How Arnold taught me that being strong can also mean being connected
I think it's important for anyone who loves their queer family to cultivate a version of masculinity that does not rely on the violent fantasies of sociopaths on social media.
For better or worse, I've always known I am a man, and that my body is also male. That has been an obvious privilege in ways that should be familiar to most people. In other ways, particularly as a child, it has also been painful, carrying expectations about strength, and violence that I found impossible to meet.
But one of the many reasons I love my queer friends and family is that knowing them has offered me a chance to ask why masculinity and manhood matter to me. As I've seen them question their genders, sexuality and their relationships to their bodies, I've understood I have the freedom to choose other approaches to my body or gender. So far, I've stuck with where I began.
I've never landed on a firm answer about why masculinity is important to me, but I've been feeling some urgency to try. Huge numbers of young men are being preyed upon by dangerous people offering violent ideas of what it means to be a man, and that predatory behavior is now big business. Often, those predators make their appeals based on the idea that acceptance and love for women and LGBTQ+ people is an attack on men.
I think it's important for anyone who loves their queer family to cultivate a version of masculinity that does not rely on the violent fantasies of sociopaths on social media. I want men to be able to see themselves in the accepting world we all deserve.
Being a man is a meaningful part of the identity of millions of people, consciously and unconsciously. A great number of people seek out male and masculine partners, and find maleness inherently attractive. Many of the men in those relationships act in ways that are kind, and decent, and do not find those behaviors to be in conflict with their masculinity.
In short, manhood exists, and I don't think it can or should be wished away, even if we can agree that it has been the source of immense pain. I feel like it's important to say that because a lot of anti-sexist discussions of masculinity do not accept the validity of male-ness: the very first book I read that was about manhood had the thesis was that men should seek to not be.
All of this discussion is offered with the caveat that masculinity is an identity that should be easier to adopt or discard for people who feel moved to do so. One of the foundations of a free society is that you should not be trapped in your gender, and that you may express it how you want. My hope is that people who are (or think they might be) men should have some vision to grow towards that is kind, just, and caring.
After Andrew Tate was immolated online by Greta Thunberg, Rebecca Solnit wrote this about why his version of toxic masculinity opposes climate action:
"it’s a result of versions of masculinity in which selfishness and indifference – individualism taken to its extremes – are defining characteristics, and therefore caring and acting for the collective good is their antithesis."
One of Tate's focuses is one vision of male strength. I think 'strength' is one of the basic building blocks of maleness - to people who are men, to the people in relationships with them, both - but it's one of the most dangerous as well. It's a defining feature of male heroes, and of many of the most visible male public figures, but also the worst examples of male violence.
In bell hooks' book on masculinity, The Will to Change, she talks about patriarchal masculinity as "psychic self-mutilation" that cuts off men - particularly boys - from emotional connection. Andrew Tate's strategies are a perfect distillation of that idea. He tells his followers to manipulate their closest friends and family into doing free work for profit, and to make all of your romantic partners into your employees in sex scams (often, by traumatizing them first).
This is cultivated sociopathy. He emphatically demands men to not only avoid vulnerability with the people closest to them, but to actively manipulate them into personal profit-making enterprises. It's an extreme version of telling boys not to cry: cutting yourself off from every point of potential vulnerability, by reducing every relationship to a one-way self-service.
In Tate's world, sociopathy is strength. The strong man is one who stands completely, selfishly alone. You can see this anti-social strength in other mens' ostentatious, polluting, confrontational displays of wealth, or abusive control over partners, children, or other family members. The purpose of being strong is to serve yourself, which gives you the ability to harm others.
Not coincidentally, any man who follows this advice also cuts out the people in his life that could question his commitment to Andrew Tate. This is quite convenient for him.
Tate's primary source of income is essentially a cult-like multi-level marketing scheme. The first step of bringing someone into a cult is to cut them off from friends and family - something his philosophy does marvelously.
But I think there is a way to talk about strength that values connection, and undoes some of the psychic damage done by toxic masculinity, while still resonating with the value that I think many men, and their partners, see in male strength. To me, the key is the idea of responsibility.
Responsibility is a way to value strength that does not imply domination, or ownership, and is oriented towards the service of others. There's a wonderful monologue in the noted documentary Terminator 2: Judgement Day, where Sarah Connor watches her son with the T-1000 that I think captures this dynamic:
“The Terminator would never stop, it would never leave him. And it would never hurt him, never shout at him or get drunk and hit him or say it was too busy to spend time with him ... Of all the would-be fathers who came and went over the years, this thing, this machine was the only one who measured up."
To be clear, men should not model their emotional lives off of a cybernetic robot sent from the future. That said, Sarah Connor recognizes something important about what it means to be strong, and responsible: The Terminator is the first man in her life to protect her son without asking for power over them. He helps, without obligating them to accept his ability to harm or abandon them. In other words: he was the first man to prioritize his relationship with her son, rather than just himself.
I think responsibility provides a way to put many of the things that are desirable about manhood to use - providing, resilience - without the implication that they should confer toxic ownership, dominion, or a debt in exchange. But importantly, I think you can only act responsibly towards someone if you have their actual wellbeing at heart. (This is also connected to hooks' definition of love, taken from M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled: the will to extend yourself for one's own, or another's personal growth.)
Importantly, I think it is also a way to think about inherited or unearned power, that isn't just abject abandonment of the privileges they confer. If you are born into the benefits of being a man, those benefits should not be used just for your own advancement. They come with obligations placed on you to help others.
I want to acknowledge that responsibility can be perilous for men as well. I was recently reading a Reddit thread asking what the worst things about being a man might be, and one of the most upvoted responses was: “Always living for someone else.”
You can take on too much service towards others, and end up melting in a pool of liquid steel. The burden of being a provider can be a heavy one, and men should always cultivate joy in their lives.
Fortunately, I think curiosity, exploration, and playfulness are increasingly recognized as part of masculinity too (take, for example the valuable subreddit r/JustGuysBeingDudes). And these are much easier traits to detoxify where they become un-fun.
In short, men deserve to know that being strong can mean being connected, caring, and committed. Strength is not what helps you stand alone, it is what gives you the power to stand alongside others. Anything else might just well be a cult.