A dimmed bedroom filled with the soft hum of fluorescent lights and the faint laughter from the television screen showing “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” was social activist Ron Blake’s turning point while he prepared to swallow the pills that would end his life.
A single trivial moment from the show — a joke that made him laugh, broke through the suffocating silence and convinced him not to commit suicide at 10:44 p.m.
He says his struggles with mental health began in 2015 after enduring an alleged sexual trauma when three men broke into his apartment, held him down, raped and beat him.
Blake’s near-suicide stemmed from unprocessed trauma after a sexual assault and society’s failure to respond to his case. Masculinity failed Blake in many ways that day.
On the night of the rape, Blake managed to break free and make a 911 call letting the emergency dispatcher hear his attack live. He says the dispatcher was listening to it as it was happening.
“Four police officers arrived at my home in downtown Phoenix, and I was surrounded by the three perpetrators. I only had my underwear on. They were blood-splattered. They were ripped. There were dapples of blood around my loft, along with broken furniture,” Blake said.
Despite his report to the police, along with his live recording of the attack, he wasn’t given the justice he deserved, according to Blake.
“A former FBI agent was brought in and did a detailed investigation on my case, and his report stated that the police treated me differently that night. He said it was because I was a male, and it became clear to many people that, because I’m a gay man, they just didn’t take it seriously,” Blake said.
Numerous organizations, including the National Women’s Law Center and federal prosecutors nationwide, stepped in to advocate for his case. However, despite their best attempts to reopen his case, the investigation never moved forward, and the alleged perpetrators were never arrested.
“With all these people who came in to help me, I still haven’t been able to get justice. And to me, that’s just troubling because I had all the men right there,” Blake said.
He says toxic masculinity not only failed him in the aftermath of his assault but also stifled his ability to speak openly about the trauma. Society pressured him to remain silent, embodying the cultural belief that men should “tough it out” rather than seek help and show vulnerability.
Under the guise of strength and leadership, toxic masculinity is packed with outdated and harmful stereotypes that ultimately harm everyone involved.
Societal standards that perpetuate norms for men lead to a more significant trend of toxic masculinity. The Cambridge Dictionary defines toxic masculinity as “ideas about the way that men should behave that are seen as harmful.”
Professor Davarian Baldwin, the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and the founding director of the Smart Cities Research Lab at Trinity College, corroborates that toxic masculinity is also when they repress or limit the full range of ways in which that male individual can express themselves.
Luckily for Blake, rather than conforming to traditional norms, he became a social activist, working to break the stigma of toxic masculinity. By sharing his experiences and advocating for speaking out, he reached more than 30,000 people nationwide.
Besides the current number of people that Blake helped, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 6 million men nationwide suffer from depression, something that can escalate into more serious issues.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also says that this rate has only risen in recent years. Through advocacy, Blake reminds others that they aren’t alone and encourages individuals to challenge harmful norms that pressure men to suppress their experiences.
“When those characteristics of masculinity become so strong and so constraining that they contain a fuller range of human behavior and possibility, both for that person and those around them, that’s when it becomes toxic,” Baldwin said.
“Real men don’t cry”
Toxic masculinity statistics reveal the societal impact of these expectations to conform and suppress emotions.
According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in 2022, proportionally, for every woman who died by suicide, 3.85 men died.
Even high school students are affected by this representation of masculinity through a trickle-down effect.
“We were told, ‘Hey, I don’t want to hear about this. Just forget about it.’ In high school, if a guy breaks up with his girlfriend and he’s told to just get over it and not talk about it, and that’s not healthy,” Blake said.
Carlmont student Wyatt Dent says he most likely wouldn’t talk to his friends about events like a breakup because he thinks “nobody really wants to hear about any of that.”
According to Dent, there are other aspects of toxic masculinity he faces.
“As a guy, I’m expected to like football. I hate football. I tried to get into it a million times, but it’s literally so boring. I don’t want to watch football. I don’t want to play fantasy football. I don’t like the players. I don’t like the game. I don’t like any of it. That’s toxic masculinity,” Dent said.
Dent says he experienced toxic masculinity in friend groups with men, but he thinks that’s the case for all friend groups. Additionally, he says that one of his friends sends him misogynist Instagram reels.
