Men Will Be Men

"I don't think [the term 'toxic masculinity'] is helpful because it's not how most guys live their lives."

"There a lot of good blokes out there who are doing good things, who are honourable and have good masculine values and virtues, and it's a pity that the newsworthy story is Will Smith."

"There is evidence that male depression can present with externalizing symptoms including aggression, substance use and risk-taking."

"There is also evidence that male exposures to adverse childhood events [such as] physical and/or sexual abuse, can manifest mental illness challenges and/or maladaptive behaviours."

"We may be missing a lot of male depression in clinical practice because [of these other issues]. Not to excuse the behaviours, but if you have a man in your life who's drinking heavily, negative and angry, it might be that he's carrying some depressive symptoms that might benefit from some therapy."

:"When an intimate partner relationship breaks up, guys are eight times more likely to [commit] suicide than a woman who's had a breakup."

"It's the guys who do the introspection work -- often with counselling - to understand what they can do better, that can help them grow."

"Often they will have emotions that might be discordant -- happy and sad at the same time, for example, and they try to make sense of emotions too quickly. A lot of anger comes from feeling they can't make sense of it."

"Behaviours are usually patterns, and these patterns are hard to correct. But if you have a good foundation, some ground rules and boundaries, your chances [for growth are better.]"

Dr.John Oliffe, professor, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Men's Health Promotion, School of Nursing University of British Columbia

Ben Wiseman for The New York Times

 

Men behaving badly. Well, it's inevitable, they're human. Women, in their own way can also behave badly. With men, it's mostly acting out physically. This is a conversation well beyond the psychopaths who go through the world -- a distinct minority that cause social and personal havoc left in their midst -- performing atrocious acts of criminal intensity. Those who prey on women, serial killers, and men who place their intimate partners at risk of great physical and psychological harm. In some, it's frustration, lack of control, confusion, and a lapse in judgement. For others it's all of that along with an inability to constrain themselves, or to feel empathy for others.

These men who conduct themselves so badly, are not in the majority; most men view them and their injurious behaviour with condemnation and bewilderment. At most 15 percent of men in a general population can be among those with impaired judgement and lack of control. And it is these men, and a much smaller contingent among them whose socially deviant exploits get splashed all over the front page of newspapers and take up space on tabloids. They become the face in the minds of some within the public sphere of the majority of men, a contortion of reality.

The most criminally egregious of these behaviours cannot be excused, they are beyond the pale; the sexual offenders, domestic abusers, violent reactions in behavioral excesses. But they are not universally representational of the majority of men. Those who were identified along with their socially unacceptable exploits by the #Me Too phenomenon of accountability have been punished by public shame and rejection and loss of reputation and livelihood.

According to the work and the research conducted by Dr. Oliffe, lead investigator of the Men's Health Research program,  along with the online men's resource portal Heads Up Guys which focuses primarily on mental health including depression and suicidality, the impression gained suggests that there is more than what appears on the surface with respect to the behaviour of some men who lash out unacceptably. Mental stability can help a man get through and try to understand the failure of intimate relationships. Some men are able to successfully make their way through adult relationships that fail.

In others such failures may lead to self-harm through frustration, anxiety, depression and ultimately, attempts at suicide. In Dr. Oliffe's experience, it is not always the case that men are less likely to seek out help than do women. He points out that 60 percent of men in Canada who felt suicidal had been in health care for 12 months previous to their health crisis; the therapy given and practise may be abandoned and its effectiveness diminished. Men are given encouragement to indulge in some introspection, to understand their emotions leading to anger, and to consider other ways of expression.

Unhealthy masculinity reeks of lack of emotion, stoicism, dominance, aggression, sexism, homophobia, in contrast to healthy masculinity which encompasses values of selflessness, openness, kindness, supportiveness, authenticity, and vulnerability. "It's one of the things we need to show [vulnerabiliity], because everything is not perfect; adults don't always have it together, and it's okay to ask for help. When you're struggling with something, it's okay to let your kids see some of that and how you deal with it." 

 

Boys raised with healthy trajts and attitudes become men who gain from everything surrounding themin parental examples from an early age. Children, emphasizes Alyson Schafter, create their blueprint in understanding life within the first five to six years of life, when they are bombarded with subtle messages about masculinity, one being that boys don't cry.

Psycom. by Modern.Affliction on Unsplash

"The fact that we're having this conversation is a sign of progress, even though it could be disheartening to think we're still here in 2022."

"Were shedding [sic] a spotlight on a situation that needs to be improved because we find it untenable."

"We have a long history of [a certain] narrative in cultures. And different cultures have different narratives -- we call them gender guiding lines -- around what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman. And that may be different in Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, China."

"But culture also speaks to the culture of your high school, your family, your community. It's in [kids'] social media, the movies they watch, the toys they get for Christmas, the way their father [portrayed] manhood, the way their mother [portrayed] motherhood. And every child is tasked with coming up with a story, a representation and understanding of what it is to be these genders."

"[These messages] in totality don't send a good message for what it is to be a human being who also happens to be of the male gender. We are culturally bound, but boys pay the price for subscribing to an unhealthy dictum or cultural stereotype of what it is to be male and we've got to let go of that."

Alyson Schafter, speaker, podcaster, author