Fragile masculinity

Image by Barry Deutsch (https://thenib.com/toxic-masculinity-stew)

Masculinity has always been fragile, because just like racism, it is based on a belief of superiority. The problem with a superiority complex is that the natural reaction to any threat to this superiority is always violence. When men feel that there is a threat to their masculinity, most naturally react with either physical or emotional violence. Any individual or group that responds with violence to little or no provocation, primarily to perpetuate a perceived superiority or belief, is naturally insecure, therein lies the problem with masculinity.

Masculinity has always been attached to something, in the past it was physicality. That’s not to say that femininity wasn’t attached to something, it was: beauty, purity, and fertility. Femininity existed in obedience and servitude to masculinity. However, while the definition of femininity has evolved and become flexible and fluid, masculinity hasn’t, it was just shifted from physical prowess to political and monetary prowess. In the past, a man was judged by his physical strength, and biological attributes. And, when this physicality was challenged the easiest way to reaffirm, and reestablish superiority was through force and violence. In the modern day, masculinity is now equated to how much money you have, what you own, and who you know. This is how the meaning of what it is to be a man has degenerated in Namibian society. If you listen to boys on the playground, they determine which of their fathers is the bigger man by the car he drives, they dictate the hierarchy among themselves by who owns the best gadgets and the most expensive sneakers. Why attach masculinity to things that are so flimsy?

Men are frightening, not only for their propensity to become overly violent towards women, but even more due to their propensity to be violent towards men they perceive to be lacking in masculinity. Men are such trash, that even men are scared of man, navigating the violence and insecurity is a task most men struggle with. 

The biggest enemies of progress are men who emasculate other men, ignorant men who are comfortable in their patriarchal ways and in a society that allows them to trample on others without impunity. This form of both physical and emotional violence perpetuates the cycle even further. Black men are already born in a lopping cycle of violence spanning two to three hundred years. Slavery, Colonialism, Racial segregation, and now Capitalism. All which emasculates the black man and prods him, causing him to revert to natural retaliation.

A change in mindset, and in the way we raise young boys is needed. It needs to be reconditioned in those who are willing to unlearn, and it needs to be redefined so that boys grow up knowing that being a man is not directly dependent on status, money, and the ability to physically and emotionally control a woman. Men need to discuss the difficulty of being ‘men’.