Will Smith is back. And like all good action heroes, just in the nick of time.
Before the release of his latest movie Bad Boys: Ride or Die this summer, the last anyone had seen of Smith was at the 2022 Academy Awards. In what became known as the “slap heard around the world,” Smith marched onstage and struck comedian Chris Rock in the face for making a joke about Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. “Keep my wife’s name out of your f**king mouth,” Smith yelled at Rock after he’d mocked Pinkett Smith’s close-cropped hairstyle – a necessity given that she suffers from alopecia, a form of hair loss.
Smith’s slap was quickly condemned as a shocking instance of uncontrolled male rage. He was banned from the Oscars for a decade and ostracized by his Hollywood peers; many observers declared his career over. Among a legion of self-appointed experts in how men should act (hint: more like women), Smith’s conduct became a ready example of the grave risk posed by so-called “toxic” masculinity. “There are a lot of good blokes out there who are doing good things, who are honourable and have good masculine values and virtues, and it’s a pity that the newsworthy story is Will Smith,” chided John Oliffe, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Nursing and a leading Canadian authority in the study of “masculinities”. Rather than taking aggressive action, Oliffe opined that real men ought to talk out their problems. “It’s the guys who do the introspection work — often with counselling — to understand what they can do better…[and] help them grow” who deserve our respect, he told online magazine Healthing.
Funny thing: while “masculinities” experts were declaring Smith a ghastly example of poisonous manhood, moviegoers had other ideas. After Hollywood suffered through a string of massive box office failures in early 2024 – most notably Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in which waif-like actress Anya Taylor-Joy took over what was once Mel Gibson’s testosterone-laden Mad Max movie franchise – Bad Boys: Ride or Die became the first legitimate blockbuster of the summer, earning over US$100 million in its first weekend and pushing the entire Bad Boys movie series past US$1 billion in revenue.
Beyond making Smith a lot of money, this tacit expression of public support suggests ticket buyers aren’t repelled by displays of traditional masculinity, either onscreen or off. Rather, it appears they’re eager to see Smith rescue his kidnapped wife, pump the bad guy full of “toxic” bullets, wrestle an albino alligator named Duke and perform assorted other acts of manly aggression and mayhem. “We’re bad boys,” says Smith’s partner Martin Lawrence prior to the movie’s final shootout. “Not bad as in bad, but bad as in good.”
“We’re bad boys”: Despite Smith’s notoriety, Bad Boys: Ride or Die (co-starring Martin Lawrence, on right in right image) became the first smash hit of the 2024 summer movie season, suggesting the public approves of traditional manly behaviour even if “masculinities experts” don’t. (Sources: (left poster) IMDB; (right screenshot) Frank Masi/Sony Pictures)It’s sage commentary. There remains something vitally necessary about the qualities that have always defined manhood – courage, aggressive risk-taking and unfettered competitiveness among them. Men may be a little bit bad, but in a very good way. It’s a distinction the public seems to appreciate, even if masculinities experts don’t. When Smith instinctively leapt to defend his wife’s honour – something that would have been considered obligatory behaviour for husbands in past ages – he was demonstrating the same traditional masculine virtues as his movie character. And rather than condemning Smith for acting like a man in real life, we ought to be encouraging all men to act likewise. It may be our best chance to fix what ails us.
Men in Decline
Life hasn’t been easy for men over the past several decades. Since the fading of the 1950s-style nuclear family and the rise of feminism and, more recently, the neo-Marxist ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), men have found their traditional roles as bread-winner, leader and protector of the weak undermined and demeaned. It can start even before grade school. On average, boys arrive at kindergarten already behind girls in reading and other intellectual skills. Yet no one seems to care.
These gaps only widen through childhood and youth. Women have comprised the majority of university students in Canada since the early 1990s; last year they earned 57 percent of all post-graduate degrees. Of 13 academic post-graduate categories tracked by Statistics Canada, men currently constitute the majority in only two: math/computer sciences and architecture. All the rest, including business, law, medicine, education and other high-income, high-status fields, are dominated by women, often overwhelmingly so. And in those two male-heavy subjects, numerous programs, scholarships and other special treatments exist to boost female participation. No such programs exist to support men trailing in the 11 other categories.
