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An essay about toxic masculinity that accompanies the Neuro Networks: Disruptors of 2025 digital exhibition. Check out the full exhibition in my LinkedIn profile.
When conversations about masculinity surface, they often become polarised. The language hardens until the polarisation becomes entrenched.
The underlying question is:
What are boys being taught about shame, rejection and power?
Revisiting Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë recently, I was struck less by its gothic drama and more by its psychological clarity.
Heathcliff is not born cruel.
He is shaped by exclusion, humiliation and rigid social hierarchy.
When Catherine chooses Edgar Linton — the socially secure, respectable option — Heathcliff experiences it not simply as heartbreak, but as confirmation of his unworthiness.
He lacks the language to process that humiliation and instead turns it into a toxic version of masculinity that craves dominance.
Brontë does not excuse him. However, she shows how unprocessed shame, when fused with identity, can turn toxic.
Nearly two centuries later, the emotional pattern feels familiar.
When Rejection Is Experienced as Threat
Some years ago, I had an experience in my own home that revealed how quickly boundary-testing behaviour can escalate when rejection is perceived not as information, but as insult.
What began as minor disputes over practical matters shifted gradually into reframing, pressure and attempts to destabilise responsibility.
Administrative boundaries were recast as personal affronts.
Financial obligation became leverage.
“No” was treated as negotiable.
The situation was resolved swiftly and safely. However, what stayed with me was not the confrontation itself but the underlying certainty and the belief that refusal was a challenge to overcome, rather than a boundary to respect.
This certainty mirrors a pattern that Brontë depicts, showing what happens whe. emotional resilience is underdeveloped; when humiliation feels intolerable, control can appear stabilising.
This is not about masculinity being inherently harmful, instead it is about what happens when masculinity is narrowly defined.
The Problem of Narrow Scripts
If boys grow up absorbing messages that:
Vulnerability is weakness
Worth is tied to status
Emotional expression invites ridicule
Rejection signals failure
…then shame has nowhere to go.
In that framework, dominance can become the only socially acceptable outlet for distress.
Control, then, is misinterpreted as strength.
Certainty is mistaken for confidence.
Persistence crosses into coercion.
What some refer to as “toxic masculinity” is better understood as a rigid dominance-based script: one that restricts emotional range, equating power with identity.
The issue is not masculinity itself, but how some people project it.
When emotional vocabulary narrows, behavioural responses also narrow.
The Digital Amplification of Masculine Scripts
Brontë wrote in an era shaped by class hierarchy and social codes. Today, cultural scripts are shaped at scale by digital ecosystems, as much as they are by families or schools.
Online spaces can amplify grievance-based narratives about gender and power.
Communities exist that frame rejection as injustice, present women as adversaries, and promote dominance as proof of worth.
For young people navigating identity, belonging and self-esteem, such narratives can provide clarity, however it is also true that this can come at a cost.
This risk is heightened for some neurodivergent young people. Adolescents who experience social isolation, struggle with nuance, or gravitate toward literal explanations may be particularly susceptible to rigid, black-and-white frameworks about status and rejection. When online content reinforces entitlement or humiliation-based narratives, it can entrench distorted relational expectations.
The Online Safety Act 2023 reflects growing recognition that digital environments shape behaviour. By placing duties on platforms to reduce harmful content and strengthen protections for children, it acknowledges that safeguarding must extend beyond physical spaces.
Legislation alone cannot cultivate emotional literacy. However, it can reduce amplification of narratives that normalise coercion or hostility.
Digital culture is not neutral. It educates — implicitly and persistently.
Emotional Literacy as Safeguarding
If we are serious about preventing coercive or destabilising behaviour, we must widen the emotional vocabulary available to boys and young men.
This means teaching:
That rejection is survivable.
That shame can be articulated without collapse.
That anger often signals vulnerability.
That boundaries are not threats.
It also means modellng leadership that does not equate authority with dominance.
In educational settings, this requires pastoral sensitivity and digital literacy. In policy, it requires sustained attention to online harm. In communities, it requires spaces where boys can process confusion and disappointment without humiliation.
We need masculinity that can deal with rejection, as that will mean that men are less likely to resort to forms of control.
Strength, in this broader sense, includes self-regulation.
Confidence includes empathy.
Authority includes accountability.
From Literature to Leadership
What I like about Wuthering Heights is its psychological insight into human relationships and emotions. Heathcliff’s abuse was not brought on by lack of emotions, but instead by incapabaility of dealing with humiliation and transforming it into strength.
The same dynamic, in subtler forms, continues to surface in contemporary contexts, whether they be our interpersonal relationships or our online discourse.
This is why discussions about masculinity must move beyond accusation and defensiveness. The question is not whether masculinity is good or bad. The question is how it is defined, reinforced and taught.
If dominance remains central to masculine identity, then control will continue to appear rational to those who feel diminished.
If emotional literacy is normalised, the script changes.
A Wider Definition of Strength
We don’t need to diminish masculinity, we just need to expand it.
A broader definition allows boys and men to experience:
Rejection without humiliation
Authority without coercion
Intimacy without entitlement
Rather than this expansion be ideological, instead it is preventative.
When it comes to literature and legislation, the pattern is clear: shame that cannot be spoken often becomes power that must be asserted.
If we widen the emotional vocabulary available to young people — particularly in digital spaces — it reduces the likelihood of dominance becoming identity.
This benefits everyone.
Digital curator specialising in inclusive museum events, female community leadership and empowerment, and digital safeguarding policy.
Better Transitions
This essay is part of Better Transitions, the digital exhibition sponsor - supporting organisations to enable better transitions for young people, from education into work.