See No Evil

What does good masculinity look like?’”

Traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression — is deemed harmful and men are constantly told to be “better” and less “toxic,” but what does that “better” actually look like?

I don’t feel like men in general have the same types of role models that women do, even in their own personal lives and that fosters this idea that they have no sense of what it means to be them or what it means to be a good man.

Some kind of normative standard of masculinity is meaningful and useful, if only to give them a starting point from which to expand. Nevertheless, fostering positive representations of manhood requires relationships and mentorship on an individual level that breaks the messages ingrained by society.

The change we need will have to come from the bottom up — from everyday men who notice the crisis of identity hitting their younger counterparts and can put themselves forward to be a guiding light for others.