And the simple answer was I learned about toxic masculinity and the negative effect is has on boys and men.
But in researching the subject, I also learned about the negative effect it has on women.
Toxic masculinity doesn’t just harm men—its impact on women is equally damaging. When boys are told not to “act like girls” by showing their emotions, or engaging in certain activities (for example boy who love to dance, or play with dolls), the underlying message for girls is that being feminine is lesser.
These subtle reinforcements and they are of course subtle – generally in life we are shaped by many many micro moments – shape how girls view themselves from a young age. Often for young girls, internalising the idea that femininity is weak or undesirable, can lead to feelings of inadequacy, pushing pushing to question their worth, especially in male-dominated spaces. This continues throughout the teenage years and into womanhood, until we almost believe it ourselves that we are less than.
And as girls grow into women, the effects become more pronounced.
Women may avoid leadership roles or downplay their achievements in fear of being seen as overly aggressive or unfeminine. Relationships, too, are affected, as women may feel their emotional needs are devalued or dismissed, leading to an unhealthy imbalance where they aren’t taken seriously. The ripple effect of toxic masculinity impacts gender dynamics at every level, making it harder for men and women to relate as equals.
Both genders suffer, but often people assume that toxic masculinity only affects men.
But the impact on women is equally damaging and the cost is often in their emotional well-being and self-worth.
I wrote How Frank Helped Hank thinking it would be a book for little boys, but realised just like my other books, it’s a book for all children, regardless of their gender.
Today, October 6th, is National Poetry Day. So I’m celebrating by posting a never seen before rhyme that I wrote way back, when I was just starting out on my writing journey. When I knew that I wanted to tackle the issues of inequality facing our children. Could I make a difference writing stories that taught kids they could do and be anything?
This one didn’t make it to a rewrite into an actual story book. I received some feedback on if, that it might be a little outdated; that television shows like The Great British Bakeoff had shown boys and men it was cool to be bakers. So I rather lost my nerve and didn’t pursue this one…
It’s been sat in a Dropbox folder for 6 years! But I think the message is still relevant. There will still be many young boys who are told they can’t do something because it’s traditionally seen as ‘for girls’. I hear it in toy shops, still to this day: put that back it’s for girls. So it felt like it was worth dragging it out the Dropbox, and sharing with you all today. Let me know what you think of The Boy Who Baked Cakes in the comments below.
The Boy Who Baked Cakes
There once was a boy, who was lacking in joy,
as he did not know what to do.
See though he liked planes and riding on trains,
he rather liked baking cakes too.
There was naught he loved more, in fact he adored,
creating a scrumptious sweet.
He could spend half an hour, just sifting the flour,
to create the perfect treat.
Now there’s someone at school, a bit of a fool,
Who said, “boys shouldn’t be baking!”
“Why not?” the boy cried, “shouldn’t I bake with pride?
It’s an art form, make no mistaking!”
Then that someone from school, urgh what a fool,
simply just wouldn’t back down.
To the sports pitch he ran, oh what was his plan?
He was jumping around like a clown.
“Listen to me!” the fool cried with glee,
“There’s a chap here who says he can bake.
He says he likes planes, and riding on trains,
But baking? That’s a mistake!”
The boy hung his head, his face turned bright red,
the fool was being quite cruel.
What was so wrong? He’d thought all life long,
that baking cakes was quite cool.
The boy turned to leave, feeling aggrieved,
but was suddenly stopped in his tracks,
when cried out a girl, with a head full of curls,
“Ignore him and just face the facts!”
“So you like to bake, that’s not a mistake,
it’s something that makes your heart sing.
I spoke to my mum, ‘bout what to become,
She said ‘you can do anything!’
What makes you smile, just think for a while,
if this is what you enjoy:
you bake with great ease; you should do as you please,
so what if you are a boy?”
The boy stopped and smiled, and he thought for a while,
Man up. What does ‘man up’ even mean anyway? Be more like a man? Are men creatures who don’t get upset? Don’t feel? Don’t want to have a good cry sometimes?
