Psychologists call 'traditional masculinity' harmful, face uproar from conservatives

Hello,

I'm extremly skeptical about that decision. It seems quite obvious that association went under far left controle. It's interesting to remember that the USSR had a high tendancy to put in psychiatric asylum their opponents.
I don't see how achievement can be considered as harmfull, neither taste for adventure or risk (excepted useless risk).

I could agree there is bad behavour related to man like "drink if you're a true man".
Considering early death, substance abuse and suicide, children raised with a dad have much less often that kind of problem, masculinity isn't the problem, but the solution.

 

This is what happens when the beta male and hyper feminist world conjoin to publish their opinions....

 

You said 'traditional masculinity'. Having lived when we still had it I am aware they are right. We worked to change that but this is the stereotype that the far right wants to bring back in.

I have two grandsons. One of them is in no way macho but the other one is. He pretty much could not be more so and thoroughly enjoys play fighting all day and identifying himself with what he believes he should be in order to be a good man when he grows up. He discovered when he came out of nappies that he was like his dad and his sister was like his mum and said when he grew up he was going to be like his Dad.

But he is a really kind boy and does not have any of the other negative connotations - they come from our conditioning.

 

@alexa About conditionning, it's almost impossible to know the acquired from inborn on a species made of acquired like mankind.

However, at the opposite of post modernist left says, we more and more know there is a part of inborn in the human species, however, it's a field where considerable research have still to be done.

I think that all the "blame mascunility" is kind of hypocrital.
First, because it's extremly comfortable to blame boys rather than looking at what's wrong. For instance, we do know that the lack of fathers hurt particulary boys. But rather advocating for giving more place to father in family laws, let's blame boys more.
The same for school, we know that there is much much more boys failing at school that girls, but that would be too uncomfortable for the rather progressive teachers to look at the way they treat boys.
And so on.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thi...be-sacrificed-for-the-benefit-of-others-than/

 

I don't know what they mean by "traditional masculinity", but men commit the vast majority of violent crime in this country (and every country on Earth). It's not even close. We also start all the wars.

It's just biology. We have to compete with each other to get our billions of sperm to that one egg. The females of the species can always afford to be choosy, which means males have to show off our fitness. Our species obviously didn't go the peacock route. We're more like those rams who fight each other for dominance and the privilege of mating.

It's worked well for the species up until the last century or so. Now men don't know how to properly channel all the aggression, and when they get turned down by females, they don't just sulk for awhile. They huddle together online, vent their hatred of women, and go down some really dark rabbit holes. Have any of you actually read the stuff on an incel message board? If you haven't, don't. It's just depressing and scary to think there are people walking around who think like that.

 

I would disagree on that. I would think the difference between my two grandsons probably comes from their inherited genes but the environment is of major significance. As well as the desire to fit in. To be frank most people are so conditioned they do not even know who they are.

With personality I know some years ago psychologists did some research on temperament. The divided this into three kinds, easy, slow to get started and I think the last was something like fiery. They identified these categories pretty much from birth and spent 20 years studying them. They discovered that from birth to adulthood their temperament did not change - they had the same one as that they were born with. However they did discover that what made a difference was how the parents and others dealt with the child's temperament. This was particularly relevant with those with a 'fiery temperament'. Where these parents or care givers returned the child's anger and frustration with anger and frustration these children were likely to end up getting into trouble with the law or in some other way be considered anti social whereas where there parents and those involved in their care did not respond like this but spend their time talking to them and helping them to understand what they were doing and finding more creative ways to deal with these feelings the children learnt how to deal with their temperament and found ways to use it to their advantage resulting in a happy successful adult life.

Here the temperament is what they are born with. There is nothing they can do to change it. However how those around them respond to it when they are very young makes a big difference. That is the conditioning. That part to a massive extent depends on the adults around them. It is the same with being macho.

Why shove in post modernist left. Was that who did the study? It seems like a way to try to discredit an opinion different to your own.

Are you meaning genes? We have always known that.

I never did that. Instead I correctly illustrated how we are born with some traits but a lot of how they develop depend on conditioning - the environment in childhood. If my macho grandson grew up in a household which did not respect women or boys who were not macho like his little brother, then he would grow up like that. If he grew up in a household where his feelings were not respected as was the tradition with men for a long time, then he would grow up out of touch with his own feelings and unable to feel empathy - which is what the concept of masculinity you quoted and the far right talk promote.

