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The current23:38Raising Boys in an Age of ‘Impossible Masculinity’
Ruth Whippman went into labor with her third son as the #MeToo reckoning was in the news.
“I read these tweets about how horrible men were and [about] toxic masculinity and one man after another is a sex offender or a predator or a horrible person,” Whippman said. The current host Matt Galloway.
As a feminist, Whippman said she found the #MeToo movement energizing and validating. “It was like women finally had a voice. We were allowed to call out this kind of bad behavior that we all knew about and were all aware of, but … we didn’t have the social permission or the vocabulary to call it out.”
“But I think as a mother of boys, I just felt really conflicted and defensive,” she said. “It was like everyone was talking about this gender like they were the enemy and harmful and horrible. But these are my kids they’re talking about.”
That got her thinking, she said, whether parents might be better off focusing on raising good people — regardless of their gender — rather than striving to define positive versus toxic masculinity.
Whippman explores that idea in her new book, Boy Mom: A New Look at Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity. But others say that rigid ideas about masculinity are so pervasive in our culture that they can’t be ignored, and that parents should instead strive to be part of broadening boys’ horizons about what it means to be a man.
Nadia Kidwai of CBC’s Weekend Morning Show leads a conversation about masculinity with three Winnipeg men: Jean-René Dominique Kwilu, lawyer; Matthew Shorting, advocate and facilitator; and Rhyland Qually, exercise and nutrition coach.
Michael Kehler, research professor of Masculinities Studies at the University of Calgary’s Werklund School of Education, belongs to the latter camp.
He says the #MeToo movement was an important “historic moment” that brought to light sexual violence and harassment against women, as well as the code of silence surrounding it.
Despite the movement’s efforts, he says violence and intimidation – and the mentality of keeping quiet about them – still exist and that ignoring them would be a mistake.
“Men and boys are still complicit in misogyny, homophobia and gender-based violence,” said Kehler, who has a doctorate in teacher education.
But while “the landscape hasn’t necessarily changed,” he said, “our awareness and understanding, for example, of how we raise boys is much more advanced, because we can look beyond that one or unique path of raising a boy.”
Moving Away from ‘Harmful’ Definitions of Masculinity
If that one path was one that required men to be strong, stoic and aggressive, then today’s boys and men “have the opportunity to step away from the more traditional, sometimes harmful and damaged ways of being boys and men,” Kehler said.
Rachel Giese, the Toronto-based author of Boys: What it means to become a man, says there is nothing inherently wrong with the terms male and female, but there is something wrong with the values we associate with them. She is not sure how practical it is to leave them out of parenting altogether.
“I think I’m more interested in the project of exploring what it means to be male or female, rather than the idea that we can’t solve it.”
But Whippman says she worries that the conversation about men and masculinity has become “impossible on all sides.”
“On the one hand, we have all the old expectations of masculinity that boys have always lived with, which are: be tough, be strong, don’t show your feelings, which can be quite difficult and punishing for boys. They’re all still very much in play,” she said.
“But then we have this new conversation more from the left that says, ‘Guys, you’re toxic, you’re harmful. Time to shut up and give someone else a chance.'”
Nathaniel Packham, a 17-year-old from Lethbridge, Alta., says he’s noticed this too, especially in online spaces.
“I’ve seen a lot online that for a lot of young men and teenagers, there’s no middle ground,” Packham said. Instead, there’s “different forms of toxicity.”
“On the more politically right wing, it’s just, yeah, ‘No emotions. Get rich. Get muscular and get loads of girls,'” he said. Of voices on the other side of the political spectrum, Packham said he’s noticed that “when a man expresses concerns about … feeling lonely or feeling stuck in their life, I see from the online left at least, it’s just, ‘Oh well, that’s the society you’ve created.'”
“There’s not really a lot of empathy for anyone,” he said.
Are the boys doing well?
According to Whippman, there is a “microgeneration” of boys who entered puberty as #MeToo unfolded.
“Their entire adolescence was played out in the shadow of this conversation, where they were portrayed as inherently harmful, bad, and toxic,” Whippman says, suggesting that even if that’s not the intention of the conversation, many boys believe it and internalize the idea.
“I think it’s psychologically very unhealthy to grow up with the idea that you’re harmful in the beginning.”
I don’t think it’s necessarily that boys are lost. I think it depends on the premise that there [one] road map to life as a boy.– Michael Kehler, research professor of masculinity studies
But Michael Kheler says there have been a number of historic moments in the past — including in the early 2000s — when people raised the alarm about boys being “in crisis” or “under siege.”
“I would challenge that position. I don’t think it’s necessarily that guys are lost,” Kehler said. “I think it depends on the premise that there’s [one] “Road map to life as a boy.”
If boys experience confusion or difficulty in determining how they want to define masculinity, he says, that points to the importance of “our influence as parents or as teachers, as coaches … in terms of pushing boys to rethink what it means to be a boy and a man.”
A shifting concept
Ali Zaidi, 22, of Richmond Hill, Ontario, says his thinking about girls and women needed all those positive influences when he was a prepubescent and young teen.
When allegations of sexual abuse came to light through #MeToo, Zaidi admitted he was misled by celebrities he admired who said they had been wrongly accused.
“I remember in the music industry, which had a big influence on me, there were a lot of male artists who said they were victims, when they clearly weren’t.”
For example, when a popular musician he liked faced a lawsuit and allegations of misconduct, Zaidi said he would just believe his story. “Because he made great music, he was handsome, he was rich. And I just wanted to be like that.”
That changed when he enrolled in an after-school program run by the nonprofit Next Gen Men, which focuses on topics like mental health, healthy relationships and gender equality.
Statistics show that nearly half of all sexual assaults are committed against young women, and the perpetrators are usually men they know. Experts say preventing sexual violence against women starts with having conversations about the culture of toxic masculinity.
He now works for the organization that helps run these programs, including an online community for high school boys that is described as positive, inclusive and supportive, with the goal of preventing gender-based violence.
“It was a great start to my journey of changing my mindset about this,” he said.
“The conversations about mental health, the conversations about vulnerability, the conversations about privilege became very normal.”
That’s the kind of progress that Kehler says signals a shift toward a much more nuanced understanding of what it means to be a boy or a man.
“Patriarchy still exists, just as it was, but the ability to question patriarchy is what is new and changing. The voices asking these questions are changing. Boys and men from patriarchal systems are asking these questions themselves.”