Remember at the start of Love, Actually when Liam Neeson’s character is crying a lot , because his wife had died. And Emma Thompson’s character says to him: Get a grip, people hate sissies. No-one’s ever going to shag you if you cry all the time. Remember that?
Love Actually came out in 2003; time when I admit I viewed the world very differently to how I do today. Then I would definitely have told my male friends to ‘man up’ or not to ‘cry like a girl’. I had no idea of the cumulative impact phrases like this have on men and boys. No idea about the horrendous male suicide rates (75 per week according to ONS figures for 2020). But that line in the film stood out because I think even then I thought, bit harsh, he’s just lost his wife. But we all laughed anyway.
I wonder if that film would be in any way different, if it was made today? I wonder if Emma Thompson would give Liam a copy of our book, How Frank Helped Hank, and say, “Let it out, have a cry, don’t keep it inside, It will help you feel better, you’ll see.” I wrote about an Instagram post by Scarlett Curtis a while back saying that Martine McCutcheon never was, isn’t now, never has been fat, as the character of Natalie was repeatedly referred to in the movie. Again I wonder if that would be any different if made today? I digress. In short, let’s stop saying ‘man up’ shall we? We want our boys to grow up to become men who aren’t afraid to have feelings and share them, rather than bottle it all up like a ‘real man’ would.
Some time ago I came across the Instagram account of Karen Dobres, a director at Lewes FC. In 2017, Lewes became the FIRST professional or semi-professional club in the world to start treating its women footballers the same as its men – the same playing budgets, same pitch, same training facilities. And after just 2 seasons they had quadrupled the women’s gate figures! I wanted to know about this club, about Karen, and so I asked her to write a guest blog post. Grab a cuppa, and have a read: this is a great story (and not just because we learn that women were actually banned from playing football by the FA back in 1921! And mostly likely because women’s games drew greater crowds than the mens!). And do check out the links at the end where you can find out how to become an owner, because Lewes FC is 100% fan-owned and not-for-profit, using the power of football to create social change.
‘Thea Chops Books believes in sharing messages of equality and acceptance, and teaching our little ones that they can be whoever they want in life.’
Suzanne Hemming, Author, Thea Chops Books
Why has Suzanne asked me to write a blog post here about football?
What has football to do with self-acceptance and freedom from stereotyping? What has it to do with your children’s’ futures? And isn’t it one of the last places you’d look for equality and acceptance…?
Why Football?
Let me explain, with two examples from my own kids (boy, now 19; girl, now 23).
In 2017 three things happened in close succession.
1) My daughter passed her driving test, and took her younger brother out for a spin. Loudly and persistently catcalled by two white van men (‘Hey sexy, where you going? etc) she didn’t react at all, so used to it was she at just 18. He though – just 14 and a boy – was flabbergasted. Not only that they had shouted at his sister unprovoked just for existing as a woman, but because she hadn’t batted an eyelid. Now of course at 19 he understands that not only is this behaviour normal, but he must also look out for girlfriends’ and their drinks in nightclubs in case they are spiked, or worse.
2) My daughter and her friends would chat with me around the kitchen table about politics, social issues, and their lives, but seemed to morph into different beings over on Instagram. On that public platform they’d pose in nightclub toilets above captions like ‘Yeah’ and ‘chillin’’. All perfectly fine, but where on earth was the rest of them in public? The thoughts and reflections, the determinations they shared, the substance.
3) My local football club became the first in the world to pay their women footballers the same as their men and made international headlines for our small town. And I didn’t even know women played football.
Don’t judge though.
Unwelcome Women
You see, all my life footballers had been men – on the telly, on the back pages of newspapers, in jacuzzis with WAGS. Football was by men, was consumed by men, and featured men – women were decorations on footballer’s arms. And I’d been to just the one match (Brentford – my cousin played for them), felt threatened by loutish male fans, decided it wasn’t for me, and dropped it from my radar.
Looking back, I’d been meant to feel that way. At school in the 70s we girls weren’t allowed to play football. Only the boys would play – taking up the whole playground at break times to do it – and leaving us girls to jump rope or play hopscotch round the edges.
