Academic Paper: The harmful effects of using the current narratives of "toxic masculinity", "masculinity in crisis" "patriarchy" to talk about men's issues and just men in general

122 points•5 comments•submitted 7 months ago * by mhandanna to r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates

Abstract:

Masculinity is frequently talked about in contemporary Western media as being in crisis, needing reform or even being ‘toxic’. However, no research to date has assessed the impact that this pervasive narrative might be having on people, particularly men themselves. This cross-sectional online pilot survey asked 203 men and 52 women (mean + SD age 46 + 13) their opinions about the terms toxic masculinity, traditional masculinity, and positive masculinity, and how they would feel if their gender was seen as the cause of their relationship or job problems. Most participants thought the term toxic masculinity insulting, probably harmful to boys, and unlikely to help men’s behaviour. Having feminist views, especially being anti-patriarchy, were correlated with more tolerance of the term toxic masculinity. Most participants said they would be unhappy if their masculinity or femininity were blamed for their work or relationship problems. Further analysis using multiple linear regression found that men’s self-esteem was significantly predicted by older age, more education, and a greater acceptance of traditional masculinity. Men’s mental positivity – which is known to be negatively correlated with suicidality – was significantly predicted by older age, a greater acceptance of traditional masculinity, and more education. Implications for the mental health of men and boys are discussed in relation to the narrative around masculinity in the media, social sciences, and in clinical psychology.

Full article for free:

https://zenodo.org/record/3871217#.X-p1ji2l2J_

This is real MRA - "construction" not "deconstruction"

Guys this is real MRA - construction. Talking about how bad things are e.g. misandry, negative options of men, falsely using toxic masculinity, to complaining about feminsim etc is "DECONSTRUCTION" and its just talking in an echo chamber to people who already agree with you. "CONSTRUCT" something instead. These guys above ARE CONSTRUCTING i.e. they are creating alternative research, ideas, theories to toxic masculinity "man bad" "man patriarchy" nonsense and menslib style bullshit. (read below what the amazing work they are doing) So SUPPORT THESE GUYS. Find them on social media, they have great accounts, share their work, buy their books, donate, send them emails of thanks. Do something useful for MRA, in terms of CONSTRUCTION. Deconstruction is being done by the anti-feminists. Don't mix up MRA with anti feminism at every turn when there is no point and it becomes a distraction. The main MRA reddit is becoming to look like Buzzfeed, there's like 100 anti feminist articles and 1 about improving mens issues.... im not saying dont post it, im saying post about mens issues, and just that too! For example post something useful about anti circ, not just rants about feminism and circucmsion.

Who are these guys?

Male Psychology Network - an amazing development in MRA, literally one of the biggest ones I think in the entire movement in recent times! Male Psychology Network actually produce proper male positive, non feminist publications, conferences, etc on men and masculinity. They are trying to get therapy to be tailored to men, and not this current anti male bullshit, toxic masculinity stuff... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdQntHZSMWA) They are very much pushing the agenda of stop male bashing and misandry in media, society, uni, academia. This is not of the menslib nonsense, and it is not idealogical. It is science based, and not agenda driven (ughhh man bad masculinity bad). The amazing thing is this is getting into universities. The book by the author (interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB-Gpq7h9cs)

has been download over 5.5k (probably more now) times so is getting into universities. They set up UKs first male psychology module which is led by fantastic pro men non feminist professor.

Here is interview with said professor at the International Mens Conference, which was online this year due to COVID:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz9lfrJR2EM

They are about to produce another book.... again this means actual proper mens psychology and gender issues that is not feminist, so something academic that can be used.

Another good development, you will be pleased to hear is there is a whole raft of psychologists and professors who are looking at male victims of DV in the UK... I've vetted these guys throughly, listened to dozens of hours of them speaking, this is the real deal, pro male approach none of this menslib style fake MRA stuff.... they get it, and they are flat out not feminists and go after feminism HARD for LYING about male DV. This is not some obscure stuff, its senior professors, heads of department etc. and they've even been published in anti male Guardian and can get mainstream attention. Look out next year as a lot of their research will be released next year. These guys are loud too, they will be all over social media, interviews, newspapers, doing conferences, podcasts, video etc. its not little obscure research papers that get forgotten about.

Here is the blurb of the book:

Male Psychology is a new field. In August 2018, the membership of the BPS voted for a Male Psychology Section of the BPS. This means there are already around 2,800 BPS members who support what we are doing. However, there is, as yet, only one textbook on this topic (The Palgreave Handbook of Male Psychology & Mental Health, 2019) edited by Barry et al. This was released in March 2019 and has already had almost 5.5k chapter downloads from universities. As the interest in Male Psychology continues to grow, there will be an expanding need for further academic and practical knowledge on the subject. This new series, Perspectives in Male Psychology, will fill the gap that exists, and be the seminal book on this subject.

[–]ShortTailBoa 4 points5 points6 points 3 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]mhandanna[S] 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Yeah but did I say don't do that? I said balance it out with actual stuff to IMRPROVE mens lives, not just OMG feminism is so bad.... thats exactly what these guys are doing... they are CREATING another message to feminism bullshit narrative. It gives us something to use when talking about this issue now, instead of "feminism sucks for spreading this toxic masculinity narrative to deal with mens issues, or men dont rape bull shit" now there is something else

Look at this sub, how many articles are there on improving mens health, mens education, reducing male homelessness? For example, post an article saying that 10% of boys are colour blind compared to <1% girls and this is a small contributing factor to education gap - teachers should have more awareness of this. Hey guys email this to your school. That is action and progress

This is an article where someone is doing something, and something we can do about it. Follow them, check out their social media where they are contacntly posting good stuff for mens issues.... i.e. this guy just published 12 articles for 12 days of christias on mens issues.... no one knows about that stuff as they are posting an article about feminsim sucks.... yeah me to Im a big offender.... im

Look at this website, its the best website on mens health, best reports:

Here is talks about gender health gap: https://www.amhf.org.au/exactly_how_big_is_the_gender_health_gap

then follow up articles on what are reasons, and why not to blame men etc and that narrative men dont care about health is wrong etc etc its much more effective message, people can read it, people can accept it, and it is very very difficult for feminsit to object to this.... in fact they will look unreasonable doing so

so by all means shit on feminism, im not saying don't im saying also actually postt articles about mens issues, and helping them

Not just yeah feminism sucks. No one cares about mens issues.

Youre example about Nazism.... did people moan about Nazism and say how bad they suck? No they built an army, strengthened their nation to fight them.

This is an example of an MRA building that army and doing something. Support them

Posts about mens issues or something like this will get a few likes, a rage bait feminsim sucks article will get 3,000

[–]ObviousObservationz -5 points-4 points-3 points 3 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]woke_is_a_plague 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]Girlbutgamer 2 points3 points4 points 3 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

I'm not the person you asked but I'll give it a go.

There are several ways you can argue feminism increased these things but I'm not going to go into all of them.

Feminism as it right now, propogates more inequity between the sexes, it's passively making equality but actively pushing men below women.

Radfems don't like men's health, they protested against mens mental health sessions with the idea that it belittles woman's mental health, that's definitely going to impact all of them.

They also increased the difference between men's and womens abuse cases, where women are seen to be believed immediate while men are seen to be suspicious, or apart of the problem Amber heard abd the johny depp situation as an example There are many events of falsely accused men going to jail for years only to then be released with all of there life gone as everyone they know including their employers believe they are raping criminals. And there are still radfems that say it was a good thing when that women falsely accused those groups of men of gangrape and got them into prison.