Not being shaped by a conventional masculinity from birth means they have not been forced into suffocating stereotypes
Turn on the TV, watch kids’ cartoons or most films, and you won’t have to look hard for the message that nice guys finish last, while tough guys get the girl, and, more importantly, gain the respect of other men.
In the heterosexual safari that is Channel 4’s latest Married at First Sight we saw a woman called Morag spend the whole UK season demeaning and berating her new husband, Luke, for being more of a boy than a man, lacking in muscle and not being aggressive enough. Did she perhaps hanker after more of a “toxic masculinity”, the experts queried, while reassuring her that a calm, attentive and reliable man is the definition of masculinity. Maybe so, but we could well ask why that definition hasn’t become the norm.
Finn Mackay is the author of Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars and is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England in Bristol
