What is a “manly man”? My grandfather pretty much abandoned his wife and two sons during the Twenties. My Dad grew up in the Depression. He picked fruit in California; logged in Montana; worked on a government survey ship in the Gulf of Alaska; was the assistant manager of a movie theater in Portland, Oregon; soldiered on Guadalcanal and Bougainville; was a ski-bum in Sun Valley and a cab driver in Seattle and Anchorage; and—eventually—owned a small business that put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies, along with many other things. He smoked two packs of Camels a day. He read a lot of high-end trash.[1] He knew many “colorful” expressions, but he did not use them indoors or in front of women and children. He never raised his voice to–let alone hit–my Mom or me and my siblings. (He did punch out a tug-boat captain who disrespected my Mom.) He taught me to sail, to ski, to drive a car (with a manual gear-shift), and to shoot both long guns and pistols (which we had around the house in an unlocked rack) and gun safety (“always check in the breech”). He believed in individual achievement and personal responsibility. He always voted straight-ticket Republican, except for the time he voted for McGovern because he was so angry about the waste and lies of the Vietnam War. He intensely disliked rich swells, especially rich swells who went into politics and took up the cause of the “common man.” (This meant FDR and all the Kennedys.) He and my Mom believed that “a woman’s place was in the home” and that “a man had to provide for his family.” He and my Mom were casual racists, just like most other White people of the time outside the South. He was the finest man I’ve ever known.
He offered an example of “traditional masculinity,” rather than “toxic masculinity.” That distinction began when the term “toxic masculinity” was taken up by men’s movements in the 1980s and 1990s. Gender differences are essentially hard-wired, rather than socially constructed.[2] “Toxic” masculinity could appear where men had lost contact with real or “deep” masculinity. Masculinity became “toxic” when men lost comradery with other men and when they repressed emotions. From there, the term crept into academic studies and, from there, into the media in the 2010s. Along the way, however, it became generalized to describe ALL masculinity. In part, this seems to have occurred among people—feminists, gay-rights activists–struggling courageously for their own liberation. In part, this sprang from “gray wolf” behavior among academics.[3] In part, this seems to have resulted from the intellectual laziness of people in the media.[4] There followed a moral panic over behavior attributed to many men.[5]
Social movements swing like a pendulum, taking ever more extreme positions. So it was with “toxic masculinity.” Recent studies find that many male Trump voters support abortion rights, gender equality, and openness about emotions, but don’t believe that women’s progress has come at the expense of men. They’re just sick of being stigmatized.[6]
Believing a man should provide for his family is preferable to abandoning that family.
[1] Kenneth Roberts, C.S. Forester, and John D. MacDonald.
[2] On “Social Construction” see Social construction of gender – Wikipedia Lots of jargon.
[4] See: Toxic masculinity – Wikipedia, “Terminology.”
[6] Claire Cain Miller, “Many Trump-Voting Men Feel Under Fire, Yet Defy Stereotypes,” NYT, 5 March 2025.
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