You tell it like it is my friend. So interesting to me, as a therapist, how I have to walk on eggshells while seeing couples (in fact, I decided this week to stop seeing couples and only see individuals, I think I can do better work without a muzzle on (no pun intended)) although I walk on eggshells I still hold what I believe to be the truth, I just get a lot of flak for it. As you know, I am an archetypal psychotherapist, and what you describe here is so clearly a very serious archetypal dysfunction.
Men need to learn to pull the sword half way out of the scabbard and let the sun glint off its shiny surface into the eyes of his opponent, rather than pull it all the way out and start slashing heads off when it is not appropriate. I find more women in my practice prodding men to slash rather than stand up to situations with strength and fortitude, with one hand on the sword, always ready, but strong enough to know when to use it. It isn't a woman's responsibility to make a man a man, but we are all in this together...
Thank you for this...no one can ever accuse you of having no balls.
Exactly, but people have been trying to for quite some time...primarily because people have no clue what they are and the power they have in their lives...you CAN "think for yourself" and clash with them if you are conscious of them...but more often than not the fundamental archetypes, king, warrior, magician, lover, for men, can be so beneficial if we embrace them and learn how they can help us. Women the same...matron, maiden, crone, and whatever else she wants to constellate. What you describe here, to me, is clear and obvious archetypal dysfunction, where everything is so twisted and convoluted no one knows up from down...each pathology feeding the next...was this brought on by the "powers that be" intentionally? Certainly the dysfunction is a result of conscious manipulation...with the slow but deliberate destruction of the male/female relationship, relationship to family, to self, etc. Whether ANYONE in power knows what archetypes actually are is a pretty clear "no"...
All very perceptive and true. We need really strong women too in order to have strong, real men. Women and men seem to have been weakened across the board by the trending narratives and the mass psychosis you write of. When we ordinary folks notice this on a daily basis it’s gotta be pretty real. Also can’t help but think of the powerful effect of online forums. I see them as weakening all of us. They’re like High School as forces to move people toward the lowest common denominator. Thanks.
The thing is, toxic masculinity AND toxic femininity DO exist. They are the extremes of the gender roles manifested by deeply disturbed and traumatized people who believe that by exploiting the power they have over the opposite sex, they can benefit themselves at great expense to the other.
There are approximately 3 and half billion women in the world. They should not all have to constrain their behaviour, becoming more ‘feminine’ according to the gender roles that are imposed on them in order for men not to be predators. The work of feminists - and even that is a very broad endeavour that cannot possibly represent the interests of all women around the world - has been to liberate women from the brutality of male predation and place women on an equal economic, political, social and legal footing in society. Feminism was intended to elevate women from their status as chattel and property to actual human beings. Feminism, women's liberation, would simply not exist if patriarchal gender roles were working for women. As much as men would like to think so, women don’t all wish to be subservient to men. The average woman would like to be treated like a human being who matters, who is respected, whose boundaries are honoured and whose voice is heard.
Because you live a very insular, privileged and affluent life, you cannot possibly know what it means to realize every day that women are seen as only having value for their appearance. Yet here you are clearly saying that women should enjoy it, men should do more of it. I shouldn't have to say this, but being objectified is dehumanizing. Appreciating the opposite sex is fine as long as you appreciate more than just their body. But men stereotypically, because our culture condones this, don't seem to be particularly interested in what women have to offer beyond their bodies. 80% of men enjoy pornography, starting as young as 11 years old on average. But the porn men enjoy now is utterly vile, abusive, degrading and despicable. Boys and men are being taught through porn that women's bodies are to be CONSUMED, not appreciated. They take that perspective out into the world and then resent that women don't accept their predatory behaviour as normal. What you're proposing - and this is terrifying to me as a woman - is that men be ENCOURAGED to dehumanize women, as if they don't already do enough of it.
Mark, there's a reason why 90% of the prison inmates are male. And even the 10% of inmates who are female are there mostly for non-violent crimes. In fact the vast majority of female prison inmates are themselves survivors of abuse at the hands of their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, boyfriends. What would you propose these women should have done? Be MORE feminine? As if their abusers became abusive because they weren't feminine enough? That's misogynist and utterly out of touch with reality.
