American Psychological Association: ‘Traditional Masculinity’ Harmful to Men and Boys
“traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful”
We now live in a world where questioning whether Chelsea Manning is truly a woman can get you deplatformed on social media for hate speech while the American Psychological Association sees traditional masculinity as a mental disorder.
The APA just published a lengthy screed on the topic which reads as if it was compiled with assistance from a college symposium on intersectional feminism. I’ve tried to digest some of the most telling passages.
Stephanie Pappas writes at the APA website (emphasis is mine):
APA issues first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys
APA’s new Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men strive to recognize and address these problems in boys and men while remaining sensitive to the field’s androcentric past. Thirteen years in the making, they draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.
The implication is clear. Manliness is bad.
The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors. For example, a 2011 study led by Kristen Springer, PhD, of Rutgers University, found that men with the strongest beliefs about masculinity were only half as likely as men with more moderate masculine beliefs to get preventive health care…
The report even invokes John Wayne. And naturally, links masculinity with racism.
This vision of masculinity may summon up an image of a closemouthed cowboy, à la John Wayne. But there’s more to masculinity than macho swagger. When the rules of manliness bump up against issues of race, class and sexuality, they can further complicate men’s lives.
For example, the masculine requirement to remain stoic and provide for loved ones can interact with systemic racism and lead to so-called John Henryism for African-American men, a high-effort method of coping that involves striving hard in the face of prolonged stress and discrimination.
Then we get the completely taken-as-unquestionable suggestion that transgenderism, unlike masculinity, is completely normal.
Today, transgender issues are at the forefront of the cultural conversation, and there is increased awareness of the diversity of gender identity.
Which brings us to what is the possible goal of this entire exercise. The belief that gender is actually nothing more than a social construct.
Indeed, when researchers strip away stereotypes and expectations, there isn’t much difference in the basic behaviors of men and women. Time diary studies, for example, find that men enjoy caring for their children as much as women do. And differences in emotional displays between boys and girls are small, according to a 2013 meta-analysis (Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 139, No. 4), and not always in the stereo-typical direction. Adolescent boys, for example, actually displayed fewer externalizing emotions such as anger than did adolescent girls.
Professor Jacobson commented on Twitter:
“traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful” — expect this conclusion to be weaponized https://t.co/3z8NfHh7AD
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) January 7, 2019
Twitchy has compiled some reactions to this as well:
40 years of agenda-driven pseudo scholarship—and voilà: Masculinity becomes a pathology in need of a cure. https://t.co/c99kypzWEW
— Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) January 7, 2019
So if you are a biological woman who believes you are a traditionally masculine man, are you now undergoing something psychologically harmful? https://t.co/tZAQ66jpbW
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 7, 2019
Liberals are DETERMINED to effeminate men at every given opportunity
— Will. Power (@KIR_bigg50) January 7, 2019
Thank god we had traditional masculinity in rich supply on, for example, June 6, 1944.
— Timothy F. Sweeney (@timothyfsweeney) January 7, 2019
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Comments
Wait a gosh darn second. I like a traditional, masculine male! (Two if they are smallish!)
Make Men Masculine Again
https://www.prageru.com/videos/make-men-masculine-…
–
“—it’s because the elite KNOW that changing our school system would lead to a nation-wide revolution, and a loss of power on their part. So, like a den of vipers, they’ve been hiding in the shadows, pulling the strings to influence public policy and school curricula, in an attempt to deliberately feminize our boys and brainwash our youth.”
http://www.returnofkings.com/105985/how-our-feminized-school-system-is-crippling-young-boys
I’m sorry, but that’s total bullsh!t.
It’s astonishing the human race survived for as long as it did…. of course, at the rate we’re going, who knew this was how life on our planet would end….. people too confused or terrified to procreate or survive.
well,have always viewed the adult human race in three distinct groups–men, women and the mentally ill
nothing and no one has ever been able to convince me otherwise
will live in that reality the remainder of this life
Yeah that’s nice.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna chop wood, build fires, make furniture, eat a lot of meat, strive to be the best at what I do and tell places like the APA to go to hell.
I think I still have the Gor series in the basement. Time to dust them off for a dose of male-dominant fantasy!
So is your real name “Tarl Cabot”?
Psychiatry is nothing more than licensed voodoo.
Nah, Voodoo has a better reputation.
… and they wonder why mental health is not covered by health insurance.
I realize that APA is mostly clinical psychology and not research psychology; nonetheless, the field would benefit far more by cleaning up the sloppy scholarship that led to the replication crisis in the first place than from trying (yet again) to pass off trendy politics as science.
It’s a few years old, but this remains an entertaining read on the replication crisis in psychology:
https://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed/
They say this because they know that traditional masculine man vote Republican! They’re trying to increase the number of Emasculated, democrat-voting men.
I was thinking about this earlier today as I watched a number of mid-30’s couple at the store. The poor guy these days has to do everything that his wife wants to do, and god forbid she be required to attend any of his recreational activities. The book “The Myth of Male Power” covers this pretty well in that in the last 100 years, eh, make it 80 since women went into the factories in WWII, we have had a complete shift from nominally type 1 relationships (different roles) to type 2 relationships (equal roles). It would not shock me at all to learn that 90% of the high divorce rate is instigated by women who are upset that their partner hasn’t allowed himself to be sufficiently emasculated. Combine that with AI and there is really no reason for men, except, as Tim Allen put it “auto repair and yard maintenance.”
