Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
I'm speaking today about men and toxic masculinity,
and about how the ideals of manhood are harmful for the realities of tomorrow.
I choose this topic because my PhD involved the study of masculinity,
particularly how boys learn to become men.
Gentlemen, I'm going to say confronting things
that your masculinity will automatically reject.
That doesn't make me wrong;
it's just that masculinity hides itself so well,
especially when questioned,
by acting normal and natural and right -
what Michel Foucault called 'the order of things.'
Ladies, I'm going to need your help, please.
Masculinity and its problems is largely invisible to men.
But you can see it.
(Laughter)
And you can help them change it for the better.
Women's experiences are vital to helping real men do better.
And we all know what a real man is, don't we?
Strong, silent type.
Macho, brave.
He's a risk-taking winner.
He's tough, and he's dominant. He takes what he wants.
He's a sexual master.
(Laughter)
Women want to be him -
No! Women want him, and men want to be him!
(Laughter)
Han Solo, in 'Star Wars,' is a real man,
even if he's scruffy-looking.
John Wayne, in 'Hondo',
Clint Eastwood, in 'Dirty Harry',
and Bruce Willis, in 'Die Hard', are real men.
Real men don't cry,
not even at their own father's funeral.
Because a tough guy takes the slings and arrows of life
with a steely-eyed glare,
or when provoked, harsh words and his fists.
By these definitions I'm not a real man.
I'm not macho or brave or dominant...
or a sexual master.
(Laughter)
And I did cry at my own father's funeral.
At least I think I did. I got very drunk afterwards and don't remember it.
(Laughter)
But being a real man is bad for your health.
A 2016 meta-analysis involving 19,000 participants
identified that real men have higher rates of stress,
depression and substance abuse.
Manly men die, on average, five years younger than women,
and men and boys are 7 out of 10 suicides.
Men, our masculinity is literally killing us!
Today's masculinity is toxic.
Here are some examples of toxic masculinity
taken right from the news headlines.
The drunk man who shakes his toddler to death
because it's crying.
The man who, in a rage, rapes the woman that's just rejected his sexual advances
at the end of their date.
Or the man who gropes a co-worker, grabbing her by the breast or buttocks,
or sending her 74 text messages in a single day,
11 of which are images of his penis.
Toxic masculinity is the homophobic slur
on Call of Duty chat or the football field,
and it's putting other men down with name-calling like 'fag' or 'pussy'.
Toxic masculinity is the phrase 'Boys will be boys',
because boys only behave like they are taught to behave.
Masculinity is learned.
It's not in our genes.
It's constructed, socially.
And masculinity has been well studied for more than 50 years.
My PhD research used R. W. Connell's seminal text from 1994, 'Masculinities'.
Connell is a sociologist
who started her career studying how boys behave in schools,
and later identified that there are multiple masculinities,
each unique in the circumstances for that person.
Connell says, for example,
I'm a different man playing catch or wrestling
with my two little boys in the backyard
than I am in the classroom in front of my students.
I use a different vocabulary, different diction,
different tones of voice.
And physical touch is differently acceptable.
I'm a different man in the bedroom with my wife
than I am in the church or out drinking with the boys.
There is no essential 'me', fixed and unchanging.
Instead, my social circumstances dictate what is acceptable behaviour.
Connell calls this idea 'hegemonic masculinities'.
Hegemonic masculinities
is the set of social rules expected of men and boys.
We learn it.
That's where 'Dirty Harry' Callahan and Han Solo come into the game.
They are cultural representations of real manhood.
They teach us how real men should behave,
and hence, I want to be them.
Hegemonic masculinities also values itself most highly,
which is why Dirty Harry Callahan and Han Solo are such arrogant assholes.
(Chuckling)
Toxic masculinity
lives on in our daily experience.
It affects everything we do.
And much of what we do is driven by power, by wanting more power.
The men in the room know what I'm saying.
Connel developed the idea of the hegemon
from Italian sociologist Antonio Gramsci,
who defined hegemony as the system of social power
in which violence is promised and is the ultimate threat.
Have you ever noticed how a police car pulling up behind you on the highway
causes anxiety?
That's the hegemon's power, scaring you.
Or have you ever felt alone and afraid on a dark night
when a group of men passed close by?
That's the hegemon's power, scaring you.
When I get called to my boss's office,
I get nervous!
(Laughter)
That's the hegemon's power, scaring me.
Gramsci noted that institutions typically have more power than individuals.
The police are a good example, as are the military or the Boy Scouts.
He also noted that people behave according to the hegemon's rules,
without being forced to.
People are a social creature, and hence largely police themselves.
We learn hegemonic masculinities in schoolyard games as children,
and we practice it
in department meetings at work as adults.
We learn it from TV.
We learn it from friends and family and co-workers
and movies and books and pop songs.
And remember,
men want to be the hegemon.
But that means many men end up trying to be a man they can't define,
which leads to guilt and shame because they don't measure up.
Many men, intuiting that they don't meet the hegemonic standard,
lash out with anger and violence
because those are the tools of the hegemon.