If you check out William Ferguson's substack, all of his articles, he documents, along with many other men out there thank goodness, the rampant misogyny that we're seeing globally. Men don't become predators and monsters because women aren't feminine enough. Men become monsters because women have been portrayed as prey in our media, in cultural stories about romance, in pornography (Read Porn Inc for a shocking exploration of what male sexuality is becoming - https://www.amazon.com/Big-Porn-Inc-Exposing-Pornography/dp/1876756896), in men's groups. Men simply don't see women as human. Your article is yet another example of this.
So, no. we should not celebrate toxic masculinity. We should celebrate strong, healthy grounded men AND women in whatever capacity they show up on a continuum of masculine and feminine traits. We should not shame and punish women who are strong and try to weaken them in order for men not to be afraid of them. We should discourage toxic femininity which seeks to exploit women's power over men in ways that harm them. We should strive to raise healthy HUMAN BEINGS who respect and honour and cherish the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’ qualities in both men and women. We should not mutilate their bodies to make them fit the objectified genders that this culture creates for them.
I'm appalled that you and Jeremy - both men I respect for the important work that you're doing - cannot recognize the basic humanity of women and the dark road that we're going down because men blame women for the loss of their masculinity. No thanks. Women are already reeling from the destruction of their rights to private spaces away from men, reproductive rights, legal rights.
In closing, I dream of a world where men wake up and recognize the harm that they’ve done to women in their roles as fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, etc and women wake up and recognize how they deserve to be seen not just as objects but as full human beings. It seemed for a while that we were getting there, but the feminism project went off the rails, being coopted by the media, fertility, sex trafficking and porn industry which profits enormously off of women’s bodies. I despair for my children and granddaughter. I had hoped men like you and Jeremy would take up the challenge of getting feminism back on track by showing what good men do – model masculine behaviour that affirms women’s humanity, not denies it.
I appreciate your passion, conviction, and sincerity, but I don't see how anything you wrote applies to my article. I did expand on this topic in more detail in my book, United States of Fear.
As Todd Hayen wrote in a comment, the rebranding of true masculinity as toxic is an archetypal dysfunction. It eliminate any possibility of the flourishing of the feminine, and it destroys both sexes.
The feminists I know and the feminist theory that I've learned does not and has never considered masculinity itself as toxic. This is where I think so many people get it wrong.
Masculinity and femininity, as a spectrum of behaviour, not so much roles, in our culture are inherently good and valuable expressions of our humanity.
When we hard-code these terms to limit men to only being allowed to do 'masculine' things - and then we define these things as being dominant, aggressive, demanding, etc - is where masculinity becomes toxic.
The same thing with femininity. When we demand that women only be considered worthy of respect if they are traditionally 'feminine' - and then restrict and limit women's behaviour to being submissive, obedient, domestic, etc. - women become resentful and toxic. This manifests in manipulative behaviour.
The thing that I find supremely frustrating is what I'm seeing now. Our regression as a species back into the traditional roles and the glorification and valuing of women as primarily wives, helpmates and mothers and the glorification of men as soldiers, bosses, leaders.
And when taken to the extreme we get men actually demanding to be seen as better than actual women, by simply telling the world that they are women. And telling women that they can be as domineering and bullying as men by carrying out the same destructive political games.
Nobody wins.
So, getting back to my post - and I'm deeply saddened that you don't see the connections I thought I clearly made - women AND men should be free to choose what their spirit calls them to be and not have either sex feel they have to live up to our culture's expectations of where they fit within a narrow range of behaviour. Women's liberation was supposed to free both men and women to be their best selves. When women's roles continue to be undervalued, underpaid and underappreciated and men's roles continue to be more respected, more recognized, more valued, we have a problem.
The reason why feminism exists in the first place is not because women necessarily wanted to take men's place. Women, and their children, were living in a hellscape. By achieving the right to vote, work, learn, gather freely, women's lives improved exponentially. But what I'm seeing now is frankly terrifying. Women are losing control of bodily autonomy, men are lashing out at women blaming them for their own failure to take responsibility for their lives, our culture exploits women's bodies and sexuality in so many ways that I cannot even begin to express.
Being a man insulates you from so much, Mark. You are oblivious to all of the issues women have to deal with and women need to be strong, not dependent on men, in order to deal with them. Men and women need to be allies in the fight against the oligarchs, not adversaries. MeToo was supposed to bring awareness to the reality of women's everyday lives. Women don't want to be victims, we want to be empowered and independent, but everywhere we turn, we are shamed for wanted to be just a mom, or just a career woman. There is no relief from the judgment about women's choices, bodies, behaviours.
