Suzanne Harrington: Men don't cry — except my date did

We all know toxic masculinity is (a) terrible, from its violence against women to its disproportionate male suicide stats, (b) a social construct, and (c) can be socially deconstructed by encouraging both girls AND boys to express vulnerability when they feel like it, instead of instilling gendered emotional response from babyhood.

We all know within that most pernicious myth of toxic masculinity — the strong silent type — is a human socialised not to show his feelings, to express no emotion except anger. That the only designated place where men can cry openly is the football stadium, and then only when their team loses at the end of the season — not before. Toxic masculinity is traditional masculinity, the kind drummed into boys in the olden days so that they grew up hemmed in by their own unexpressed feelings. We know how harmful this is, to the extent that the American Psychological Association made a statement last year warning of the dangers of socialising boys to suppress their feelings.

It’s like Whack-A-Mole — traditionally, society has trained boys to push down feelings of sadness, vulnerability, loneliness, and insecurity, so that these feelings pop up in other guises — rage, violence, depression, disconnectedness. Men are four times more likely to terminally disconnect from their feelings, as my kids’ dad did a few years back, trained from birth to keep his upper lip stiff. It killed him. And toxic masculinity kills women — two a week from partner violence in the UK. Mass shootings in the US. Laura Bates’ new book, Men Who Hate Women, is essential reading for anyone who identifies as human, and wants to bridge the manmade gap between the genders; for anyone who wants to understand the extent of toxic masculinity and its resultant misogyny, particularly online, where it flourishes. It’s a vital, sobering, illuminating read.

And we are all part of the construct — it’s not just the online nutters, mad Trumpies, sexist losers. I realise this to my horror, during my first trip to the cinema since lockdown. My date and I go to see the vivid, beautiful Australian movie Babyteeth. The cinema is almost empty. As the film ends, I hear sniffling in the dark. The sniffling is coming from the seat next to me. It’s my date, crying at the sad ending. I freeze. I have no idea how to react. Do I pat him on the back? Offering him a cough sweet? Punch him on the arm and hiss ‘man up’?

A man, expressing emotion in reaction to a film, exposes in me a whole lifetime of socialisation that props up toxic traditional masculinity. Men don’t cry. Except they do, and this one has evolved beyond the need to hide the fact. I punch myself in the arm instead, simultaneously realising that (a) I need to have a serious word with myself around my own ingrained gender conditioning and (b) any bloke who can cry at a film is probably something of a treasure.