Martyr Culture is not particularly masculine, but it is endemic in American masculinity. It's the mindset that says you have to sacrifice everything to have any worth. In that way, it's sort of at the crossroads of capitalism and toxic masculinity.
Read MoreMuch has been written about toxic masculinity, much of it by much better scholars than me. What I would like to do in this piece, and subsequent pieces under similar headings, is analyze non-toxic manifestations of masculinity, discuss their functioning, and – as much as possible, without oversimplifying – present guidelines so that we can follow them in the future. There are, of course, pitfalls here and I want to acknowledge them at the beginning: just about everything we do has unintended consequences, and the suggestions that I make here will no doubt be liable to have them, too. Moreover, any behavior can be twisted into a toxic manifestation: you have to have the self-awareness to try to recognize that when it happens, and to accept the criticism when it comes up.
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