Are you dealing with some personal issue? No one has been blaming boys for anything.
A study has been done claiming negative qualities are 'traditional'. Research suggests this is not helpful and to be frank has been saying so for longer than 40 years. Probably the research will have been both psychological and sociological.

Now I did not know kids were being brought up to be 'traditional' men. I thought that had stopped a long time ago and people instead tried to bring up their child to be who they were.

The US I think may be a bit different and this is research in the US. It is the 'traditional' bringing up which I would say would be harmful to the boys not people doing research on it and daring to say it. I had no idea we were still in such a repressed world though I am aware that the new far right are promoting misogyny, look down on gays (which I know you do not) and tries to make those who join them tough I will say again this brainwashing turns a boy/man off from their feelings and that results in the negative effect that they are unable to feel empathy. It may be an appropriate way to bring up boys when you want them to go to war and to have no compulsion when you kill but if you are wanting a healthy society it helps no one and this is not talking about ingrained qualities it is talking about conditioning.

We do? You would need to look at why these fathers kept away from their children.

Please take the time to read the rest. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...01606/boys-without-fathers-3-myths-3-miracles

You have to explain how you have got this as blaming boys. I see nothing being about blaming boys. This issue is about how to bring them up, what values to encourage in them.

I don't know what the situation is now. However I know that it used to be that girls after they reached puberty tended to do less well academically than boys and that this was particularly on subjects like maths, science, engineering. Such things can be a self fulfilling prophecy leading to teachers not expecting them to do so well and so not giving them so much attention and them believing they well not achieve or that it is something just for boys so not trying. This all was worked on and resulted in girls getting higher marks than boys.

I am aware that there was concern about boys not achieving and would have expected that to being looked into by now. Life is an ongoing thing, situations change and need adjustment.

 

Jean-Claude van Damme is a very good role model for bringing up a son. John Wayne and Billy Jack, too.

 

Sidenote: our education system is totally failing boys, and has been for a long time. They're expected to sit, hour after hour, while I'm expected to teach "bell to bell", and the school district expects the boys to soak up all that knowledge. Of course the whole thing is a sham. I carve out breaks throughout the day for the boys, so they can get up and run around. And I'm often the "villain" at the school because I do that. It's a disgusting system I can't wait to retire from.

 

It certainly does not sound good. Where do you teach? Is it a boys only school? This sounds like the sort of education there used to be before Discovery Learning' was created.. That is just get them to learn it by rote. I cannot imagine it. It sounds awful.

 

A public school near L.A and Bakersfield. Rural, very poor.

It's better now that Common Core replaced the old "go by the textbook or else" thinking. I had a principal once who said he would write my up if I created a custom math homework page. I was ordered never to deviate from the adopted curriculum OR ELSE. That was eight years ago. Now I can use whatever I want. I still could, really, even if we had the old system in place. My school is so terrible they only care that no one got hurt at the end of the day. We make a pretense of caring about test scores, but it's all Kabuki theater. Maybe it's different in other districts. I've been in the same place for 20 years.

 

Psychologists call 'traditional masculinity' harmful, face uproar from conservatives

Psychologists have been facing an uproar from me for decades.

 

A public School US would mean State School here (UK) Our Public schools are where all the toffs go.

Is it all boys though or do the girls get this as well. It sounds like it is in a disadvantaged area. I knew a biology teacher years ago who said he was happy if he managed to stop them burning each other with the bunsen burners!! I'd agree it needs change. Not quite the same but my daughter works in a Further Education College. Part of her work is checking that teachers are teaching well and being their mentor. She went on a course last year and came back and told the Principle and all the head teachers that she could give them a course where they could learn a different way of working and interacting with the rest of the staff. The core of this was to allow teachers as much input as possible. Get them to present how things should be taught and learn to trust them and indeed to encourage them to trust themselves. In this way teaching would remain fresh and would draw on the creativity of the teachers. The focus of working had a strong person centred approach. She was a bit scared how they would react to her suggesting they gave up some of their authority and instead to trust and respect the input of others but it was exceedingly well received.

 

This thread is about the push to d emasculate America. Ritalin was part of that drive. Now gender neutral toys and sex changes. What else can a deviate culture come up with?

 

So after a forty year exhaustive study by the greatest minds in Psychology, they concluded that losing ones temper can yield negative results? Ya know, I always suspected that. Now it's bona fide. I predict that their next great discovery is that the same principle also applies to women.