“I don’t know if he believes in the stuff he sends me, but he sends crazy stuff,” Dent said.
Blake says that men need to be more empathetic.
“We need to be able to say, ‘Hey, here’s the lesson we should be learning. Let’s let these guys talk about this,’ and that’s allowing them to vent,” Blake said.
This approach encourages men to be healthy with their emotions and process their feelings openly rather than internalizing them.
Carlmont student Ayaan Maker experienced this struggle firsthand.
“My friend’s dog passed away during school, while I was with him. Instead of letting us comfort him, he walked away because he didn’t want anyone to see him crying,” Maker said.
The societal expectation of suppressing emotions often pressures men to handle pain alone, reinforcing stereotypes about masculinity that discourage vulnerability.
These barriers are the driving force behind toxic masculinity and the normalization of it. A study published in Sage by Neill Korobov states that being able to talk about feelings helps process emotions and manage vulnerability.
Blake says this is the point of his activism, promoting empathy and removing communication barriers.
“Once we remove those barriers, it will allow people to truly be themselves, a human being, without hiding their emotions and who they are,” Blake said.
A struggle for representation
Media portrayals of manhood reinforce harmful stereotypes that undermine the experiences of male victims. Sometimes, the stereotypes that popular media even sustain what Dent, Maker, and Blake face.
Baldwin says the popular media in earlier years told people to “act like a boy, don’t act like a girl. Don’t be gay. It was normalized. It wasn’t even identified as being one of a range of ways of being a man. It was the only way to be a man.” He adds that men were taught not to discuss any vulnerable moments for fear of being weak.
Lyle and Erik Menendez were both victims of severe trauma during their childhoods, facing years of abuse from their parents: physical, emotional, and sexual. According to the brothers in their Netflix documentary, pent-up feelings of frustration and fear of their parents eventually culminated in their decision to commit parricide.
This lack of acknowledgment not only neglected the psychological and emotional toll of their upbringing but also perpetuated a culture that stigmatizes vulnerability in men.
The media, along with the justice system, portrayed the brothers as entitled killers who murdered their parents in cold blood, obscuring the complex psychological factors that led to their actions.
“We’ve got to stop treating males and females differently when it comes to sexual or domestic violence. Justice should be blind. We should approach it that this person is a victim, not male or female or straight or gay. This is a victim, so address it accordingly,” Blake said.
The media also plays a part in this narrative, according to Baldwin.
“It’s just a general sense of the fact that showing vulnerability and a full range of expression can be sometimes called gay. The punchline of a joke can be caricatured. It doesn’t receive likes and gets a lot of negative comments on social media,” Baldwin said.
Further, Baldwin says content that challenges types of masculinity doesn’t get the same kind of platform that promotes toxic masculinity.
“This could be extremely damaging because social media is such a small fraction of the full range of human experience, but those things get platformed, reproduced, and recirculated,” Baldwin said.
Shifting away from toxic masculinity requires society to acknowledge male vulnerability and trauma more openly, and in the end, it could come down to changes in public policy.
Baldwin says men should show their full range of emotions, not to be too sensitive but authentic. By implementing a fuller range of behaviors associated with varying genders, younger generations can live in a less stigmatized world.
However, besides media portrayal and personal vulnerability, Baldwin argues that policy can also influence toxic masculinity.
“I think that we have done away with sexual education in the classrooms. Human behavior is more broad (in range) in terms of how it’s being described,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin acknowledges the backlash, saying that parents need to teach those things at home and control how those things are taught in the house.
“But sometimes parents are the ones who reinforce toxic behaviors. There should be a place in public education where a fuller range of behaviors associated with varying genders can be made available and not be associated with negative ideas,” Baldwin said.
By reinforcing healthy masculinity in schools, younger generations will dissociate emotional expression as a vulnerability rather than as an essential part of personal growth.
“When we hear or see on an individual level, young people, or even older people, discouraging vulnerability, and limiting the range of expression for young boys, we can discourage them and fight against that,” Baldwin said.
This type of masculinity, no matter the influence, can have a profound impact on discouraging young men, and sometimes even older men, from expressing, showing vulnerability, or showing a full range of human expression.
“We can encourage them and try to associate positive attributes or positive encouragement when boys are exhibiting a full range of emotions or showing vulnerability,” Baldwin said.
