Ali Haxton

ALI HAXTON

Danielle Goodland

What does it mean to be a man? To be honest, that is an excellent question. I think traditionally to be a man is to be strong, to take care of people. Certainly in a family aspect, you need to be seen as the breadwinner. You are the top dog. But today things are changing a little bit. It is becoming okay to not be the manly stereotype that we once had to be. To be a man today is very different than it used to be. A lot of the time, I’ve experienced not living up to what I think it is to be a man. I’ve never really been the stereotypical manly guy. I’ve never been physically strong, or muscly, even though I’m tall. I’ve never been into manly things. In terms of my personality and male stereotypes, I tend to approach everything with caution. I also worry and overthink a lot about the little things in my life. I can sometimes get insecure about what people think about me, which doesn’t fit the male personality stereotype. I’ve never really felt that I live up to that stereotype, but growing up I’ve learned that it’s okay not to.

Danielle Goodland

Toxic masculinity is such a big issue. I’ve got mates who play rugby, I know what they get up to when they’re not playing and it’s the stereotypical lad culture. It can be a bit intimidating sometimes. I think toxic masculinity still exists because people didn’t speak out against it. It’s dangerous because it forces men to feel that they need to fit the male stereotype when in reality we don’t need to, and it could make men pretend to be someone they’re not. I think it’s important we hold each other to account with lad culture and sexual assault too. If you surround yourself with people who always agree with you and say yes to whatever you’re doing, you’re never going to grow or improve. You’ll repeat the same toxic actions and cycles. I think we need to be more open about who we are. We don’t need to play into these masculinity stereotypes anymore. We need to be more inclusive of all types of men. I think the fact I’m doing this interview is a testament to how we are realising the toxic nature of masculinity.

Danielle Goodland

I think male suicide is our biggest challenge because we aren’t opening up. From personal experience, it’s really hard to open up about these feelings. As a man, you’re told be strong and keep a brave face. I think we need education on what help there is out there and to let men know that it’s okay to talk. I think men are more prone to suicide because at least from what I’ve experienced, we rarely talk about our deeper thoughts and feelings. It then makes opening up more difficult because we don’t know how people will react, whether they will react in a positive way or not. When we don’t open up, our thoughts and feelings stay deep down, we don’t deal with our problems, which can in the worst cases lead to suicide. It’s very easy to say you need to talk to someone, but it’s so hard to open up. I’m contradicting myself now, because if we get more people talking it’ll make it easier to open up about it. We just need to be persistent. Make sure we are all talking about our feelings and are open to others talking to us about it.