 

Because post modernism consider roughly people as a blank page and that most things are culturally constructed. Such as the notions of masculinity or being feminine.

I didn't blame you for that and never thought you did that.

But is really the unability to feel empathy really a problem specific to boys ?

No thank you, I'm fine.

This study blame masculinity, and so boys for having more problems of addiction, suicide, self destructive behavour, they have some responsibility in that like every human being, but isn't it easy to just says "if boys have problems is only because of their own masculinity " ?

Now I did not know kids were being brought up to be 'traditional' men. I thought that had stopped a long time ago and people instead tried to bring up their child to be who they were.

The US I think may be a bit different and this is research in the US. It is the 'traditional' bringing up which I would say would be harmful to the boys not people doing research on it and daring to say it. I had no idea we were still in such a repressed world though I am aware that the new far right are promoting misogyny, look down on gays (which I know you do not) and tries to make those who join them tough I will say again this brainwashing turns a boy/man off from their feelings and that results in the negative effect that they are unable to feel empathy. It may be an appropriate way to bring up boys when you want them to go to war and to have no compulsion when you kill but if you are wanting a healthy society it helps no one and this is not talking about ingrained qualities it is talking about conditioning.

Some because they're not allowed, some because they don't care, there is a lot of different reasons. Furthermore, the role of father is from a cultural point of view an "optionnal" parent. A lot of father don't feel an usefullness or legitimity as a parent, so they leave.

I did, don't take it personnaly but this article is terribly poor in arguments. The author repeat unclaimed found and don't understand the difference between a trend and a systematic law. The fact that fatherless boys tend to have more of specific problem doesn't mean they will always have a specific problems.
Honnestly, I'm not motivated to spend 30 minutes listing everything wrong with that article.

Because it blame their values, competition, taste of risk. It just add to them more guiltiness than they already ness. It's much easier to blame that rather than blame the lack of efforts of the government to help boys failing at school or simply the lack of money, efforts spend in fighting men suicide. I suppose simply people in power prefer to spend money on other issues.

Is it really the boys that have toxic masculinity, or is it the society that surround them that is toxic to them ?

 

Absolutely, certain aspects of human conditioning by society are less than optimal for the fullest development of an individual, male or female. The 'trick' is accurately identifying what is truly 'bad' and then filling the gap with what is truly positive. It doesn't, or at least shouldn't, have anything to do with ideology. Psychology, yes, but to the maximum degree possible that it be objective.
Dr. Jordan Peterson has said a lot that makes sense to this poster. It is a necessary push-back against a maudlin sentimentality and false humanism. If some find him too strong, that may be understandable, too.
We do not effectively educate children. What we know about the brain, about psychology, about linguistics, about the consequences of what science has discovered, all this fails to be transferred in a meaningful fashion to the general public. As a society, we continue to stumble along as if all this precious knowledge did not exist.
Sleep walking this way threatens to find us stepping blindly into the abyss.

 

It is called TESTOSTERONE.

I am sure in the near future if it has not already happened the powers that be will begin fortifying our foods with not just vitamins and minerals like flouride in water, iodine in salt, and Vitamin D in milk, folate in flour, but hormones to suppress male testosterone.

I remember some years ago the found pharmaceuticals in the water supply.

 

I'm going to fart loudly and laugh about it and cuss and belch and drink to much beer and hoot and holler and not shave. So there, neener neener!

 

Nah! That was Skinner and Behaviourist Therapy. Give me a child before seven and I will give you the man. I think the basic belief now is that we are born with certain traits but how we learn to use them is to a large extent determined by our experience. There is also a lot of new psychological understanding of how the young child's brain and nervous system forms.

No it is not specific to boys and most people have at least some access to their inner feeling self but I think it is about 2% though I would guess more who have absolutely no access to their genuine feeling self. The sort of thing which creates this is having their genuineness rejected, being told to be tough, to ignore their feelings. It seems that when someone has been hurt too much their inner feeling self shuts down. This is to protect them because what they are experiencing is intolerable. In a child you would see them withdrawing from their essential self. In a young child because of all the neurons that are working and brain development, they will on an inner level believe this is what they need to do whenever they experience anything which in any way resembles what did it first. People often think this is the child's choice behaviour but it is simply the child doing what they needed to do to survive - or what they believed they needed to do to survive.

I think you have totally missed the message of the research. It is not about blaming boys. It is about looking at what this kind of behaviour does to them which is

No it is not blaming masculinity. I am sure the grandson I mentioned will be very masculine but we will certainly do everything we can to make sure he does not have the characteristics which they define as 'traditional masculinity.'

