
'Traditional masculinity' labeled 'harmful' by the American Psychological Assc - jelliclesfarm
https://www.latimes.com/health/ny-news-traditional-masculinity-harmful-psychological-association-20190109-story.html
======
notacoward
Very disappointing to see things phrased this way. Yes, certain aspects of
traditional masculinity - suppressing emotion, hypercompetitiveness, risk
seeking - are harmful. So are certain aspects of traditional femininity -
submissiveness, excessive concern about appearance - and I don't remember an
APA warning about that.

Putting 'masculine' or 'feminine' at the center of this just isn't
constructive. Address the behavioral syndromes themselves, maybe note in the
text that they're traditionally associated or correlated with gender roles,
but FFS don't get all gender-essentialist about it. If nothing else, it just
triggers all the MRAs and gives their leaders a talking point to rile up the
regressives some more.

~~~
tomp
"Suppressing emotion" is just another word for emotional maturity. Should we
all be like babies, crying all the time, screaming when we're hungry, etc? An
adult should recognize that while some emotions are useful, others are not and
learn to accept and transcend them, and also that even the useful ones are
sometimes useful to other people as well, but at other times only useful for
the person having them and there's no need for them to be shared and burden
other people.

~~~
notacoward
Suppressing emotion is like level two on a five-point scale. Sure, giving your
emotions free rein like a kid (level one) is worse, but suppression causes
problems too. Those emotions will find a way out, whether it's suppressed
anger turning into depression, suppressed fear turning into impotence, etc.
There are literally thousands of books and scientific studies of this stuff.
Read some.

Learning to _deal with_ your emotions is the mark of true maturity.
Suppression is itself a manifestation of fear, and denial of that fear. As
with anything else, it's better to solve problems than to turn a blind eye.

~~~
d0100
Suppressing emotions is one way to deal with them.

Some people find outlets, some just suppress them. Maybe you have a different
definition of what "suppress emotions" means?

------
Balgair
Where is the Times getting these quotes in their article? I can't find nearly
any of them in the actual APA Guidelines document :

“traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and
aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.” - This sentence is is not in the
guidelines.

"conform to traditional stereotypes about men’s emotionality" is not in the
document, however :"in part because internalizing disorders do not conform to
traditional gender role stereotypes about men’s emotionality." is in the
document. Though not a large misquote, it is still a misquote.

“Traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological
development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender
role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health,” is
just straight up not in the document.

"despite social forces that can harm mental health" is also not in the
document.

I've no idea where the author, Jessica Schladebeck, is getting her quotes, but
the linked document that is in the article doe not have them. What am I
missing here? I've not parsed it in detail yet, so my apologies, but it seems
that a few of these quotes are just made up out of whole cloth.

~~~
Balgair
Ok, _The Atlantic_ [0] has a MUCH better report on the APA guideline. It seems
that the _LA Times_ author cribbed a lot of her article from there. For
instance the quote of :

> traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and
> aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.

comes from the APA's _Monitor_ Jan. '19 edition [1]. The context of the quote
seems to indicate that _some_ recent research has taken the tack that
masculinity is harmful and that such a bent in the research should be
corrected. The full sentence in the _Monitor_ piece is:

> The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional
> masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and
> aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.

Read the rest of _The Atlantic_ article for a better take on the APA
guidelines going forward. It's _real_ journalism.

However, I'm going to soapbox a bit here:

This whole exercise has been a real eye opener for me. The very inflammatory
quote was a bit much and so I idly opened the linked document. Seeing a fair
few pages of text, I just tried to Ctrl+F for the sentence, to get a quick way
to see greater context on the quote. I could not find it.

I tried some permutations on that sentence. Still nothing. The more I looked,
the less sense everything made. Yet many of the commentors here on HN and in a
fair few other sites I visit, were _outraged_ at the APA. Many of the comments
on this article are greyed out, downvoted, calling on feminists, political
bents, conspiracies, etc. Other sites are equally as bad, just really crazy
stuff that the _actual_ APA guidelines have nothing to do with. I've re-
skimmed them and, honestly, it's fairly good advice for practitioners, though
not really 'brass tacks' advice. But it seems that nearly none of you actually
read the guidelines before commenting. It seems that YOU (yes you, the real
person reading this!) barely skimmed the _LA Times_ article, let alone dug
into the APA guidelines at all.