‘There is this general anti-male animus in society today,’ laments Janice Fiamengo, a retired professor of English at the University of Ottawa and an outspoken critic of feminism. ‘Everywhere is this sense that men are at best irrelevant to women’s live, and at worst, a menace to society – that they are toxic.’
While feminists frequently and loudly bemoan the (greatly exaggerated) gender pay gap, other gaps of far greater consequence face men. Canadian men, for example, die from suicide at three times the rate of women. The opioids crisis is also a male crisis; three-quarters of all such overdose deaths are men. The same holds true for workplace deaths. Of 993 occupational fatalities in Canada in 2022, 95 percent were men. These factors, plus many other health-related issues, add up to a gender death gap of over four years: according to Statistics Canada’s most recent figures, life expectancy at birth is 79.28 years for Canadian men and 83.84 for Canadian women.
It gets worse. Despite ample and convincing evidence that a stable two-parent family is the best environment for raising healthy and successful children, dads are widely treated in popular culture as disposable, forgettable or incompetent buffoons – as well as lazy, shifty, treacherous and at times violent. The denigration of men has reached the point where the loudest and most aggressive feminists now declare the only acceptable man is one who recuses himself entirely from society. In a particularly vicious 2018 Washington Post column headlined “Why Can’t We Hate Men?” Northeastern University sociology professor Suzanna Danuta Walters offered her opinion on how men should act. “Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from power,” she wrote. “We have every right to hate you.”
“There is this general anti-male animus in society today,” laments Janice Fiamengo, a retired professor of English at the University of Ottawa and an outspoken critic of feminism. “Everywhere is this sense that men are at best irrelevant to women’s lives, and at worst, a menace to society – that they are toxic. I see almost no appreciation for men’s unique and distinctive abilities and gifts.” Walters’ virulent form of anti-male feminism has seeped deeply into Western society, Fiamengo observes. “Feminists don’t want to address any of the gender gaps that favour women,” she says, listing the death gap, suicide gap, college degree gap, workplace injuries gap and so on. Plus, the legal and education systems have also been “weaponized against men,” Fiamengo notes. “The message is always that men pose a danger to women and have done so throughout human history.”
The combined effect of this general disregard for male problems plus outright discrimination and animosity towards men in education, the workplace and leadership positions has undermined the very foundation of masculinity. Even the Boy Scouts of America, once a pillar of masculine virtues such as duty, self-reliance and preparedness, recently decided to rename itself Scouts BSA, shunning the word “Boy” in order to better attract girls and hide its manly roots. As Heather Mac Donald writes in City Journal, “That the Boy Scouts cannot tolerate even an atavistic use of ‘boy’ reveals how powerful the impulse is to efface males from our culture.”
What were once considered a man’s best qualities – independence, determination, selflessness, stoicism, competitiveness, emotional restraint and (when absolutely necessary) the judicious application of aggression – have lately been rebranded as inherently poisonous and dangerous to society. According to the health advice website WebMD, “Toxic masculinity is an attitude or set of social guidelines stereotypically associated with manliness that often have a negative impact on men, women, and society in general.” Traditional manhood, in other words, is now something that needs to be diagnosed and cured.
This is obvious nonsense. Accepting the current feminist narrative that men are toxic to society ignores the many inherent virtues of masculinity and the broad-based benefits it provides. Celebrating and rewarding the traditional aspects of masculinity is vital not only to protecting the self-esteem and self-worth of men themselves, but also to our collective social success. We need to let men get their mojo back, and we can only do that by letting them be themselves again.
“Only masculine men can save Western society,” Fiamengo declares provocatively. “After all, masculine men built it. Women are concerned with fairness and equity and making sure everybody in the group is treated fairly. But they are not particularly interested in invention and growth.” After nearly a decade of “feminist” government in Ottawa, Canada now faces a variety of crises – a productivity crisis, an education crisis, a military recruitment crisis, a crisis of international reputation, a competency crisis – that can largely be ascribed to an absence of competition and assertiveness at the national level.
With the future success of Canada at stake, we need to recognize and celebrate the many important virtues of maleness. And the first step is to demolish the notion that masculinity is somehow toxic. It’s time we recognized that acting like a man is the tonic we need for many of our biggest problems.