These men lash out at those weaker than themselves,
usually women and children,
to make themselves feel more powerful.
It's pathetic, but it's true.
Let me give you an example.
The last decade has seen the rise of the incel movement,
a toxic masculinity that blames a man's involuntary celibate status,
his incel status,
as the fault of the women around him.
Women won't sleep with him, therefore women must be punished.
It's a very masculine logic.
Rage and vengeance for perceived loss of power
are symptoms of men
suffering the psychic backlash of failed masculinities.
These men have to blame somebody else
or else accept the truth that it is they that are at fault,
that it is 'we men' who need to change.
I'll look at a terrible recent example.
November 2, 2018.
A perpetrator I won't name and hence glorify,
who was 40 years old,
walked into Hot Yoga, Tallahassee, and opened fire,
killing Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61,
Maura Binkley, 21,
and wounding five others.
This man had a documented history of groping women,
had posted extensively on social media about his troubles with the opposite sex,
including YouTube videos
where he glorifies other violent incel figures.
Afterwards, he turned the gun on himself -
far too late, in my opinion.
His was a toxic masculinity.
A 2010 study published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences
identified that such murder-suicides are highly depressed,
overwhelmingly men,
and that a high percentage of murder-suicide is male on female.
The Violence Policy Center's sixth edition of Murder-Suicide in the United States
identifies that such murder-first-then-suicide
are, and I quote, 'almost always committed by a man carrying a firearm',
end quote,
and that between 1,000 and 15,000 deaths per year
occur because of murder-suicide.
Toxic masculinity isn't just killing men;
it's killing women and children, too.
Noted feminist author Margaret Atwood
once described the difference between men and women
in very stark terms.
'Men', she said, 'are afraid that women will laugh at them.
Women are afraid that men will kill them.'
Extreme, perhaps,
but let's ask the women their opinion.
Let's ask the women
about the catcalling and wolf-whistling and casual harassment
that confronts them every day on the streets,
in the workplace and in their homes.
Men, we don't see it; we're blind to it,
because privilege is a thing, and the hegemon is invisible.
Ask women about how they change their daily behaviour
in order to accommodate their physical safety!
For example, women have a lifetime of messages
that puts the responsibility on them not to be raped.
'Don't go out late at night.'
'Don't dress provocatively.'
'Don't leave your drink unattended.'
That's patriarchy!
That's toxic masculinity defining the victim as the one to blame,
when it's men doing the raping!
And this is an example of how powerful and invisible is the hegemon:
despite violent crime being committed overwhelmingly by men and boys,
only now, only in 2018 and 2019,
and with the help of the #MeToo movement,
does gender become part of the conversation about violence.
News reports don't highlight gender.
They hide it!
News headlines use gender-neutral terms
such as 'suspect' or 'assailant' or 'shooter'.
Worst of all,
in the phrase 'violence against women',
men are left out of the construction altogether.
Our very language is part of hegemonic masculinities.
Rape is framed through the victim.
'The woman was raped.' 'The child was raped.'
This takes the responsibility off the perpetrator, the man,
and actually shields him.
The passive voice construction makes it invisible.
It's much better to say 'The man raped the woman'
because that at least keeps the bastard on the hook.
Australian comedian Hannah Gatsby,
in her Netflix special 'Nanette',
wonders briefly what it must be like for men to hate what they desire!
She does this in the context of telling a joke
about her own physical and sexual assault.
It's confronting stuff.
I've experienced toxic masculinity as both the aggressor and the victim.
I was a nightclub bouncer for a decade, and I really enjoyed the power.
'Not in those shoes.'
(Laughter)
But I was also bullied all the way through primary school and high school.
Just look at me.
And I've been physically and sexually assaulted.
And what I do know
is I absolutely will perpetrate a toxic masculinity again
because its power is insidious and invisible.
What I really want you to do
is think about privilege.
Think about who in the room can change our culture.
I feel guilty
because of what happened to Hannah Gastby.
I feel responsible.
And I'm one of the most privileged people on the planet.
I'm a PhD, and my income level, and my skin colour
and...my penis.
(Laughter)
I'm just a less-than-ideal man.
What can I do to fight the hegemon?
I can name it!
And I can teach you to name it too.
Because that's what the hegemon hates most of all,
being seen.
Because if we can see it, we can change it.
So I choose to share an eye-roll with a woman during a mansplain
or a condescension bomb.
I choose to let a woman speak first, and just nod my head in agreement.
I don't have to speak after her to clarify what she meant.
And I can cry,
without shame,
during the good bit in 'Love Actually'.
(Laughter)
But what I must do, first and foremost, is point out the hegemon to men and women,
and to help them transform
one of the most fundamental forces in our culture and in ourselves.
And that's what I want you to do, ladies and gentlemen.
Name the hegemon when you see it.
Name it to shame it, shame it to change it,
because power can change!
And lastly,
in the wise counsel of Dr. Seuss, in 'Horton Hears a Who!' -
Horton says,
'"I've got to protect them! I'm bigger than they!"
So he plucked up the clover, and hustled away.'
Thank you.
(Applause)