Winner: Write the World Op-Ed Competition 2025
As a boy, I had an instinctive curiosity about dresses. Time and again, I would sneak into my mother’s dressing room, run my fingers through the hanging fabrics, and, if no one was watching, put one on in front of the mirror — a narrow-shouldered boy looked back at me from his overflowing dress.
Of course, these explorations were done with utmost vigilance and in absolute secrecy. Even at the age of four, a boy knows he is not supposed to wear dresses; he also knows he should shout, fight, play gun games, and like the color blue. From the very start, a boy knows he is different from and opposite to a girl.
Even to this day, I am bewildered by the mysterious process through which boys become boys (To me, it feels like indoctrination).
No one has ever told me what being a boy actually entails. But many people have tried to tell me what being a boy cannot entail: tears, quietness, dresses, high-pitched laughter, plutonic relationships with girls, and more. Why? I don’t know, and from questioning and fighting back, I’ve discovered that they don’t know either.
It seems like the only thing masculinity actually entails is a perpetual fear of losing it. And as a kid whose interests frequently run into the many “cannots” of masculinity, I might have already lost mine. Many of my traits — cleanliness, quietness, and queerness — seem to render me an outcast in the masculine community, yet some of my other characteristics — assertiveness, leadership, and responsibility — are conventionally deemed as masculine. Caught adrift between masculinity and its absence, I grow increasingly frustrated with this nebulous yet restrictive idea.
What should I do about my masculinity?
Looking beyond my puzzling selfhood, the same confusion is echoed throughout society. In recent years, we have witnessed a growing divide that seems to tear up any remaining common ground on the issue of what it means to be a man. On the one hand, the rise of the “manosphere” and misogynist figures like Donald Trump actively advocate for the return of (toxic) masculinity (Kahn). On the other hand, the growth of radicalized feminist movements, like the Korean 4B movement, boycotted men and masculinity as a whole (Sarnoff). Sinking between two ever-widening extremes that see each other as perpetual and irreconcilable enemies, our society seems to find itself in a manliness deadlock.
What should we do about our masculinity?
Well, we need a shift in the way we look and treat masculinity. Instead of seeing it as a defining identity, we should see it as traits — traits available to anyone and everyone.
Masculinity cannot be defined. Up to this day, we have never had a universally-accepted definition— and we probably never will. Ever. Any attempt to assign one set of characteristics to half of the world’s population is bound to fail from the very start. So, instead of plummeting into never-ending debate spirals on what men should be, we should stop trying to reduce billions of boys and men into one set of standards.
In deconstructing a rigid masculine identity, we are empowering every boy and man.
For my whole life, I have felt confined by society’s expectations. In spite of the fact that I never liked to shout, fight, and play gun games, I spent a considerable amount of my childhood stranded in various after-school sports programs — basketball, tennis, soccer; you name it, I’ve tried them all — as my parents actively tried to “invent” my masculinity. “All the boys like it,” they would say. Well, clearly, not all the boys — at least one didn’t like any of them…
If we move on from the belief that all boys — regardless of background, interests, and gender identity — share a universal set of characteristics, a lot of the back-and-forth between me and my parents can be avoided. And surely, I am not the only boy who felt betrayed by the masculine identity — there are many of us.
Even for boys and men who aspire to conform to society’s expectations, moving beyond the ‘masculinity-as-identity mentality’ can be profoundly liberating. In a world where gender dynamics are rapidly changing (and changing for very good reasons), many men find it increasingly difficult to live up to the masculine model that has been passed down for centuries (Emba).
In almost half of US households, men are no longer the primary breadwinner — an essential tenet of traditional masculinity (Fry, Richard, et al.). In chasing after an identity that no longer represents reality, many men, especially young men, are feeling increasingly lost, frustrated, and angered, turning to the radicalism of Andrew-Tate-like misogynists for a sense of direction (Emba). However, this need not be the case if we can stop enforcing the static belief in an all-defining masculine identity. In moving away from the ‘masculinity-as-identity’ straightjacket, men can free themselves from their relentless pursuit of an unattainable masculine ideal and reorient their lives around self-discovery, understanding, and appreciation.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying that we should collectively abandon masculinity in its entirety. The traits that are commonly associated with it, in and of themselves, are very productive, healthy, and beneficial. A study by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, found that “…greater endorsement of masculinity predicted lower self-reported depression… lower internalized shame… better academic performance… and increased personal strength.” Clearly, positive associations exist between the practice of masculine traits and increased confidence, well-being, and life satisfaction. Personally, my assertiveness has helped me to stand up to discrimination and protected me from those who see my individualistic expression as a masculine betrayal.
In moving away from the ‘masculinity-as-identity’ mindset, we are not abandoning these powerful “masculine” traits; we are making them available to everyone and anyone.
To progress, we must take one step at a time. Maybe we can start by cheering on the little boy in his mother’s dress. Or, better yet, we can buy our boys dresses (if they want, of course).
Written by AWriter (China)
February 23, 2025
Footnotes
Emba, Christine. “Men Are Lost. Here’s a Map Out of the Wilderness.” The Washington Post, 10 July 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine-emba-masculinity-new-model/. Fry, Richard, et al. “In a Growing Share of U.S. Marriages, Husbands and Wives Earn About the Same.” Pew Research Center, Apr. 2023, Kahn, Matthew. “Dave Portnoy and the Rise of the ‘Manosphere’.” The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/magazine/dave-portnoy-manosphere.html. Mahalingam, R., and Balan, S. “Culture, Son Preference, and Beliefs About Masculinity.” Journal of Research on Adolescence, vol. 18, 2008, pp. 541-553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2008.00570.x. Sarnoff, Leah. “What is the 4B Movement? Trump’s Win Has Some Women Swearing Off Men.” ABC News, 8 Nov. 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/US/4b-movement-trumps-win-women-swearing-off-men/story?id=115622944.
About the Collaboration
The Sunday Diplomat collaborated with Write the World through the 2025 Op-Ed Competition to spotlight voices of the younger generation. Opinion pieces by writers from both organizations were communicated and published on respective websites. Write the World is “a nonprofit dedicated to developing teenagers’ writing and critical thinking skills.” The organization was developed at Harvard University in 2012 and involves 110K+ teens and educators representing 125 countries.
