page_title: Masculinity
section_title: Gender-role stress
hierarchical_section_title: Masculinity / Criticism / Gender-role stress
caption_attribution_description: English: Comic book panel showing young boy (Dan Garret, aka Blue Beetle) being told not to cry after the death of his mother. From page 3 of Blue Beetle #1.
context_page_description: Masculinity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with boys and men. Although masculinity is socially constructed, research indicates that some behaviors considered masculine are biologically influenced. To what extent masculinity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex, as both males and females can exhibit masculine traits.
  Standards of manliness or masculinity vary across different cultures and historical periods. Traits traditionally viewed as masculine in Western society include strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness.
  Machismo is a form of masculinity that emphasizes power and is often associated with a disregard for consequences and responsibility. Virility is similar to masculinity, but especially emphasizes strength, energy, and sex drive.
context_section_description: In 1987 Eisler and Skidmore studied masculinity, creating the idea of "masculine stress" and finding three elements of masculinity which often result in emotional stress:
  The emphasis on prevailing in situations requiring body and fitness
  Being perceived as emotional
  The need for adequacy in sexual matters and financial status
  Because of social norms and pressures associated with masculinity, men with spinal-cord injuries must adapt their self-identity to the losses associated with such injuries; this may "lead to feelings of decreased physical and sexual prowess with lowered self-esteem and a loss of male identity. Feelings of guilt and overall loss of control are also experienced." Research also suggests that men feel social pressure to endorse traditional masculine male models in advertising. Brett Martin and Juergen Gnoth (2009) found that although feminine men privately preferred feminine models, they expressed a preference for traditional masculine models in public; according to the authors, this reflected social pressure on men to endorse traditional masculine norms.
  In their book Raising Cain: Protecting The Emotional Life of Boys, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson wrote that although all boys are born loving and empathic, exposure to gender socialization (the tough male ideal and hypermasculinity) limits their ability to function as emotionally-healthy adults. According to Kindlon and Thompson, boys lack the ability to understand and express emotions productively because of the stress imposed by masculine gender roles.
  In the article "Sexual Ethics, Masculinity and Mutual Vulnerability", Rob Cover works to unpack Judith Butler's study of masculinity.  Cover goes over issues such as sexual assault and how it can be partially explained by a hypermasculinity.
caption: According to social learning theory, teaching boys to suppress vulnerable emotions, as in the saying "big boys don't cry", is a significant part of gender socialization in Western society.[113][114][115]
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2017:10:30 21:54:25", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8088", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "460", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "320"}