Tonic Masculinity: Good for Our Health
The term “tonic masculinity” was coined by Miles Groth, a psychologist at New York City’s Wagner College, to highlight the positive, necessary and currently ignored elements of manliness. In a 2021 paper in the academic journal New Male Studies, Groth explains he chose the term for its contraposition with toxic masculinity. Tonic has two meanings, he points out. It is “an invigorating substance or influence” as well as the home key of a musical composition. Tonic masculinity thus represents both harmony and healing for a wounded world.
To explain the concept, Groth’s article opens with a lengthy two-page paean to the work men do that is often overlooked amidst the feminist rage against them. A small taste:
“Men dug the tunnels and laid the track for underground and surface mass transit. Men poured the concrete for highways and sidewalks and laid the asphalt for the streets you drive, bicycle, or walk on. They keep the subways and buses operating and repair your automobiles, which they designed. They keep freight and passenger trains moving. Most long-distance and local truck drivers are men. Men built the first seagoing ships and then airships and the airports where thousands of flights now take off and land each day throughout the world. Most pilots are still men.”
He goes on to list surgeons, garbagemen, soldiers, loggers, miners and many other occupations as examples of the vital and underappreciated contributions made by men in building and bettering Western society. Men, he observes, not only do all these necessary things well, but what they do tends to involve a recognizable degree of personal risk and/or self-sacrifice. The power of tonic masculinity, Groth writes, “is seen in men who pursue careers in public service such as first responders and…men who serve in the military.”
And while U.S. Democrats have recently attempted to purloin the phrase by claiming Democratic vice-president candidate Tim Walz and his liberal virtues are a paragon of tonic masculinity, Groth has other ideas. Among the role models his paper cites are 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who doggedly challenged the received wisdom of the entire Catholic Church; Albert Einstein, who turned modern physics on its head; and Captain Ahab, the protagonist of Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, whose single-minded pursuit of his Great White Whale pushed him to “face the mysteries of nature…and in doing so realize the limits of human power.” Men push limits and explore frontiers.
‘By examining personality at the level of the 10 aspects of the Big Five, we demonstrated that gender differences in personality traits are even more pervasive than has typically been reported,’ the psychologists observed.
As for the bad apples who have come to dominate the feminist characterization of masculinity, Groth argues that they are relatively few in number and far from representative. “Rapists, mercenaries and conquistadors are a tiny fraction of the male population,” Groth observes, listing the worst of the worst. It makes no sense for Western society to allow these notorious exceptions to define contemporary masculinity. The solution, he says, lies in “restoring harmony between the sexes…[and] in the nuclear family”. While Groth’s paper displays a curious fixation with the aesthetics of the male body, his contribution to achieving détente in the seemingly endless gender wars lies in his clever recasting of traditional masculinity as a positive force for society. It’s a good start.
Look to the sky: Groth’s examples of men to admire include 16th century Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (left), physicist Albert Einstein (middle) and Captain Ahab, the protagonist in Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick (right). The trio are noteworthy for their courage, determination and independent thinking in pushing against limits and challenging their era’s status quo.
The Big Five
The rebranding of manhood from toxic to tonic requires recognizing the many ways in which men and women are different. And accepting that these differences are on the whole beneficial for all. Consider psychology’s well-established “five-factor” model of personality traits that is comprised of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness/intellect. These “Big Five” can be further divided into ten subcategories covering things like assertiveness, sensitivity, anxiety and depression. A 2011 study in Frontiers in Psychology sought to determine how these traits measure up across the two sexes, comparing the results of previous studies with additional survey research. The research team from three North American universities found substantial differences between men and women, bolstering the work of novelists, playwrights, songwriters and comedians throughout history who have made such observations their stock in trade. “By examining personality at the level of the 10 aspects of the Big Five, we demonstrated that gender differences in personality traits are even more pervasive than has typically been reported,” the psychologists observed. “In every one of the 10 traits assessed, significant gender differences were evident.”
Women, the study’s analysis revealed, “are more nurturing, tender-minded, and altruistic more often and to a greater extent than men.” The fairer sex also scored higher than men on warmth, gregariousness and positive emotions. Surprised? Probably not. Men, on the other hand, scored higher on assertiveness, industriousness and excitement-seeking. Men also displayed greater self-confidence and were more likely to overestimate their own intelligence. From this perspective, traditional gender roles of nurturing women and bread-winning, risk-taking men have a solid foundation in basic psychology. The stereotypical male and female roles are, in other words, scientifically valid.
