Across history and culture, masculinity has been defined primarily by what it is not — not feminine, not weak, not dependent — which makes it a perpetually anxious achievement rather than a settled ground. The costs of this construction are borne not only by men but by everyone who encounters men shaped by it: the emotional constriction, the prohibition on vulnerability, the equation of worth with dominance. To examine masculinity is not to diminish men but to ask whether this particular version of what a man is supposed to be is actually serving anyone well.
Each step builds on the last.