Men’s lack of deep, close friendships has been in the spotlight lately. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 54% of women say they turn to a friend for emotional support, but only 38% of men say they do. Essayist Sam Graham-Felsen and American Institute for Boys and Men CEO Richard Reeves join John Yang to discuss why some men seem to struggle with maintaining social connections.
I grew up on a farm and worked construction, played sports thru college, then joined the military. Raised by and around other men who make my life seem like a cakewalk.
Every stereotypically “manly” group I’ve been apart of, dudes are all emotionally open because they’re secure in their masculinity.
When boys/men think they’re acting “tough” by suppressing their emotions, they’re not copying men who are actually tough, they’re copying other people’s false bravado.
That’s the entire point of what I’m saying.
All the posturing only impresses other people that are posturing.
And literally anyone can stop buying into it at anytime…
If they don’t, they’re perpetrating it.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to stop caring what douchebags think is “manly” and that’s literally all it takes to fix this
If any problem could be solved by ‘just do x’ it would have been solved already. I grew up in the same sort of environment you did, except the men in my life very much bought into the culture of toxic masculinity. It wasn’t until I started to research my own family history and saw the horrific abuse that my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather experienced and perpetuated that I really made the connection between the cycle of abuse, PTSD, and toxic masculinity.
For people that can just drag themselves out of that mire on their own without any help, great. But some need to be pointed in the right direction and to work through all the trauma that was inflicted on them.