That's all I have to say. If I didn't have children, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago.
I won't go into detail here because I don't want to start a fight, but some of what you say here is essentially part of the problem. I definitely think your heart is in the right place, and what you are fighting for here, fundamentally, is the right fight. What Mark is talking about, like he said, really has little direct relation to what you are saying, again, I think your points are very important, but when Mark says there should be "more toxic masculinity" I don't think he means TOXIC masculinity (he implies that masculinity in general is considered toxic by the culture), I think he just means what many CALL toxic masculinity, but in fact, is not.
One of my favourite analogies is the man who is capable of pulling the sword out HALF WAY so the "sun will glint off the shining metal into his opponents eye"...the true man does not need to pull out the sword all the way and start slashing with little, if any, provocation, maybe we could call THAT toxic.
The problem in this culture now is that a man who even pulls out the sword half way is considered expressing toxic masculinity...so he only knows black and white, because the culture sees it to be all the same...no sword, or sword to slash. As a result we get very passive males, males "with no balls"...or...highly aggressive and dangerous males...which are either honoured (as the Ukrainian soldier) or vilified (as the toxic male--the Russian soldier)...considering all the movies that continually are pumped out of Hollywood...the only good male is the one that slashes everything in sight...or...the totally passive male that is sweet and loving 24/7. Where is the male that stands up to adversity with intelligence, wit, AND strength and fortitude? This is what Mark is addressing...at least that is MY take on it!! There is so much more detail here...and to be honest, I did not read your responses in a lot of detail, I got the general confusion right away. Maybe you are not confused about all of it (or any of it), but felt I should respond to the part of your response that hit me as a bit confused. If anyone wants, I could go into more explanation taking your comments in more detail (I would love to comment on your pornography reference...I agree that pornography is a big problem for young men, but for very different reasons!!)
You tell it like it is my friend. So interesting to me, as a therapist, how I have to walk on eggshells while seeing couples (in fact, I decided this week to stop seeing couples and only see individuals, I think I can do better work without a muzzle on (no pun intended)) although I walk on eggshells I still hold what I believe to be the truth, I just get a lot of flak for it. As you know, I am an archetypal psychotherapist, and what you describe here is so clearly a very serious archetypal dysfunction.
Men need to learn to pull the sword half way out of the scabbard and let the sun glint off its shiny surface into the eyes of his opponent, rather than pull it all the way out and start slashing heads off when it is not appropriate. I find more women in my practice prodding men to slash rather than stand up to situations with strength and fortitude, with one hand on the sword, always ready, but strong enough to know when to use it. It isn't a woman's responsibility to make a man a man, but we are all in this together...
Thank you for this...no one can ever accuse you of having no balls.
No one can run from the archetypes, no matter what their politics!
Exactly, but people have been trying to for quite some time...primarily because people have no clue what they are and the power they have in their lives...you CAN "think for yourself" and clash with them if you are conscious of them...but more often than not the fundamental archetypes, king, warrior, magician, lover, for men, can be so beneficial if we embrace them and learn how they can help us. Women the same...matron, maiden, crone, and whatever else she wants to constellate. What you describe here, to me, is clear and obvious archetypal dysfunction, where everything is so twisted and convoluted no one knows up from down...each pathology feeding the next...was this brought on by the "powers that be" intentionally? Certainly the dysfunction is a result of conscious manipulation...with the slow but deliberate destruction of the male/female relationship, relationship to family, to self, etc. Whether ANYONE in power knows what archetypes actually are is a pretty clear "no"...
All very perceptive and true. We need really strong women too in order to have strong, real men. Women and men seem to have been weakened across the board by the trending narratives and the mass psychosis you write of. When we ordinary folks notice this on a daily basis it’s gotta be pretty real. Also can’t help but think of the powerful effect of online forums. I see them as weakening all of us. They’re like High School as forces to move people toward the lowest common denominator. Thanks.
Mark McDonald, I don't even know where to begin with this, but let me start with Exhibit A: https://williamaferguson.substack.com/p/what-a-coincidence?s=r
The thing is, toxic masculinity AND toxic femininity DO exist. They are the extremes of the gender roles manifested by deeply disturbed and traumatized people who believe that by exploiting the power they have over the opposite sex, they can benefit themselves at great expense to the other.
