By Tom Robotham
Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
– Margaret Fuller, Woman in the 19th Century, 1845
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the mixed messages American society sends to young men—and so, apparently, have a lot of other people on both sides of the political divide. On the left, there’s a lot of talk about “toxic masculinity.” Many on the right, by contrast, have embraced notions of traditional manliness with new fervor.
Not long ago, for instance, Mark Zuckerberg sat for an interview with bro-icon Joe Rogan and asserted that large companies need more “masculine energy” because the corporate world is becoming “culturally neutered.” More recently, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated photo of himself as an uber-macho Jedi with huge, rock-hard biceps. Both, of course, were ludicrous given that Zuckerberg is more akin to the high school nerd who gets shoved into lockers than a hyper-masculine jock, while you have to admit that Trump—whatever you may think of his politics–isn’t exactly built like a Greek statue. Nevertheless, both of these examples underscore the degree to which many Americans long for a society where men are men and a woman’s place is in the home. Even some women have come to embrace the concept of what’s come to be called the “trad” wife.
Meanwhile, many 20-something males are in crisis. Young men today are three times more likely to overdose, four times more likely to commit suicide, and 14 times more likely to be incarcerated than their female peers. They are also far more likely than women to be the perpetrators of domestic violence.
All of this has led me to think about my own upbringing as an American boy.
From a young age, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, I absorbed society’s notions about masculinity and tried my best to live up to them. The messaging came first from television, especially Westerns like Roy Rogers and Gunsmoke. Looking back on those shows, they don’t strike me as entirely unhealthy. The latter, in particular, drew a sharp contrast between Matt Dillon and the bad guys who routinely beat women and bullied weaker men in a desperate effort to prove their “manhood.”
I always wanted to be like Matt—tough as nails and able to stand up to anyone looking for a fight, but otherwise a gentleman. Alas, as I got a little older, I realized that I fell short. Most of the neighborhood boys were a lot tougher than I. The pressure never let up, though. I remember one day, at age 9, when my best friend Charlie instigated a fist fight between me another kid who was about my size. It didn’t amount to much. A few flailing punches were thrown, then I landed one on his cheek, and he ran away. Charlie congratulated me, nonetheless.
“You’ll never get any respect in this neighborhood if you can’t fight,” he said. And I took that to heart. I wanted to be as tough as he was—so much so that when he told me that his father would occasionally whip him with a belt, I wished that my dad would do that too. Maybe it would make me stronger.
There was no possibility of that. My father never even raised a hand to me—and in retrospect, of course, I’m grateful. But there were times back then when I was ashamed of him, not only because of his gentleness but because of his job. He was a librarian. Charlie’s dad was a cop.
By the time we reached high school, the masculinity gap between Charlie and me had widened. He became a football star and dated a cheerleader. I was still small for my age, not terribly good at sports, and shy around girls to boot. I found refuge among the potheads. But the culture of macho violence continued to swirl around me.
One day after school, I was hanging with half a dozen neighborhood kids outside a local deli. Nearby was a private boys’ school, just letting out.
“Let’s go kick the shit out of those faggots,” my friend Johnny said, gesturing to the boys in coats and ties. And off they went to start a brawl.
I stayed seated on a milk crate outside the deli, next to a girl named Maureen.
“I can’t believe you’re not going to help your friends,” she said.
I’d had a crush on her, but at that moment she lost my respect. I lost a little self-resect as well. If I’d had more guts, I would have told Johnny that those private-school kids had done nothing to him. Leave them alone. But I knew I didn’t have the power to stop him. He was the kind of boy who measured his entire worth by his ability to beat people up. And most of the time, he could do it.
Most galling of all, was the fact that girls were drawn to boys like him.
It wasn’t until college that those feelings began to wane. The social environment could not have been more different from the tough-guy culture in which I’d grown up. Most of the guys I met were exceedingly laid back. Sure, there were some stereotypical frat boys here and there, but we had zero interest in that subculture. Meanwhile, I began to meet girls who seemed to appreciate my sensitive nature and would likely have been appalled by hyper-macho types.
When I returned to New York City after college, though, I encountered the culture of machismo once again. I remember sitting in a bar one night with a couple of buddies when a girl with mermaid-length locks walked over and stood next to our booth. I told her she had beautiful hair, and out of nowhere a big bruiser of a guy stepped up and angrily got in my face: “What’d you just say to her?!” he asked, clearly ready to hit me. One of my friends—who was pretty tough himself—grabbed our pitcher of beer by the handle, ready to smash it over the guy’s head if he started something. I told the guy to relax—that I’d just given her a compliment. He glared at me, but then noticed my friend, grabbed his girl roughly by the arm and pulled her away.
I encountered this crap in my job, too, as a police reporter for a daily newspaper. Some of the cops I dealt with were nice enough, but a lot of them walked around with chips on their shoulders, seeming to relish a profession that, in their minds, called for them to intimidate people as a way of life. I despised such men, but continued at the same time to feel some of the insecurity and envy I’d felt as a boy—especially because, as I tried to date, it seemed to me that girls still gravitated to the macho-types.
Certainly movies—like Die Hard—continued to reinforce the notion that hyper-masculine men rule the world and are to be admired.
It wasn’t until I got married that these feelings went away entirely, and I began to accept myself for who I am. Eventually, I came to believe that everyone has masculine and feminine qualities—to varying degrees—and that a healthy psyche embraces them both, to whatever extent each exists within our individual souls.
In recent years, however, I’ve gone even further, wondering whether masculinity and femininity are mere social constructs. After all, the traits traditionally associated with manliness—strength and courage—are as admirable in women as they are in men. At the very least, I think we place far too much emphasis on these gender distinctions. For my part, at any rate, the qualities I admire in people are genderless: intelligence, empathy, compassion the ability to express a full range of emotions without embarrassment, a sensitivity to beauty and a passion for life. Conversely, I despise more than ever the bullying machismo that seems to be making a comeback in our culture. Then again, perhaps “despise,” is the wrong word. I’ve come to believe that men who seek to dominate with intimidation are simply trying to compensate for profound insecurities—as are women who behave that way, or are drawn to it in men. Frankly, I think that’s tragic.
