I learn a lot by reading the Arts & Minds pages. This week my antennae were activated by Dorothea Samaha’s article about Daniel Waite Penny and his podcast, Non-Toxic (see page C6 of this issue). It introduced me to a new word, “hypebeast,” and a concept, “toxic masculinity,” that I had somehow missed.
The phrase, I now know, refers to the worst aspects of stereotypical masculine behavior. “Toxic masculinity is represented by qualities such as violence, dominance, emotional illiteracy, sexual entitlement, and hostility to femininity,” wrote sociologist Michael Flood in The Conversation. It’s not just bad for women. Men coined the term in the 1980s because it constrains men’s lives and relationships.
I recall a brief period of enlightened male vulnerability in the wake of #MeToo. But by 2022 Alex McElroy was declaring in the Times that “toxic masculinity is so 2017.” That nascent vulnerability had “curdled” into petulance. “The aftermath of last year’s Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a festival of petulant vulnerability,” he wrote. “While the attack itself was violent and wrathful, many in the mostly male mob, who screamed obscenities or threw heavy objects at police officers that day, later wept as they expressed shame, offered excuses or complained about jobs and friends they lost.” Now, of course, they’ve all been pardoned, and they’re all mad again.
Daniel Penny links toxic masculinity to climate change denial and the “staggering differences between how men and women view the crisis,” reports Samaha. “Men are much less likely to believe that climate change is real,” says Penny, and are more susceptible to the denialist propaganda that has enthralled many young men. Candidate Trump told Joe Rogan, who is wildly popular among men ages 18 to 34, that people concerned about sea-level rise are “poor fools.”
Men feel a loss of their place in the world, says Penny. “We’re weak and powerless in the face of this big force that’s bearing down on us.” Then he names the big bugaboo: fear of death is at the core of this sense of loss, he says.
Penny may be right about that, but the fear seems to have escaped the bounds of the individual, making its way into corporate culture. We are seeing a race to retreat from decency by American businesses. The number of companies that mention diversity, equity, and inclusion in their annual reports has fallen by nearly 60 percent in one year, the Times reported on March 16. And while we’re at it, ordinary money is too genteel; we need crypto.
Just six years ago, the Gillette razor company had an ad campaign with the theme “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be.” It urged men to confront their bullying and catcalling, and to hold each other accountable for misogyny. Would any big U.S. corporation dare to mount such an advertising effort in 2025’s Trumpworld?
The climate crisis we face is about more than rising temperatures and sea levels. It’s about the rising tides of narcissism, homophobia, and hostility toward women that are creating a toxic environment for all of us.