Following Lewes’ ground-breaking decision, I went down the road to The Dripping Pan to watch Lewes FC Women play and had an epiphany. These young women – strong, powerful, decisive, assertive, and working in a team, right here on a public platform – were the antidote to sexist conditioning that saw women and girls as decorations, and as lesser than boys and men.
The problem was that following this football club’s bold move to split playing budgets down the middle, critics (male ones) were saying the women didn’t deserve to be paid the same because they didn’t draw the same crowds. This was true – at that point Lewes FC Men got an average gate of around 450 and the women just 120.
However, the club responded by targeting and welcoming ‘unwelcome women’, like myself, to the game. But, as I was to learn, it’s truer to say BACK to the game.
Lewes FC Defender Ellie Hack
The Ban
I discovered that women were in fact banned from playing football in this country back in 1921, at a point when they were drawing crowds greater than men could muster. So the FA decided – in a 15 minute meeting – that it was ‘a sport quite unsuitable for women’ and could harm them gynaecologically were they continued to kick a ball and run around a pitch.
Knowing what I know now, as a director of the club, and working with footballers, it hurts and angers me even to write this ‘herstory’. But it drives me too. Because football with 3.6 billion fans (mostly men) around the globe is the world’s most popular sport, and a microcosm of our wider patriarchal society. What happens in football has a huge impact on the actual world. Why? Because it affects men’s heart and minds like nothing else. Think of the men in your life who are fans of the game: how much time and thought do they devote to it? How much passion do they have for it? So where is the best place to demonstrate and have a conversation about the power of gender equality with those who can really do something about it (ie, men)? That’s right, it’s the beautiful game.
Former Lewes FC player Georgia Bridges at The Dripping Pan
Fans Of Change
It took two seasons to quadruple the women’s gate figure by actually letting people know about women’s matches and what they could expect at them. By 2019 the women’s gate had quadrupled and the men’s had risen too, thanks to the boldness and buzz of ‘Equality FC’. There were clever match day posters designed to interest unwelcome women, and themes and campaigns to attract them in solidarity with our cause (Prosecco on tap, and world record for how many suffragettes at a football match anyone?). Both first teams were promoted the season after the introduction of ‘Equality FC’, and the men’s gate rose too. The media attention was overwhelming and remains high to this day.
As sexism and corruption are the wallpaper of football (there are too many examples to mention here but try the location and quality of pitches, TV exposure, pay, resources, medical care, newspaper inches, cup prize figures for starters) our club is streets ahead of others in terms of the way we treat our players, fans and owners.
The agenda of Lewes FC is set by its ownership model. We’re a not-for-profit community benefit society, and as such we use football as a vehicle for social change. We are NOT about making profits for private shareholders, instead we aim to create value for the community who own us. Hence the social campaigning.
L to R Ollie Tanner, Razzaq Coleman De-Graft, Joe Taylor
Call Him Out
The latest step in our gender equality work is our campaign to #CallHimOut.
Because the other side of female empowerment is, of course, the fight against toxic masculinity.
Having formed a ‘SisterShips’ network with like-minded groups empowering women and girls, we were struck as a club, by the outpouring of grief and anger following last year’s high profile spate of violence against women and girls. Our SisterShips were upset at the way women were effectively being made to take responsibility for the violence against them when the onus should be on the perps – who were men.
So, having strong male role models in Lewes FC Men, we discussed what the team as male allies could do. Our amazing male players decided to call out misogynistic language and behaviours in themselves and in their changing room, in the belief that these micro-aggressions could fuel a wider rape culture. They made public pledges on twitter to #CallHimOut, and are now working on the movement through dialogue and awareness training. They aim to mentor our under 18s boys team next.
Inequality is SOOO Last Season
As we welcome more girls and women to our historic ground, ‘The Dripping Pan’, as we tell our story to schools, colleges, journalists and business conferences, so we loosen society’s restrictions a little more. As more girls realise they have a bona fide choice between ballet shoes and football boots, so do boys. As more girls learn the leadership skills football has to offer, so boys learn that they don’t always have to be the strong ones – they can relax, be vulnerable, cry when they need to. As we pay and resource men and women the same in football, so we tell the world, and all our children – it really is ok to be you.
