Mapping A Framework for Masculinity

by Marie Lena Tupot and Tim Stock, scenarioDNA

Recently, an article in Fast Company by Harvey Deutschendorf discussed that emotional intelligence may be the key to reducing toxic masculinity at work (2023). The solution can’t possibly be as simple as that. Can it? Also, the recent launch of the Barbie movie has catapulted the counter concept of toxic femininity into the mix, spinning it into new harmful meaning (Anderson, 2023). The genders certainly are lost, and battles continue.

Researchers in Finland and Australia consider the concept a global public health problem that is being neglected (Sudenkaarne et al, 2023). Those researchers assert that “in modern society, part of the definition of ‘gender equality’—a goal that many modern societies state they aspire to—is that the needs of all genders should be treated equally.”

Consider that Google searches for the concept of masculinity had begun to rise at the point of the 2008 Great Recession. Curiously, searchers for the topic of “power” remain consistent never soaring off like the rise of “masculinity.”  Society is seeking answers. Are they finding what they need? The 2008 disconnect between men and their masculinity was serious. We had not seen the likes of that type of global recession since the Great Depression. It shattered masculinity as we knew it.

The Point of Divergence

During the Great Recession, men lost jobs at 3.4 times the rate at which women did (Wall, 2021). This is not an unsurprising nor outlying number. However, gender roles had changed significantly since the 1930s. It was almost excusable for a man to be angry if he had to depend on a woman in the 1930s. Even the Works Progress Administration (WPA) program was considered by some to be discriminatory as it was limited to one member of each family, usually the male (Marx, 2020). And think how quickly Rosie the Riveter got sent back to the kitchen after World War II (Wallace, 2011). Gone went the febrile days of pre-code movies, Marlene Dietrich and the Weimar era (Hughes, 2019). 

Come 2008, the paradigm for men feeling angry had changed. Over the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, feminist movements gained significant momentum, broadening the scope of rights, prospects, and self-perceptions accessible to women (Shulman and Moore, 2021). And by 2008, women were well-seated in the workforce. Stay-at-home dads (Kelly, 2022) had become a normal, albeit sheepish, admittance – but the codes that they lived by had not evolved. Men had been taught fleeting, not evolutionary, codes of what it meant to “be a man.” 

Lucy Purdy writes in 2017 that an unwritten man code involving power and authority has left many dangerously out of touch with their emotions (Purdy, 2017). Authors Katty Kay and Claire Shipman discuss the concept of the Power Code in their new book of the same name. They assert that "power" is not working — for women, for men, or for the world (Kay and Shipman, 2023). Without question, power is the dominant code that traditional society applies to men (Conroy, Ruark, and Tan, 2020). They give the example of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women stemming from rigid or traditional gender ideals. Researchers argue that such rigid notions result in failing to see the gender evolution that surrounds us (Dworkin et al. 2012; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005).

Books on Masculinity are Exploding

The proliferation of books on masculinity is no surprise. The trend has gained momentum in recent years as societal attitudes and perceptions about gender roles and identities have evolved and cultural tensions have ensued. The best-selling books involving masculinity on Amazon range wildly. The top 10 are: The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by Bell Hooks, December 2003; The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes by Nancy R. Pearcey, Susan Hanfield, et al., June 2023; It's Good to Be a Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity by Michael Foster and Dominic Bnonn Tennant, November 2021; The Rational Male – Preventive Medicine by Rollo Tomassi, March 2015; The Rational Male - Positive Masculinity by Rollo Tomassi, July 2017; The Mask of Masculinity: How Men Can Embrace Vulnerability, Create Strong Relationships, and Live Their Fullest Lives by Lewis Howes, October 2017; Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity by Justin Baldoni, April 2021; The Masculinity Manifesto: How a Man Establishes Influence, Credibility and Authority by Ryan Michler, September 2022; The Manliness of Christ: How the Masculinity of Jesus Eradicates Effeminate Christianity by Dale Partridge and Eric Conn, May 2022; and Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality by Zachary Wagner, April 2023. 

