This Isn’t Your Old Toxic Masculinity. It Has Taken an Insidious New Form.
有毒的男性气质，有毒的脆弱
Toxic masculinity is so 2017.
有毒的阳刚之气已经是2017年的旧事物了。
It hasn’t disappeared, of course, but in the years since #MeToo, many men have been trying to drop the stoicism and anger that have long warped masculinity. Some are seeking therapy. Others have enrolled in workshops and men’s groups in an effort to get in touch with their feelings and become better men. For better or worse, everyone you know is watching “Ted Lasso.” The strong, silent type is losing some of his allure.
当然，它还没有消失，但是在“#我也是”运动之后的几年里，许多男人一直在试图摆脱长期以来扭曲了男性气质的坚忍和愤怒。一些人在寻求心理治疗。另一些人则参加了工作坊和男性团体，以努力贴近他们自己的感受，并成为更好的男人。无论是好是坏，你认识的每个人都在看《泰德·拉索》(Ted Lasso)。坚强且沉默的那种类型正在失去一些吸引力。
My personal relationship to masculinity is fraught. I spent my first 31 years moving through spaces where I didn’t feel I belonged, and I was often told implicitly or explicitly that I wasn’t performing maleness correctly. I cried often as a child, and a cousin once pulled me aside to tell me that as a boy I should never cry unless I had a cut running from my eye to my ankle. In high school, after telling my best friend that my grandfather died, he asked me to please leave his house if I was planning to cry.
我本人与男子气概的关系充满了紧张。在我人生最初的31年里，我穿梭于我感到自己并不属于的空间里，人们经常暗示或明示我，认为我没有正确地表现男性气质。我小时候经常哭，一位堂兄曾经把我拉到一边告诉我，男孩子永远不该哭，除非我有一个从眼睛到脚踝那样长的伤口。高中时，我告诉我最好的朋友我的祖父去世了，他说如果我要哭的话就请从他家里出去。
Two years ago, I came out as a nonbinary trans person. Expressing my true gender identity did not immediately fix my relationship with vulnerability, but it led me to delve deeper into what vulnerability is and how it can operate. As it happens, vulnerability was having a cultural moment — as the topic of popular TED talks and the focus of groups invested in helping men evolve, such as The ManKind Project and Evryman (whose men’s retreats echoed earlier movements encouraging self-reflection in men, including Robert Bly’s “mythopoetic men’s movement”).
两年前，我以非二元跨性别者的身份出柜。表达我真实的性别认同并没有立即修复我与脆弱的关系，但它让我更深入地了解脆弱是什么，以及它是如何运作的。碰巧的是，脆弱正在成为一个文化时刻——它成为受欢迎的TED演讲的主题，也是The ManKind Project和Evryman这样致力于帮助男性进化的组织的焦点（他们的男性静修与早期鼓励男性自我反省的运动相呼应，包括罗伯特·布莱的“神话创作式的男性运动”）。
It has been exciting to watch as more men embrace vulnerability. At a men’s group meeting in 2019, I saw men like those I knew growing up taking responsibility for their actions and feelings. This was far from the new normal, but at least men were coming together to talk. I began to feel hopeful about the state of masculinity.
越来越多的男性在接纳脆弱，这令人兴奋。在2019年的一个男性组织会议上，一些男人和我成长过程中所熟知的男性如出一辙，在会议中我看到他们在为自己的行为和感受负责。这绝不是新常态，但至少男人们开始聚在一起谈心了。我开始对男性气质所处的状态充满希望。
But my hope has begun to diminish as I’ve watched male vulnerability curdle into something toxic: Let’s call it petulant vulnerability.
但当我看到男性的脆弱凝结成某种有毒的东西的时候——我们可以称之为“暴躁的脆弱”——我的希望已经开始逐渐消失。
Think of the boyfriend professing loneliness to ensure his partner never sees their friends. Or the hundreds of texts and anecdotes of so-called softbois collected on the @beam_me_up_softboi Instagram account — men who express their feelings the way avalanches share snow, often as a form of manipulation or passive aggression. On the HBO Show “Succession,” Kendall Roy professes his empathy with the plight of abused women only to feed his narcissistic desires. And the film “Promising Young Woman” showcased the horror of the “nice guy” whose sensitivity slides stealthily into misogyny and abuse.
