Toxic Masculinity — A Social Study
A couple of days ago, I read this article about the society’s perspective on how men should act, I wanted to test out if men actually agree with what it said, so I asked a bunch of random males -18 to 20 years old- some questions related to the content of the article to see their point of view.
I started the questionnaire with a simple question asking them to define toxic masculinity; not all of them were aware of what the term stands for, however, all of their answers revolved around the same definition; “it's the traits and attitudes that societal norms and traditions expect -or even force- men to have, making them emotionally detached, forcing them not to show any kind of empathy. and having men always need to be dominant," and everything that falls under that. Or, for short, some ideologies that are passed down through generations on how a “man” should act.
When asked whether they consider the discouragement of men crying and showing emotions as part of the definition or not they all agreed, saying things like, “people criticise males when they show emotions, but when a female cries it's considered okay,” but some of them considered crying in public as a form of weakness. Unlike how the community perceives the issue, I personally believe that crying in public needs courage; it's like showing the universe what hurts you the most, showing vulnerability, yet challenging to overcome it.
The third question was a bit challenging since not all of the interviewees fully understood it -thank you to my explaining skills! ..... this is a joke my skills suck- was how they felt about the women representation in video games. Almost all of them -except of course the ones that didn’t play- agreed that it's a bit sexualized, but so is men's.
“I personally do not mind it, I always play as a female character and I think they’re badass, not sexy. But, of course, there are limits and they always feel the need to add cleavage. Also, I constantly feel like they make them more fragile.”
Some used this argument as a power point for video games; "yes, they are sexualized, but I'd say it goes for both genders because this is what makes money. You don’t see blockbuster Hollywood movies without a lead character that doesn’t have any sex appeal to them.” This doesn’t have to be necessarily correct, if I might say so myself, I mean a movie like The Post --which was named as the best film in 2017 by the National Board of Review and as one of the top 10 movies by The Time magazine and the American Film Institute, moreover, it received 6 nominations by at the 75th Golden Globes and 2 nominations at the 90th Academy Awards- didn't abide by their statement.
To add to that, many other movies -that I’m too lazy to list- don't abide by their statement either. So, it's true movies containing sexual scenes does make money, but actual movies that have an artistic meaning to them are what get the actual ratings from professional critics and thus it isn’t necessary for a movie to show any sexual scenes or sexually appealing actresses/actors in order for it to be successful; it's just what the audience expects after what’s been set by film creators.
Many also claimed that in video games female characters play crucial roles, and don’t worry I do approve *finally.*
“Multiple video games have female characters play integral roles, Tracer from Overwatch is on the cover of the game and is considered to be one of the big faces. Also, Ellie from The Last of Us and a lot from Horizon Zero Dawn are other examples that I just got off the top of my head."
Clothing is a controversial topic when it comes to how males should dress, luckily they all agreed that anyone should dress as they desire but some said, and I quote, “let's be real, some things fit males while others don’t”.
Finally, the last question was about whether they support males having the right to choose their sexuality, while not all of them agreed with the topic itself due to some religious beliefs and cultural background, some said, “you see, people think that when you are attracted to the same sex it's normal and that you’re born like this blah blah blah, I believe that the group or the community around them affects their sexuality.” Nevertheless, others choose not to comment on the topic, ”how I feel about this is something of no importance, and I think it won’t really matter if I share what I feel, so I would rather keep It to myself.” Some, however, were supportive, saying, “everyone should be free to love whoever they want, I don’t feel like it has to do with anyone's business.”
While views differ from one to another, they all agreed that everyone should be free to do whatever they want and should be given the respect they deserve because, in the end, we’re all just humans.
Overall I’m really surprised with most of the answers given but, again, all the interviewees come from the same social class, so it's not exactly a 100% representative study, but I tried!