And the author, Jessica Schladebeck, really played with journalistic standards
by confusing quotes from the APA guidelines with quotes from the APA's
_Monitor_. Now, if you look at her output on a typical day [2], she writes
about three 2000 word essays on a multitude of events and topics; she seems to
have no specialty or 'beat'. 6k words per day is a full time job, that is for
sure. But I cannot excuse the total lack of copy editing at the _LA Times_. I
know they are going through a fair few issues of their own [3], but _come on!_
, this is simple stuff yall.

Has journalism _really_ sunken _that_ far for a real, actual, major US
newspaper?! Jesus, no wonder we are in the pit that we find ourselves as a
country. I'll say that I have been surprised, shocked even, at the level of
discourse in this country, in my local community, my work, and even in my
family. I've always wondered why that was. Now I know the answer.

The information we digest _really is 'fake'_. Jessica Schladebeck's article
dances on the line of journalistic ethics. Honestly, I feel that it merrily
crosses right over that line. It's pure 'clickbait' dressed up in the veneer
of a 'real' newspaper. I expect this kind of crap from _Buzzfeed_ , but the
_LA Times_?! I mean, they actually printed this and sent it out on
broadsheets?! How little _do_ they pay per line?

What is going on?! Now, I thought that HNers were a _bit_ above the hoi
polloi, but no. You all just like to argue over imaginary differences. You all
made up these points of view from whole cloth and then took sides in an
argument that had no basis at all in reality. Some commentors bemoan
:"disappointing to see things phrased this way", yet the APA never phrased
things in that way and bemoaned it themselves (it seems to me). Others state
they are "glad it's finally being treated in this way", yet the APA is not
treating masculinity as toxic and their discussion is nuanced in the
_Monitor_. Others still question the APA via: "encouraging men to achieve
success in life is harmful?", but that statement cannot be pulled out of the
APA guidelines, and can barely be pulled out of the _LA Times_ article itself.

Quite literally, you all are 'playing yourselves'. So stop it.

Stop trying to get in fights on the internet. Stop skimming articles. Stop
being smug. You're not getting more information faster. You're getting all but
lied to and you are lying _at_ each other. Internet karma points do not
matter. It feels like so many 4th graders trying to come up with book reports
on the spot [4]. So, if you commented in this thread about this article, it's
time you took a note from John Green [5] and took a sabbatical from the
internet. It's not helping you, it's hurting you and those around you.

[0]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/tradition...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/traditional-
masculinity-american-psychological-association/580006/)

[1] [https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-
corner.aspx](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/01/ce-corner.aspx)

[2] [https://www.latimes.com/author-
all/?fn=Jessica&ln=Schladebec...](https://www.latimes.com/author-
all/?fn=Jessica&ln=Schladebeck)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times#Modern_era](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times#Modern_era)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo45o69HaKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo45o69HaKI)

[5]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoHkvc3DA3o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoHkvc3DA3o)

~~~
tomp
thank you for a thorough and thoughtful reply!

------
acostoss
This makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad it's finally being treated in this
way.

There's 100% nothing wrong with being a man, and there's nothing wrong in
taking pride in it. There is, however, a ton of societal pressure to do
dangerous, harmful things to ourselves to "prove" our manliness/masculinity.
Ignoring pain and sickness because fear of being weak, taking a lesser role in
the development of our children because it's seen as girly, harassing women
because it's "what guys do", doing dangerous stunts to impress the guys; these
are all harmful behaviors that are all rooted in a need to appear masculine.

This _is_ toxic, and we need to recognize that without getting defensive over
it just because it's what we know. We can do better for eachother and
ourselves and recognition of this fact is a necessary first step.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
Whether you like it or not, people of both genders will be competitive.
Ultimately, this is why socialism fails. The incentive to compete essentially
disappears. If everyone is forced to be paid the same, why try harder than
anyone else? The goal then becomes to game the system as much as possible,
where the ruling class accumulates wealth. However, the mere accumulation of
wealth is not itself a productive endeavor.

You need only look to the former Soviet Union and republics for evidence of
this.