There are approximately 3 and half billion women in the world. They should not all have to constrain their behaviour, becoming more ‘feminine’ according to the gender roles that are imposed on them in order for men not to be predators. The work of feminists - and even that is a very broad endeavour that cannot possibly represent the interests of all women around the world - has been to liberate women from the brutality of male predation and place women on an equal economic, political, social and legal footing in society. Feminism was intended to elevate women from their status as chattel and property to actual human beings. Feminism, women's liberation, would simply not exist if patriarchal gender roles were working for women. As much as men would like to think so, women don’t all wish to be subservient to men. The average woman would like to be treated like a human being who matters, who is respected, whose boundaries are honoured and whose voice is heard.
Because you live a very insular, privileged and affluent life, you cannot possibly know what it means to realize every day that women are seen as only having value for their appearance. Yet here you are clearly saying that women should enjoy it, men should do more of it. I shouldn't have to say this, but being objectified is dehumanizing. Appreciating the opposite sex is fine as long as you appreciate more than just their body. But men stereotypically, because our culture condones this, don't seem to be particularly interested in what women have to offer beyond their bodies. 80% of men enjoy pornography, starting as young as 11 years old on average. But the porn men enjoy now is utterly vile, abusive, degrading and despicable. Boys and men are being taught through porn that women's bodies are to be CONSUMED, not appreciated. They take that perspective out into the world and then resent that women don't accept their predatory behaviour as normal. What you're proposing - and this is terrifying to me as a woman - is that men be ENCOURAGED to dehumanize women, as if they don't already do enough of it.
Mark, there's a reason why 90% of the prison inmates are male. And even the 10% of inmates who are female are there mostly for non-violent crimes. In fact the vast majority of female prison inmates are themselves survivors of abuse at the hands of their husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, boyfriends. What would you propose these women should have done? Be MORE feminine? As if their abusers became abusive because they weren't feminine enough? That's misogynist and utterly out of touch with reality.
If you check out William Ferguson's substack, all of his articles, he documents, along with many other men out there thank goodness, the rampant misogyny that we're seeing globally. Men don't become predators and monsters because women aren't feminine enough. Men become monsters because women have been portrayed as prey in our media, in cultural stories about romance, in pornography (Read Porn Inc for a shocking exploration of what male sexuality is becoming - https://www.amazon.com/Big-Porn-Inc-Exposing-Pornography/dp/1876756896), in men's groups. Men simply don't see women as human. Your article is yet another example of this.
So, no. we should not celebrate toxic masculinity. We should celebrate strong, healthy grounded men AND women in whatever capacity they show up on a continuum of masculine and feminine traits. We should not shame and punish women who are strong and try to weaken them in order for men not to be afraid of them. We should discourage toxic femininity which seeks to exploit women's power over men in ways that harm them. We should strive to raise healthy HUMAN BEINGS who respect and honour and cherish the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’ qualities in both men and women. We should not mutilate their bodies to make them fit the objectified genders that this culture creates for them.
I'm appalled that you and Jeremy - both men I respect for the important work that you're doing - cannot recognize the basic humanity of women and the dark road that we're going down because men blame women for the loss of their masculinity. No thanks. Women are already reeling from the destruction of their rights to private spaces away from men, reproductive rights, legal rights.
In closing, I dream of a world where men wake up and recognize the harm that they’ve done to women in their roles as fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, etc and women wake up and recognize how they deserve to be seen not just as objects but as full human beings. It seemed for a while that we were getting there, but the feminism project went off the rails, being coopted by the media, fertility, sex trafficking and porn industry which profits enormously off of women’s bodies. I despair for my children and granddaughter. I had hoped men like you and Jeremy would take up the challenge of getting feminism back on track by showing what good men do – model masculine behaviour that affirms women’s humanity, not denies it.
I appreciate your passion, conviction, and sincerity, but I don't see how anything you wrote applies to my article. I did expand on this topic in more detail in my book, United States of Fear.
As Todd Hayen wrote in a comment, the rebranding of true masculinity as toxic is an archetypal dysfunction. It eliminate any possibility of the flourishing of the feminine, and it destroys both sexes.
The feminists I know and the feminist theory that I've learned does not and has never considered masculinity itself as toxic. This is where I think so many people get it wrong.