想想那种宣称自己很孤独的男朋友，他这样做以确保他的伴侣永远不会见到他们的朋友。或者Instagram上的@beam_me_up_softboi账号收集的数百篇所谓的softbois（忧郁巨婴）的文字和轶事——这些人分享自己感受的方式如同雪崩，通常以一种操纵或被动攻击的形式。在HBO剧集《继承之战》(Succession)中，主角肯德尔·罗伊表达了他对受虐待女性困境的同情，只是为了满足他的自恋欲望。而电影《前程似锦的女孩》(Promising Young Woman)则展示了“好男人”的恐怖，这些男人在情感上的敏锐正悄悄变成厌女和虐待行为。
There have been some extreme examples in high-profile court cases of the past year. The courtroom tears of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was later acquitted in the deaths of two men he shot and the wounding of another, and Travis McMichael, who, along with his father and a neighbor, was convicted of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, were public displays of petulant vulnerability. They show strikingly how this aggrieved, self-righteous mind-set privileges one’s own vulnerability over that of others: The crying killer doesn’t recognize the vulnerability of his victim.
在过去一年出现了一些极端的例子，成为备受瞩目的法庭案件。凯尔·里滕豪斯枪杀两人并导致另一人受伤，他后来被宣判无罪，以及特拉维斯·麦克迈克尔——他与父亲和邻居一起因谋杀艾哈迈德·阿伯里而被定罪，他们在法庭上留下的眼泪公开展示了暴躁的脆弱。他们惊人地呈现了这种委屈、自以为是的心态，将自己的脆弱置于他人之上：哭泣的杀手意识不到受害者的脆弱。
The aftermath of last year’s Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was a festival of petulant vulnerability. While the attack itself was violent and wrathful, many in the mostly male mob, who screamed obscenities or threw heavy objects at police officers that day, later wept as they expressed shame, offered excuses or complained about jobs and friends they lost. One rioter even blamed “Foxitis” for his actions: His lawyer argued that months of watching Fox News had destabilized him to the point where he started believing untruths. Classic toxic masculinity was on full display when those would-be heroes rallied to “save America” on Jan. 6, but some became hapless patsies once they were held accountable. Their capes became baby blankets.
去年1月6日对国会大厦的袭击的余波是一场暴躁脆弱的狂欢。虽然袭击本身是暴力和愤怒的，但以男性为主的暴徒中的许多人在当天大喊脏话或向警察投掷重物，后来他们在表达羞耻时哭泣，找借口或抱怨他们失去了工作和朋友。一名暴徒甚至将他的行为归咎于“福克斯新闻炎症”：他的律师辩称，观看福克斯新闻数月之久让他变得不稳定，以至于他开始相信不实之词。1月6日，当那些准英雄汇聚一堂要“拯救美国”时，经典的有毒男子气概得到了充分展示，但有些人一旦被追究责任，就成了软弱的懦夫。他们的战袍变成了婴儿毛毯。
Petulant vulnerability is not, of course, confined to men. An example can be found in the case of Amy Cooper, the woman who was filmed falsely reporting to the police that “an African-American man is threatening my life,” her voice sounding breathless and panicked, after a bird watcher in Central Park asked her to leash her dog.
当然，暴躁的脆弱不仅限于男性。艾米·库珀事件就是一个例子，在中央公园的一名观鸟者要求她给狗拴绳后，她向警方谎称“一名非裔美国人正在威胁我的生命”，这个过程被拍了下来，她的声音听起来气喘吁吁、惊慌失措。
What is real vulnerability? Brené Brown, a researcher whose work on vulnerability has made her a celebrity, defines it as “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure” in her 2013 book “Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.” Petulant vulnerability, however, uses the language of vulnerability as a cudgel. If true vulnerability means accepting change, personal fallibility and the human condition of reliance on others, petulant vulnerability feigns emotional fragility as a means of retaining power.
