a prison and a sacred, beautiful thing

I’ve been thinking about what I want to write about for this project for weeks – and interviewing all of the (very patient) men in my life about what masculinity looks like and means for them.

And one of the most interesting things that came out of all those conversations is how many guys recoil at the word “masculinity” itself – and say that it’s due to it almost always being attached to the words “toxic” or “crisis”.

It feels like we’ve talked the word “masculinity” to death in (mostly negative) think pieces – to the point that it’s lost almost all coherence or meaning.

But it also feels that as a society, we’ve stopped having real conversations about masculinity – the bad and the good – for fear of being canceled or shamed by others.

Most of the men I interviewed asked “how woke” I am before actually getting real about the topic.

Most of the men I interviewed asked that any quotes attributed to them be anonymous.

Most of the men I interviewed – despite being people I’m close to – were supremely worried that they would misstep or say something wrong.

And it seems to me that the island of “acceptable” masculinity gets smaller and smaller by the day – with all of the opposing messages and asks of men (be alpha! don’t be domineering! be tender! but why are you crying!) leading to an increasingly impossible landscape to navigate.

I realized that I’ve been struggling to write about masculinity because there are so many different definitions of what it is, should be, and shouldn’t be.

And so instead of summarizing an increasingly complex topic, I just compiled a bunch of thoughts and quotes on masculinity that have stuck in my brain over the last few weeks.

-Megan Weisenberger