It's easy to be ridiculous and sink to base misogyny, but to do it without a glimmer of irony is where the real genius of the 'Hot Masculinity Takes' collection lies. Speaking to Bored Panda about the origins of their page in 2021, four years after it was created, the founder reveals that its original goal wasn't to make fun of 'toxic masculinity' - a catchall explanation for Andrew Tate-admiring Chads who try to preserve outdated ideals of masculinity to the point of absurdity.
"I will say that it’s not purely about 'toxic masculinity,'" the person behind 'Hot Masculinity Takes' explained to my colleague Rokas. "I do draw a lot from the manosphere but a lot of the takes are from women speaking about men, and I include left-wing hot takes too." Since 2017, the page has garnered thousands of new followers, currently sporting a number shy of 155,000.
Although the term 'toxic masculinity' has gained recent popularity among feminists, many will be surprised to learn that it actually was coined in the mythopoetic men's movement of the 1980s and '90s by Shepherd Bliss, a psychology professor at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California, who only wanted to capture his "father's militarized, authoritarian masculinity."
By those days' definition, nobody would suspect that one of America’s greatest writers, the ultimate man's man, Ernest Hemingway, could be "the avatar of toxic masculinity." In this day and age, depending on who you ask, however, Hemingway might be just as bad to young men's masculinity as rock and roll was to our grandparents (due to the fact that for a short period of time it was considered 'Devil's music').
There's no surprise in the fact that perception of masculinity has been shifting in the last few years, with people associating it with aggression and being inconsiderate. On the other hand, the 2017 Pew Research Center survey, while being pretty outdated, shows some fascinating metrics. In terms of self-perception, approximately 31% of American men identified themselves as "highly manly or masculine", while 54% described themselves as "somewhat masculine." Only a small percentage of 15% considered themselves as "not too or not at all masculine." Fair enough.
A compelling statistic that I came across, thanks to GQ magazine, is from their "Survey of Attitudes on Masculinity" conducted in 2019. The survey revealed that among those who are familiar with the term "toxic masculinity," 26% of men acknowledged witnessing it in the workplace, while only 37% of women agreed with the statement. These numbers, all things considered, seem fairly significant, although the ultimate goal remains to strive for a complete eradication of such instances in the future.
The desirability of masculinity, like anything else, depends on how you define it. And so, in order to understand the phenomenon of 'toxic masculinity' better, Bored Panda reached out to Michael Karson, a professor at the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology. According to him, 'toxic masculinity' has morphed into a heavy-handed term, one that carries many misconceptions.
"Horrible things that some men do are not extensions of positive traits like assertiveness, ambition, and courage, just as the vile things that mean girls do under the labels of gossip, ostracism, and character assassination are not extensions of positive traits like social grouping or emotional bonding. Both sets of bad behavior involve dehumanizing other people," Karson explains, noting that bad behavior shouldn't be associated strictly with gender, rather with a person's psychology.
Otherwise, men could start to fear that once respected traits like assertiveness, standing up for what’s right or speaking truth to power have become "villainized in our conflict avoidant society." Something that can drive young men to display hyper-masculinity, according to one survey by YouGov.
Karson believes that while there's some good in condemning horrible aggressive behavior to 'toxic masculinity', we should be careful of how we characterize it. "If a man robs someone, it’s a political choice whether to construe him as a man or as someone who is enraged or desperate or antisocial," he said. "This also happens with race: when a Black person commits a crime, depending on the political agenda, he can be characterized as Black or as desperate, or as enraged."
Based on the "Man Box Study" conducted by Promundo in 2017, which surveyed over 1,000 men aged 18 to 30 in the United States, it was discovered that 72% of participants reported being told that there is a specific way in which a "real man" should behave. Additionally, the study found that 59% of respondents agreed with the notion that men should display strength even if they feel scared or anxious internally, while 40% believed that men should handle their personal issues without seeking assistance from others.
Of course, these are completely outdated sets of ideals that organizations such as A Call to Men try to root out from our society. "I’m not sure how much control parents really have on their children’s gender development in a culture that sends pervasive messages about what girls and boys are supposed to be like," Karson said, "but I would advise parents to teach kids how to think critically and skeptically about those messages."
"Also, if parents can love their children wholly, the children may be more likely to integrate their various conflicting agendas, including their sons’ needs for tenderness and their daughters’ needs for achievement."