. . . there isn’t much difference in the basic behaviors of men and women.
These people really should get out more often.
or have more than 1.2 children
any parent of a boy AND a girl knows that they are different.
BETA MALES WIN…..finally….
The hubris of it all. The very same Maoist-Leninists deconstructed the notion of God or a intelligent creator, and replaced it with the Darwinian theory of evolution. Now they tell us that their own evolutionary theory is bunk. That manliness and maleness is not the result of thousands of years of genetic selection, but a construct of white patriarchy.
Does this mean it would be ok to add hormones to make palestinian men less aggressive, less likely to be martyrs, less likely to have any desire to make more martyrs with additives to their water? The world be better off if they were emasculated.
So it appears that they cherry-pick the attributes they disagree with: “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression” and say that that is harmful to minorities.
But endurance, stoicism, etc… are valuable and needed in certain arenas.
I’m 20 years past taking an Ethics class where we discussed Aristotle’s ethics, but didn’t Aristotle teach that a balance was needed in these things? That we needed a meanness to our virtues to avoid an excess or deficiency?
This seems to just castigate the excesses.
If you think toxic masculinity is bad for men, wait and see what 50 years of toxic femininity does for them.
APA has sure gotten queer lately.
So being a man is psychologically harmful.
But there’s no real difference between the behavior of men and women.
And we can trust these statements because they’re Science.
I guess that sums it up.
The rise of leftism in Psych is the main reason I left Psych-Nursing. I worked in Forensic Psych and Substance Abuse and it went from; “Yes, you are mentally ill and on drugs, but you are still responsible for what you did.”, to; “We can’t use the consequences in the behavior mod system, because of how society treated these poor people!” When it comes to the medical world the beating heart of leftism is in psych.
I told them when I left that if this kept going the success that we had enjoyed for the past 6 years would disappear and the program would shut down in 2 years or less. I missed that mark by 1 month and 3 days.
Your experience is similar to what Marvin Olasky observed in “The Tragedy of American Compassion.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37663.The_Tragedy_of_American_Compassion
In short, religion-based American welfare programs tended to demand that the recipient take some responsibility for their condition. If someone applied for their assistance, the program would invariably contact the family: “Your Uncle So-and-So is destitute and seeking assistance…why isn’t the family helping him?”
Once the gov’t got involved, the emphasis on personal (and family) responsibility diminished…indeed, it’s disappeared.
I’d venture to guess the people who authored this study have never been in a crisis situation:
“OMG! What are we going to do???”
“I know: let’s ask the one who’s crying uncontrollably!”
Good to read that someone else refuses to go along with institutional insanity. I left teaching after 20 years c. 1990 because I was not going to go in the direction the school system was headed with discipline. In 2016 I (as one who had dealt with same-sex attraction) spoke out publicly against my minister and guest retired Methodist bishop for violating Methodist Disciple by marrying two men in our sanctuary. I was banned from the church. Thanks for sharing your experience. Very encouraging.
We let these idiots normalize homos and trans people!
The corrupted American Psychotics Association can stick their opinion where obama might tool around in his spare time.
Who really wrote that article? A bigoted pig like Rashida Tlaib?
Next, we’ll see it reprinted in the American Bar Association’s political rag.
I will NOT see it in the ABA Journal. I don’t belong to the
ABA, never have. It is as bad as the Lawyers’ Guild! Their publications are not welcome in my office.
It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?
The ABA’s Liberal Bias:
https://www.forbes.com/2009/04/06/originalism-liberal-bias-opinions-columnists-aba.html#61be1e3343c9
American Psychological Association: ‘Traditional Masculinity’ Harmful to Men and Boys, Being transgender and gay is healthy.
WTF
I think I have toxic masculinity. Can I get a handicapped parking permit? For my Cummins diesel powered Dodge P/U?
Next, APA will call for the mandatory chemical castration of all pre-pubescent males, in an effort to curb excessive testosterone production and attendant undesirable “traditional masculinity” traits. Eunuchs, castratos and capons, unite.
This is what happens when transparent Leftist ideological zealotry and a political agenda dictate medical conclusions and guidance.
What a lot of people forget is that most people go into psychology because they are basically crazy to start with. They hope to figure out why they are so screwed up. This paper confirmed that.
The APA voted to consider homosexuality as normal and now considers what it describes as traditional masculinity to be a problem. I believe feminism is the larger problem followed by democratic psychology that defines healthy with silly votes and trivial survey studies.
President Trump has traditional masculine traits and is the greatest president the U.S. has ever had according to many. Feminists will disagree and believe that traditional feminine traits might improve great leaders. Are we confusing politics and psychology?
Good Stewards must be measured by their results and not by their imagined intentions and motives. Operant psychology remains the black sheep of the mainstream psychological theories because it refuses to accept most statistical surveys at face value. Men don’t even have a right to procreate in the “healthy” feminist view of contemporary civilization. Contraception and abortion are the new feminine norm and far more destructive than all the military weapons and environmental issues combined.
The most hilarious part of this study is the part where they mention these masculine men don’t eat as many vegetables! I don’t see that section posted here but read it elsewhere.
Apparently, there are no traditionally masculine men in the APA. Here’s the truth: boys growing up without a traditional masculine man at home have a high risk of suffering from anxiety disorders starting in their teens. Good luck to the psychological researchers.
Was that put out by the APA or NAMBLA?
I wonder if they have any common Board Members?
Psychology “jumps the shark”