How to Address Toxic Masculinity With Boys
Photo by Chaozzy
This is the final article in a three-part series about why and how Next Gen Men’s youth programs and resources engage boys-only groups in schools.
Start by exploring why schools need to commit to combatting ‘toxic’ masculinity in Why Schools Should Commit to Combating Toxic Masculinity. Then read A Gender-Neutral Approach to Toxic Masculinity Won’t Work to round out your understanding of why working speciically with boys and young men matters.
I recently engaged two preteen boys in a counselling session about why they were in conflict with each other. One of the boys, Jordan, began the conversation with a joking attitude, and I shut him down. Several times. “I’m asking you both to be vulnerable,” I eventually told him, “and if you target Madden while his guard is down, that’s going to make me snap.”
Jordan looked at me. “Can I say something?” he asked.
I said sure.
“You think I’m someone I’m not,” he fired. “You judge me as soon as I start talking and I hate it. You warned me so many times, like you already have it in your head that I’m a fuck-up. Because I’m Black? I don’t know.”
“Or the past,” he added. “The past is not the future.”
This gets at one of the hardest things to balance when working with boys—how to challenge problematic and harmful behaviours or beliefs without making them feel like they’re being targeted themselves. Many boys’ identities are closely intertwined with masculinity, which means that when we talk about their actions it can feel like we’re talking about them. No one wants to feel like that.
So how do we address toxic masculinity without vilifying boys?
‘Boys will be boys’ creates a feedback loop in the way we think about boys.
In many ways, the way we conceptualize boys today originated in the early 20th century, when kind, gentle, and soft boys started being problematized by parents, sociologists, writers and politicians alike.
“Masculinity became a singular blueprint. Patriarchal society demanded it; allowing femininity among boys was too great a risk. And so, with one eye on a boy’s fists and another on the man they hoped he would become, adults reinforced characteristics like temerity and reticence. They built up a male ideal.”
Read more: Past Breaking the Boy Code article, The Heart of a Harsh Boy.
The point of saying this is that our baseline expectations for boys’ behaviour come from a long history. The ‘boys will be boys’ narrative is sometimes as blatant as the defending a Supreme Court nominee accused of committing sexual assault, but often it is more subtle than that.
You can hear it as an undercurrent in the way we talk with or about teenage boys in particular—boys like Jordan. We see them as inaccessible. Unapproachable. Impenetrable. “How many of us parents have watched our sweet toddler boys slowly hide their tenderness,” asked John Bell in a #MeToo op-ed, “in order to fit into the harsh teenage boy culture?”
It’s the same ‘boys will be boys’ rhetoric, only no one is saying it out loud.
Yet boys know it. They feel it, just like Jordan did. Because what we don’t say with our voices we demonstrate with our actions—and working with pro-feminist ‘sweet’ boys while writing off the tough ones as yet another bitter end to the status quo says it all.
That’s like teaching kids the dangers of smoking. It’s preventative. It’s worthwhile. But it’s clearly inadequate. What about the kids already smoking to fit in or to cope with anxiety? What about the kids who picked it up from their parents? And what about the kids who don’t smoke but still think it looks cool?
Every one of them deserves to breathe. To be heard. To be held accountable when they screw up, and to be given opportunities to grow beyond the limited stereotypes they are so often given.
Engaging boys on masculinity should include a trauma-informed approach.
In Vincent Grashaw’s 2017 film And Then I Go, 15-year-old Arman Darbo plays Edwin, a high school freshman who is bullied constantly and desperate for something to change. In one poignant scene, he breaks into tears after another day of unrelenting violence at school.
“Oh honey, it’s okay,” his mother tries to tell him.
“What is?” he says.
“Whatever it is,” she hesitates, “I know that sometimes you just can’t handle stuff. It’s too hard.”
Abruptly, he pushes her away. “I can handle it,” he snaps.
Trauma-sensitive care calls on parents and educators to recognize the impact of traumatic experiences and actively resist re-traumatization. Edwin’s victimization within his peer hierarchy at school caused him to feel utterly powerless. Because his mother didn’t use a trauma-informed approach, she inadvertently made that feeling worse.
When I first watched this scene, I was moved by how clearly and powerfully Arman Darbo demonstrates the mask of boyhood.
Really, though, most boys could probably do the same. They’ve experienced it firsthand.
Even teenagers—even the ones trying desperately and sometimes convincingly to appear invulnerable. They’re not. If you think a boy who was in a fist fight isn’t hurting, try punching something with an unprotected fist. If you think a boy who is using drugs isn’t struggling, ask yourself what kind of feelings outweigh getting arrested.
As Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson put it in their landmark book about boys’ emotional lives, Raising Cain, it’s vital that we not take boys at face value, even though they sometimes insist—furiously—that we do so.
That means being attentive to the fact that boys are each carrying past hurt or ongoing struggles on their shoulders, and knowing that those experiences influence their current mindset in different ways.
We don’t judge boys. We meet them where they’re at, and we help them lift that weight.
Positive masculinity can be built through strengths-based psychology.
Shame and judgment have a powerful regulatory presence in the lives of boys and young men. Boys who don’t fit the ‘tough guy’ stereotype are often mocked or excluded by their peers; boys who do usually get shut down or punished by their teachers.
As a result, boys become highly attuned to shame. They can sense a deficit mindset a mile away.
That’s one of the reasons Next Gen Men’s youth team avoids the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ altogether. Instead, we build on a body of research about how to strengthen boys’ best qualities and engage them as allies.
Psychologists Mark Kiselica and Matt Englar-Carlson, for example, propose a framework called positive psychology/positive masculinity, which empowers boys and men to embrace healthy forms of masculinity by accentuating positive traditional qualities like courage, heroism and boys’ relational styles.
Learn more: Develop a foundational understanding of theories on masculinity in Next Gen Men’s online course, Raising Next Gen Men.
What really matters is the mindset.
A strengths-based mindset matters because when the threat of shaming or judgment is removed, boys don’t hold back: they long to tell their stories. We’ve seen this again and again in our work at Next Gen Men. When given the chance, boys’ groups become incredibly open to sharing about their experiences with masculinity.
What this has taught us is that boys already have what they need to make positive change. They have the experience, the self-awareness, and the capacity to see the consequences and inherent limitations of harmful versions of masculinity.
Yes, boys who are stuck may need help unpacking their baggage or overcoming significant barriers, but our job, then, is to provide them with opportunities for meaningful reflection—not to fix them altogether.
“Boys have the ability to imagine for themselves lives that are entirely of their own design. Inspired by their dreams, they can and do resist all efforts to make them into something they are not. And as we nurture all of their human capacities, including integrity and courage, I am confident that boys will surprise us with their reinvention of a boyhood well suited to this new world.”
Boys want to know how to be masculine without being toxic.
In the first blog post in this series, Why Schools Should Commit to Combating Toxic Masculinity, I talk about Louis, an 11-year-old who first connected with Next Gen Men while he was in trouble with the law. Through a lot of hard work, self-reflection and a mentoring relationship with me, he slowly came to terms with what he’d done and committed to a new vision for his future.
One of the most impactful things I learned through speaking with him on the Breaking the Boy Code podcast was the impact of an adult mentor’s belief: he didn’t believe he could change until I did.
In the end, he started propelling his own transformation, but to do that he constantly drew on my steadfast belief in not just who he could be but in who he already was.
It isn’t always easy to find the balance between affirming boys and pushing them to do better, but that middle ground is a landscape of immense possibility. That’s where boys want to be found.
Listen: Subscribe to Breaking the Boy Code so you don’t miss the upcoming season featuring Louis.
The human body is designed to resist toxicity. It’s not until we’re immersed in it for a long period of time that it becomes dangerous.
That’s why the most important thing we can do as role models and mentors in boys’ lives is to provide an unwavering sensation of being known and loved.
As Jordan put it, the past is not the future. The future of masculinity lives in our relationships with boys and within boys themselves.
So we need to challenge the ‘boys will be boys’ narrative wherever it arises, respond to boys’ behaviours and beliefs with a sensitivity to their trauma and a commitment to their strengths. Above all, we need to show them that we believe they are the change-makers we’ve been waiting for, the ones who will lead change within their lives and shift our culture towards justice.
That’s who boys are.
Why does this matter at school? Learn about the ways boys are struggling and how schools can be spaces of transformation in the first blog post in this series, Why Schools Should Commit to Combating Toxic Masculinity.
ICYMI This Week
Boys Will Be…Resilient (Voice Male Magazine)
What is happening to Indigenous men and boys along B.C.’s Highway of Tears? (APTN News)
A Cruel Thing I Said As A Kid Made Me A Pariah For Years. Here's What I Wish I Knew Then. (HuffPost)
Written by Next Gen Men Program Manager Jonathon Reed as part of Learnings & Unlearnings, a bi-weekly blog reflecting on our experiences working with boys and young men. Subscribe to Future of Masculinity to get Learnings & Unlearnings delivered to your email inbox.