Are they happy? Amidst the rat race and comforts of modern living one can find a man trapped with his own demons. The carefree child grows to a sulking carcass of a man dredging out scoops of an overdue past.
Nowadays, just a cursory scroll on Twitter and Facebook feeds can give one the idea of “toxic masculinity”- a hybrid of aggression, possession, homophobia, emotional frigidity. The ingredients to a perfect hellscape. But what does non-toxic look like? Why does the set of normative behaviors arbitrarily assigned to little "boy" kids still revolve around the same idea of power, possession, aggression, entitlement? Sure, the idea of masculinity differs from culture to culture, society to society, Disney villains to Disney villains. And the causes of male violence and other social problems are not the same everywhere. But once boiled down to a boxing match of "Bad guy" vs "Good Guy", one leaves out critical answers to questions like these. Because, "bad men" will keep sprouting up as long as we, as a society, square testosterone as synonymous to manhood and masculinity.
We have just started on our way to consider gender roles as socially constructed. However, to construct socially means that we enforce those roles into action through our ongoing movement, language and dialogue from a very, very young age. The more we practice, the more we cement it as a social norm. Or else, we will find ourselves with jacked up Hercules slashing away at the heads of a Hydra that we created. It only stops when we go for the heart.
Let's go for the heart.
Song list:
Breaking the Habit – Linkin Park
Save My Soul – JoJo
Everybody Hurts – R.E.M.
Fix you – Coldplay
Happy little pill – Troye Sivan
Demons – Imagine Dragons
The Stigma – AS IT IS
Fake Happy – Paramore
How to save a life – Fray