The Pressures of Masculinity (and Why You Should Care)

Recently, I attended a showing of Now That We’re Men, a new play written by Katie Cappiello about the impact of masculinity standards and rape culture on the lives of boys and men.

Cappiello, who develops theater arts programming for young people around the world, has previously been honored by the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and was recently named one of New York’s New Abolitionists for her theater-based work to eradicate human trafficking. In other words, she’s a badass feminist.

Cappiello’s new piece, Now That We’re Men, is almost a second act to her 2013 play SLUT, which follows the journey of a 16-year-old girl who is assaulted by three friends during a night out in NYC, focusing on the damaging impact of rape culture on young people. Now That We’re Men, on the other hand, follows five charismatic high school boys as they negotiate their high school prom.

The play tackles a range of heavy-hitting issues from male virginity to rape culture and consent, but its core message is about masculinity, or more precisely, the impact of toxic masculinity standards on young men. To varying degrees each character is oppressed by the pressure to “man up”, which leads them down dark and terrible paths. It’s all the worse to know that the play was inspired by real experience of teens across the country.

Often when feminists extend the conversation of oppression to men, they are shut down. When Emma Watson launched her HeforShe campaign at the United Nations, she was criticized by traditional feminists for making men the center of the conversation. By pandering to men, asking them to join fight for women’s rights and acknowledging their oppression, Watson was dishonoring the feminist movement, at least, according to her critics.

But here’s the thing; intersectionality should be at the core of feminism. As a white woman, I have to be mindful of the experience of women of color. As a bisexual women, I have to be mindful of the experience of straight and gay women. As a cis-woman, I have to be mindful of the trans experience. By listening to the experiences of women who are not like us, we can understand our own privilege. We become better feminists because we fight for all women.

And it’s the same for men. If Cappiello’s play has taught me anything, it’s that boys and men experience the pressure of their gender in a completely different way to women. In a chat-back session after the play, an audience member asked each of the male actors about their method. Throughout the play, each character walks into the audience and delivers a powerful confession about their fetishes, fears and frustrations. Tragically, all of the actors said they had a hard time picturing anyone in their lives to whom they could talk so openly. From a young age, boys are taught to suppress their emotions and acknowledging this oppression does not negate the oppression of women.

Feminism must extend the blanket of intersectionality to men for two main reasons. Firstly, the way that men are pressured by masculinity can tell us a lot about the damaging effects of gender roles. If we can all agree that gender roles are harmful to everyone, there’s a greater chance of them being rejected or deconstructed.

Secondly, men hold all the power. As the oppressed group, women can create as much noise as they like, but until men want to dissemble the patriarchy too, we can only get so far. In the same way, white people must speak up for the rights of people of color and cis-people must stand up for the rights of trans people.

It might seem reductive—or even degrading—to say that women need the support of men to gain basic human rights. But equality, by definition, is intersectional. If men continue to back away from feminism because it’s not their business, we’re doing the world a disservice.  We’re betraying the essence of feminism. We are fighting alone instead of together.