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6 Ways ‘Tough Guys’ Are Actually Weak
Thomas Fiffer redefines strength by finding the weakness in ‘tough guy’ masculinity.
Did you know there’s one thing every man (and woman) seeks from the world — more than love, sex, or money, more than power, pleasure, or fulfillment?
More even than a sense of identity or a life that holds meaning?
This thing we seek, that we’re wired to seek, is validation — the feeling that we’re worthy of acceptance, that our thoughts and opinions align with others, the security of knowing there’s a place where we fit in.
Validation is a powerful human desire that leads us to form beneficial relationships. But it also allows damaging and discriminatory belief systems such as racism, sexism, and homophobia take hold when the cultural forces that validate those systems are stronger than the forces that disavow and invalidate them. Put more simply, if a man’s sexist colleagues or a boy’s homophobic peer group accept and validate him when he follows their lead, that man or boy must consider the risk of exclusion and invalidation when challenging the group’s bigoted beliefs.
Mark Greene and others have referred to this constraint as the Man Box. The box limits men’s range of behavior by defining…