World-famous Canadian psychologist and public intellectual Jordon Peterson has gained considerable notoriety for ascribing an evolutionary basis to these observed gender differences. Women being hard-wired to protect their vulnerable babies, Peterson explains, gives them a higher “trait neuroticism”, or negative emotion score, in five-factor studies, than men. Being finely tuned to potential threats to their children leads women to display greater levels of anxiety and depression than men, as well as being more often the initiators in divorce.
Noting these differences is not sexist, Peterson asserted in a podcast with economist Glenn Loury. “It makes perfect sense given that the world’s probably a more dangerous place for women, especially when they have infants.” These defensive propensities, along with an instinct to nurture and provide emotional support, are clearly vital to maintaining and supporting the human species. But the fact that women are better-adapted to caring for babies doesn’t mean that men are useless at everything else. Rather, the dominant traits of masculinity provide many other necessary advantages to society – advantages that we ignore at our peril.
What Men Do Better
No woman has ever landed on the moon. In 1953, two men were the first to climb Mount Everest; it would be another 22 years before the first woman summitted the world’s highest peak. Going further back, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and 270 other men undertook the first circumnavigation of the globe in the early 1500s, a three-year, 60,440 km undertaking. This was no place for a woman. Magellan’s crew were “tortured by thirst, stricken by scurvy, feeding on rat-fouled biscuits, and finally reduced to eating the leather off the yardarms,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Nonetheless, “The crews, driven…throughout the voyage by the relentless determination of Magellan, made the great crossing of the Pacific.” Magellan himself did not live to see his mission completed; he died in the Philippines and it was up to his navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano to complete the task with one remaining ship and – get this – 17 surviving crew members. Risk-taking of this sort is almost exclusively a male thing.
The same goes for intellectual exploration. Any list of the most revered scientists, inventors, philosophers, mathematicians or business leaders is inevitably dominated by men. Of the 970 Nobel Prizes given out since the award’s inception in 1901, 905 went to men. And those 65 women winners are predominately in the non-scientific fields of peace and literature. The prizes in physics, medicine, chemistry and economics are thoroughly dominated by men.
Further, every one of the top scientists in the Manhattan Project, arguably the most complex and urgent project ever undertaken in the field of physics, were men. The same observation holds true today. A quick scan of the current crop of high-tech entrepreneurs and social media tycoons includes Tesla and X owner Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Uber founder Travis Kalanick, AirBnB CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Nvidia owner Jensen Huang. Men, men and more men. Among the very highest echelons of performance, there are few women to be found.
Yet even though a preponderance of reliable evidence shows men have in the past and continue to dominate the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), admitting this basic fact has become controversial to the point of career suicide. It cost respected economist Lawrence Summers his job as president of Harvard University in 2005. In a speech, Summers had ventured the proposition that “issues of intrinsic aptitude” account for the fact that relatively few women achieve the highest positions in STEM fields. Facing an eruption of outrage over this true statement, he quickly apologized. But it wasn’t enough.
Chess at the highest levels is also dominated decisively and perennially by men – despite the image popularized by the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. The same goes for word games.
As journalist John Tierney later wrote in City Journal, “The equalitarian mob that ousted [Summers] couldn’t rebut his facts or his logic: whatever traits it takes to reach the top—intelligence, creativity, industriousness, obsessiveness, ambition—more males than females will be found in the 99th percentile. This pattern largely explains the gender gap in researchers’ productivity, which owes mainly to the disproportionate number of men at the extreme high end of the rankings.”
It is necessary to point out that, on average, men are not smarter than women. There are many very smart women who have made great contributions to science, business and every other field of endeavour. Rather, men tend to display far more variance in their intellectual performance; they have greater representation at both ends of the distribution. There are more excruciatingly dumb men than women. But men are equally dominant at the other end. If you are playing a game of averages, this doesn’t matter very much. But when society’s success is on the line – when we are dependant on breakthroughs in science, engineering, economics or other subjects to improve our standard of living, cure a disease or beat back a crisis – being at the extreme end of the curve matters quite a lot. And more men than women hang out in this rarified air.