~~~
acostoss
Competition isn't bad, but harming yourself in service of competition is. You
can compete without endangering yourself and harming others. You can be the
best without having to play the "I'm manlier than you" game.

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _You can compete without endangering yourself and harming others. You can
be the best without having to play the "I'm manlier than you" game._

Play without keeping a score so the loser is not "hurt" emotionally?

~~~
jalgos_eminator
It sounds like you were reading a subtext that isn't there.

------
nickles
Traditional masculinity:

 _" Conforming to the norms of the “masculinity ideology” can result in
suppressing emotions and masking distress in young boys as well more risk-
taking and aggressive behavior and a lack of willingness to seek out help."

"traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and
aggression — is, on the whole, harmful."

"Despite its warnings, the APA also encouraged men to embrace the positive
aspects of traditional masculinity, like leadership and courage."

"Men in the United States also commit an estimated 90% more homicides than
women and are also much more likely to be arrested for domestic violence."_

Testosterone:

 _" Most studies support a link between adult criminality and testosterone"

"Most studies have also found testosterone to be associated with behaviors or
personality traits linked with criminality such as antisocial behavior and
alcoholism."

"Studies have also found administered testosterone to increase verbal
aggression and anger in some participants."

"Testosterone is significantly correlated with aggression and competitive
behaviour and is directly facilitated by the latter."

"The rise in testosterone levels during competition predicted aggression in
males but not in females."_

I can't help but notice that many of the attributes that fall under the
umbrella of "toxic masculinity" are behaviors that appear to be correlated
with response to testosterone. Although we can a identify biological basis for
these behaviors, why do we insist they are a social "constellation of
standards"?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone)

~~~
archarios
People have varying level of testosterone in their bodies. Different bodies
react to the same hormones differently. There are a lot of variables that
contribute to who we are and how we experience life. Traditional gender
standards push all sorts of people into certain boxes that a lot of people
don't fit into comfortably and that causes a lot of people hardship. This is
just recognizing a certain pattern that is generally harmful towards people
subjected to it. It's fine to be competitive. It isn't okay to pressure people
into being competitive because they "should" be to fit into their assigned
role.

------
makerofspoons
In the face of ecological collapse, diminishing living standards, and
increasing authoritarianism I fail to see how stoicism is anything but
healthy. To overcome challenges in the present and future we need fortitude,
calmness, and patience rather than panic.

~~~
moosey
While it might not seem so, stoicism, in the sense that is discussed in this
paper, is not really synonymous with fortitude, calmness, and patience.

It is more along the lines that there is a natural order that is good that a
person must conform to. I would argue that it's something closer to
heteronormativity in personal belief.

~~~
zekrioca
I really get annoyed by the mixture with the different definitions of
stoicism. One would avoid using it in a paper if it causes confusion

------
karpodiem
So would (self) pursuit of being physically attractive (high muscle mass / low
body fat) and intelligence (eventually leading to earning power to support
yourself and a family) equate to "eschewal of the appearance of weakness"?

I'd like to hear the APA's answer to this.

~~~
lucozade
Probably. And both can definitely be contributors to psychological strain. So,
in my view, it's not unreasonable for the APA to say that.

In fairness, I don't see this as the APA saying that these things are
inherently harmful. They're saying that they can be causal to mental health
issues so psychologists should be aware of that.

I guess I may have interpreted that incorrectly. Clearly the article
interpreted it differently.

------
turingspiritfly
> “traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance
> and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.

This really sounds like an attack on masculinity. One must never forget, the
age of information with all it's flaws and good was brought upon the back of a
structure who's main building block atleast in terms of values were masculine
values which I think is independent of gender/sex

~~~
Aldo_MX
Out of curiosity, if someone agrees with the statement that competitiveness is
"toxic", I want to know what search engine does that person use because I'm
honestly expecting that person to use a terrible engine like Ask Jeeves.

