A young friend of mine, name withheld, once shared this story with me:
I remember when my maternal grandmother died while I was a young boy in secondary school. My mum had called me through my hostel master to tell me the news. Once I heard it, I became disillusioned and began to cry. She was the last of my grandparents alive and was the only one I had been privileged to meet so we had drawn quite close to each other.
I hid my face in the pillows to cry because I didn’t want the other boys in the hostel to know but they found out anyway and the seniors among them called me and asked why I was crying. They sounded so sympathetic and, soon, I’d told them what happened. Suddenly, they burst into laughter, asking me if that was the only thing that had happened. As if my parents should have died also before I was permitted to cry!
I felt ashamed as they sent me back to my bed, taunting me for mourning my grandmother’s death. That was the moment I learned that it was completely wrong for me to cry or show any emotions as a man.
He’s not the only one who had to learn that lesson. Most of us grew up having distant fathers who only came close to us or held us when they wanted to discipline us, or who spoke to us only when they wanted to send us on errands. We saw our fathers show our mothers little or no affection. They just ordered them around and ruled the house as a king in a kingdom. We weren’t told that we were loved and we couldn’t say it because it looked like weakness. We are unemotional with our friends, taunting them to ‘be strong’ when they are going through tough times. Everyone has to be manly. No space to seem hurt or need consolation.
There’s a word for this concept- Toxic Masculinity.
Toxic Masculinity says that a man must be rock-hard and stiff emotionally, keeping his feelings to himself. That’s a lie.
This emotional posture is inhuman- it’s not real. It’s a picture that the society paints and pushes men into, making men victims of their desire to fit in. A lot of men don’t know it but they’ve been caught in this net. Soon, young men bottle up their emotions and, when the pressure becomes too much to bear, they break down mentally, emotionally and even physically. It turns men into Money Making Machines, as money is all they contribute to the family’s wellbeing. Very soon, the mother is idolized since she seems to be only one that reaches out to the family’s emotions. The man makes equal and even greater sacrifices which go unnoticed because of how distant he seems. Soon, he can’t control his children anymore because they’ve gone beyond the point where fear could restrain them. At this new point, if you don’t have their hearts, you can’t have their hands. They might not say it to your face, but they no longer care what you think.