什么是真正的脆弱？因其对脆弱的研究而为人所熟知的研究人员布蕾妮·布朗在2013年出版的著作《脆弱的力量》(Daring Greatly)中将脆弱定义为“不确定性、风险和情感暴露”。然而，暴躁的脆弱使用脆弱的语言作为棍棒。如果真正的脆弱意味着接受改变、接纳人难免犯错和依赖他人的处境，那么暴躁的脆弱则假装成情感脆弱，以此作为掌控权力的一种手段。
If true vulnerability seems scary, it is — but that doesn’t make expressing it any less necessary, for men as for everyone. What if, on Jan. 5, 2021, a man upset by Donald Trump’s electoral defeat had confessed to friends and loved ones that he was afraid and that he felt he was losing control in a world he believed no longer valued him? What if he had sat with those feelings, cried if he wanted to and discussed how to chart his path in a changing landscape? That would have been vulnerable.
如果真正的脆弱让人感到害怕，那么的确如此——但表达脆弱的必要性并不因此而降低，对男人和每个人来说都是如此。如果在2021年1月5日，一个因唐纳德·特朗普的选举失败而心烦意乱的人向朋友和亲人坦白了他的恐惧，在一个自觉不受重视的世界里感到失控，这会怎样？如果他带着这种感觉坐下来，想哭就哭，并讨论如何在不断变化的环境中规划自己的人生道路，这会怎样？这才是脆弱。
This kind of vulnerability can be difficult, of course. Even as men’s groups committed to positive change gain prominence, our society still broadly enforces traditional masculinity norms and restrictions. And online there are plenty of spaces where extremely toxic behavior is encouraged and applauded — some of which also deploy the language of vulnerability. In incel forums, for example, rather than working through the pain of being sexually rejected, men lash out at the women they feel they deserve — occasionally resulting in horrific violence.
当然，这种脆弱可能很难面对。即使致力于积极变革的男性组织声名鹊起，我们的社会仍在广泛贯彻传统男子气概的规范和限制。在网上，有很多地方鼓励和赞扬极端有毒的行为——其中一些还使用了脆弱的语言。例如，在非自愿独身(incel)论坛上，男人没有去消化在性方面被拒绝的痛苦，而是猛烈抨击他们认为自己应该得到的女人——有时会导致可怕的暴力。
So, what’s to be done? Though men’s discussion groups and more nuanced male leads on TV cannot, on their own, shift our expectations of manhood, the fact that they exist and are gaining popularity counts for something. “Men cannot change if there are no blueprints for change,” bell hooks wrote in her 2005 book “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love,” where she uses feminist thinking to show men how to overcome their conditioning.
那么，该怎么办呢？虽然男性讨论小组和电视上更复杂丰富的男主角本身不能改变我们对男子气概的期望，但它们存在并越来越受欢迎的事实仍然有意义。“如果没有改变的蓝图，男人就无法改变，”贝尔·霍克斯在她2005年出版的《改变的意愿：男人、男子气概和爱》(The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love)一书中写道，她用女权主义思维向男人展示如何克服他们的约束。
The hard part is yet to come. Change is taxing and boring and scary. It requires humility and vulnerability — the real stuff, not the cheap imitation. And it requires letting go of what some men feel entitled to. The rewards, however, will make this effort worthwhile.
困难的部分还没有到来。变化是繁重、无聊和可怕的。它需要谦逊和脆弱——真实的，而不是廉价的模仿。它需要放弃一些男人认为他们有权拥有的东西。而它的回报将使努力变得有价值。
“To know love,” Ms. hooks writes, “men must be able to let go the will to dominate.”
“要了解爱，”霍克斯写道，“男人必须能够放弃想要主宰的意志。”
来源：好英语网
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