HOW TOXIC MASCULINITY
Hurts Us All by Amina Moustapha
O
ne of the most complex and serious toxicities known to man is Thallium. It is colourless, odorless and tasteless; its slow-acting, painful and wideranging symptoms are often suggestive of a host of other illnesses and conditions. The person wouldn’t know they are being poisoned until it is too late, and sometimes they wouldn’t even understand what killed them. In the 1980s, when psychologist Shepherd Bliss sought to separate the negative traits of men from the positive traits, he used the term “toxic masculinity” as a means of making the distinction. That was the first time the world ever heard this term. Bliss defined toxic masculinity as what can come of teaching boys that they can’t express emotions openly; that they have to be “tough
38 IDENTITY • April 2021
