1 MASCULINITY
Of all the problems I’ve mentioned above, none is so damaging to men as our own notions of masculinity. For all internet commenters like to claim feminism is holding men back and turning us into victims, the reality is we’re doing a perfectly good job of it ourselves. As fathers, we teach boys to lash out instead of restrain themselves. As a culture we teach men to hide their emotions even if it kills them. As a society we teach boys to aim low and not educate themselves for a well-paying job. And look where that’s got us: prone to suicide, prone to homelessness, often unable to see our kids and unwilling to confront violence with anything but more violence. As the journalist Ally Fogg recently said:“The truth is that even if every single feminist of every single flavour abandoned feminism today and went back to bed with a good book for the rest of her life, it would make barely a jot of difference to the real and significant problems facing men.”And, until we find a way to separate those good parts of traditional masculinity from the absurdly-damaging ones, this will always be the case.
MORRIS M.