Masculine Can't Be Toxic
Toxic masculinity is an oxymoron. Objectifying women, sexism, gender inequality is anything but masculine. It’s what little boys do. Little boys hit girls, they challenge them to races, and get excited when they beat them in basketball. Like most societal issues, we missed the bigger picture.
Women are casualties of man’s internal war. Show me a man marginalizing women and I’ll show you fear and comparison. I’ll show a man losing his battle to answer his question. John Eldridge, Author of Wild at Heart, talks about every man’s question “Am I enough?” He claims the fall of Adam occurred when he took his question from God and brought it to Eve. In essence, sin is when man tries to answer his heart’s question with someone or something other than God. Ever wondered why we’re so obsessed with sports? It is literally a scored measurement of “how enough” we are. As a college coach I watched grown men, with families attempt to validate their existence on this planet one Saturday at a time. If we won, they were worthy, if we lost, they were inferior as men. With these sort of stakes, Saturday is so much more than football, it’s a frenzy of validation. Every trophy, paycheck, and tender hook up is in pursuit of the answer. “Am I Enough?”
The treatment of women is a symptom to the virus, not the virus itself. I love the quote from the movie Legends of the Fall
Some people hear their own inner voices with great clearness.
And they live by what they hear.
Such people become crazy,
or they become legends ..
l think it was the bear's voice he heard deep inside him.
Growling low of dark, secret places.
A man who hasn’t done the work to quiet his question has a bear in him. He’ll destroy everyone and everything in hopes of filling the black hole in his heart. Masculinity, true masculine men have excused themselves from comparison. They’ve allowed God, their father to tell them who they are. They know the answer. Critic aside, there are two types of men in every arena. The one who competes to get his question answered by the result. And the one whose come to display his skills already knowing the answer. I recently did an interview with Navy Seal and CEO of Heroes and Horses Micah Fink. He said, “We are incredibly educated about what everyone else says will make us happy, but we are ignorant of ourselves.” How do we teach us about our own hearts. Micah thinks it’s only possible under great strain and struggle. The struggle is the medium in which we educate our minds about our hearts. You have no idea what’s going on in there until we do something hard enough, we’re forced to go looking.
A man who knows he’s enough can shift his view of a woman from possible answer to his agony, another meal for the bear, to a role of protector and defender of her heart.
There is no beauty in our universe like when a woman lets her guard down and shows her true heart. But she can’t do that with predators at her heels. I’m ashamed of how we’ve made women feel on this earth, but I’m hopeful for what we can make for our daughters. We must struggle greatly, and on purpose to put the bear to sleep.
Struggle Well Friends