People who develop these traits do so not because it is 'masculine' so to do but because of some sort of trauma in their upbringing. These are not traits which make people happy as should be obvious. As I have already said they also are the traits which the far right encourage and we live in a time when that is being promoted and healthy ways of living are being maligned.

Nowadays there seems to have been a return to giving men if anything too much power in this area - depending on the man of course. The old situation was wrong in that it was very easy for women to keep men away but now generally unless the man is a psychopath or something he can have half time care of the children by law. Children need to attach to people. They need to form strong bonds with people who are worthy of that and if dad goes or even is not emotionally present and there is an alternative the child will use that person, if they are right for them. Children who do not find people with whom they can form this bond are the ones who suffer and tend to shut themselves off from themselves - leaving them open to take on the characteristics which that research calls 'traditional masculinity'

Well then we cannot discuss it. I do know that up until maybe ten years ago all the research which went on determined to show that children from one parent families suffered from the situation, found that they did not. I do not believe things change that quick. The amount of that article I read went with what I know. My experience - a social science degree and working for several years as a counsellor as well as an interest in bringing up happy grandchildren and a lifelong interest in self development. It's an area I feel strong on knowledge on.

That is not what the article says. It says ingraining these characteristics into boys, making them feel they need to be like that to be men can result in them having serious problems in adulthood including being violent and indulging in alcohol and drugs and even committing suicide. This is something which is apparently on an explosive level in the US at the moment because white working class men are not able to get decent employment. Because they have been brought up to believe that if they are a man they will be able to achieve this and provide for their families and not to be able to shows they are weak and not manly. they are taking to drink, drugs and suicide - and what benefit you believe women hating provides, I do not know. These are learned behaviours. They are not genetic traits.

This is not about blaming boys. It is criticising a poor attitude towards boys concerning what masculinity is.

They were not studying these things. Other people do or ought to be doing. However as I keep telling you when we took on neoliberalism we gave up a lot of this but these are issues which need their own threads to be discussed. This is simply dealing with bringing up boys to have a character which belongs more in the 1930's and which psychology and social policy since had done a lot to change. You may believe here you are sticking up for boys but you are not. Sticking up for boys would mean allowing them to be vulnerable when they are, teaching them to respect everyone including women and teaching them that while it is a good idea to know how to protect oneself, violence is not the answer - except in self defence. You are supporting bringing boys up in a way which ignores the genuineness of the boy, forces him to hide when he is hurt acting tough instead, being hateful towards women and basically being empty inside.

well if you have read any of what I have written you would have gathered that I do not believe these negative characteristics are inborn in boys - so when boys do develop in this way it would suggest it comes from some outside experience. This could be trauma when they are very young coupled with people telling them that such characteristics are what they ought to have if they are 'a man' and belittling them if that is not how they act.

 

Reminds me of that stupid preachy Gillette TV ad.

 

Men in US have limited access to sex, so they express their sex deprivation by shooting people in public places.
The article might suggest that men needs to take pills that shutdown testosterone production.
Mandatory castration looks like a great option.

 

The best way you can bring up a self confident level headed boy is with traditional masculinity. The problems many young men experience today is because they are told the exact opposite, or that masculinity is toxic... what utter rubbish

 

What on earth causes you to speak in such error? Will you lead by example?

What a "hate the USA" flamebait post.

 

I'm a product of the public school system and the Catholic school system. In the public school system it was not uncommon to walk near the school yard and find me in a fight with another student. I was often called on the carpet for being unruly with the teachers. I haven't really reflected on that until now reading the posts. My father was off too war and when he did return he worked so hard that I really don't remember a whole bunch about him, The woman in our family were the authoritarians. I eventually wound up with my mother and step father. They took me out of public school and put me in Catholic school. I didn't take to my new surroundings very well and was a constant run-a-way and lived on the street. Then it changed. My real dad showed up and we drove into the city and he parked outside the juvenile detention center. There were kids hollering out side the bar windows and my dad told me if I didn't change that is where I would wind up. That had an impact. I still would get in the occasional fight and be taken to see Mother Superior (damn good title for her) . Mom and my step-dad clamped down on my street life but also put some structure in my daily life. Which one worked best? Oh Yeah! I really have fond memories of having an erasure bounce off the back of my head.

 

Thanks for sharing.