By Jack Underhill
C.W. suicide, depression, violence
The call for men to be feminists is often argued on 2 terms. One is that feminism is a social justice issue and that we all have a duty to bring about a just feminist, patriarchy-free society; this is obviously indisputable. The other, which often aggregates around conversations about toxic masculinity is that men need feminism to save them from themselves, to end the self harm that patriarchal masculinity breeds. This, I think is true, and men would benefit from having a decoupled concept of strength from masculinity, but it obfuscates the point and treats men as another victim in patriarchy’s long and vicious history. This avoids how men are complicit in the perpetuation of patriarchy and often choose to maintain its power, even at the detriment of their own mental health.
The question of whether or not a ‘healthy masculinity’ is possible is important but not the be all and end all. Decoupling masculinity and power is an important and necessary hurdle. Imposed ideas of strength; power in the masculine and weakness in the feminine, does lead to men suffering in silence. The inability to admit struggle, and attempting to maintain an idea of a strong façade, leads directly to lots of undiagnosed cases of depression in men. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 35. Furthermore, men also report significantly lower life satisfaction than women.
Releasing men from these clearly harmful realities would indeed be a kind of liberation but it seems a cost few are willing to give up. The maintenance of power is not passive. Men are damaged by patriarchy but remain complicit. These ideas of value defined by powerful masculinity are things that men benefit from. It allows their ideas to be taken seriously, respected, employed, promoted, paid more, valued more, in general it grants them power. The ability to navigate these male spaces that grants individuals, companies and institutions power comes with this trade off and is yet to be properly challenged. Of course, these issues are not purely based on gender, with class, race, sexuality, disability all playing an intersecting role in who pays the heaviest price for patriarchy’s crimes and persistence. But the important thing to note is that the virtue of being male brings power, even when factored within those other intersecting social identities.
The idea that feminism is a win-win for everyone is always tempting and is good at garnering interest and support, but the harsher reality is that men do lose something from feminism, but it is something they must lose in order for a more just world to exist. The violence under patriarchy has no justification and must be ended. The call of the feminist movement then is that men must realise the cost to their own social position but continue to fight the battle anyway.