The Day a-Three-year-old Learned Toxic Masculinity

how we teach boys to fear softness

Before you go into this, I just want to make one thing clear: I WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY HATE OR BADTALK ON MY FAMILY. I love them. I am not writing this to bash them but to show how incidents a child experiences can be reflected in the adult they become.

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I stayed over with my uncle last weekend. They’re based in the East.

He has three really young kids. Like the eldest is five years old, type of young.

This same uncle has the same type of Igbo man anger I have been surrounded with all my life. Since he was stressed over the event he was planning, his annoyed side was active a lot more than his pleasant can-dash-you-forty-k-if you-asked side.

At first, I noticed that his first son, behaved like him, down to the temper. The boy’s tantrums were funny coming from someone pint-sized but deep down it was still not right.

My older female cousin (that was also staying over) and I, tried to discipline him when he threw a tantrum, and he immediately heeded but I’m not sure that will stick.

Anyway, unlike the first son, the second son is basically an angel. He was the type of child that would just sit on your lap and do nothing but exist in your presence. You give him a phone and you don’t have to wrestle to get it back.

Naturally, I took a liking to him and babied him. To the point he followed me places and his mum(my aunt) got upset because anytime she wanted to beat him, I didn’t let her.

One night, my uncle saw me and my older cousin cuddling the boy, who was watching TikTok with me and casually mentioned us turning his three year old son, soft and feminine.

It screamed weird Igbo toxic masculinity to me, but I ignored it. It was a passing comment, probably a joke.

But the incident that had me thinking, happened the next night.

The same boy I was cuddling yesterday came to me, picked up a bottle of pink nail polish and gave it to me to paint his nails.

He was a little kid and had probably seen him mum’s nails and wanted it, so I obliged.

I mean, it’s just nail polish right (famous last words)

I painted his left hand and he was so excited. Like he was constantly reminding me when I delayed too long before painting the next finger.

For his right hand he picked her blue nail polish.

My older cousin mentioned the remark his dad made the day before, saying that our uncle wouldn’t like it. But I had made up my mind. As long as he liked it, I was ready to fight tooth and nail for his right to temporarily wear nail polish.

I painted both hands and he walked around, proudly and majestically with his coloured fingers on full display.

He was happy. Really happy.

I think he ended up going to where all the adults were to show them too.

Then my little brother came to me and said that my (sweet) grandma saw the nails, got upset and demanded they should be cleaned off immediately.

I stood up from the bed, ready to fight for the boy's right to autonomy and coloured fingernails. Like bro he's just three for fucks sake.

But then he came to me, almost crying, spirit broken and asked me to clean off his nails and he didn't want them anymore.

Unlike before, the more I delayed in cleaning a nail, the more his hysteria increased. He only stopped crying when all nails were back to normal.

He left the room after that and my cousin looked at me with that ‘told-you-so’ look.

When the boy came back to the room and table, happy and playful, he looked past the nail polish and fiddled with something else on the table.

Somewhere in his little brain, a seed had taken root. He had forgotten he was upset, didn't fully understand why but he just knew not to touch the nail polish.

Toxic Neural pathway created.

Why are we like this?

As this goes on, more and more regularly, new things you know not to do but don’t know why, it shapes the kind of boy he can grow into.

This is how we grow men who don’t know why they flinch away from softness, only that they’ve been told it’s not for them.

Men who have been told to man up, not allowed to cry or break-down. No way to properly process negative emotions.

This is how we grow men into the toxic masculinity mindset.