The Long History of Hateful Language and False Fears

As the male volunteer director of a youth sports program, I volunteer hundreds-of-hours a year to oversee more than 500 boys and girls and nearly 100 male and female volunteer coaches. The majority of my coaches are male; and it’s not for lack of appreciation for female coaches. Dad coaches are applying to coach their sons and daughters more so than mom coaches. One of my coaches, a woman, coaches two teams for our youth league as well as a high school girls’ team while working full-time. A number of my male coaches have multiple teams, some coaching sons, daughters, or some combination of son and daughter. These are giving people.

Dads and moms are doing a great job teaching their players, boys and girls, how to deal with adversity and accept loss with dignity. But let’s face it. Winning is more fun than losing, whether it’s the Yahtzee game in the house or basketball game on the court. And whether or not adults keep score, the kids know who won.

Strauss’s article is what people like Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in the Coddling of the American Mind might call an agenda to push the “three great untruths:”

• What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker

• always trust your feelings

• and life is a battle between good people and evil people

I’ve worked with hundreds of coaches, male and female, who employ different models of leadership that have nothing to do with gender but the approach the coach takes to sports. I’ve seen many competitive female and male athletes at the middle school and high school level play with an insatiable aggression symbolized in athletes like Serena Williams and Elizabeth Lambert. These tough-minded athletes succeed because they work hard and don’t like to lose. Those are the same types of attitudes some women take to the classroom and career and the reason many are leading the ranks in college education.

The majority of young players simply enjoy being with their friends and the comfort and lack of comfort that naturally comes with team sports. We cannot bubble wrap our children and only expose them to the behaviors that we specifically want. The notion that “men are socialized to lead by force, whereas women are socialized to lead by way of relationship building,” assumes there is only one form of relationship building, the kind Strauss thinks may happen with women leaders more than male leaders. The article is more than misleading; it's an attempt to promote one gender at the expense of the other gender.

Strauss’s article is more of a journal-entry than journalism. The blanket narrative of toxic masculinity is accepted without any oppositional viewpoints. There is a rhetoric in today's culture that has created a terrible linear projection for boys and men. It begins with the demonizing of boy behavior and the misrepresentation of the once harmless phrase "why can't boys be boys" and matriculates that phrase into the adult version. Toxic masculinity is a troubling term that uses a rhetoric of hysteria and fear to quantify the essence of maleness, from boy to man. We're now seeing it creep into youth sports. The overwhelming number of boys, men, girls, and women are not dangerous and not toxic. (And there is no reason to believe males and females do not possess the potential to be toxic in their own ways as a natural part of the human condition.)

The term toxic masculinity reminds me of the designation, interloper; a word used decades ago to associate fear and hysteria with the African American male presence. Someone who will come in and hurt one's women or invade one's space with their ways, as noted in literary works such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Raisin in the Sun, and the writings of great thinkers such as James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison. There is a bogeyman element to toxic masculinity used to promulgate a stereotype that assumes the worst. Toxic masculinity and interloper may seem exclusive to time and place, yet they are, however, linked to a common rhetoric designed to see the worst in inherent male behavior and presence. We've seen this in our history before, and it is ugly. Truly, truly, ugly. There are people of all genders who pollute the waters of life but so many more who provide the type of spiritual and emotional nourishment our children need.

Strauss's article attempts to promote the idea that sports could use more female coaches, and that argument is valid if honest. Instead, Strauss facilitates a cultural association that links male coaches as toxic and female coaches as relationship oriented. It's just untrue and the article only contributes to the dishonesty associated with the male narrative in the public discourse. Saying we need more female coaches because male coaches are less capable is a troublesome view; a blanket statement on the state of manhood and as discriminatory as interloper and sexism. The narrative of toxic masculinity has become a culturally assimilated archetype that associates fear, hysteria, and maleness. Honest journalists should challenge that viewpoint.

I appreciate that my sons have had different types of coaches; some tough as nails and some exceedingly mild. Some I’ve grown to love and others I’ve grown indifferent toward. Life is full of challenges, rewards, let downs, and people of all sorts. And youth sports offer a tempered venue where boys and girls are introduced to the harder lessons of life and the aphorism of resilience, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.