The Department of Toxic Masculinity

When I first started working, smoking in offices had already been banned. Officially, you couldn’t smoke anywhere in the workplace, yet the director of my first job still regularly walked through the building puffing on his cigar. Rank has its privileges.

I remember one of my very first clients, a small software company. Their office was the typical soulless building, done up in light shades of blue, a sad plant here and there. In that building, despite the rules, there was one room always filled with blue smoke. It was a dim, tucked away space, shared by two men in their 50s.

They were too set in their ways to change, and too valuable to the company to let go, so a compromise was reached. They got stuck in a far-away corner, away from the rest of the staff, where they could keep on doing what they did.

I sometimes feel like I have a corner of my brain which is like that office.

I’ve taken to calling it the Department of Toxic Masculinity. Basically, it’s where I keep all the ideas I was brought up with, which I know no longer serve me, but I haven’t been able to completely evict.

So, they’re stuck in that corner, basking in their own toxic fumes, mostly raging at the world and furiously writing memos. Those memos generally start with “A real man should…” and go downhill from there.

Most days, these memos get tossed straight into the shredder without so much as a second glance.

Every now and then, the poor sap driving my brain gets tired and overwhelmed, and he lets the intern take the helm for a moment. That’s when one of those memos might get read. Usually, it stops there. I feel shitty for a bit, but I recognise the memo for what it is.

And then, there are days when the memo gets read. The intern goes “looks good to me”, and it gets implemented. Those are the worst days. They are thankfully rare, and they usually end with me eating a lot of crow as I apologise for acting like an asshole.

So, why don’t I just kick these guys out of the building? Evict that nasty, smoky room and build an indoor climbing gym there?

I wish I could.

The thing is: these old ideas, they’re a part of me. I was brought up with them, and they shaped who I am. I can challenge them, I can choose not to act on them, but I don’t think I can ever truly rid myself of them, because they’re too ingrained in me.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Toxic masculinity still rules this world. Fighting it is up to us men. Me still getting those memos means that at least, I know what they say. I know what their views are and why they ultimately hold no water. This helps me counter those views, but more importantly: it helps me have empathy with those that hold them.

If you’re a man born last century, you have an office like that somewhere in your brain. Whether it’s still front and center or tucked away in a corner depends on how much work you’ve done. Maybe it’s even in a little annex outside the main building. No matter how much effort you’ve put into getting rid of them, none of us are completely free of them.

So, I’ll keep reading their memos and put them aside with sigh, but I’ll also remember that that department isn’t evil. They’re just deeply misguided. They’re trying to help me move through a world that no longer exists, and never should have existed in the first place.

Those two men in their smoky room have long since retired. Maybe their counterparts in my head will do that same one day.