not worried about the penalties,” Chicago police spokesman Guglielmi said. Often the dispute is mindless:
• A Calumet Heights man allegedly shot and killed his good buddy in the chest for touching his Cadillac. “Let that motherf----- die,” the shooter said.
• An Englewood man shot and killed a guy who cheated at a dice game.
Men are therefore highly motivated (albeit unconsciously) to protect their honor, and often go to extreme lengths to do so. Daly and Wilson explain these homicides between men in terms of their (largely unconscious) desire to protect their status and reputation in their attempt to gain reproductive access to women.
(Martin Daly & Margo Wilson. “Crime and Conflict: Homicide in Evolutionary Psychological Perspective.” Crime & Justice, 22. 1992.)
l impact of White Supremacy. To learn more about Frank visit
Statistics show that males are responsible for 90% of the violence that occurs. This includes both male on male violence, and male on female violence.
Frank Blaney, author at the Good Man Project, says, “Men are intimates of the demon of violence.” He asks, “Does it not seem strange to you that 90% of the perpetrators of a particular crime would come from one gender, who only makes up about 50% of the global population?”
“We love it (violence). Within the atmosphere of violence, we American males “live, and move, and have our being,” (to cop a line from Paul the Apostle.) Why do we love it? Because, within the American context, violence is the overarching paradigm for defining masculinity and self-respect. A man unwilling to use violence to defend their home, family, and nation, is emasculated. They are less than men. Worse than “faggots,” as many of the far-right, gun toting, “pro-American” White racists males would say.”
– Frank Blaney, Creative Director at Less is More Press
Where and when did this obsession with violence begin? Can we simply blame evolution? I am sure we must also blame toxicity on traditional masculinity as it readily serves those “bad guys” who abuse its well-established traits. These males exhibit hyper-aggression, hyper-violence and criminal sexual objectification.
History should also be considered in the blame. After all, the United States is a very young nation with a very violent past …
“A nation (of people) whose influence and economic power is based upon three centuries of state and economic violence against kidnapped Africans violently forced into labor, the extermination of Indigenous people for their life-giving lands, and the exploitation of war – has no alternative other than to become infected with an adoration (conscious or unconscious) with violence.”
– Frank Blaney
Perhaps, saddest of all, most men do not believe they’ve been sociologically conditioned, and the first step towards rehabilitation is awareness. A traditional ignorance that fosters toxicity? It well could be. An Irish survey on men’s attitudes towards domestic violence (SAFE Ireland, 2013) shows Irish men are less conscious of the prevalence of domestic abuse than Irish women. That seems unrealistic, yet consider once more that concept of traditional masculinity.
With great pride, tradition instructs a male – young or old – to be tough, not to show any emotions, to be the breadwinner, to always be in control, to have many sexual partners, and … to use violence to solve problems. This “holy” guy seems to have gotten the message loud and clear …
“My penis was chiseled out of marble by the hand of God himself.”
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