A press release announcing the American Psychological Association’s new Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men starts off by apologizing for talking about men at all. “This may seem unnecessary. For decades, psychology focused on men (particularly white men), to the exclusion of all others.”
In fact, the opposite is true. Women have outnumbered men among mental health patients since the 19th century. (To say nothing of the prominence of Jean-Martin Charcot’s experiments on female “hysterics” in modern psychology courses.) If it hates talking about men so much, the APA should have stuck with its first instinct and said nothing at all, since the “guidelines” amount to a jargon-laden declaration of war against everyone with a Y chromosome.
The document, which establishes best practices for psychology professionals, is an indiscriminate grab bag of grievances, all of which its authors attribute to “masculinity ideology.” No distinction is made between serious problems, such as men’s higher suicide rates, and the not so serious one, such as men not wanting to eat their vegetables or talk about their feelings. Everything from homicide rates to heart disease is deemed the fault of toxic masculinity, which psychologists are requested to undermine by instilling their patients with an open-mindedness about gender norms.
Entirely ignored are the ways egalitarianism is responsible for many of the problems cited. Fewer men than women now attend college. How can this be blamed on toxic masculinity when the trend has coincided with the switch to universal coeducation? Maybe male students would do better if their classrooms were a little more masculine. Men report having fewer close friends than women. Could it be because the last bastions of male-only socializing have been eradicated by anti-discrimination lawsuits over the past 50 years? There was never any shortage of close friendships among the all-male cadets at the Virginia Military Institute.
The worst part about the document is the tortured English in which it is written. “Prescriptions and proscriptions for behaviors that either align with or contradict the dominant ideal of masculinity are not linear, uniform, or without resistance.” Speaking as a member of the more voluble sex, if that’s how they expect people to talk, I would prefer a bit of stoic silence.
