By Christine Rosen
Monday, February 18, 2019
If you are a psychologist concerned about the health and
well-being of boys and men, there are many matters to which you might turn your
attention: In the United States, these would include drug use, high suicide
rates, educational achievement rates that lag far behind those of women, and
shortened life expectancy, to name just a few. But if you examined the recently
issued American Psychological Association guidelines for practitioners who
treat boys and men, you would think the main challenge facing men today is
masculinity itself.
Masculinity, according to the report, is a “particular
constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the
population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance
of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.” In a summary of the study on
the APA’s website, Stephanie Pappas writes of the guidelines, “Thirteen years
in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that
traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to
suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.”
And so “traditional masculinity” now joins “patriarchy”
as an abstract but menacing force that exercises complete power over its
hapless conduits (men) who then wield it to harm everyone else. (Patriarchy
does not go unmentioned in the guidelines; as psychology professor Ronald F.
Levant told Pappas, “though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged
upon by patriarchy.”)
What, then, will the kinder, gentler, nontraditional
masculinity ushered in by the APA’s eager practitioners look like? Reading the
report, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled across a term paper
written by a mediocre women’s-studies major. Theory and jargon suffuse the very
first guideline, which states, “Psychologists strive to recognize that
masculinities are constructed based on social, cultural, and contextual norms.”
We are told that “dominant masculinity was historically predicated on the
exclusion of men who were not white, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, and
privileged.”
By guideline three we are, predictably, reading about the
impact of “power, privilege, and sexism,” and readers are reminded that “male
privilege often comes with a cost in the form of adherence to sexist ideologies
designed to maintain male power that also restrict men’s ability to function
adaptively.”
The report is heavily biased against masculine
characteristics, which are asserted (without proof) to be harmful and which psychologists
are encouraged to quash. As one clinician told Pappas, “the clinician’s role. .
. can be to encourage men to discard the harmful ideologies of traditional
masculinity (violence, sexism) and find flexibility in the potentially positive
aspects (courage, leadership).” Note that when positive aspects of traditional
masculinity are mentioned, they are merely “potentially positive,” while things
like violence and sexism are described unequivocally as “ideologies of
traditional masculinity.”
Missing entirely from the report is any mention of the
one real thing (as opposed to made-up post-structuralist theoretical things)
that does impact men: testosterone. Instead we read of “heteronormative
assumptions” and “binary identity” and “microaggressions.” As Toby Young noted
in the Spectator, “the word
‘transgender’ occurs more often (56) than ‘masculine’ (53).” As for what
psychologists should do with men who are stubbornly, traditionally masculine,
the guidelines advise: “Strive to create psychoeducational classes and
workshops designed to promote gender empathy, respectful behavior, and
communication skills.” Group hug, everyone!
Even when the guidelines properly identify some of the
challenges facing boys (such as the fact that they are falling behind girls
academically), its authors miss an opportunity to deal with actual challenges
as opposed to theoretical ones. Why is the educational system more amenable to
traditionally female behavior in the classroom than to male behavior? At the
elementary-school level, where most teachers are female and where the supposed
pathologies of boys (e.g., difficultly sitting still and concentrating) often
first emerge, such behavior is viewed as early evidence of the disease of
“traditional masculinity” rather than an understandable expression of
frustration with a system that doesn’t always take the needs of young boys into
account.
And so the guidelines paint boys as the bad guys ruining
school for everyone else. Although they concede that “addressing the school-related
problems of boys is also important,” they deem it so “because many of the
problems posed by boys in schools (e.g., classroom disruption, poor
organization, sexual harassment, bullying, discourtesy) have a detrimental
impact on the academic and social experiences of other students.” As to what is
causing Johnny to squirm in his chair during social studies or bother his
classmate when he’s distracted? Easy: “Constricted notions of masculinity
emphasizing aggression, homophobia, and misogyny may influence boys to direct a
great deal of their energy into disruptive behaviors such as bullying,
homosexual taunting, and sexual harassment rather than healthy academic and
extracurricular activities.”
As these guidelines reveal, an abstraction like “traditional
masculinity” brings confusion rather than clarity to the challenges facing boys
and men. It also provides convenient cover to ideologically motivated
psychologists who would rather complain about broader structural forces than
engage with the messy realities of male patients who, like ever other person on
earth, are merely trying to navigate life’s many challenges.
Attacks on masculinity sacrifice the best interests of
individual patients to service a political agenda. Consider the final guideline
offered in the report: “Work with public health officials to disseminate
information regarding the destructive aspects of rigid notions of masculinity
may result in inclusion of gender-sensitive public health initiatives for boys
and men. Psychologists also are encouraged to advocate for more financial
support for research studies aimed at boys and men with special attention to
neglected areas of research, such as examining masculinity with other social
identity–based experiences.”
Consider a father involved in a custody battle. What
happens when he takes his son hunting and a therapist, following the APA’s
guidelines, determines that such behavior encourages “heteronormative
assumptions” and violence? What if the family-court judge agrees?
Calling for an end to masculine behavior won’t help the
men who most need guidance. On the contrary, it polarizes them. This is why
far-right extremists online describe the world as divided between real men
(themselves) and “soy boys” (everyone who disagrees with them). Their
reactionary masculinity and puerile posturing is unlikely to be improved by
psychologists hectoring them about their male privilege and “boy code” norms.
These guidelines will effectively be APA policy for the
next 10 years, serving as the guideposts for all therapists who treat male
patients. In a culture already rife with casual misandry and one where
hyperemotional responses move at the speed of Twitter, there is plenty of room
for a virtue like stoicism, which the APA claims is harmful to men.
Left-leaning psychologists might not like men who embody stoicism, or the
competitive instinct that fuels high achievers, or the disciplined aggression
that makes for an ideal soldier, but our world would be a less free and prosperous
place without them.
In The Triumph of
the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff noted, “Power is one thing. Authority
another. Therapeutics derive their authority from their role faiths.” As these
new APA guidelines suggest, today’s adherents of the therapeutic faith worship
the false god of intersectionality. One can only hope that this modern Baal
will eventually enjoy the fate of its predecessor.
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