Three of these books are rather progressive. Three involve Christianity. Most are self-reflection or recovery guidelines, and one laments negativity around the concept of Patriarch defining it as "simply the male leader of a home, organization, or community." How would an average reader navigate through this spectrum of topics? Let alone the “I’m not a book guy.”

Awareness is Everything

We can acknowledge that there is a problem. The tradition of “men” had been off-kilter for quite some time now. It’s more than just money. That’s (a-hem) “2008 and late” (Black Eyed Peas, 2009).  Since then, society also has been dealing with more inclusive and equitable understandings of gender, intersectionality acknowledging that masculinity is not a monolithic concept and that it interacts with other aspects of identity, such as race, class, sexual orientation, and more. This affects education and parenting and overall health. 

A 2021 Ohio State study discovered that certain men who possessed conventional masculine traits like competitiveness and a sense of adventure were associated with being more effective fathers to infants (Schoppe-Sullivan, S., et al, 2021). However, the participants in this research, who were well-educated and part of couples where both partners worked, combined these traditionally masculine attributes with a commitment to being nurturing and actively engaged fathers. Knowing how to navigate through the evolution would be invaluable. It’s complicated, but complications can be unraveled.

Unraveling Masculinity into a Meaningful Framework

The need for a framework of masculinity arises from the evolving need to understand these gender roles, social dynamics, and the desire for healthy, well-rounded individuals and communities. As stated prior, traditional notions of masculinity often come with rigid stereotypes, such as being emotionally detached, dominant, and aggressive. These stereotypes limit personal growth and self-expression, leading to a one-size-fits-all approach that fails to reflect the diversity and complexity of individual experiences. A more inclusive framework encourages open conversations.

A positive shift in masculinity norms can have a ripple effect on society, influencing media representations, workplace dynamics, and community behaviors. ‘Stranger Things’ had already begun to provide an alternative model of masculinity (Ornelas, 2022). “Through representations of healthy communication, emotional vulnerability and the unpacking of “popular guy” stereotypes, Season 4 proved that retro nostalgia can also help pave the future,” wrote Jessica Ornelas for Collider in 2022. These actions contribute to a culture that values diversity and inclusion. 

Just as gender is a social construct that evolves, a framework of masculinity should be adaptable and open to change over time. It should encourage continuous learning, critical reflection, and growth, fostering a more enlightened perspective on masculinity's place in contemporary society. As Pankaj Mishra wrote for the Guardian in 2018, “Some of this post-9/11 cocksmanship was no doubt provoked by Osama bin Laden’s slurs about American manhood: that the free and the brave had gone ‘soft’ and ‘weak’.” We must move forward.  

An Adaptable Framework

In 2022, we put out a Culture Mapping brief identifying current Archetypes of Men. People ask: Why use archetypes? Because archetypes simplify complex concepts and ideas by providing spaces for recognizable patterns and symbols. They serve as mental shortcuts that help individuals quickly grasp and make sense of abstract or intricate concepts. Topics today are complex and multifaceted. We need archetypes as a device to make meaning. The four archetypes and their respective real-life examples in the brief were identified as:

• Disruptive, driven by survival, recontextualizing ideas. Represented by actor Matthew McConaughey and activist David Hogg
• Emergent, driven by illumination, shedding light on concerns. Represented by comedian Trevor Noah and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian
• Dominant, driven by visibility, asserting their awareness. Represented by fashion designer Reese Cooper and actor Brad Pitt
• Residual, driven by power, reining in like minds. Represented by social critic Jordan Peterson and media personality Andrew Tate

The method used to create the archetypes for the terms describing masculinity is scenarioDNA’s usual culture mapping method. It is a system and method for organizing language on a semiotic grid rooted in social science (Blumer, 2001, p. 465).

The x-axis of the grid demonstrates the Analytic/Expressive spectrum. The y-axis demonstrates the affirmation of society’s norms to the resistance of norms. It allows for a human-centric view of data and is the crux of the four quadrants representing disruptive, emergent, dominant, and residual archetypes. 

The language behind new ideas and provocative thinking get worked out in the disruptive/symbol quadrant. This is where ideologies of truth and purpose live. The rebel lives in this quadrant as a declaration of opposition.

Concepts of technique and alchemy manifest through language in the emergent/ritual quadrant. Experimentation happens and we implement new ways of doing things. 

