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We need better research on the health & well-being of men in our lives. 

I want to emphasize our lives, again, because I think most people can agree, we want the men we care for to feel well, be healthy, and live quality lives.

Almost everyone I know can agree with that, even if people have complicated relationships with men, and most if not all of us do. That’s a human experience.

One which should not erase our responsibility to care for any person as we would expect to be cared for, regardless of race, gender, religion, or creed. When we are in need of care, we are in need of care.

Researchers, I point my finger at you because I’m very interested in why there isn’t a collective effort to protect our young boys. To find and innovate interventions that halt the crises of masculinity and the weight of this moment on men’s health and well-being.

I feel like in academic spaces, especially progressive ones, there’s a difficulty speaking openly about the need to take care of men, protect men, and advocate for men to live their best lives. 

Yes, we must confront patriarchy, gendered violence, disrespect, and unethical privilege, but we must also remember to care for the child. Every one of us has a child living within.

Men are the same.

The health of young men and boys is especially essential. Toxic masculinity most often features men who’ve inherited a boyhood, adolescence, and young adulthood that has harmed them.

Of course, I’ve lived most of my life as a male. I refuse the category now, but an irreducible fact, is that the majority of people who have known me, have known me as a man. 

That I’m attached to masculinity and manhood, and that I have inherited social expectations based upon this assignment— I’m okay with that. I’m happy, for instance, that I’m a brother and uncle, two roles that are essential in society.

I love my nephew, and I love his father—my younger brother—more than anything. I love my father, too, but I keep coming back to my nephew because I want him to grow up healthy.

I sometimes wonder, what if every child could stay playful, curious, and empathetic throughout their life?

I think back to my own childhood. I wanted badly to connect with people, yet I was terrified of being perceived. You know, in some ways this was because I was a feminine boy, but I also think it’s deeper than that, and I think it speaks to the experiences of boyhood more generally.

Many of our young boys are in environments that, irregardless of how their masculinity shows up, regardless of the sexualities that they organically form, there are people who will have unattainable expectations.  

The expectation, I know, is differently pronounced across cultures. For instance, the expectations of young white boys and young Black boys in the United States are related, but distinctive.

Irreducible from experiences of where and how you are raised. Think about the differences globally, but even within the U.S., from a southern upbringing to one in California is an entirely different thing. 

It’s related to class. It’s related to education, and generational aspects around class and education. Do your parents, do your grandparents have a high school diploma or college degree? Did they even have the right to have higher education? All of these factors are essential.

Unhealthy pressures of masculinity are always co-constitutive with expectations of heteronormativity. In that, to “be a man” is still greatly tied to the perceived sexual prowess towards women. 

This speaks to the crises of exclusion felt by gay and bisexual boys, especially those with non-conforming gender behaviors. Even boys who identify as asexual, those who don’t subscribe to identity or interpersonal relationships on the basis of sexual attraction or intercourse. 

Many boys are plagued by impossible expectations.

I’ve been doing research for the past couple of years now on Black bisexual men, and many of the narratives that I’ve collected and analyzed reflect the characteristics of living in a cage.

When you’re not given the right, socially, through limitations of the environment – if you’re not given the right to be your full self, your health is compromised. 

Mental strain equals stress, equals physical pathways, equals high blood pressure, equals sleep deprivation, equals back pain, equals posture issues, equals heart attack, equals panic attack, equals anxiety disorder and depression, equals thoughts of harm, harming yourself or others.

Again, we need better research on the health and well-being of the men in our lives.

I would like to see, in a way that is void of coddling ego, a radical shift towards listening. However impossible it might seem, we must begin to listen to boys and young men more indiscriminately. In a way that is care-filled, oriented towards shared harmony. 

Many of the women, femmes, and queer people that I know, when you actually get down to the fundamentals of life, want men around them.

Well, men, and especially boys, need us to care for them. And by us I mean every gender — even those free from gender. 

That’s the truth.

Flag art credit: @trintinic, shared on the Beyond MOGAI Pride Flags Tumblr—see the original post here.