As many of you will already know, over the last couple of months we've been busy crowdfunding, to raise £5,000 so we can gift 1,000 copies of our latest book, How Frank Helped Hank, to UK primary schools.
I almost can't belive I get to type this, but we did it! We raised over £5,000 via Boys Cry Too: Let's Change the Message. And this means we can now gift those 1,000 copies of our award-winning book, to key stage one classrooms, around the UK. And change the messages that children receive. Because it's ok not to be ok. It's ok for boys to cry too. And the best first step to feeling better is to talk about it.
If you're a primary school reading this, and you haven't emailed us yet then please do ASAP and let us know if you'd like a copy.
This article was first published in Motherdom Magazine in December 2019.
I’m currently writing my third book, and tackling the subject of toxic masculinity, in illustrated rhyme, for kids aged 3-8. I like a challenge!
But why am I writing about such a big subject for children?
I didn’t really plan to write about toxic masculinity, though I had started to read more about it and become more aware of what an issue it is. And then one day, my daughter and I visited a butterfly house at a local museum. It was beautiful. And hot! Butterfly houses are always hot! But the butterflies themselves were an amazing array of colours, and my daughter loved watching them flutter about the room. Quite magical really.
And then we of course, exited through the gift shop, as one must do leaving a museum of any kind! The shop attached to the butterfly house was, as you’d expect, filled with butterfly-themed toys, games and books. We stood and looked at the shelves of gifts, and next to us stood a small group; two children, a boy and a girl, and I think their mum. While the girl flicked through a book about flowers, the young boy, perhaps aged about 4 or 5, picked up a wand. A beautiful, sparkling, glittering wand that had a shiny lilac butterfly where the star would normally be. He looked up, his face filled with so much excitement that it made me smile watching him, and asked if he could have it. And the mum, snatched it from his hands and said, “What d’you want that for? That’s a bit girly! Why d’you want a girl’s toy?” And she laughed.
This is toxic masculinity. The assumption that boys should behave in a ‘masculine’ way. That behaving like girls, is a bad thing; liking something traditionally thought of as ‘for girls’ is a bad thing; a thing to be mocked.
There is a very set idea, in society, of what it is to be a man: behaving in a certain way, talking in a certain way, hobbies, jobs, colour preferences, the list goes on. Not conforming to these masculine standards can often lead to men being called ‘girly’, or worse. It can lead to bullying, in the playground or in the pub, and can mean that men suppress their true likes and dislikes, in favour of being thought of as “manly”. And so engrained is this idea in society, that we all buy into it, and we’ve all been guilty of thinking that way. Who hasn’t joked with a partner, brother, or friend that they squealed like a girl, ran like a girl, threw like a girl? I’ve definitely done it.
But if we stop and think about the messages these phrases send, to both boys and girls, it does not make make for pretty reading. By the age of six, children associate intelligence with being male, and the importance of ‘niceness’ with being female. It impacts on the gender pay gap, as fewer girls seek jobs in STEM. The more we tell boys to stop behaving like girls, the more likely it is that they will view girls as beneath them, and that the girls will see being female as somehow ‘less than’. This can have implications that lead to higher self harm rates amongst young woman, or contribute to abusive behaviour within male/female relationships.
I think about that little boy, and tell that story when I do book readings in schools. I talk to the children about how that little boy may have felt being belittled by his mum. How the little girl may have felt being told something she might like isn’t good enough for her younger brother. What do children internalise when they hear these messages? Will that little boy ever share what he likes again with the adults in his life? Will he be honest with them, with himself? Will his embarrassment turn to anger and will he go on to mock another child’s preferences? Will that little girl think she is less than her brother? Will her self esteem drop? Will her confidence in her skills or her choices lessen?
Will they be happy?