Without competitiveness we wouldn't have Google or Duck Duck Go.

------
CodeWriter23
This is straight up sexist man-hating bullshit. It should not be tolerated any
more than any kind of gender inequality.

------
busterarm
"achievement"

So encouraging men to achieve success in life is harmful?

~~~
z_open
I have a hard time with people who believe everything in life is a
competition. At work, they have to get ahead. At home, they still have to get
ahead. When they eat breakfast, they have to do it better than you. We need to
teach people to work towards society's ends, rather than their own.

~~~
dekken_
That would be a "pathological" form of competitiveness

------
jrauser
Constraining people via arbitrary norms is harmful. Putting people into tidy
little boxes is harmful to those that don't neatly fit in their assigned box.

The smartest HR person I ever worked with once told me "Your standardized
people processes work well for about 80% of your staff. The other 20% is where
enlightened, thoughtful management comes into play."

------
fvdessen
Has 'non-traditional' masculinity been studied long and extensively enough to
do an outcome comparison with the 'traditional' one ?

------
PavlovsCat
> You have to have strong women in order to deal with masculine men. That's
> why masculinity is constantly being eroded, and diminished and dissolved
> [..] because it allows women to be weak. If you have weak men, then you can
> have weak women. And that's what we have.

\- Camille Paglia

~~~
orasis
YES. This is why it’s so important for men & especially women to learn how to
communicate and defend boundaries. I’ve observed the wonderfully healthy
communities you can build when men & women are strong together.

------
olefoo
Standards that were adaptive when society was much less connected are no
longer adaptive in todays world.

This is an attempt by the APA to improve treatment for problems they see in
their field including the much higher rates of suicide and violence that men
in our society express.

It's an unfortunate fact that as with many other aspects of our broken culture
there are plenty of people willing to take advantage of people who have
maladaptive psychological issues.

A certain Canadian youtuber peddling hyper-masculine value systems via books
and seminars comes to mind. The equivalent of scientology for those who feel
less than secure in their masculinity.

------
orasis
“(masculinity)...marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and
aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.”

As a 20 year practitioner of the primal dominance game of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
I’d like to address dominance and how it is completely mid-understood.

Dominance is not the act of dominating other people. It is people allowing
themselves to be dominated. A key characteristic of alphas is that they are
indomitable.

Since people perceive dominance instead of indominance they view it as a
scarce zero-sum resource.

If I dominate you it’s because I either accidentally transgressed your
boundary or we have boundaries that conflict and we haven’t negotiated new
boundaries. Just going about my business people grant me dominance but this is
not something I actively do, it is on them.

When people label dominance as bad, this tells me that they have poor boundary
establishment and enforcement skills.

What are your values as an individual. From that, what are your boundaries?
Are you willing to unflinchingly communicate those boundaries?

Are you willing to _attempt_ to defend those boundaries from transgression?
Can you incrementally develop indomitability and eventually read as dominant?

Some who believe they have zero ability to defend boundaries will retreat to
the surrender of the boundary-less feminine. This might work, but I think it
is more productive to metaphorically die defending boundaries than not have
them in the first place.

The unique magic of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is that even if you are powerful with
clear boundary establishment, for years and years you will utterly fail to
defend those boundaries.

Knowing you may fail to defend boundaries but trying anyway is a key to next
level masculinity.

One of my precious jobs as a coach is to show men that they can die well. When
I think they’re ready, usually after 1-2 years of training I will show them
that they are _almost_ completely powerless. From the outside it looks like
I’m torturing these men because I never fully checkmate them so that they can
quit by tapping out. I encourage them to keep moving, keep trying, try to keep
a clear head and act well despite the fact that it’s utterly hopeless.

This human condition is hopeless, but act well in accordance with your values
anyway.

This quote by Rickson Gracie sums up the process:

“Where there's discomfort, there's fear," he said. "In these very tough
positions, you're in a little piece of hell. And through this daily suffering,
you learn to survive in these situations. You have to find comfort in
uncomfortable situations. You have to be able to live in your worst nightmare.
Jiu-jitsu puts you completely in the moment where you must have complete focus
on finding a solution to the problem. This trains the mind to build that
focus, to increase your awareness, your capacity to solve problems. Sometimes,
you don't have to win. You cannot win. But that has nothing to do with
losing."

------
Tade0
As an outsider: are these guidelines of any consequence in practice?

------
js8
This is sexism. People should avoid labels such as "masculine" or "feminine".
How would we react if they said, for example, "traditional jewishness" (is
considered harmful)?

I think feminist movement is actively hurting itself by adopting divisive
labels such as "toxic masculinity", "patriarchy" or even "feminism". We have
gender neutral way of talking about these phenomena, there is no need to
invoke gender.