The dominant/identity quadrant reveals through language archetypes driven by badge values and social currency. They’ll share new ideas that have been tested and proven in the ritual quadrant.

Once concepts resonate within residual/mainstream zeitgeist, they have become ubiquitous and have fallen into residual code. Archetypes in this quadrant need ideas that are easy to digest and receive assurance. That said, “residual” does not mean that the ideas here are invalid. If their initial intent maintains validity, trends will be reinvented in the cognitive playground of “symbol.” And the cycle resets.

Because cycles are fluid and continuous, it is critical to view disruptive trends against their emergent and waning counterparts. Compelling narratives live in the tension of contrasting ideologies and place us in front of the innovation curve. The process is not about putting concepts within strict borders. It’s about seeing centers of gravity at any point in time through the contemporary language of the time.

Putting Science Behind Archetypes

The point of the 2022 Archetypes of Men piece was to open discussion. What we learned from it was that men were being driven by a range of behavioral codes, and that encampments of men are entrenched in differing ideologies. It was also clear that activist paths to being better men have been in play for more than 20 years. The ideology of power was clearly only one path of existence. The fall of the dominant code was causing the current tensions.

This summer, we decided to revisit the language within the corpus behind the Archetypes of Men brief. There were about four dozen articles. Each article dealt with a range of masculinity ideals from right to left-leaning, traditional to progressive. From the corpus, we pulled a breadth of signifying words. Then, with the help of WordStat from Provalis, we created a dictionary for masculinity in order to retest the archetypes, and hopefully result in a more functional narrative tool regarding the underpinnings of masculinity.

To read changes in culture, we have always analyzed words and visuals as clusters of distinct societal traits and behaviors. They indicate patterns of social change. Linguistic signifiers naturally reveal codes of behavior and inform archetypal narratives. Language is the most powerful source of insight and foresight.

As expected, the corpus demonstrated a weighting of masculinity-signifying words in the dominant quadrant, expressing a “hero” concept of masculinity. The lightest quadrant was the creative explorer space. The dominant “hero/lover” masculinity holds the heaviest weight at 30.8%. We can’t seem to let traditional codes go. 

The emergent “creator/jester” masculinity has the least weighting at 22.5%. Yet, we adore young male comics on Instagram. 27-year-old comedian Matt Rife recently announced an ambitious 115-date world tour across two years and three continents (Brooks, 2023). He has spent more than 10 years already touring and cultivating TikTok and Instagram. Residual slightly outweighed disruptive, 23.5% vs 23.2%.

Since the culture mapping matrix has a temporal component going counterclockwise from the bottom left, one could imagine that the Ruler residual archetype is waning, and the Disruptive/sage is moving in. Masculinity seems to be least discussed in terms of explorers, creators, and jesters – but that too will evolve with the generations.

Envisioning Future Iterations

To run a basic test beyond the initial corpus, we ran two recent articles through WordStat using the masculinity dictionaries we created. One was Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “The Weaponization of Loneliness” published by The Atlantic (2023). The other was “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness” by Christine Emba published by the Washington Post (2023).

The gist of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s article was about rebuilding our communities and how society has been exploited. The essence of Christine Emba’s article is about fresh starts and repurposing for the common good of men and women. There are similarities and differences across the articles but it stands clear that Hillary’s article leverages dominant words (47.1%) and residual codes (30.4%), whereas Christine's gives more weight to emergent (23.8% vs 12.7%) and disruptive codes (15.2% vs 9.8%).

The dominant codes also held weighting across the main 48 articles at 30.8%, as well as Clinton and Emba. But it is noteworthy to see that the 48 articles held the greatest weighting in disruptive (23.2%). Overall, people are seeking change and meaningful evolution.

But why map at all? Lots of reasons. Perhaps, a political speech writer might consider gauging the leanings of their writings. Testing and understanding our language could help us get beyond our biases. Books can be rated by running them through mapping. 

In any case, culture mapping lays the foundational work so that mapping can be executed over time, allowing future researchers to know where to place emphasis or investigate further. With the ability to add iterations of information, mapping also allows for comparing diverse sources.