“Learning to wear a mask (that word already embedded in the term ‘masculinity’) is the first lesson in patriarchal masculinity that a boy learns. He learns that his core feelings cannot be expressed if they do not conform to the acceptable behaviors sexism defines as male. Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder.”
bell hooks: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004)
How to (Not) Be a Man: A Selfhood Built on Disavowal
My school had a very precious tradition in nursery class; we got a 30-minute nap time. In year one (aged 4 or 5), we would sleep in girl-boy-girl-boy order to prevent conversation. The next year, we slept in different rows. This was the first concrete memory of acknowledging a gender difference for me. The first time the grown-ups solidified it was when we turned 13 and had to learn about puberty. We were taught about menstruation, how our bodies are changing, and how we have to now learn to draw and defend our boundaries. In retrospect I can think about how much I learned about how “boys” desire us (and how to navigate this invitation) but barely anything about how we (might) desire boys. Our boy-friends told us how they learned about their bodies changing and how to “control (their) urges.” They were taught about restraint, of what is NOT okay: do not harass, do not be impulsive, respect the line. The message is clear now –women are objects of desire, men are the desirers, and in that role, both sexes assume the threatening potential of a man’s attraction.
I remember normalised portraits of boys pulling hair or teasing you to express that he likes you. A school counsellor once told me point blank that a boy who was always “play fighting” me was telling me that he likes me, and he just cannot do it with words (this was also how I started liking this boy, and he rejected me and maybe solidified the notion that violence = love is purely a myth). From the beginning, boys were given the rules, and girls were given the responsibility. I think in this suppression of desire, for both sexes, a certain envy of the other develops that breeds the grounds for disavowal. In this separation, both sexes learn that the act of differentiation is what protects them. For femininity, the modelling is a mixed bag based on where we are located, but for masculinity, it is modelled as “not feminine.” To define masculinity, one has to “protect” it” – from softness, failure, and being mistaken for anything else. It starts small: a boy and a girl fall while playing, and somebody comes to help the girl first, or a twelve-year-old boy cries about being slapped by a girlfriend and is asked how he could be hit by a girl. The space for comfort for so many young boys is situated in grabbing more power instead of letting them cry and move on. By adolescence, when gender roles solidify for most of us, these boys instinctively know what parts of them are unacceptable: the wish to be held and seen and express uncertainty is to be buried with baby hood. This performance leads to a gap in the self, an anxious filler where masculinity is held together by the fear of being exposed.
In psychoanalytic literature, Freud writes about the theory of castration anxiety that suggests that boys fear losing their masculinity if they don’t separate from the mother; Nancy Chodorow describes how boys feel the need to actively dis-identify from the mother at the cost of emotional depth, and Donald Moss describes masculinity as a defensive performance. The observed phenomenon of the masculine is an experience of disavowal, of an absence. Masculinity is not something you are (or you become), but it is something you must constantly prove by rejecting everything that threatens it.
Masculine Becoming: The Gap Between Boyhood and Manhood
Sometimes I feel like masculinity (especially today) exists in a state of contradiction. In no uncertain terms, the messaging of what not to be is ever present: don’t be violent, domineering, or emotionally stunted. The language of “toxic” masculinity has given us a framework to critique the worst expressions of being human. While there is a desire to learn how to dismantle harmful masculinity (mind you, this communication too is mostly directed towards women to identify and protect ourselves), there are hardly any models of what to build in its place. The result is a generation of men who know what not to be, but there is no clear sense of what they should become. This uncertainty becomes real in the subtlest of ways. Many men struggle to assert or express their vulnerabilities, not because they don’t have them, but because they were never taught the language of it. Fear of intimacy is often disguised as avoidance or disinterest to avoid this very confrontation. Emotional repression becomes detachment or even an inability to be fully present in close relationships. Without an internal sense of what identity can be, many people turn outward to seek validation through external markers. For men in a capitalistic structure, these external markers often become status, money, success, power, and sex. But no matter how much they accumulate, the question is the same: have I arrived? The cost of this crisis is not just psychological; it is existential. Men perform an identity that they don’t fully understand. The pressure to appear strong while feeling the full range of emotions that they cannot express creates a hollow inside, creates a quiet dissonance, a loneliness that is rarely spoken of but deeply felt. This arrival that we seek becomes an unachievable goal that leaves many to either retreat to numbness or overcompensate in exaggerated, rigid performances of masculinity.
As a society, we are lonelier than ever. Men often struggle to find a lasting bond within friendships too. For many men, this loneliness is not just about a lack of community but also about craving something that they don’t even have words for. The structure of masculinity leaves very little room for deep, sustainable friendships where they feel known without the masks. In this void, connection takes the shape of relationships built for validation and not intimacy. The rise of hypermasculine figures that provide “answers” to lost men is not just about power; it is about direction. If masculinity is reduced to a set of prohibitions, then rigid ideals seem better than this void. Perhaps this is why the “alpha male” culture has been so seductive. The unmoored find guidance in figures who promise them certainty, a clear vision, and a definition of who/what a man is – dominant, assertive, and powerful. The increasing popularity of these seemingly “traditional” values spread via social media is a call for help. Young men are looking for something stable to hold onto that does not demonise them or deny them a definition. It is not surprising that they gravitate towards these figures and follow them religiously. bell hooks, in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, argues that men are not inherently oppressive, but that patriarchy wounds them by severing them from their capacity to love and be loved. She writes that men, too, are victims of a system that dehumanises them, forcing them into roles that deny their full emotional and relational selves. To move forward, masculinity cannot be shaped only in reaction to what it should not be – it must become something real, expansive, and liveable.
This is where the work begins: If masculinity is not just a rejection, then what can it be?
From Negation Towards a Felt Masculinity
A big challenge to this shift is that rigid masculinity is not without its rewards. Men who conform to these norms are rewarded with status, appreciation, and major economic advantages. Those who refuse or try to venture towards a different masculinity often face ostracisation. The cruelty of the system offers men an unfair bargain: participate in your hollowness or refuse and embrace the unknown. Men are not victims of masculinity – they enjoy the privileges – but they are trapped by its structures. The question is if one can be brave enough to break them.
A different masculinity can be built on presence instead of performance. It requires teaching children the ability to inhabit the self without the need for external validation, for strength that includes vulnerability, and for relationships to be intimate and not be conquests.
If masculinity is to move beyond negation, it must be learned through presence – not as a mask, but as a way of being that allows men to finally feel real to themselves.
Cover Image by Tom Chrostek on Unsplash