Crucially, this sex difference is not related to any of the obvious physical advantages men hold. Rather, it is an embedded masculine trait with no bearing on size or strength. Tierney points to a variety of non-physical competitive challenges as proof. “A majority of bridge players are women,” he points out, “but men have won virtually all the major championships open to both sexes.” So convincing is this male dominance that the World Bridge Federation now organizes women-only bridge tournaments to shield women from the embarrassment of having to play men.
Chess at the highest levels is also dominated decisively and perennially by men – despite the contrary image popularized by the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit. The same goes for word games. “Women have long outnumbered men at Scrabble clubs and tournaments, but only one woman has ever won the national championship (in 1987),” notes Tierney. “Today the 25 highest-ranked Scrabble players in North America are all men, and only five women rank in the top 100.”
What explains the male dominance in cards, chess and Scrabble? It is relatively easy for anyone to learn the rules and tactics of Scrabble, yet academic studies cited by Tierney show significant differences in how the sexes prepare. “After controlling for various factors, the researchers concluded that the gender gap was mainly due to training preferences,” Tierney found. “Both sexes devoted about the same amount of time each week to Scrabble, but the women spent more of it playing games, whereas the men spent more time doing tedious anagram drills and analyzing past games—not as much fun as playing another person, but it gave them a competitive edge.” Competition pushes men to outdo each other. Relentlessly so. The evolutionary origin of this trait can be found in the competition for mates between men. But it carries over to all sorts of other activities and fields, from games to financial success. And that, in turn, has profound benefits for society as a whole, as we’ll soon see.
Where strength, endurance and risking-taking do matter, men also dominate. The reasons here are obvious and scientifically uncontroversial. Due to the production of testosterone at puberty, even relatively small and short men demonstrate far greater upper-body strength than women. Male upper bodies have, on average, 75 percent more muscle mass and 90 percent more strength than those of females. In a 2020 experiment on sexual dimorphism – that is, genetically-sourced physical differences between males and females – biologists and physiologists at the University of Utah calculated the gap in punching power between men and women. It isn’t remotely close. “Even with roughly uniform levels of fitness the males’ average power during a punching motion was 162% greater than females’,” the researchers found. “The least-powerful man [is] still stronger than the most powerful woman.”
In the workplace, tonic masculinity combines men’s inbred advantages in strength with the male propensity to accept greater risk, their competitive instincts and their sense of duty. According to Statscan, men comprise over 92 percent of the skilled trades, equipment operators and transportation workers, and 82 percent of jobs in natural resource extraction and agriculture. In comparison, women are dominant in health care, education and public administration. Both lists clearly comprise important jobs crucial to society. But those typically filled by men lean heavily on masculine traits.
The trades also pose a far greater threat to life and limb. Recall the workplace safety gap discussed earlier. The reason men account for 95 percent of on-the-job fatalities is that they are drawn to occupations that entail the greatest risk. In 2020 (the latest year for which industry-specific data is available) a total of 17 women died on the job in the education, health care and entertainment fields in Canada. Meanwhile, 357 men died in agriculture, mining and construction alone. They literally put their lives on the line to deliver necessary services to Canadians. Despite decades of efforts at greater female representation across all occupations, these inherently dangerous jobs remain largely male domains. This isn’t evidence of systemic discrimination. Rather, it is a logical sorting of tasks – and for which men selflessly pay the price. Tonic masculinity keeps the mines working, the power flowing and food on the table.
The Narrative Begins to Shift
In addition to Will Smith’s surprising box-office success this year, there is other evidence of a slowly growing cultural backlash against the feminist definition of maleness as toxic and dangerous. “I miss dominant masculinity,” comedian Jerry Seinfeld recently told journalist Bari Weiss on her podcast Honestly. As a youngster in the 1960s, Seinfeld says he remembers wanting to grow up to be a “real man,” like John F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali or Sean Connery. Given Seinfeld’s comedic fixation with the ordinary and mundane aspects of life, it seems a small but noteworthy moment reflecting a largely unspoken desire to reestablish coherence in gender relations.
Another, more controversial promoter of traditional male values is NFL football player Harrison Butker. In May, the Kansas City Chiefs’ placekicker delivered a provocative and widely-shared commencement address at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. “As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in,” Butker said. The two-time Superbowl champion warned that the “absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation.” His advice to men? Be “unapologetic in your masculinity.”
