From Toxic to Tonic Masculinity

All right, and welcome back. So today's episode, we're going to talk about this new phrase you've maybe heard that's starting to kind of permeate our culture, and that's tonic masculinity.

So this is very different from what we've normally heard of, toxic masculinity. Right? And that one letter signifies a pretty profound difference, and it's something I want to explore here today. Now, this phrase is an interesting one. You can kind of go down the Internet rabbit hole like I did, trying to figure out where did it come from. According to Google, earliest kind of references to it directly are a 2020 Medium.com blog entry about creating a healthier workplace environment by bringing in the four masculine archetypes of warrior, magician, lover, and king.

Now, a year later, in 2021, this guy, Miles Groth, wrote a bigger journal article entry in a journal about men's health that really defined it even more and I think brought it more into academic circles. Since then, there's been different Christian traditions talking about it. Jordan Peterson's been talking about it, came up in the presidential campaign. And I think it signifies something that's really happening in our culture, which is this longing, which I've talked about on this podcast before, for healthier manifestations of masculinity to show up in our culture and be there as an example for men and for, frankly, the world.

And now, the interesting thing about this word tonic, let's start with that. Myles Groth, that author, he kind of talks about it in two different ways. First, there's the actual tonic, like the old bottle, right? We think of in olden times, someone would drink a tonic and magically get cur. And what it really means is it's a invigorating substance that has a positive influence, right? So you can think of a tonic as something that brings positivity and vitality to our system.

So for something to be a tonic, it's actual. It's an actual positive force against maybe unhealthy parts of our system. So tonic masculinity in that sense is. It's this force of good in the world. Now, the second one, and I thought this one was really fascinating, was it also means the first note of a musical scale what's really called a song's home key. So this is the part of a song that it's the note that we come back to throughout the song that actually sounds like a relief.

So we go through the song and then we come back to this first note and it actually relieves us. So it's kind of the home base of freedom and relief in this musical scale system. And when you think about both of those, I think they really point to why there's such a yearning and hunger for talk about tonic masculinity in our culture. But before we even get even deeper into that, let's start with the other one that we've heard so much about, toxic.

Now, I've talked about on this show, I don't actually believe in toxic masculinity or even toxic femininity. Toxic would mean it's inherently evil and bad. There is nothing good or redeemable about it. It's toxic, right? It's toxic waste. It's always going to be that way. I don't believe in that. What I tend to think about is more pathological masculinity. So pathological means something has grown awry, taken a wrong turn away from health in the system.

So nobody starts as toxic, but we can all grow through pathological means to a place that's not so healthy. And that has absolutely happened with the masculine. And I've talked about that plenty on the show, and I do a lot of work with men around this, of dismantling the man box, the lone wolf, and primarily the disembodied and disconnected man who's not in touch with his heart and his body and his environment.

When that man is disconnected, that's when men, the masculine, can do the most awful things and really try to take control over people through domination, often causing hurt and harm to others along the way, including the environment. But that's pathological meaning no one starts there. As a man, as a young boy, something happens in our system which knocks us off our healthy growth path into this more twisted form of masculinity.

Now, tonic masculinity, I think, is a bit of the corrective to that of how do we keep things growing vitally and healthily from that home base place of the masculine, which is actually a place that is deeply caring, deeply attuned, deeply present, and wants to create and protect those around it. And so this idea of tonic masculinity as this positive version, this positive force of masculine in the world, I think is really needed in our culture right now because the Thing is, the mistake I think a lot of people make is that we need less masculine energy in the world.

Where I've talked about before, and I'll reiterate here, I think we need more, right? The feminine women, all the manifestations of that in male or female bodies, doing a pretty damn good job of trying to keep this planet afloat, keep this whole thing going. And that polarity, which isn't just gendered, it isn't just cultural. This actually goes into the fabric of our being in reality, right? Life and death, light and dark, yin and yang.

This polarity shows up everywhere, and they're stronger together. And we need more masculine energy of the positive kind in the world right now, the kind that calls forth the best of everyone. And you can think of tonic masculinity being another way to talk about the unique texture of masculine love, right? So we can all love in any way we want.

But I think there's a unique version of love that is particularly masculine in its essence. And this masculine love is actually generative. It's about growth and becoming and having a vision in moving towards it. So masculine love, in a sense, is penetrative. It goes deeper and beyond where we're at in the moment. So masculine love includes the vision of what could be in the world, right?

So masculine love is often expressed in creating a container or a structure that love and goodness can flow into. There's this great book called the Flowering Wand that came out a couple years ago by Sophie Strand that actually talks about a lot of this and examines it culturally and historically of what happened. Masculinity wasn't always toxic. There was a tonic, generative version of it for many, many years.

And she really examines this specifically through the lens of the shift from masculinity being represented with a wand to a sword. So the wand was actually something that gave life and created and added to the world. The sword is actually what cuts and reduces and separates. And it was that separation of the masculine heart from our head in our body that I think really laid the groundwork for this wave of toxic masculinity that's become so big and pervasive in our culture.

But it's not the inherent way of being tonic masculinity. The Flowering wand, as she calls it, the part of the masculine that can actually create and generate and add to the world, includes masculine sexuality, something that has often been demonized as taking, dominating, but doesn't have to be that way. Trust me. I've worked with hundreds of men that have learned that their Sexuality can actually be a creative gift to the world.

Our sexual drive, our sexual power is not the problem. It's what do we do with it. And if we bring it into the world by dehumanizing and objectifying the people around us, that's when it's a problem. But if we are connected to our hearts and connected to the humanity of those around us, it's not so much a problem. We can use that energy responsibly, literally, to create life and love in the world.

