Growing up, I felt that I never really fell into the category of "masculine." I had always been a mama’s boy and wouldn’t always enjoy things that were considered masculine, most notably competitive sports. I remember being on a soccer team when I was little, and once during a game in which I played the goalie, I was yelled at by my coach because my mind had drifted off somewhere and I started dancing to some pop song in my head instead of paying attention to the game.

Let’s just say I let more than a couple of balls pass by me into the goal. I tended to be more interested in "girly things" like playing house or listening to pop music. I had always known that I wasn’t very boyish, and when I was really young, that didn’t bother me.

I had found hyper-masculinity to be brush, abrasive, unthoughtful, and prone to not caring about things. I found a distinct lack of acceptance of emotions or feelings. From a young age, what society deemed as "masculine" wasn’t really my cup of tea.

Before I started school, I wasn’t really that bothered by who I was, but increasingly as I grew older and was exposed to more boys, I became increasingly more distraught. I had started to like myself less and less. I had this deep conflict between the things that I liked and enjoyed versus my biological sex, and that was extremely painful and harmful to a boy trying to develop his self-esteem.

The stereotypical ideal of masculinity generally promotes the image of a man as being dominant, muscular, a protector, and able to control his emotions. None of these traits are necessarily bad, and I’m not trying to attack them, but they create a very narrow definition of what masculinity is.

The masculine man only likes certain kinds of music, dresses certain kinds of ways, likes sports, has short hair, etc. Early on in a boy’s life, that kind of masculinity becomes a strong force that begins to pressure the boy to conform to that set of narrowly defined behaviors.

If a boy cries frequently, for example, he is shamed as not acting toward the standards that life set for him at his conception; he is made to feel that he is less than a man, that he must change his behaviors, his way of thinking, even maybe his personality to that standard. This boy is shamed until he changes, until he stops crying and learns to "control" his emotions and to think more "logically."

If the boy changes, he’s rewarded through external gratification; he’s praised as someone who has grown up into more of a man. On the other hand, if the boy doesn’t change, he’s criticized, sometimes bullied and harassed and made to feel like he is worse than what he’s supposed to be. Effectively, the boy isn’t allowed to be himself. This is when things start becoming "toxic" and harmful.

The narrowness of what it means to be a man inhibits boys from experimenting with self-expression. The shame associated with behaving in ways that aren’t masculine holds them back. I’ve met — and still meet — guys who struggle expressing their emotions, who feel shame over something as human as crying, who don’t listen to certain kinds of songs for them being too "girly," etc.

These are feelings and emotions that even come from supposedly macho and super masculine guys. This is psychologically unhealthy, and I would argue that it’s one of the factors contributing to the fact that men are at higher risk of suicide than women. Masculinity strongly pressures boys to act a certain way and that’s just flat out unhealthy.

Toxic masculinity creates a type of single-mindedness. It also promotes a kind of distance between "masculine" men and other people, whether they be women, queer men, or effeminate straight men. The strong pressure boys feel to conform to masculinity creates a kind of fear of the "un-masculine."

This fear starts to breed sexism and homophobia. Guys start to feel that they have to prove their masculinity in order to maintain it because un-masculine behavior is "gay," and one of the ways they do so is by proving their dominance over women and harassing and bullying men who don’t fall into the same narrowly defined toxic masculinity.

The truth is that toxic masculinity is bad for boys and all of us. There is no good that comes out of it, and it ends up causing a lot of harm. So what is a positive form of masculinity then? The truth is that there is no set form of masculinity and there never has been. For example, King Louis XIV of France wore tights, heals and liked to show off his legs. Today’s version of masculinity in our culture wouldn’t approve of any of that, but it was OK in France in the 1600s.

So, what I believe to be positive masculinity is the acceptance of the wide range of personalities and expression of personalities that different boys have, and the acceptance that those personalities can be masculine, too.