The initial social media response to Butker’s speech was similar in fury and scale to the backlash faced by Smith after his Oscar slap, as well as that previously directed at economist Summers. Plenty of celebrities, including some of Butker’s NFL teammates, chastised him for his remarks, and an online petition with over 230,000 signatures currently demands his firing from the Chiefs. Even the nuns associated with Benedictine College condemned his overtly Catholic views.
Yet there’s plenty of apparent backing for Butker if you know where to look. After the speech, sales of Chiefs jerseys and t-shirts with Butker’s name and number rocketed to third spot across all player merchandise, according to The NFL Shop. Popularity of this kind is rare for a placekicker and must be regarded as an outpouring of public support akin to Smith’s post-slap commercial success. As Fiamengo pointed out in a recent blog post on the subject, Butker’s alleged sin was to “speak some plain truths about the need for masculinity.” (She also noted that the signatories to the petition were “mostly women”.) And it appears quite a few people agree with him.
In the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 in Broward County, Florida, which left 17 people dead, the first law enforcement officer on the scene, Scot Peterson, was tarred with the horrible nickname ‘the Coward of Broward’ for not running into the school with his pistol blazing as soon as he arrived.
Perhaps surprisingly, some on the political left are also recognizing the problems associated with the decline in masculinity and male traits. A case in point is the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM), launched in 2023 by British-American author Richard Reeves, who wrote Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. “Too many boys and men are struggling – at school, at work, and in their families and communities,” the AIBM site says. While the organization’s achingly liberal outlook means it often misconstrues the current malaise affecting men and how to correct it, at least Reeves is prepared to recognize the problems of modern masculinity.
Manly Cops and Other Necessities
Sometimes social commentators find themselves pining for a return to traditional masculine values without even recognizing it. Consider the reaction to the 2022 mass casualty event in Nova Scotia, in which Gabriel Wortman went on a murder and arson spree that left 22 dead and three wounded before he was finally shot by RCMP officers. The scale of the death toll led many, including Globe and Mail columnist Robyn Urback, to criticize the Mounties for their lack of speed and vigour in chasing down Wortman. Similar complaints were voiced in the U.S. following school shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Broward County, Florida when armed police appeared to hesitate rather than immediately put themselves in harm’s way.
Armchair critics such as Urback have little apparent patience for cautious cops. “There is no ambiguity as to what police are expected to do in these situations: act quickly – don’t wait, protect innocent lives,” she scolded. “Police must act to neutralize the threat immediately, even if it puts their life in danger.” In the case of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County in 2018, which left 17 people dead, the first law enforcement officer on the scene, Scot Peterson, was tarred with the horrible nickname “the Coward of Broward” for not running into the school with his pistol blazing as soon as he arrived. He was later charged with seven counts of felony child neglect for failing to protect the students who were shot. (He was acquitted.)
In all these cases, critics have condemned the police for failing to act in a prompt, instinctive and – dare we say it – aggressive manner. Rather, they acted with great care and caution and by following proper procedures, what might be considered emblematic of trait neuroticism. Not good enough, says Urback. For first responders to earn the “honour and esteem” of the public, they are “expected to run toward the danger while the rest of us run away.” The delicate sensibilities of the police officers in Nova Scotia, Uvalde and elsewhere threaten “law enforcement’s pact with the public” and throws the “entire profession into disrepute,” she claims.
What Urback really means but can’t bring herself to say is that she expects police to act in a deliberately and traditionally masculine way. They must run towards danger, put their lives on the line and protect the innocent and the weak – even if they end up wounded, maimed or dead. Self-sacrifice, stoicism, risk-taking: all the things likely to get a man labelled as “toxic” – if not mentally ill and in need of psychiatric treatment – are, when lives are on the line, the exact traits society expects from its (still mostly male) police forces. But if we want police officers to take down the bad guys without regard to their own safety – and if we want other men in analogous roles to exercise similar stoicism, courage and self-sacrifice – we will need to accept, celebrate and demand masculine virtues more often than just during mass shootings.
Tonic masculinity is also sorely needed in Canada’s battered and abused military. Men are overwhelmingly drawn to join the army because of its traditional emphasis on such masculine traits as assertiveness, competitiveness, comradeship, risk-taking, adventure and service. These qualities plus the sheer physical demands are why young aggressive men have formed the essential core of armies throughout history. It’s called manpower for a reason. Yet the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are currently incapable of fulfilling their most basic role of defending Canada’s national sovereignty, and the nation’s reputation among its NATO allies and elsewhere has hit an historic low.