And that’s why I’m writing my third book, tackling toxic masculinity in illustrated rhyme for kids, boys, and girls, aged 3-8. Because every child deserves the chance to be happy in life. We all do! Being ourselves, doing what we feel is right for us, regardless of what society thinks (about what colour we like, what job we do, whether we stay at home with our children or go back to work, bottle, breast, medical birth, or home birth…. Another list that goes on!), this is the best way to achieve balance and happiness. If doing what feels right is in part important for adult mental wellbeing, then it’s true for kids too.
How Frank Helped Hank was published on 13th October 2020
In a previous post, I wrote about how Toxic Masculinity is damaging to boys and men. And I mentioned that it can be equally damaging for girls and women. And here’s why:
If you tell a boy that he does something ‘like a girl’ for example cry / throw / run etc, and are using the saying to stop him from doing it that way, or to mock him, both the boy in question, and any boys or girls within earshot, internalise the idea that doing something ‘like a girl’ is bad.
To the girls internalising this message, they unconsciously take on board the idea that to be a girl is less than, that they are the other sex, second in line to boys. For the boys who hear it, they too internalise the idea that girls are less than they are. Not much room for men and women to view and treat each other as equals if they grow up with this unconscious bias.
And what if a boy enjoys doing something, like many girls are known to do? Play with dolls, wear pink, dance? Tell this boy often enough that he has to stop being like a girl, and at best, he will hide his true feelings, his likes and dislikes from you. He may deliberately act in a more ‘boyish’ way to further hide his preferences for toys or favourite colours, and internalise any shame he feels for liking something you’ve made fun of. At worst. this shame might lead him to mock other boys, or to take out his frustrations on girls, people who he sees being able to make the choices he can’t. Shame him enough and he might never show his feelings again, or choose to hide them with aggression to prove how ‘manly’ he is, which can only have a negative impact on the women in his life, be that a sister, friend or partner.
So while toxic masculinity is damaging to boys and men, it’s pretty rubbish for girls and women too. No one wins.
Not much room for men and women to view and treat each other as equals if they grow up with this unconscious bias.
Our new book, How Frank Helped Hank, tackles the subject of toxic masculinity. But what is toxic masculinity?
It’s a term used to describe the societal expectations placed on boys and men, that can have a damaging affect on them, and as a consequence, on women. It’s the outdated idea that there are traditional male gender roles, that men, strong men, manly men, winners, must behave in a certain way. That being seen to be this strong, manly type of man, is the most desirable way to be. So from a young age we tell our boys to ‘man up’. We tell them, ‘don’t cry like a girl’. We belittle them if they ‘throw like a girl’ or ‘run like a girl’. We throw around the word ‘girl’ (or other more sweary variations of the word!) as a derogatory term, intended to make fun of the boy or man on the receiving end. But why is this damaging?
In the simplest of ways it’s just bizarre in 2020 that we expect people to behave in a certain way, and not just allow them to be themselves. But there is a more serious reason.
In the UK, one of the biggest causes of death for men under the age of 45, is suicide. On the home page of their website, CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) states that every week in the UK, 125 people take their own life, and that 75% of all UK suicides, are male. These numbers are shockingly high; I was astounded, and so saddened when I first read about them. And I wondered why it is that boys and men are more vulnerable to this.
The CALM website lists 3 societal pressures that boys and men live under, which likely contribute to this:
They feel a pressure to be a winner and can more easily feel like the opposite.
They feel a pressure to look strong and feel ashamed of showing any signs of [perceived] weakness.
They feel a pressure to appear in control of themselves and their lives at all times.
It’s not a massive leap to understand that a childhood of being told to man up, and not cry like a girl, negatively impacts on a man’s ability to access and express his emotions, and seek help.
Blimey Suze this is all a bit heavy for a kids’ book isn’t it? We can think that, or we can start to change the messages that boys receive so they are not embarrassed to ask for help when they need it. And also, y’know, so they don’t grow up to be macho dicks with gigantic egos and a total lack of empathy for their fellow humans!
So if toxic masculinity is damaging for our boys, why and how does it negatively impact on our girls? More on that in our next blog post: Why Toxic Masculinity Hurts Women Too.
