Mosaic Meeting Thursday November 16, 2017
Topic: “Toxic Masculinity: Healthy Masculinity and Leadership”
Today’s guest speaker, Mr. Maurice Sangodele-Ayoka, of the Sangodele-Ayoka Organization, led a conversation around toxic masculinity versus healthy masculinity. His message is that gender equity and the roles we all play are at the source of the conversation about how we move our culture forward.
Maurice was born in Brooklyn; he has 2 young sons, and now lives near Washington, D.C. Growing up in Brooklyn, he was involved in sports, community activities; he got a track scholarship to college, and there studied physics and chemistry, and became an educator. When he found people struggling with math he became a teacher to address this, then ultimately moved to working in youth development.
It wasn’t until he became a parent that he thought about what defines being a really good parent. He has been socially active and aware, but never thought about misogyny, etc., or gender roles. What role do men play in feminism? He went to a rape crisis center in DC and learned a lot about assault, but there was no conversation about the ways in which race, sex and gender play a role in healthy masculinity.
So he started his own program to teach healthy masculinity to boys and young men.
Maurice presented a couple of word clouds that consider words used to market toys to children. The first is clearly geared to boys, even though the word boy is not there: battle, power, ninjas, heroes, fight, success. The next one targets girls: love, magic, girl, fun, mommy, baby, friends, perfect. “Friends” doesn’t show up on the boy word cloud. The word clouds point out how ridiculous is the marketing, and therefore also the set of assumptions about socializing young people. We are constantly being conditioned about what boys and men should be doing, and by extension, we are also telling girls and women what they should be doing.
Too often definitions of masculinity messaged to young men and boys focus on terms like Man Up. What does that term mean: don’t cry, be tough, don’t be a girl, get it done. A more positive connotation is “take responsibility,” but it doesn’t get characterized as a male trait.
Healthy masculinity is the framework Maurice uses in teaching and coaching and working with young men and boys to help them grow to healthy adulthood.
He defines healthy masculinity as…
– Recognizing unhealthy aspects of masculinity that are harmful to the self and others.
– Empathizing with self and others
– where in society is empathy celebrated and approved? It’s important to identify this and acknowledge it in the course of everyday life for the young boys in your world.
– Supporting gender equity and other forms of equity. We need to support equity in all aspects of humanity. We also need to relieve women of the “cross” of defending gender equity. Need to make boys and men responsible for their roles in promoting equity.
– Replacing harmful risky and violent masculine attitudes and behaviors with emotionally intelligent attitudes and behaviors that respect the self and others.
– Learning to use emotional and social skills to constructively challenge unhealthy masculine attitudes and behaviors expressed by others. We must teach young men and boys how to challenge behavior that is toxic without erasing the dignity of the other.
If we can take these five points and use them as a framework for defining healthy masculinity, this would be helpful to all people.
Some aspects of his approach are:
1) A male (+) positive approach – we as a society tend to focus on “what’s wrong with men,” but he tries to focus on what there is in masculinity that is positive about maleness. It’s easy to see what’s wrong; it’s harder to see what’s right. He reminded the audience of male role models in their own lives and suggests the” reason you feel that way was is because he cared for you.” This never gets noticed in defining masculinity, but should. Caring and loving don’t get associated with masculinity. We need to identify and uplift that aspect of masculinity.
2) A focus on masculinity: let’s think about it. What is it? What does society ascribe to this term, and how has that changed over time? The definition of masculinity has changed to include other things. We need to think carefully about what our definition of masculinity includes.
3) Primary prevention: focus on what’s positive, and be attentive to behaviors that are detrimental, and help boys see the socially positive aspects of masculinity early on and develop them, rather than have to deal with the aftermath of simply following the negative connotations.
4) Sustained work: this work continues through life.
Q&A:
1) Where does toxic masculinity come in? Mothers on the playground with very young children model appropriate behavior, so when does it start? Maurice replies that the answer is not clear, but perhaps as children get a bit older and interact more with other kids and adults and media and social input that early messaging becomes distorted, especially as kids are entering adolescence.
2) If there is no activity or behavior that is the exclusive domain of a single gender, is there a way to talk about masculinity with boys (or girls) without basically saying there is no distinction between gender roles, and still identify a person as masculine? Maurice replies that masculinity is the domain of all humans. When you only see one display of masculinity that doesn’t include multiple aspects of humanity, that becomes toxic.
3) Testosterone: isn’t there a biological difference. Do we see changes in our boys as they go through adolescence? We know brain chemistry changes, but does this have to define social change in a given direction? Maurice doesn’t discount the role that hormones play in our identity and behavior; his concern is over the role of society in how our gender identity is shaped or constructed. When we focus on biological reductionism, we get apologies for behavior based on biology. But we ignore the impact of society that also profoundly contributes to construction of masculinity.
4) Isn’t it really hard to change the idea of masculinity, because the idea/term is so loaded at this point? Shouldn’t we be talking about Humanity? Maurice thinks the conversation NEEDS to be about masculinity! It is hard to change the definition, and it takes time. All cultural change happens over time. NOTE: Masculinity is NOT gender. We are addressing performances of masculinity that are toxic to self and others, and ways to acknowledge aspects of humanity that masculinity should include. It’s the same with femininity. We should all be able to access both.
5) Relentless outside messaging always gets in the way of the positive messaging. So is there a language issue that makes it impossible to even use this term? Maurice replies that the goal is not to ascribe toxicity to us as a core, the goal is to identify the positive aspects and nurture those.
6) Can you offer examples of a conversation you have had with your sons where this work on toxic masculinity comes into play? Maurice overheard a conversation where a friend said to his son “Pink is for girls.” Later his son repeated this. Maurice had a conversation with his son later about it. The son said he was just talking, didn’t really believe it. Maurice told him that it’s OK to challenge such language when you hear it among your friends. It’s OK as a boy to say you don’t believe in that.
The conversation is about having courage, which is human, not male or female.
He doesn’t play the radio, because so many songs use such heavily gender
-distorted language. But yet the kids learn lyrics anyway. His son would say “I’m not saying it because I mean it, I’m just singing the lyric.” Maurice responded that every time you repeat the lyric, you reinforce the message.
Maurice recommended some videos on the topic: “The Mask You Live In,” and “Miss Representation” (both available on Netflix) talk about negative representations and restrictions of masculinity and femininity.
Maurice closed his presentation by referencing several recent public examples of highly toxic masculinity:
Donald Trump: Maurice defines him as an archetype and avatar of toxic masculinity. He embraces and is proud of his position as a bully, sexist, patriarchal, white supremacy. This position of power has mobilized others to solidify their own definitions of masculinity.
Harvey Weinstein: he himself is bad, but he also represents a power structure of collusional behavior among many others that allowed it to continue. We don’t spend enough time identifying the power structure that allows this to exist, and working on the method by which to break this down.
Louis C.K.: incredibly skilled in the way he talks and jokes about sexuality and misogyny. Now he’s in the space of being the perpetrator of despicable behavior. We can celebrate his letter of apology without dismissing what he did wrong.
So how do we stop this kind of behavior? A male parent’s response is that all language referring to masculinity is basically criminal and should be eliminated. There is no way to escape the definition of male as being negative.
Maurice wants to step away from the definition of masculinity as criminal, and instead enforce definitions of masculinity that are positive. He believes we should all be sharing a positive message to boys, and uplifting behavior of boys who stand up to assert a positive definition of masculinity.