We learn a lot of hard lessons growing up: Santa isn’t real, you can’t always get what you want, and dreaming big means losing big if you can’t reach the finish line. Most lessons are common to both boys and girls, but some are exclusive to one or the other. Girls learn to stay safe from men, boys learn to protect themselves and others. Girls are taught to communicate, boys are taught to take action. Girls are told that it’s okay to be vulnerable, and boys are told that no one will come to save them when they’re at their lowest.
Observers may say it’s harmful to tell a boy he’s on his own, but it’s better taught by a parent’s gentle hand than the slap of reality. There’s a male loneliness epidemic, men end their lives at four times the rate of women in America, and men are significantly more likely to be victims of violent crime — as well as the ones committing the crime. Male role models respected by men and women embody independence, while one of the most common dating tips for men in dating is to just be confident and avoid seeming hesitant. Every lesson a boy is taught on strength was deemed necessary because of male lived experiences and what the world has told men repeatedly.
Despite that, some associate these teachings with toxic masculinity and the manosphere. Feminist scholar Gloria Jean Watkins, pen name “bell hooks,” argued that the male crusade against vulnerability was a pillar of the patriarchy. Some modern feminists have gone even further and tried to reverse the damage by telling men to be more open about their feelings. Just as one would be skeptical of a man’s view on what’s best for women, it also applies the other way around. Even if the intent is noble, a more appropriate method to understand how men function at an individual and collective scale would be a scientific one.
A leading hypothesis is the Precarious Manhood theory, which suggests that womanhood is intrinsic while manhood is earned and must be constantly maintained. Studies have deduced that this reality encourages male anxiety and maladaptive behavior. Boys are taught masculine norms because they are not considered masculine by society if they stray from those norms. Men are complicit in reinforcing these norms, but that is done out of self-preservation and conforming with societal expectations. One response to male maladaptivity is that men need to change how they view masculinity, but that won’t happen until they are fully convinced that their manhood will be accepted unconditionally by both men and women.
Many women will say they oppose gender roles in public yet uphold them in their private lives. Oftentimes if a woman wants to insult a man, she’ll call him weak, emotional, or put his manhood under the microscope. Height, a common indicator of masculinity, is something many women prefer, and men under an arbitrary height threshold may be emasculated and ridiculed. Meanwhile, a Harvard study found that men without full-time jobs were 33% more likely to be divorced due to their failure to meet the gender norm of being the breadwinner.
Commentators have made all these sweeping claims about the patriarchy and how men need to do this or that, but they say to go left and men’s experiences say to go right. The manosphere exploded in popularity because men don’t want empty platitudes from people who don’t get what it’s like to be a man. It doesn’t take a research paper to know that constant vigilance and self-consciousness is a slow poison that kills the spirit, and men have known this for a long time. Now they get advice from bad men and grifters who use that isolation against them.
A father is a boy’s best teacher because he can teach him the hard lessons of manhood from a place of love. Whenever a man lets the mask fall or his shoulders sag, he remembers what he learned so long ago and the ways that lesson was proven right in the years since. Observers can rack their brains, run their numbers, and make their claims about how men need to change, but until society changes its expectations of them, more boys who swore to be good men will be found going dark.
Acknowledgement: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author, not necessarily Our National Conversation as a whole