A New Guide for Masculinity
Some men say they can’t let go of the old norms until they have some new ones, and I’m happy to provide them
I’ve had many conversations with men in the past 7 years that involve discussions of masculinity in this culture. A lot of it stems from me laying out what experts say is harming men about traditional gender norms. Some guys agree that these norms can be restrictive and even damaging, but still don’t see men giving them up unless and until they have a new set of norms that are distinctly masculine to follow.
Being a good human being isn’t enough, I’m told. Men need rules about how to be masculine, and if we don’t provide ones that are better for men, they’re likely to just stick with the old harmful stuff, the Man Box.
These old norms include suppressing any difficult emotions other than anger, to the point where many men don’t even know what they are feeling, much less how to express it. It includes domination of others as a key way to rise in status (in male hierarchies), something that goes double for controlling and dominating women.
If you don’t wear the pants in your family; if you’re male friends think you are pussy whipped; or if you don’t feel dominant in your relationship, then maybe you aren’t a real man. Show her, and the world, that you won’t stand for any disrespect, and that you are willing get violent in order to protect your reputation and right to be in control. At least this is what the old norms say.
What other men think of you is THE most important thing. That’s how guys have been messaged to gauge their masculinity. The fact that many of these masculine metrics were devised by other people hundreds, or even thousands of years ago, doesn’t matter. The fact that many of them are psychologically and physically detrimental to men, doesn’t matter. You show how tough and independent you are by adhering to their rules for what it means to be a man (and engage in cognitive dissonance around the dichotomy of that).
If we expect guys to shift into a new kind of masculinity — one that doesn’t drive depression and substance abuse in men, doesn’t drive violence in the culture, and actually makes men feel happy and satisfied, apparently, we have to tell them what that looks like.
OK, boys, I’ll bite . . .
I was recently watching a clip of James Talarico, a candidate from Texas for the US Senate. His opponent has been attacking his masculinity, asserting that he’s a vegan, and saying that he looks transgender (or alternatively that he looks like a child). These sorts of stupid elementary school playground taunts make me shake my head, but I did love how Talarico responded.
At a recent rally he talked about being raised by a single mom who worked overtime at a hotel to support them, after leaving an abusive husband. Then a man named Mark Talarico came into their lives, and changed it for the better. He married James’ mom, formally adopted James, and then proceeded to model being a good human being (oops, I mean a good man).
One of the ways that Mark Talarico did that was he would mow the lawn every Saturday, and then without fanfare, would go and mow the lawn of the elderly widow who lived next door. As James Talarico noted, a real man shows up for his family, he shows up for his community. He’s not out there looking for ways to aggrandize himself at other people’s expense (like his opponent, Ken Paxton, who was impeached for corruption by his own party).
In other words, a real man isn’t looking to dominate and take what he can get from others; he’s looking for how he can contribute to others. What he eats or looks like don’t really matter for masculinity. What matters is how he behaves in the world and how he treats others who can do nothing for him. James Talarico didn’t say that last part, but I will.
This isn’t actually a new concept. Many guys grew up with the men around them modeling this for them. Where it gets tricky, however, is that many men grew up with the women around them modeling this same thing. It’s not an exclusively masculine trait, but if you absolutely need a new set of rules of masculinity, that’s a good place to start.
Don’t build your life around who you can dominate and control. Build your life around who you can contribute to and assist — both inside your family and out in the wider world. Performing dominance for other men’s approval has never made anyone truly happy anyhow, but being good to others produces a well documented “helper’s high.”
Allan Luks, author of The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others, has researched a phenomenon he calls “Helper’s High” for many years. Luks states that helpers experience a high similar to that of a runner following a workout. After helping someone, the helper’s body releases endorphins, brain chemicals that reduce pain and increase euphoria. This creates a rush of elation followed by a period of calm. He found evidence that a helper can even re-experience this high just by remembering their altruistic acts — even long after they take place.
Luks’ studies also suggest that volunteering and charitable giving help ease stress, improving physical and emotional health by:
strengthening immune system activity
decreasing intensity and awareness of physical pain
activating positive emotions that support well-being
reducing negative attitudes that deplete well-being
enhancing functioning of various body systems
One of the most damaging aspects of traditional masculine gender norms is that they drive isolation and loneliness. If you’re supposed to always be in control, and everyone around you is envisioned as competition, it’s hard to be really close to anyone else. Research indicates that the more a guy subscribes to traditional masculine norms, the more likely he is to be violent, but also depressed and suicidal.