A central reason is that the Justin Trudeau government has sought to turn the CAF into yet another woke diversity experiment. In 2017 the Liberals set for themselves the goal of making the CAF 25 percent female by 2026, for no other reason than it seemed like a progressive thing to do. Currently, women comprise just 15 percent and there’s no reasonable expectation the 2026 goal will ever be reached. Meanwhile, the CAF is losing more male soldiers, sailors and pilots than it can recruit, a situation current Minister of National Defence Bill Blair has described as a “death spiral”. Morale has sunk lower than our decrepit fleet of submarines can go.
Much of this can be traced back to former Defence Minister Anita Anand, who upon being sworn-in in 2021 declared that her “top priority as Minister is to build a military where all members feel protected and respected by their own colleagues.” It’s a nice sentiment, but the top priority for any military must be to protect and defend its nation by any and all means necessary. And doing so requires coming to terms with the job’s essential masculine and violent nature. Canada’s federal government would rather look the other way.
At a recent House of Commons committee meeting, Blair admitted that of 70,000 (predominantly male) applicants to the CAF last year, only 4,000 were actually accepted. Having prioritized the recruitment of women – who aren’t predisposed to joining the military for obvious sex-specific reasons – Canada is now actively rejecting legions of young men, both by turning down their applications and by discouraging them from even applying through signals that Canada values warm feelings and rainbows over effective, lethal military readiness. In a final insult, Canada has become a laughingstock around the world for its lack of preparedness and commitment to collective security. If Canada wishes to defend its interests on the world stage, the CAF will require a strong dose of masculine aggressiveness.
Gender-based Incompetence
A similar observation could be made about Canada as a whole. Since 2015, the country has had a self-declared “feminist” government, with all that implies. Trudeau’s first official act as prime minister was to unveil a delicately gender-balanced cabinet. Since then, he has focused his legislative efforts on a broad range of gender-based issues, including embedding a feminist perspective everywhere, from the federal budget to Canada’s foreign aid priorities.
In domestic policy, the Liberals have concerned themselves almost exclusively with redistributing Canada’s existing wealth rather than encouraging the nation’s industries to generate additional economic growth. All of Trudeau’s major initiatives involve finding new ways to “share” the country’s existing resources: $10 per day national child care, pharmacare, dental care, increases to seniors’ programs, the scrapping of a planned increase in the retirement age, affordable housing initiatives and many more. All this must be paid for by taking money from one group of taxpayers and giving it to another.
Meanwhile, the federal government has been openly hostile to resource development, agriculture and other “male” pursuits that involve building and creating things. Outside of a narrow band of climate-change related initiatives, federal tax policy now discourages major private sector-capital investments and punishes risk-taking. And in the few favoured green sectors, such as electric vehicles, investment is now driven by government subsidies and trade policy rather than entrepreneurial initiative. The result has been chronic under-investment in new technology among Canadian employers and a decided lack of competitive fire across the entire economy.
With Canada’s GDP per capita falling, it has become axiomatic among economists, including those at the Bank of Canada, that the country is in a severe productivity crisis. Why? To use Jordan Peterson’s terminology, Canada has been burdened with a “trait neurotic” government. The country has concerned itself with the defensive feminine preoccupations of nurturing and risk-avoidance, at the expense of more masculine attributes such as competition, inventiveness, assertiveness and risk-taking.
If there is reason for hope in the future, consider Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s succinct pre-election platform. “Axe the Tax, Build the Homes, Fix the Budget, Stop the Crime” rests on four active verbs full of manly vigour and purpose that promise to get things done. References to nurturing or sharing are noticeably absent. With Poilievre currently riding high in the polls, it might be considered one more bit of welcome evidence for the growing feeling that tonic masculinity is the cure for what ails us.
End of Part I. “Yay Men! A Love Letter – In Praise of Tonic Masculinity, Part II” will cover the author’s personal and emotional attachment to men of all shapes and sizes.
Lynne Cohen is a journalist and non-practising lawyer in Ottawa. She has published four books, including the biography Let Right be Done: The Life and Times of Bill Simpson.
