There is a lot of discussion today about “toxic masculinity.”
While some men have a more nuanced understanding of that phrase, many of the men I have worked with hear it as saying masculinity itself is toxic.
For most of human history, societies were organized through power, hierarchy, and dominance. Men were expected to establish boundaries through intimidation, force, threat capacity, emotional control, and status enforcement.
That form of masculinity evolved inside societies organized around survival, scarcity, hierarchy, territorial conflict, and physical power, where fear and shame were often used to maintain order.
But societies changed.
Human beings evolved inside dominance-based systems, but technological power and modern society now require psychological evolution beyond those systems.
Modern democracies increasingly depend on cooperation rather than domination. Legal systems, institutions, and shared rules were created so conflicts would not have to be settled through violence, intimidation, or constant struggles over power.
At the same time, women gained more social and political power. Civil-rights and minority-rights movements pushed for greater equality and inclusion. Psychology, sociology, and child development research increasingly challenged authoritarian models of parenting, family life, and social organization.
Many people began pushing for something different.
Less authoritarianism.
Less domination.
Less fear-based control.
More cooperation, emotional regulation, curiosity, and mutual respect.
In my own work, I have spent decades helping fathers move away from power struggles and toward something more emotionally grounded and effective.
On one occasion, I worked with a 17-year-old boy who was deeply oppositional and increasingly antisocial at home. He fought everything. Every limit became a battle. Every interaction turned into a conflict about power, control, or disrespect.
Even though I did my best to engage him directly, he remained defensive and hostile, so I shifted my focus toward his father.
His father was a hardworking man who carried enormous stress. He worked long hours, felt trapped by responsibility, and beneath his anger was a painful feeling that he was valued mainly as a provider.
During one session, he told me that if he died, he did not think his family would really care. Saying those words out loud seemed to allow him to finally feel the weight of them, and he cried openly for the first time in his adult life.
Much of his relationship with his son had become organized around tension, authority, and escalating struggles over respect. Underneath that was grief, exhaustion, loneliness, and years of emotional pain he had never learned to process differently.
Over time, as we worked through some of that pain, the father became calmer, less reactive, and less drawn into dominance battles with his son.
Months later, the mother told me that her son had commented, “Whatever Danny is doing with Dad is really working.”
And as the father changed, the son began calming down too.
That experience captured something important.
Many men were raised inside models of masculinity that taught them that authority must constantly be asserted, defended, and protected from challenge.
“Civic masculinity” requires emotional capacities that older masculine systems often
suppressed.
Many men were never taught how to grieve change, disappointment, vulnerability, dependency, or loss without converting those feelings into anger, dominance, withdrawal, or control.
But a healthy family — and a healthy democratic society — cannot function as a permanent dominance hierarchy.
It requires something else.
I propose that we spend less time arguing about “toxic masculinity” and more time developing a model of what I call “civic masculinity.”
While the term “toxic masculinity” identifies a real problem, many men experience the phrase as shaming, accusatory, or diminishing in a way that often makes them defensive rather than reflective. “Civic masculinity” offers a more constructive direction.
Not weak masculinity.
Not passive masculinity.
“Civic masculinity.”
A form of masculinity where strength is expressed through self-restraint rather than intimidation. Where disagreement is not automatically experienced as disrespect. Where emotional regulation matters more than dominance displays. Where men are capable of maintaining structure, limits, and accountability without relying on fear, intimidation, or shame.
For thousands of years, masculine identity was often tied to the ability to dominate.
But a democratic society depends on the ability to cooperate.
That is not the elimination of masculinity.
It is its evolution.
