My toxic masculinity
Being “a feminist” is no guarantee for not perpetuating the patriarchy
This post will get personal and close on something I’m currently working through and find, frankly, embarrassing: Learning how my behavior throughout 10 years of depression has affected those close to me and how unfair expectations have allowed me to escape responsibility. Some of those expectations are tied to gender roles, and they have allowed me to dive into my toxic masculinity in more or less subtle ways.
I, like many others, have thought of myself as one of the “good guys.” ”1 And even though I read Judith Butler in University, I’ve failed to appreciate how gender is performed. I failed to consider how I’m also part of the unequal structures manifested through the stories we tell, the expectations expressed around the dinner table, the opportunities given to certain people, and the disinterest in the everyday experience of people who are not men.
I was brought up in an outspoken second-wave feminist2 household. My father is a nurse, and my mother is a clerical teacher in the Norwegian church. I’m brought up with the values that “women can do anything” and expected to be an ally and respect boundaries, especially women’s. My Christian parents never taught me that queer love was a sin (they will go to the pride parade to show their support). When I got involved in the socialist youth party in my mid-teens, my parents joked about my failed attempt at teenage rebellion. At said party, I also learned more about feminist theory, structural inequalities, and how social expectations influenced us. Unnecessary to say, I’ve identified myself as a feminist and an ally for most of my life. I would think that many of my readers have it similar.3
I have since come to discover that these outspoken values, and, I suspect, especially among people who place themselves on the left/liberal political spectrum (whatever that means), is no guarantee for not perpetuating the exact harmful expectations and behaviors that you’re supposed to oppose. It is an insight that feels bleeding obvious when you say it out loud. But it’s not easy to point this out in oneself because nowadays, being hypocritical4 is almost considered a sin and is called out whenever it’s discovered. It’s so easy for us to point it out in others while silent about our own.
Even with my upbringing and exposure to these liberating ideas as a young person, I still walked right into the traps of toxic masculinity after having entered adult life. And I have done so without the self-awareness and emotional maturity that, in retrospect, would have saved me a lot of existential headaches and made me less harmful to people close to me.
Toxic masculinity is a broad concept, and in this case, I’m not necessarily thinking of “jock/bro-culture” or the typical “conservative dad” tropes. I’m primarily thinking of the expectations and the lack of them based on your gender. Like when no one called me out for talking over people (often women) at University. However, in this post, I want to explore the dimension of who is (not) expected to do emotional labor5.
My partner and I met each other in our early 20s, and since I’ve been in this cis-hetero monogamous relationship. Now I’m in my mid-30s, and for the last decade or so, I have been struggling with depression. Now that I’m working through it, I’ve come to discover how toxic masculinity can fuel depression. And how toxic masculinity and depression in men often come with consequences for their partners that are often subtle and invisible. Well, once you see it, you’ll see it everywhere.
I have expected my partner to do a lot of emotional labor that I, until relatively recently, haven’t been willing to take myself. My unwillingness is the shameful part because, over time, this unreasonable expectation is also harmful. It’s the kind of unspoken expectation that leads to resentment and divorce. It’s why the statistics say that women are more likely to be happier after hetero relationships end because they are relieved of these expectations (at least in cultures where divorce is somewhat normalized). Men tend to do worse.
I haven’t been able to be a great partner throughout these 10 years with depression. I have been somewhat competent in pretending that things were OK. But in reality, during these years, I’ve primarily sought escape in work, while I have faded out most of my other relationships, including friends and family. The consequence is that my partner became my primary and, with a few infrequent exceptions, my only confidant. That’s all of my worries, sighs, and doubts. For years. With the expectations of returning unconditional emotional support without really getting much of it back.
To make things worse, my partner has met these expectations by my feminist family as well. They could excuse my behavior as “that’s just how Knut is” or “he has depression, it’s tough.” At the same time, my partner has met expectations to be the primary caretaker of our collective family involvement. Still, she ended up being blamed by them for being distant and for keeping me away from my family. No one acknowledged that I was getting too heavy to carry alone.