Masculinity and femininity, as a spectrum of behaviour, not so much roles, in our culture are inherently good and valuable expressions of our humanity.
When we hard-code these terms to limit men to only being allowed to do 'masculine' things - and then we define these things as being dominant, aggressive, demanding, etc - is where masculinity becomes toxic.
The same thing with femininity. When we demand that women only be considered worthy of respect if they are traditionally 'feminine' - and then restrict and limit women's behaviour to being submissive, obedient, domestic, etc. - women become resentful and toxic. This manifests in manipulative behaviour.
The thing that I find supremely frustrating is what I'm seeing now. Our regression as a species back into the traditional roles and the glorification and valuing of women as primarily wives, helpmates and mothers and the glorification of men as soldiers, bosses, leaders.
And when taken to the extreme we get men actually demanding to be seen as better than actual women, by simply telling the world that they are women. And telling women that they can be as domineering and bullying as men by carrying out the same destructive political games.
Nobody wins.
So, getting back to my post - and I'm deeply saddened that you don't see the connections I thought I clearly made - women AND men should be free to choose what their spirit calls them to be and not have either sex feel they have to live up to our culture's expectations of where they fit within a narrow range of behaviour. Women's liberation was supposed to free both men and women to be their best selves. When women's roles continue to be undervalued, underpaid and underappreciated and men's roles continue to be more respected, more recognized, more valued, we have a problem.
The reason why feminism exists in the first place is not because women necessarily wanted to take men's place. Women, and their children, were living in a hellscape. By achieving the right to vote, work, learn, gather freely, women's lives improved exponentially. But what I'm seeing now is frankly terrifying. Women are losing control of bodily autonomy, men are lashing out at women blaming them for their own failure to take responsibility for their lives, our culture exploits women's bodies and sexuality in so many ways that I cannot even begin to express.
Being a man insulates you from so much, Mark. You are oblivious to all of the issues women have to deal with and women need to be strong, not dependent on men, in order to deal with them. Men and women need to be allies in the fight against the oligarchs, not adversaries. MeToo was supposed to bring awareness to the reality of women's everyday lives. Women don't want to be victims, we want to be empowered and independent, but everywhere we turn, we are shamed for wanted to be just a mom, or just a career woman. There is no relief from the judgment about women's choices, bodies, behaviours.
That's all I have to say. If I didn't have children, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago.
I won't go into detail here because I don't want to start a fight, but some of what you say here is essentially part of the problem. I definitely think your heart is in the right place, and what you are fighting for here, fundamentally, is the right fight. What Mark is talking about, like he said, really has little direct relation to what you are saying, again, I think your points are very important, but when Mark says there should be "more toxic masculinity" I don't think he means TOXIC masculinity (he implies that masculinity in general is considered toxic by the culture), I think he just means what many CALL toxic masculinity, but in fact, is not.
One of my favourite analogies is the man who is capable of pulling the sword out HALF WAY so the "sun will glint off the shining metal into his opponents eye"...the true man does not need to pull out the sword all the way and start slashing with little, if any, provocation, maybe we could call THAT toxic.
The problem in this culture now is that a man who even pulls out the sword half way is considered expressing toxic masculinity...so he only knows black and white, because the culture sees it to be all the same...no sword, or sword to slash. As a result we get very passive males, males "with no balls"...or...highly aggressive and dangerous males...which are either honoured (as the Ukrainian soldier) or vilified (as the toxic male--the Russian soldier)...considering all the movies that continually are pumped out of Hollywood...the only good male is the one that slashes everything in sight...or...the totally passive male that is sweet and loving 24/7. Where is the male that stands up to adversity with intelligence, wit, AND strength and fortitude? This is what Mark is addressing...at least that is MY take on it!! There is so much more detail here...and to be honest, I did not read your responses in a lot of detail, I got the general confusion right away. Maybe you are not confused about all of it (or any of it), but felt I should respond to the part of your response that hit me as a bit confused. If anyone wants, I could go into more explanation taking your comments in more detail (I would love to comment on your pornography reference...I agree that pornography is a big problem for young men, but for very different reasons!!)
The Depp / Heard trial may be tawdry, but it is representative of the worst of toxic femininity and the cowardly man today.
No matter how many studies prove wearing masks is useless, people will continue to wear them to the grave. They can no longer think.