The American Psychological Association has published new guidelines to help psychologists and the rest of us better understand men and boys. Unfortunately, the APA has reached the conclusion that traditional masculinity is harmful to men and in order for them to be healthier, older notions need to be upended.
Hogwash. Men who foster and execute healthy ideas about masculinity help themselves, and others, become healthier men.
The APA introduces its new guidelines this way: “Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.” What is this traditional masculinity that is so harmful? Are boys really socialized to suppress their emotions? The APA identifies traditional masculinity as “marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression.”
The APA gets it wrong from the beginning by asserting traditional masculinity holds only these traits, which are not even all negative, as negative. It’s not that society has wholly conditioned men to be aggressive, competitive, or stoic — they’re innately wired that way. These are positive traits, which enable men to do things that satiate their natural desires to protect and provide.
Would you rather male members of the military or law enforcement be passive-aggressive, afraid, or overemotional? Of course not.
To be sure, men commit more of the violent crimes in America, including murder and rape, and they are also more suicidal and depressed. But the former is not due to aggression alone, so much as their aggression has been channeled in the wrong way. Somewhere along the way, men who commit crimes learned that’s an appropriate way to channel their natural aggression.
The APA submits that the increased rate in suicide and depression among men is due to society conditioning men to be more stoic. It’s true most men don’t naturally offer these things up, but again, this seems more innate rather than conditioned. I bet the APA or any psychologist will have just as hard of a time prying feelings and emotions out of a man now as they will in two decades because they tend to be less verbal and emotional anyway. Imagine if the cure for women crying, missing work because of their periods, or sending too many angry texts was to eschew femininity and be more stoic like men. The suggestion would never occur.
The guidelines were peppered with an attack on masculinity from all sides, and the APA chalked it up to the fault of the traditional patriarchy. “Mental health professionals must also understand how power, privilege and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles.” These guidelines were clearly formed with a thesis to prove already in mind, a mantra based in ideological liberalism that has been pushing masculinity, and even men, to the side for several decades with some success.
The cure for men who are suicidal, homicidal, stoic, or too aggressive isn’t to emasculate, neutralize, and neuter all men to be different versions of women who talk about their feelings. Healthy, masculine men boast as many positive traits as healthy, feminine women do. Boys need to be encouraged to embrace their innate boy traits in a healthy way: sports, rough play, exercise, and more healthy men to guide them. The same goes for struggling men, just in different, age-appropriate ways.
The cure for masculinity isn’t less, but more.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