While no one will raise an eyebrow when men in my family aren’t participating in dinner table conversations, my partner was critiqued for either being too active or not participating enough. No one called me out for spending a lot of family visits scrolling on my phone. No one had asked my spouse how it felt to be lied to for months about a failing Ph.D. or offered support when my diagnosis got known. She was blamed for being controlling, while no one called me out for taking the very minimum of responsibility, if at all. Women are still expected to take charge of the logistics and planning at home and tend to social relationships.
These, often unspoken, expectations are part of the structure that enabled me to continue without questioning how to live with me. And I, “the feminist,” let all of this slide. It isn’t very pleasant to realize.
And this is where the self-identity as a feminist can be problematic because, without the humility and growth mindset, you can trick yourself into believing that you can’t be part of upholding toxic masculinity. After all, you’re a feminist.
So if that was the case, why didn’t I listen to my partner when she countless times tried to tell me that I needed to talk to someone, go visit my family and talk openly and honestly with them, see a therapist, stand up for myself, don’t work all the time, remember to take breaks, take better care of our dogs, don’t be afraid to talk to her about my failures, work on my defensiveness, read fiction as a way to reconnect with my own emotions, make plans for the future, not only reply with single word sentences but treat her as a partner and not a caretaker, try to be present and interested when we had visitors, and not lie to her about small stupid things?
Do you see how much I was putting on her? Why couldn’t I acknowledge her wisdom? Why was I afraid that letting her know that she was right would make me a smaller person?
I believe toxic masculinity has a significant role in why. For some reason, I felt that I needed to assert myself as the intellectual one and that my reasons were something that my partner should seek to understand. Again, I expected her to do the extra emotional labor of reconciling my shitty behavior with empathy for my struggle. It’s the clichéd trope of the troubled intellectual and the misunderstood genius. Another toxic role that one can hide oneself in. One that I have been prone to adopt.
I think it’s good that we have more of a conversation about depression where also men can participate and be more vulnerable. I’m slightly less comfortable with the implicit assumption that dealing with mental issues relieves you of emotional responsibility.
Especially when you’re generally able to participate in some normal high-functioning everyday life (like I have mostly been), that means going to therapy if you have access to it. It means seeking to know yourself. It means nurturing meaningful friendships where you can be open to your problems and real concerns. It means not giving into unfair expectations put forth from friends and family. It means building the self-confidence to draw boundaries for yourself and those important to you.
I’m writing this knowing that my family and people who know them will read it. I’m writing from my subjective perspective, and my thoughts here shouldn’t be new to them. I know that they might not agree or recognize themselves in all of it. But I also want to remind you that we’re not at all unique, not even in the particularities. As I have spoken to more people about this story, I have found support in our shared experiences. It has made it possible for me to find autonomy and some integrity. To know it’s possible to set boundaries, even for family, and renegotiate your relationship with them. And that’s why I find it helpful to write about my experiences.
I also write this because I don’t think we’re at the point where it’s OK for partners and close relations to people who struggle with depression to raise their voices about how challenging and exhausting it can be. I consider myself very fortunate in having met such a wise, intuitive, and strong partner and being in a place where I can write about these things. A lot of my psychiatric therapy has been (re)discovering insights that she has tried to communicate while I wasn’t listening. It also makes me shameful for having allowed her to be treated so unfairly and badly, even though depression has made it hard for me to untangle these things. So as my writing is partly an attempt at redemption as a self-proclaimed ally and feminist, I hope I have caught you in the right moment and made you consider the distribution of emotional labor in your past, present, and future relationships.
One recent rendition of this “good guy” trope is the character played by Bo Burnham in Promising Young Woman (2020).
Second-wave feminism is usually recognized as the movement that emerged in the 60s with a focus on women’s rights and societal expectations—influenced by thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir.
If not, that’s fine (but not really, that’s for another time). I think you can still get something out of this article if you read it with an open mind.
I don’t remember who said this, but it has stuck with me: Pointing out others’ hypocrisy is the lowliest form of critique.
I use Emotional labor here broadly. For example, keeping track of people’s well-being, adapting to others’ emotional states, upholding the “concerns” for domestic things, taking responsibility for the vibe at social gatherings, remembering birthdays and what people are up to, and so on. Informed readers will recognize that emotional labor is intersectional. In other words, emotional labor can be unevenly distributed along the axes of many different power structures.