• Question: you said that competitiveness isn't demonising, however what happens to the male who loses? do you not see a correlation between masculinity and a man's mental health? if you don't think that masculinity is a problem for men, what do you think affects it so badly compared to women?

    Asked by anon-216786 to Dennis on 18 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Dennis Relojo-Howell

      Dennis Relojo-Howell answered on 18 Jun 2019:

      Hi jump353sun. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to elaborate my thoughts about toxic masculinity. It is a very thoughtful question, and I am glad that you asked it.

      If I remember it correctly, you asked this question in relation to the ad campaign of Gillette. What I was saying is that the way toxic masculinity was portrayed on that particular ad is rather disingenuous – the ad is not a genuine representation of what masculinity is. It was more of a political posturing. They portrayed that masculinity is harmful (hence ‘toxic’ as they put it). I have reason to believe that I am not the only one who perceived this. You can see how people responded to this on YouTube is clear: To date, it’s been ‘liked’ 795K times, and ‘disliked’ a 1.4 million times.

      One of the traditional masculinity traits that I mentioned is competitiveness. Being competitive is not harmful. It is a trait that allows us to reflect on our abilities in relation to our peers. It is trait that allows us to seek improvement, rather than be satisfied with mediocrity.

      What can affect men, in relation to mental health, is not masculinity. It is often the stigma that surrounds mental health (regardless of the gender), which is different from toxic masculinity.

      By and large, this is of course an area that social psychologists tend to explore. As cliched as it may sound, you cannot put human behaviour in a box, so it would be interesting to hear other psychologists’ views on this.

      Good luck with your studies. 🙂

Comments

  • Photo: anon-216786

    anon-216786 commented on :

    thank you for the reply however it is a known fact that the most common cause of death for men between 20 to 49 is suicide moreover, 75% of suicides in the UK are from men. there are many factors causing this but i see many of these factors being related to masculinity. for example if a boy wants to wear earrings, we cannot deny that some parts of society wouldn’t judge him for being ‘too feminine’. and then what? the abuse whether verbal or not will impact that child wearing earrings. do you not think that that child would feel less equal or not as worthy as the other men because he’s not society’s masculine ‘norm’.
    moreover, we condition boys from a very young age to not express emotion through saying things like ‘man up’ and ‘boys shouldn’t cry’ because to express emotion is to be ‘weak’.
    therefore i believe that masculinity causes many mental health issues in men, and that society has taught boys that to be strong is the only option and to be anything less is to not be worthy of being a man.
    so i’d like to know your thoughts on this and if masculinity is not a causing factor then what is ?

  • Photo: Robert

    Robert commented on :

    Hi – sorry to jump in on this question, this is a research area I’m currently working on.

    I think the problem is that men tend to have more narrow and stringent ‘social norms’ and ‘expectations’, at least here in the UK (hence the ‘toxic masculinity’ discussion in the media). I think the issue is about the perceptions of what being a man is in our society and (I think) there’s a quite restrictive set of norms or behaviours that are expected of men (the strong and silent type; someone who just gets on with things; who doesn’t cry, seek help or show emotion like jump353sun says). For women, I think these norms may be more flexible and less restrictive, or perhaps influence women’s mental health in different ways compared to men, and it is more socially acceptable for women to seek help medically or for other things. These norms can and do change, and may just be an individual’s perception of a what a norm is and not necessarily based on a clear written ‘rule’.

    For me, ‘toxic masculinity’ is about a conformity to quite rigid perceived norms for men (by this I mean what is deemed to be socially acceptable for male behaviour – even if this is not a correct/accurate perception of what we really think men should be like). We’re running an online study at the moment looking at how conformity to stereotypical male social norms (e.g. not expressing emotion, being competitive) is related to intentions to seek help for mental health-related experiences in general. I think the reason why middle-older aged men, which can cut across the 30-60 year age group, are more likely to take their own lives is that they are more susceptible to these perceived masculine social norms and so when they don’t meet these norms, they’re more likely to feel defeated and eventually suicidal depending on their circumstances (defeat is a common thought/appraisal in the psychological pathway to suicide). I suspect there’s something about men cope with defeat/failure in this age group which is important (e.g. feeling defeated may be highly related to not meeting what you think is a masculine norm). I hope that makes sense? We’re only just starting this work so unfortunately I can’t divulge more at the present time.