By A Naidoo (5th Form)
I protect those around me, I stand for what is right, I uphold the values of others and I provide for my family no matter what. I push-on through hard times and never give up, it is these actions that define me and what I stand for. These actions all highlight what a masculine man is and in saying that, Good Morning school, today I will be discussing masculinity and topics surrounding it.
What is masculinity?
It is defined as a set of behaviours and practices that have been traditionally associated with men and manhood. To ME masculinity can be described in 3 words; driven, noble and courageous.
Masculinity runs much deeper than the shallow interpretation of the modern world, it doesn’t necessarily have to do with looking confident but looking confident may be a result of being a masculine man. He is far from any maliciousness and nothing less than noble. No one fears him except for those who have done him wrong, they admire rather than tremble before him.
Self-centeredness is not an aspect of masculinity. However, a man who recognizes that taking care of his body is just as important as taking care of his mental and emotional health, displays self-respect. Masculinity should be defined by decisiveness and initiative, as a masculine man builds trust from those around him.
He earns respect and receives admiration from people with his way of being, his words and his demeanour. Those “men” who use violence and tyranny are not respected and are the same “men” who have given this divine gift of manhood, the negative label of ‘ toxic masculinity.’
How Toxic masculinity has tarnished masculinity
Toxic masculinity is associated with the negative aspects of masculinity that are harmful and destructive to others. It is often used to describe behaviour linked to domination, humiliation and control. It is marked by things like emotional-detachment and hyper competitiveness. It is also connected to the sexual objectification of women as well as other predatory sexual behavior.
Nowadays society often confuses toxic masculinity with the concept of manhood. Men don’t even know what it means to be a man anymore, let alone a masculine one.
In my opinion, ‘men’ are taught how to be ‘men’ by highlighting feminine values. Just the other day, I stumbled across some truly worrying statistics which brought to light that the testosterone levels of men have drastically decreased within just a few decades. In a study comparing men born before World War 2 and men born thereafter, it showed that the average man today has a testosterone level of between 300-1000 nanograms per decilitre. Whereas the average man then had a testosterone level of between 800-2000 nanograms per decilitre. This indicates that the average man’s testosterone level has just about halved in less than 100 years. This is truly scary to think about and begs the question of whether masculine traits will eventually become extinct.
But do we need masculinity in society?
In the last 2 to 3 decades, the need for masculinity and masculine men has decreased and with that came the rise of the internet and the power that social-media holds. Complementing this rise of social media came the rise in the radical feminist.
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism where society is perceived as a patriarchy in which men dominate and women are oppressed. This ideology further extends into the idea that men are not needed and that women are more than capable of running society alone. I believe that some youth of today have accepted this outrageous idea that masculinity is bad and that radical feminism is correct.
This creates the broader issue that young men don’t seem to know where they stand anymore. They seem to have lost touch with their sense of masculinity and instead conform to society’s view of celebrating femininity, or, choose to rebel and assert hyper-masculinity.
It is for this very reason that a sense of masculinity needs to make a comeback. If we choose to ignore redefining masculinity, the concept of manhood will become a thing of the past. In summary the powerful Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, said ‘Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.’
Thank you