Why these men find the phrase ‘toxic masculinity,’ well, toxic

Ryan Carrillo doesn’t particularly care for the term “toxic masculinity.”

A world-class powerlifter and self-described “big man” with an imposing size and fierce-looking features, he says he has “scared countless children with my presence and garnered stares almost everywhere I go.”

He’s made peace with that, Mr. Carrillo says. He knows he naturally stands out. But his physical presence has always made others look past the kind of person he is – and just assume the worst kinds of masculine stereotypes.

Terms such as “mansplain,” too, are used as political weapons on both sides of the spectrum, he believes, feeding a negative and disempowering cultural narrative from different directions. On the one hand, masculinity is equated with misogyny and oppression. On the other hand, masculinity is reduced to a celebration of strength and power.

Throughout his career in marketing, people sometimes express surprise when he gives sharp, insightful presentations – and then offer condescending compliments. “Teachers always thought I was big and dumb, and that stereotype has stuck with me my entire life, even into my professional career.”

Naturally expressive and creative, Mr. Carrillo says he’s still recovering from the emotional trauma of growing up in the “good old boy” culture of Texas high school football. 

“Masculinity, you know, meant not being vulnerable, letting your frustrations manifest as aggression, and not having a healthy way to, you know, cry, and to share feelings and communicate honestly – but I’ve always been that kind of person,” says Mr. Carrillo, who recently published “The Big Man Bible,” a self-help memoir he wrote “for the big men of the world who are silently struggling to transform their lives.” 

Over the past few years, there have been wide-ranging discussions about a purported “crisis in masculinity,” another front in the nation’s ongoing political battles over the meaning of sex, gender, and the social roles of men and women. Many conservatives, especially, see the “crisis” arising from the left’s decadeslong efforts to deconstruct the idea of masculinity, which have caused American men to, as a whole, lose their “toughness.” 

But Mr. Carrillo sees this crisis as more of a “silent pandemic” of men who are caught in the middle, boxed in by pressures from the right to be strong and stoic, or pressures from the left to be deferential and silent. He says he sees many men “living in fear and believing that they are not worthy – not worthy of love, not worthy to stand up for what they believe in, not worthy to exist as they are.”

Men, and white men in particular, still dominate most of America’s halls of power, of course. But within the lower rungs of the country’s socioeconomic ladders, certain trends have troubled researchers on both the left and right. 

The data is startling: Middle-aged white men now have the highest rates of suicide in the nation, and while men and women generally have similar rates of depression, men seek help far less often. Over the past decade, the nation’s opioid epidemic has engulfed single and divorced men far more than any other group, and the number of men who died of alcohol- and drug-related causes spiked 35% from 2019 to 2020.

At the same time, a generation of young men is beginning to give up on college. Today women make up 60% of all college enrollments, an all-time high. And while U.S. colleges and universities lost 1.5 million students over the past 5 years, 71% of these students were men.

“Many men feel lost in this current climate of shifting gender roles and messaging,” says Mac Scotty McGregor, the founder and director of Positive Masculinity, a Seattle-area center for men seeking an authentic and healthy way to express their manhood.

A former member of the U.S. Karate Team and three-time U.S. Open champion, he doesn’t necessarily care for the term “toxic masculinity” either, a term that, if misunderstood, “can seem wildly insulting, even bigoted,” says Mr. McGregor, the first transgender person to run for office in the state of Washington.

“The purpose of discussing traditional masculinity is to help masculine-identifying people lead happy, healthy lives, by expanding their emotional repertoire and not diminishing their strengths,” he says.

He’s always identified more on the masculine side of the spectrum, a spectrum that could include both the late Fred Rogers and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, he says. 

“I’m a jock, and I still love to work out and hit the bag and lift weights and all that,” says Mr. McGregor, a member of the World Martial Arts Hall of Fame. “But I have become much more, I think, in touch with my Fred Rogers side.” 

But when he was younger, he, too, felt a bit lost. “It’s so interesting that, when I was presenting as a female, I used to never be able to cry – I would never cry in public,” says Mr. McGregor. “It was feeling like I had to uphold that idea, being that guy that never shows emotion, the stoic that’s always got it all together.” 

“I’m not afraid to do that now, and it’s because I’m more at home with who I am,” he says.

Indeed, over the past decade especially, female athletes have come to embrace the “warrior” ethos of traditional masculinity. The emergence of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, popular fighters in mixed martial arts, and athletes such as Serena Williams have helped to, in effect, divorce ideals of toughness, dominance, and swagger from gender. 

“I very much see and understand sports culture as a landscape primarily conceived for masculinity,” says Brandon Manning, professor of Black literature and culture at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. But it’s also a landscape that has been conceived according to certain white ideals, which tend to be enforced in different ways for athletes neither white nor male. 

“The larger question is, who does and does not have access to these masculine performance rituals, which are generally centered and situated around the white masculine,” which emphasizes a stoicism generally contrasted against the emotions and expressions of nonwhite players, he says. 

Images of women wielding traditionally masculine skills also pervade action films over the past two decades, including “Kill Bill,” the most recent Star Wars films, and comic book-inspired heroes such as Wonder Woman, notes Roberta Chevrette, co-author of “Dangerous Dames: Representing Female-Bodied Empowerment in Postfeminist Media.”

“These portrayals of women are ‘dangerous’ in a couple of ways,” says Dr. Chevrette, professor of rhetoric, intercultural communication, and gender studies at Middle Tennessee State University. “They’re dangerous to patriarchy in that they actually do threaten it, because here you have representations of women doing things that they previously wouldn’t have been pictured doing, and you have them appearing in genres that they previously wouldn’t have been pictured in.”

Still, even as “warrior” ideals are being celebrated in more diverse ways, it doesn’t change one of the ongoing problems men face, says Michael Addis, professor of psychology and director of the Men’s Well-Being Research Group at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

“Culturally, we tend to hide the emotional and physical vulnerabilities of men,” he says. “This goes from the individual level of not wanting to talk about depression and anxiety, not wanting to talk about grief and sadness and loss and fear, all the way up to the cultural level of how the men we celebrate tend to continue to be stoic men, strong men, men who appear invincible.”

Mr. Carrillo agrees, and one of the reasons he wrote “The Big Man Bible,” he says, was to argue that “the most ultimate form of masculinity is being vulnerable and letting yourself love and be loved.”

At the same time, however, he celebrates what he calls “the big man’s beatitudes,” which affirm the unique qualities of a big man’s outsize strength, emotional resilience, and backbone with the power to protect and provide. 

“Blessed are the scorned big men, for they understand the struggle and draw power from it,” he writes. 

First of two parts. Part 2: Why Americans struggle over the future of masculinity