Masculinity as a Scoreboard

Masculinity is not inherently harmful. Strength, courage, sexuality, ambition, protection, leadership, competitiveness, and self-sufficiency can all function as healthy parts of a man’s identity.

The problem begins when masculinity becomes a performance with penalties for failing the test.

The Norms Do Not All Have the Same Effect

A major meta-analysis by Wong, Ho, Wang, and Miller (2017) synthesized findings from 78 samples examining conformity to masculine norms and mental-health-related outcomes. Overall conformity was associated with less favorable mental-health outcomes and less favorable attitudes toward psychological help-seeking, but the effects varied by norm. Three norms were especially consistently associated with negative outcomes: self-reliance, power over women, and playboy behavior.

A man’s desire to be strong is not the same construct as believing he must never need anyone. Sexuality is not the same construct as measuring manhood through sexual conquest. Leadership is not the same as power over women.

When Manhood Feels Threatened

Masculine discrepancy stress is distress experienced when a man believes he does not meet the masculine standards expected of him. Reidy, Berke, Gentile, and Zeichner (2014) found that masculine discrepancy stress was associated with intimate partner violence in their sample. Later research by Sileo and colleagues (2022) found discrepancy stress was associated with anger, lower self-esteem, powerlessness, and greater odds of physical intimate partner violence among U.S. men.

These studies do not mean that men who feel insecure about masculinity become violent. They show that the psychological strain of feeling insufficiently masculine can be measured and can interact with anger, power, and aggression.

When the Scoreboard Is External

Cultural versions of manhood often provide visible metrics: money, sexual access, physical dominance, social reputation, toughness, professional status, possessions, or the ability to remain unaffected. Inner stability is harder to display. Emotional maturity has no luxury logo. Secure attachment cannot be counted like sexual partners. A capacity to repair conflict is less visible than winning one.

Research does not prove that any particular man consciously keeps such a scoreboard. It does show that specific norms emphasizing dominance, sexual conquest, and radical self-reliance can carry measurable mental-health costs.

Black Men Are Not Experiencing Gender in a Racial Vacuum

Powell, Adams, Cole-Lewis, Agyemang, and Upton (2016) studied 458 African American men recruited primarily through barbershops in the U.S. South and West. More frequent everyday racism and greater salience of masculinity norms contributed to higher barriers to health help-seeking. The relationship between racism and help-seeking barriers was partly mediated through diminished sense of control and depressive symptoms.

A Black man may be responding simultaneously to expectations of manhood and to a racial environment that questions his competence, threatens his safety, restricts opportunity, stereotypes his sexuality, or treats vulnerability as dangerous.

A Better Distinction Than Strong Versus Weak

Healthy strength can include interdependence. Healthy sexuality can include desire without needing conquest to verify identity. Healthy leadership can include responsibility without domination. Healthy emotional control can include regulation without emotional disappearance. Healthy independence can coexist with attachment.

The goal of Black men’s mental-health work should not be to strip men of masculinity. It should be to expand the number of ways a man is allowed to know that he is a man.

What the Research Can and Cannot Say

The evidence supports an association between some traditional masculine norms and poorer mental-health-related outcomes. It supports the existence of masculine discrepancy stress and the conclusion that race-related experiences and threats to control can compound help-seeking barriers among African American men.

It does not support diagnosing individual men from cultural archetypes or treating Black masculinity itself as pathological. The more defensible conclusion is narrower: when a man’s sense of worth depends on repeatedly demonstrating a limited set of masculine credentials, his available range of behavior can shrink. Mental health expands that range again.

References

Powell, W., Adams, L. B., Cole-Lewis, Y., Agyemang, A., & Upton, R. D. (2016). Masculinity and race-related factors as barriers to health help-seeking among African American men. Behavioral Medicine, 42(3), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2016.1165174

Reidy, D. E., Berke, D. S., Gentile, B., & Zeichner, A. (2014). Man enough? Masculine discrepancy stress and intimate partner violence. Personality and Individual Differences, 68, 160–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.04.021

Sileo, K. M., Luttinen, R., Muñoz, S., & Hill, T. D. (2022). Mechanisms linking masculine discrepancy stress and the perpetration of intimate partner violence among men in the United States. American Journal of Men’s Health, 16(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/15579883221119355

Wong, Y. J., Ho, M.-H. R., Wang, S.-Y., & Miller, I. S. K. (2017). Meta-analyses of the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and mental health-related outcomes. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(1), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000176