And that's really what this tonic masculinity is about. So you can think of tonic masculinity, again, is a version of masculine love. And it's this love that sees what can be right. It actually penetrates into potential. I see this all the time in my men's groups, where men who drop in with each other, and it's this shift right away from calling out, which has been so big in our culture, to calling forward, which means, I see you.

I see your. Your depth, your heart, your goodness. You are not rotten to the core. Maybe some of the actions you've taken have been less than healthy, but I know that's not who you are. So I'm going to stand here and with love, call you forward to be the best version of yourself you can be. This is the shift from kind of toxic shame, as Brene Brown talks about it, which is where we actually fuse the shame with the person and we shift it to healthy shame, which is more about the behavior.

You are not rotten, but what you did there is not cool. It's not okay. You hurt yourself, you hurt your partner, you hurt others. This is where tonic masculinity is really needed in the world. When I say we need more healthy masculine, the masculine needs to call forward the masculine, right? It's us that can look another man in the eye and say, you got to do better, man, because I know you can. I see you. I see your heart.

I see what's potential for you. That masculine love is so important. It's this radical embracing of who you are right now, connected to the vision of your highest self in the future. You can think of this metaphor I recently heard, for, you know, the masculine is the part of us that brings structure, right? Can bring structure to the world. And masculine love would be seeing the vision for, let's say, a home, a house, and then actually building it.

Now, the feminine love would be what turns that house into a home. So it fills the space, right? It fills the space of that structure that the masculine created and it loves it as it is. This is the house we have. So how do we make it beautiful, right? And we need both. Here's my vision for what we could create, and here's how we then take the reality we're now in and we make it beautiful.

And we need both versions of this love, and particularly right now, we need a masculine version of it to counteract so many of the forces in our world that are really quite negative, right? There's been this huge swing in our culture, our art, in our stories about the apocalypse, about the world ending, about dystopia. And there's very few models of positivity, of what could it be?

What is the vision we are moving towards as a global community, right? To me, that's going to come just as much from the masculine as it is from the feminine. And this is the tonic, right? This is what I'm saying here. The tonic is it brings life force. It's generative. It brings love and vitality to the system. I've seen countless stories of the men I've worked with, how desperate they were for any masculine figure in their life to slow down, see them, acknowledge them, and just turn to them and say, I believe in you.

Let's figure this out, right? I've talked about this before. Is the father energy I think we all need, which is that energy of, let's figure this out together, okay? What's our plan? Where are we stuck? Where are we falling? Where are we hurting? You don't have to do that alone. We can figure that out and move forward together. That father energy is tonic masculinity. It's the type of masculinity that uses our power to create structures to empower those around us.

So the best type of masculine power I believe in is one that flows through us to empower those around us. And when we have that tonic masculinity in our system, we come alive as men. I see it all the time in guys I'm working with when they make this shift from weight. Other men don't have to be my competition, but can be my allies and can help hold me accountable and move me towards the vision of what I want to bring forward in the world and call me forward if they see me not hitting that mark right?

This is the spinach in the teeth moment I often talk about. Masculine love is the love that looks us, looks at us and says, hey, you have a big ass piece of spinach in your teeth right now. You want to pull that out? And then maybe we're Flooded with a little embarrassment at first, but ultimately, we trust that person even more because they really pointed out something to us that was meaningful. And then we could remove that, move on with our life. Right, versus not saying anything at all. And that's something we see a lot with men these days, just not saying anything at all.

And most men I know are dying, are craving, are yearning for the feedback of tonic masculinity and love, this love that penetrates us, that sees through our bullshit in the moment to what we could be. And so this is an important moment in our culture. Men's work has been building these last decades, and it's about to hit a crescendo of, turns out, us men are hurting, and we need support and help in transforming that.

And one of the best places we can get that is from other men. And this idea of tonic masculinity also ties into this concept of masculinity as a transmission I've talked about in a previous episode. Which is the fastest way for us men to transform how we're showing up in the world is to actually be around healthy, embodied versions of masculinity.

So through mirror neurons and through being in the presence of other men who have done their inner work, to be grounded, to be open, to be relaxed, to be sensitive, to be attuned, and to be deeply aware of the system they're embedded in. It's profound for me. I remember when I was 26, I tell this story. I was working with a older mentor of mine, and I sat in a circle with him, and my body had the experience of, that's what I want to be when I grow up.

And had nothing to do with his career or occupation. It had to do with how he was being in the world. Relaxed, calm, powerful, direct, sensitive, able to access his full range of emotions without either collapsing into them or posturing against them. He could be in tears and be strong. He could be angry and be safe.

He could be getting feedback about his behavior, but not collapsed in shame. This is the type of masculinity men are dying for in the world right now. And it is the tonic version. It's when we're around it, we feel more alive, we feel more ourselves, we feel more connected and able to contribute to our environment, our culture, our community, and more. So it's time for men to really step forward into this tonic version.

And guess what? It doesn't just happen by itself. It takes work to unwind the wounding from our childhoods, the wounding from our cultures, the wounding from our families. The wounding we've experienced from primarily, often other men who are the ones that have beat us down into this is how you have to be. And anything less than that is not masculine. This is part of the shift that's happening right now where men are learning to embrace and take responsibility for our inner world.

That takes work, that takes growth, that takes often being extremely uncomfortable. And it takes support in mentorship from coaches, other men, men's groups, therapists, you name it. And we've had so few visions of this in our culture. A lot of men don't know what to grow towards. Tonic Masculinity is a manifestation of that. It's the masculinity that brings more love in life and safety to the system it's embedded in.

And we need a lot more of that here in the world right now. If you want some help diving into this, check out my work at Evolutionary Men until next time. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary Men. Apply.