The trouble with men…

The Church may need a serious theology of masculinity, writes David Quinn

Men have been receiving a very bad press lately, and not just specific men, but men in general. The words ‘toxic’ and ‘masculinity’ are commonly and routinely joined together in a way ‘toxic’ and ‘femininity’ rarely are.

The current round of attacks on men began with the allegations of rape made against Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein in 2016. This led to a cascade of allegations against other men and to the #MeToo movement in which women shared their experiences of being sexually harassed and assaulted by men.

In turn, this gave rise to the term ‘toxic masculinity’. Men stood accused of being sexist, aggressive, domineering bullies. Even men who were gentlemanly and respectful towards women were nonetheless guilty of harbouring sexist attitudes by not seeing women as their true equals and not treating them as such. Thus, for example, they would favour promotion of men over women at work, or deep down believe a woman’s place is at home once she has children. Even a man’s protective attitude towards a wife was seen as sexist.

Sexism

It has become extremely difficult now to say anything good about men. Try it. You will still be accused of sexism. This was my experience last year when I explicitly invited people on Twitter to say something good about men. Drawing from the American writer and feminist, Camille Paglia, I said that men are responsible for almost the whole of the built environment. Think of the houses we live in, the places we work, the roads we drive on, the planes we fly in. Almost all of these are built by men.

The hostile reaction on social media was big and immediate. I was roundly attacked, which actually proved my point, namely that it has become incredibly difficult to say anything good about men. If you are only permitted to say bad things about men, that is sexism in reverse.

Then the prestigious American Psychological Association got in on the act. In a recent report it criticised ‘traditional masculinity’ as “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”.

It criticised these traits as “limiting” the psychological development of men.

Let’s look at some of the traits it describes. Are all of them really problems? Is it bad to be achievement-oriented, which is to say, ambitious? Is it a bad thing to be outwardly strong? Yes, there comes a point at which you have to admit you are not coping, but stoicism is not in itself bad. Stoicism is about enduring pain, accepting it as inevitable, and getting on with it.

How is seeking adventure and taking risks undesirable in and of themselves? Male risk-taking does have a downside. We can see this from the fact that men have, and cause, more road accidents, for example. But without male risk-taking the world would be far worse off. We need someone to do physically risky jobs like fire-fighting and construction work, among many other things, and men are vastly more drawn than women to these occupations.

At the end of the day, a society that seems to treat masculinity itself as flawed, and attempts to alienate men from their natures, is going to find itself in a very bad place and may actually increase mental health problems among men because they will have been taught that maleness itself is a problem and constantly be told to go against the grain of their natures.

How should the Church regard this debate? To date, it has had very little to say about it. In fact, the Church is typically more concerned with not alienating women, given that only men can be ordained. As a result, it gives little consideration to how it might attract more laymen to become Christians, even though more women than men attend church.

Christianity is patriarchal in some ways, but it is also a rather ‘feminine’ religion. It emphasises humility, service, quiet prayer, compassion. These are all good things, obviously, but they don’t necessarily draw on typically male traits like risk-taking and action. Thus, Christianity to some men can appear ‘unmanly’.

We can dismiss these men and think to ourselves, we don’t want them in Church anyway. We can content ourselves with the fact that many men are not typically masculine and content ourselves with appealing to men who are not so attracted to risk and to action. But that would be a big mistake, because there is nothing wrong with typically male traits, per se, and the Church has to have something to say to men who strongly display these traits.

Perhaps we actually need to develop of theology of masculinity. We need to ask ourselves more deeply: what is a man?

Is ‘manliness’ purely the result of how we are raised, and therefore it would be easy to raise more ‘feminine’ men if we really put our minds down to it?

Or are certain typically male traits innate to most, or at least many men? If they are, then what have we got to say to such men? Can a man become a better person without having to give up some part of his maleness? How do we go about making Christianity appealing to the risk-taking, action-seeking man?

We are not even having this debate in the Church. These questions are not even considered. But they ought to be, and for two good reasons. One is that society is debating these issues and we ought to have something to contribute.

Secondly, we must find ways of attracting men to Church in the same numbers as women, because it is men who are more typically absent.