I haven’t yet watched the ad. You know the one I mean, the one with the well meant intentions that went off the rails. Look, the underlying concept is sound. Men need mentors. Men, societally speaking, don’t have a lot of healthy male role models. Look at the statistics. We live in a world of broken homes, and brave single mothers struggling on by themselves. Boys raised in these environments see their paternal units disappear like smoke in the wind, and that’s what they think they ought to do in return. Or... is that the problem?
The problem with the ad, with the scenario I sketch above, is that it takes agency away from men. The child growing up in a single parent home with no father can then choose to seek out men who can teach him how to be a man. The problem is availability. Men are no longer accepted well as teachers, as mentors, as any role working with children because they get serious judgy looks from everyone because what kind of sicko works with kids? And that is par for the course from the media that surrounds us and pretends to be a mirror of our society. The availability bias of the media is that we see what they want us to see: murder, molestation, and mayhem. All men, we are told, with a straight face. All men want to do these things.
No. No they do not. A tiny minority, perhaps. Perhaps. However, I’ve lived my life as a woman surrounded by men, and I’m a survivor. I know what the men who prey look like, and it’s not what the media want you to think. It’s not the rough and tumble crude men who swear and work with their hands and get dirty all day long. It’s the wolves in sheep’s clothing who support feminism with one hand and take all they can get with the other because the naive think them ‘allies.’ All men are not potential rapists. To say that is to punish the innocent along with the guilty. Societally, that is toxic.
Should I tell my son that? “Look, dude, we all know you’re going to want to rape. So don’t.” Yeah, no. Instead, I’m going to teach him to honor and respect women, and other men, and to be protective of his sisters, and me, and in time that will bleed over to his girlfriends and wife. Look at how a man treats his mother if you are thinking of taking him to husband. I’m going to build my Little Man up, not cut him off at the knees and tell him that his innate nature as a man is ugly and toxic and he needs to somehow be cured of being male. Men are different than women. How many times have I written that sentence? Too many, for a statement that is blindingly obvious. Different is good. Different does not mean that there’s something wrong with men. Men are driven by nature to be protective, not to rape and assault.
So why... Why do we have this ad that implies men can’t help themselves and have to be restrained from following their base natures? Perhaps because the public perception of men is that they are weak, foolish, ineffective... Have you seen any movies or TV shows recently? Portrayals of fathers on children’s shows? There are so few examples of loyal men who do their duty and protect their sacred honor and the honor of their wives and children with their lives... that aren’t portrayals of history or some comic book hero? Look at the news that trickles out of Hollywood, and then look at the portrayals of men again. Makes sense, doesn’t it now? Listen to a popular radio station. Really listen to the lyrics of the songs. How many of them are all about denigrating women and treating them like objects? Unless you’re on a gasp country station. Which isn’t cool, as all my kids will tell you.
I am a mother, a daughter, a wife, a friend. I have coworkers I trust and mentors, and so many men in my life. Of the dozens, perhaps hundreds, I’ve interacted with in my life, three have been toxic. Statistically speaking, that’s... not a lot. Too many, sure, no doubt. Although there are psychological reasons for the first one to have cascaded into the other two, because the scars made me vulnerable to a certain kind of male... and still. Not #allmen. I reject that categorically. The wounds they left in me were largely healed through other men’s love and support. To embrace the concept that masculinity is an outdated notion leading to toxic behavior would doom my son. More than that, it would doom my daughters to becoming victims of every man that came their way, and I know better than that. They have - all my children have - the chance to become wonderful people.
What has to stop, though, is the portrayal of men as powerless monsters. I’ve seen so many ‘haha, anyone who reacts badly to this ad is an example of toxic masculinity!’ Let me ask you this: if you were being bullied every day, every time you turned around and saw another article, another ad, another media depiction of ‘your kind’ as monstrous, depraved, inhuman... how would you feel? Would you become sore under the constant onslaught of blows? Would you become deeply suspicious and angry of everyone around you? Toxic masculinity? Only because the men are treated like animals, until they become what they hated most. Torture victims break, eventually, or die. Let’s stop torturing men into caricatures, and let them be themselves.
Teach them duty, honor, and chivalry as it was meant to be. Not the feminist re-imagining of that as some kind of weaponized kindness. Let men be protectors and fight for their loved ones. Let them provide for their households. Let them be noble, and kind, and all that Captain America, Mr. Rogers (who was himself a soldier), and Bob Ross would want them to be. Don’t forget that Cap exhorted them to stand, when all around them fell into wrongness. That Mr. Rogers told them to be a good neighbor. That Bob Ross told them making mistakes was ok, to make it right and whole again. Men are not evil, and we must stop perpetuating that myth. Read Kipling, and Robert Service, and Robert Heinlein. Then become the heroes they write of. Watch Mike Rowe at work and seek out those men as examples.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
You’ll be a Man, my son!
—Rudyard Kipling, “If”