Men, Love and Violence: A piece for the TOI
It’s said that the patriarchal violence women face gets acknowledged only when it kills her – when a case of domestic or intimate partner violence becomes a case of murder. At what point then do we recognise the violence that patriarchy enacts on men?
The NCRB report for 2021, Crime in India, reveals that in 2021, nearly13,000 people killed themselves over love. 64% of these were young men aged 18-30.
The fact that men disappointed in love do violence – either to others or themselves has little to do with love and much to do with what men are expected to be. Masculinity is a script each man must play out as a hero, which must end in triumph. Patriarchy tells men they are special and entitled to primacy – but it only celebrates those men who succeed by its narrow standards. Life is an exam question with one right and one wrong answer–dominate or be dominated. If you are not the winner, you are, obviously the loser, worthy of humiliation.
To feel anguished by such a debilitating system is natural, but to reveal it is to reveal weakness - to open yourself to ridicule. In this context love becomes two things: a prize to be won and endorse your masculinity, but also the refuge for and balm to all your private pain, almost like an idealised mother.
One glimpses some of this stormy inner life in accounts young men have written on Agents of Ishq. One contributor writes“By my final years of school, expectations of love, sex, relationships had been shaped to a great extent. A girl’s worth was equal to her beauty and a boy’s worth was equal to how many such “worthy” girls liked him. You could earn claps for excelling in academics, but if girls weren’t crazy about you, you would still be made to feel like a loser. Life, with its inequalities, ruthlessness, and competition, doesn’t help. There are more men wherever you go – universities, workplaces, or dating websites. I used to think once I had a relationship I would feel good about myself. (Anand Yadav, Love was not the Solution to my Masculine Anxieties).
When all other men are competition, and power can be maintained always only through the mask of control, love relationships become the only locus of intimacy – and by extension the locus of all the desperation you must never reveal. There are no other spaces in which to build emotional resilience, including friendships.
As another contributor writes, “We’d talk about the size of porn videos we downloaded or watched, the best porn stars. But we never did talk honestly about sex and our emotions. We hit the bottle when lonely or disappointed because of rejection. We didn’t discuss our ignorance and apprehensions on how to have sex, our physical and emotional needs of being validated, and held, or how to build nurturing relationships and handle jealousy. This was also when many of us weren’t being hugged or held by parents who distanced themselves when we became adults. If one wasn’t dating, then one would be bereft of any physical affection.”(Sudhamshu Mitra, My Male Friends and I Talked About Sex Constantly, But Not How We Really Felt About It)
Masculinity also prevents men also from acknowledging mental health crises and seeking therapy or medical help. They seek solace through unsolicited intimacies, piteous DMs on social media to unknown women who are supposed to save them from misery. Failure leads to despair and embitterment about women, not reflection. Their entitlement is their greatest prison.
Love is asked to carry the burden of masculinity – yet love is also not easy in our society. Caste, religion, community and simply exercising personal choice are barriers-the same things that define what it means to be a powerful man also come in the way of finding love.
Masculine crises are acknowledged mostly in negative ways. Lost love is painted as betrayal by popular culture – kaisa sila diya tune mere pyaar ka. This is echoed by Mens Rights Activists who also present men’s suffering as a betrayal by the law. These keep men fixed in their patriarchal space, allowing no space for reflection on a different journey for yourself.
What we need is a new conversation that is genuinely healing – beyond the diagnostic clichés of phrases like toxic masculinity. We critique the media on how it represents women and queer people – but why don’t we question it on how it deifies only powerful men who ‘don’t take no for an answer’? We could use a new conversation about what it means to be a person- not just a man. What it means to love others, to have friendships, to cherish compassion and decency, not just power. And a new conversation about love – as something mutual, something possible, a renewable resource, not a zero sum game. Perhaps those two conversations are really the same one.
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