~~~
orasis
If the labels describe an interesting pattern then we shouldn’t fear them.

~~~
smhost
the formula for small "c" conservative language-policing among post-critical
folk seems to be:

1) identify a criticism of some traditional power structure (masculinity)

2) hijack the critical language and turn it on itself into a contradiction
(anti-sexism is itself sexist)

it's the same formula for everything from "atheism is itself a religion" to
"anti-racism is racism against white people".

to me it just seems like a very childish defense mechanism, like if nobody is
allowed to talk about the problem then the problem will just go away.

~~~
js8
This is a big misunderstanding.

You can criticize power structures in gender-neutral way. You can say, for
example, "social hierarchy" instead of "patriarchy". You can talk about
"movement for gender equality" instead of "feminism". You can talk about
"being asshole" or "taking too much risks" or other trait instead of "toxic
masculinity".

I actually agree with the feminist critique (for the most part), I think where
they are wrong is putting people into gender boxes. And I don't think other
movements for equality (for example, movements for racial and sexual equality)
do this to such extent.

~~~
mcphage
> You can say, for example, "social hierarchy" instead of "patriarchy".

If you're afraid to even _name_ the social hierarchy that we have, why would
anybody expect you to be willing or able to put in the hard work of fixing its
problems?

~~~
js8
I am not sure what you mean by "afraid to name it". I don't want to mislabel
it. Just like it's not Jewish, or heterosexual, it's not male either.

We know there is one mostly based on wealth and income (if you're in the
West), and then there are many local ones based pretty much on managerial
position that people have in various companies. In general, it is culture-
specific.

I personally think we would be better off without social hierarchies (in
short, money shouldn't play role in politics and economy should be organized
as cooperatives), and I don't see mislabeling it as "patriarchy" helping in
any way to achieve that goal.

~~~
palimpsests
Wait, so how is patriarchy _not_ referring to male genderedness?

If something is a result of or related to the phenomenon of patriarchy (as
that term is understood by a majority of folks), I don't see how labeling it
as such could be construed as mislabeling.

------
camdenlock
There's no science to be found here, only the assertions of what is
essentially a religious ideology. Pretty disheartening.

~~~
iron0013
One of the reasons there's no science to be found here (in this thread) is
that no one is bothering to actually read the APA guidelines before lashing
out with their reactionary rage.

------
onetimemanytime
I call BS on their assessment. #MeToo bandwagon.

Like it or not, men and women are NOT (edited omission) built the same way,
and that includes more than just their private parts. What's harmful,
aggression for example, can be dealt with without calling the entire
masculinity harmful. The rest (stoicism, competitiveness, dominance) is what
helps drive humanity ahead

~~~
chrisco255
Except they're not built the same way? There's significant differences in
psychological and physical factors.

~~~
onetimemanytime
I meant NOT built the same way. Sorry

------
wil999
Sounds like bs to me. Just some more far left rhetoric disguised in another
insidious semi intellectual garb.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, or break the guidelines by
name-calling in the sense described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

If we take the name-calling out of this comment, there's nothing left. That
makes it a bad comment for Hacker News.