A key variable in the pain of loneliness is a lack of — brace yourself — intimacy.
As men, many of us struggle to cultivate intimacy in any arena of our lives (i.e., family, wives, friends) because it requires vulnerability, which, if we’re honest, is quite antithetical to what the world has taught us about masculinity. Or at least, “traditional” masculinity.
Valuing relationships, emotional expressiveness, support seeking, and the pursuit of intimacy are often seen as “feminine” traits.
On the other hand, valuing independence, dominance, career success, physical strength, and emotional stoicism is traditionally seen as “masculine.”
Vulnerability is often seen as a problem in our culture, and can be equated with weakness, particularly for men. But what researcher Brené Brown discovered when she studied it is that vulnerability is simply the ability to engage in something where there is risk, uncertainty, or you can’t control the outcome. It often takes tremendous courage, and is as Brown characterizes it, the birthplace of connection and love.
When Brown asked a group of special forces soldiers if they had ever witnessed an act of bravery or heroism that wasn’t filled with vulnerability, they could not come up with a single example.
Ergo, real men have the courage to be vulnerable. As Brown notes, this doesn’t mean swimming around in all your insecurities and asking somebody else to make you feel better about them. That’s just being needy. Actual vulnerability means being authentic, sharing weaknesses, and allowing oneself to be seen without controlling the outcome. It’s acknowledging what’s there for you, and stepping up to handle it even if you don’t know yet how to do so.
It’s actually a lot more badass to diffuse a tense situation than it is to try to resolve it with your fists. Coercion and threats don’t take a lot of skill or intelligence, but learning how to show up strong for yourself and others using your analysis of the situation and your skills around handling it — that takes intention and effort. Diplomacy, tact, and persuasion are all skills that take time and effort to learn and hone.
Having to pretend that you’re born knowing all of this, and that you never need to learn anything new, is another destructive aspect of traditional masculine norms. Being willing to learn and practice new skills means being willing to admit to others that you aren’t already perfect. Guess what? The people around you already know that. What’s a lot more impressive than pretending you are infallible and omniscient is being secure enough to try new things and acquire new tools.
Men like tools, right? 😉
Some guys talk a lot about men as protectors of those who are more vulnerable, particularly women and children, but there seems to be a rather glaring gap between the idea of that and the actual execution of it. Nearly every woman I know has a story of being touched inappropriately, or treated with disrespect by a man, and the guy she was with doing absolutely nothing about it. Most of the time, if someone comes to a woman’s rescue, it’s likely to be another woman.
Sometimes men actually protect or save women, but traditional masculine gender norms entail using coercion and domination to control others, women, in particular. Stepping up to interrupt that challenges the narrative, and potentially one’s place in male hierarchies. It may even be seen as being a traitor to other men.
There are all sorts of ways to stand up for someone else without putting yourself in harms way (which is one of the most common reasons I hear from men about why they don’t intervene). Honestly, I think that’s largely an excuse. Most bullies are cowards, and if you leave them a way out, usually they will take it.
I read something the other day about a guy who has bothering a woman on the subway. Another man simply went and stood between them. He didn’t say anything, didn’t confront the other man. He simply interrupted the dynamic by creating both a distraction and a barrier.
Sure, the possibility exists that the other man could have become violent, and that the rescuing man could have been injured, but what kind of protector are you if you only do it when safe outcomes are guaranteed?
I think that in reality, fewer men are worried about being hurt than they are worried about having their manhood questioned for doing so. The script around going along with the boys starts early and leads to a lot of problems, both for the boys themselves and for the other people being targeted.
In the new model of masculinity that I’m suggesting, men who do not create their sense of masculinity via domination support those who are being intimidated or harassed and interrupt it. They embrace that it’s manly to show up for others in need, and offer them assistance if they require it. That’s how you present yourself as a tough; that’s how you show others you are a leader.
Things like sexual assault, rape, and violence against women are not “female issues”. They are problems created almost exclusively by men, and here’s one place where a man can truly engage in pro-social activities that are really just for men.
Learning about and taking on the ways that traditional masculine culture contributes to those things is the first step. The next is to become an active part of challenging those norms, and cultural beliefs, which may include at times, telling a male friend that what he’s saying or doing isn’t cool, rather than just laughing along or staying silent. Silence is not neutral. It’s what enables this kind of thing to go on so pervasively.
