I must go and seek my danger there

Or it will seek me in another place,

And find me worse provided.

— Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV, 11, 3

To be male is risky. To be a boy or a man is like being a ticking time bomb just biding its time until it explodes. To be born male and bestowed with masculinity is both a blessing and a curse, for the odds of survival are less than a female’s, even though they say it’s a man’s world.

That’s right, male babies have a higher mortality rate than females, because males are inherently weaker than their female counterparts. Combine this with the fact that a boy growing up takes more risks than a girl does, the odds of him surviving are considerably less than the little female’s.

We all know of the risks that little boys take, as they always seem to be pushing the envelope, doing things that make the hearts of parents skip a beat. Well, at least they used to, when boys were boys and men were men. Today we are raising a generation of wimps who are so mollycoddled and sissified that it makes me cringe. I lament the loss of masculinity in this new generation of mama’s boys.

Even so, the average male suffers from toxic masculinity and is hell bent on destroying himself. Toxic masculinity, we’ll see what that’s all about, right after these responses to ‘Sex economy’.

Hi Tony,

You are right on the money about your piece on sex. It was Mutty Perkins who once said that sex was the best thing that God ever made.

Charles

Hey Tony,

The underground economy includes legal activities such as unreported income from self-employment or barter. Many ladies of the night are self-employed, but their activities are illegal and their income goes unreported. Then there is barter. It has been argued that sex is a female commodity that women exchange for men’s resources, food, rent, utilities etc for sexual favours. She who has the commodities calls the tune.

Conrad

Toxic masculinity is a term that I recently came across while watching local TV where my bredrin and former classmate at Kingston College (KC), Leachim Semaj, was discussing the plight of males in our society.

Naturally, I had to do my research on the subject, which proved to be most informative, although not anything really new. They gave it a fancy name, that’s all. It outlined that men had a higher risk of injuring themselves or dying far more than women. Well, we always knew that, but the psychological term for it does give it some flair, authenticity and sophistication.

“How de boy pickney so bad and troublesome and can’t siddung still?”

“Him suffer from toxic masculinity, my dear.”

The nature of the male is to be macho, strong, aggressive, outgoing and daring. Put a two-year-old boy in a room and watch how he gets into trouble and mash up everything that he lays his little hands on. There’s even a term for it — “The terrible twos.” People often equate little boys with puppies, as their energy is boundless and their curiosity unquenchable.

Males are hardwired to be outgoing and strong, and in fact, in many societies there is a rite of passage for young males when they reach a certain age. For the young Jewish boy, he has a Bar Mitzvah at age 13. At that point after the ritual is completed, he becomes a man, now responsible for his actions. In other societies back in the day, young men were sent out into the jungle to fend for themselves and survive for a period of time on only what they could get from nature.

They entered the jungle as boys, and emerged as men. Some were even required to hunt and kill dangerous animals such as lions, armed only with a spear, to enter into manhood. Those were rites of passage that prove masculinity and transform young boys into men. Nowadays a boy is required to breed… er, impregnate as many females as he can before he can be deemed a man.

“Yu breed anybody yet?”

“No”

“Yu is still bwoy.”

When I was a boy, I thought as a boy, now I am a man, I think and act as a man.

Many of these activities are deemed toxic, as they actually bring great risk to the male and can cause mutilation or death. Because of this daring behavioural pattern and toxicity, more men die on the job than do women. More men die in car accidents than women; more men die from bike crashes than women; more men die in fights than women. The toxic list is endless.

Suicide is higher among men than women, even though females make about the same number of attempts as men do. The difference is, the men are more efficient and succeed more, as they utilise more lethal means such as guns, hanging, jumping off buildings. No wishy-washy sleeping pills for the macho man.

It’s just the nature of the beast, as they say. I remember as a very young boy attending St Joseph’s Infant School, which is adjacent to St Aloysius Primary where I eventually went. I chose to jump off the first floor balcony down to the concrete schoolyard, all because my best friend told me that he did it, so naturally I had to match his bravado.

This toxic masculinity has been infused in my veins from birth and my parents could not contain me. While at KC I did everything that was physical, from swimming, weightlifting, track to football and more. As an older teenager I delved into the world of martial arts, fighting strangers all over the world and even did stunts for international movies, courtesy of film producer Natalie Thompson.

A notable one was Passion and Paradise where Robert Finzie Smith and I firebombed and destroyed a village and jumped off tall buildings. Toxic masculinity played out in the movies, but still risky. It was fascinating to experience the adrenaline rush while carrying out those acts of violence, even though it was make believe.

I don’t think that I am that unique, but just driving the point home how the male is inherently wired to machismo and how high-risk the life of a male in society is. It really is toxic. So many of my activities had a degree of danger involved. When it begins to get even more toxic is when the male is instructed not to show any form of emotion or react to pain. That is deemed to be a sign of weakness.

We all know that weakness is anathema to the masculine psyche.

“So yu buck yu toe, stop de dam bawling and be a man.”

“Cry cry, what yu crying for? Just hush yu mout and bear de pain.”

“Yu woman leave you for a younger man, stop de bawling.”

Bottle up all that emotion and it festers, simmers, seeps into the fibre of the male with dire consequences and becomes toxic.

Either the male develops high blood pressure, stress disorder, bursts a blood vessel or damages his heart as the toxicity takes its toll. Toxic masculinity can kill you, and machismo ranks among the leading cause of death in males. The term daredevil is apt.

The word on the street is that a real man doesn’t back down from a fight; a real man breed nuff woman; a real man knows how to control women by being physical with them; a real man drive like him own de road. Toxic, toxic, toxic behaviour that is negative.

But maybe some aspects of toxic masculinity aren’t all bad, as males have always been adventurous, venturing out to explore new territories and seeking new frontiers. When they asked Sir Edmund Hillary why he climbed the dangerous Mount Everest, his response was, “Because it’s there.”

Little did he know that he was just suffering from toxic masculinity, which drove him to do daring things. Little do people know that he was guided by the Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. And even fewer people are aware that those words were first uttered by explorer George Leigh Mallory three decades earlier when asked the same question. History has its bias.

In the long run though, it places so much pressure on the male and invariably shortens his lifespan. Males die before females because of toxic mortality. “Survived by his wife” is the norm mostly because of toxic masculinity.

The facts are real, the statistics are startling, toxic masculinity is a killer of males.

More time.

seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: You may have heard the term, “No good deed goes unpunished.” I’ve found it to be so true. When I saw the positive things Shaggy has been trying to do for Bustamante Hospital for Children, I was moved. Then when I saw and heard the negative accusations my heart sank. When Shaggy gave that interview and mentioned how his daughter asked him if he was going back to Jamaica to explain that he didn’t tief the money, my eyes welled up with tears. Why does this continue to happen? Why are we like this, always putting a negative spin on positive deeds? That’s because no good deed goes unpunished. I applaud Shaggy and implore him to continue his good deeds for the hospital in spite of the detractors.

So KC proved the ‘experts’ wrong and taught the ‘unbeatable’ Clarendon College a lesson by winning the Champions Cup trophy, being the first school to win it twice. Congrats, KC.