Make a (benevolent) man of oneself

Masculinity isn’t a disease, but there are ways of being a man that do a lot of harm to guys and those around them. In Antitoxic MasculinityMichel Dorais goes around the question and proposes an action plan to men of goodwill.

The discourse about men changes and voices rise here and there to invite them to transform themselves. Journalist Mickaël Bergeron did so in January in cock-a-doodle Doo, friendly essay whose subtitle is “guys, we need to talk to each other”. We are now back with Michel Dorais, eminent sociologist of intimacy and sexuality, with a similar proposal: to invite men to look at themselves in the mirror and to take note of what, in their way of being or acting, must change so they can be positive agents around them.

“We are not condemned to be toxic, specifies Michel Dorais from the outset. Behaviors are toxic, not people. It comes up a lot in the book and it’s something I really care about. »

Without being a sum of the works of the sociologist, Antitoxic Masculinity visibly benefits from his many years of social intervention and his decades of teaching and research. He paints a nuanced portrait of men and their harmful behaviors, details the impacts on themselves and on the beings they love, but without ever lapsing into guilt.

He names violence, sexism, lack of introspection and many other things for one purpose: to inspire change. “There is a big difference between making someone feel guilty and making them responsible. If I judge that someone is guilty from the start, it will not change their behavior, ”said the essayist, who retired from teaching a little less than a year ago.

toxic masculinity

Antitoxic Masculinity comes back to known elements: the difficulty men have in managing their emotions, in asking for help, in freeing themselves from old stereotypes associated with virility (strength, competitiveness, etc.), social pressure which causes boys and men to encourage their fellow men to fall into the ranks of masculinity. However, Michel Dorais insists on a detail: it is not masculinity the problem, it is virility.

“There are many ways to be masculine. Young men, especially, sometimes have more eccentric ways of being masculine, ”he notes, citing Harry Styles, Timothée Chalamet and Hubert Lenoir, who all incorporate a part of femininity or androgyny.

Without defending a binary vision of things, Michel Dorais exposes the extent to which the rejection of so-called “feminine” values ​​or behaviors because they are socially encouraged in the education of girls is lacking in men who adhere to a toxic vision of virility. He thinks of empathy, compassion, the expression of intimacy, listening and patience. “Guys end up learning it, it’s true, he admits, but often a little late. »

This anti-toxic man is first and foremost a guy who learns to control his negative emotions (his anger, which can turn into violence), to look at himself in the mirror rather than making women responsible for his misfortune (he notably thinks to “involuntary bachelors”, to the miserable and revengeful discourse). And more broadly, he is a man concerned with taking active action to promote respect and equality between people and genders.

“We need good people. We want a benevolent society, believes Michel Dorais. And men need models of benevolence. He believes that every human being can help another, but he also finds that some men tend to give credibility only to other men. “It shouldn’t, but there are guys who value it,” he said.

Rather than judging, again, he offers antitoxic men to act as mentors, to be in solidarity with this march towards equality, which women or sexual or gender minorities do not have to carry alone. “We saw what happened in sport recently,” he said, referring to the humiliating initiations and sexual assaults in minor hockey. We have seen that, too often, solidarity is used negatively. Solidarity is first to prevent your friend from committing an act that could send him to prison. »

Antitoxic Masculinity

Michael Dorais

Trecarre

231 pages