“Out of ten men, one makes a sexual joke at a woman, two laugh, three fake a chuckle just to blend in, and four stay completely silent, saying nothing and doing nothing in the moment. None of them speak up, none of them interrupt it, none of them make it uncomfortable for the man who crossed the line.
Later on, nine of those same men still go home believing they are the “good guys,” convinced that because they didn’t say the joke, they carry no responsibility. But from the woman’s perspective, the laughter, the forced smiles, the silence, the eyes that look away instead of stepping in, all merge into the same experience.
They all create the same environment where disrespect feels safe, normal, and protected.
No, not every man harasses women, and that distinction matters, but most men have witnessed it happen right in front of them. Most men have been in the room when a line was crossed and chose comfort, social safety, or avoidance over accountability.
Silence is not neutral, it is a quiet form of permission that allows the behavior to continue without consequences. It protects the man who made the joke, while placing the emotional burden on the woman to either endure it or be labeled difficult.
So when women say “most men are the same,” this is what they are pointing to, not individual acts, but collective behavior.”
One of the key things that guys can do in order to embrace masculinity in a new way is to learn about the traditional Man Box and the ways that it has trapped and limited them. When you are no longer mindlessly going along with old cultural scrips for men, but are instead, being intentional, and pro-active in creating new ones, that’s where a new kind of masculinity can emerge. It’s one where actual courage, strength, and individuality can showcase themselves.
Figuring out who you want to be and pursuing that is a lot more manly than simply adhering to rules that other people made up for you and told you to follow.
Showing up for and helping others around you is more manly than trying to gain status by domination and control.
Understanding and being able to regulate and integrate your emotions is more manly than being run from behind the scenes by ones you’ve disavowed and suppressed.
It’s natural for a very social species like human beings to care about fitting in with those around them, but if the people you encounter are disrespecting or harming others, it’s a lot more manly to stand apart from them, rather than to silently pretend to go along in order to be accepted.
Tough people do what’s right over what is simply easy.
You look more like a leader when you stand apart from the crowd than when you go along with it because that’s more comfortable.
Also, when you’re obsessed with being a leader, whether you have the aptitudes and abilities or not, that’s not a strong look. Insistence on unearned primacy is what fundamentally insecure and weak people do.
Strong people don’t make themselves feel better by making others feel worse.
There you have it — those are my basic guidelines for men who ask for “new norms” and complain they can’t leave the old ones behind until they have a new masculine template.
Nobody says this stuff is simple or easy, but isn’t that sort of intestinal fortitude supposed to be manly as well?
I saw a clip the other day where this guy was wondering aloud whether it was “gay” — meaning not sufficiently masculine — to try on clothes in the store to be sure that they fit. Friend, if you’re that run by implied rules of random stranger’s for you, to the point that you ignore practicalities, that’s not exactly screaming masculinity under your own definition. I mean, c’mon, let’s get real here.
There’s a lot of room to do better, and being your own man is a great place to start.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2026
Thank you for this article. It is needed.
One of the things I learned from Deborah Tannen's books is that, when talking intimately, women like to make eye contact but men do not. That men can talk more revealingly when sitting parallel rather than facing each other. My parents discovered this when, after 38 years of fighting all the time, they bought an RV and went traveling. They found that they could talk intimately when sitting facing ahead, not making eye contact. It saved their marriage -- they were happily married from then until my father's death.
Also, men tend to be hierarchical while women tend to be egalitarian. This is the basis of many misunderstandings. Men spend a lot of energy playing dominance games. Women don't understand the rules, and men don't understand women's responses.
However, what I am seeing here is that, in the hierarchical world, there are leaders and followers. Men who think they are appearing to be leaders by following all the rules and acting tough, are really being followers and not thinking for themselves, but letting the gang think for them.
Among other primates like chimps and gorillas, it is not the male who fights the most or is most aggressive who is the "alpha male" -- it is the one who is most diplomatic, who manages to avoid fighting the most/best. Because every fight is a chance to lose, so if you never fight, you never lose. If you avoid fighting by being diplomatic, that marks you as a leader, not a loser.
I, personally, think that those dominance games make men unfit to lead us. Men who play them should not be allowed to be in charge of anything, with the possible exception of men's sports. Here's a quote I just found today: “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” — Margaret Thatcher. One more quote: " a gentleman is useful at a dance and indispensable at a shipwreck."
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