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‘Masculinity is a such a primal force in boys and men, we need to find good ways to unleash it’

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Books about masculinity, it seems, are like buses: You wait ages for one, then three turn up at once. Two of the three books out this month exploring modern masculinity even have the same title: Man Up, by Rebecca Asher and Man Up: Surviving modern masculinity, by Jack Urwin.

The third of the triumvirate, Who Stole My Spear? How to be a man in the 21st century, is by Tim Samuels, presenter of BBC Radio’s Men’s Hour and one of the great contributor’s to our own book. Tim spoke to insideMAN about why he decided to write a book about men and where he thinks the conversation needs to go next.

1.) What inspired you to write Who Stole My Spear?

It was the eventual realisation that all the different pieces of the jigsaw came together as a picture – which showed that there was a real issue with masculinity we need to take to seriously as a society. So when you add up things like male prison rates, violence, Mental health, boys lagging behind at school, people being drawn to extreme politics and all that – it really felt like the modern male condition was something that needed to be explored urgently.

2.) Have you seen a change in the conversation about men, masculinity and men’s issues since you launched Men’s Hour? How/in what way?

When I first launched Men’s Hour the reaction was, what on earth have man got to complain about? And a lot of columnists – especially female – mocked that men needed to talk about anything apart from football. But over the last couple of years I’ve really noticed a sea change. People are taking male issues seriously, and we now have the likes of the Southbank Being a Man festival, the Telegraph and Huff Post have a male section – and insideMAN is a real testament to the bold thinking now going on around masculinity.

3.) What still needs to change about the mainstream conversation about men and men’s issues, in your opinion?

Man and mental health is such a crucial issue to get out there. The media are starting to wake up to this, but so much more needs to be done to provide the space and the right language to allow men to express how they feel when they are depressed etc. And big companies need to take responsibility for doing their bit – work is so central to man’s identity and well-being. Businesses just have so much more to do here, to provide work places that are going to be healthy for men and give them the right support.

4.) How has your perspective evolved i) since launching Men’s Hour ii) in the process of writing your book?

Over time I have become more and more convinced that we have to find good ways to vent masculinity. It is such a primal force in boys and men and unless we find ways to unleash this good masculinity it will find destructive outlets which will be bad for individuals and bad for society as a whole.

5.) What do you make of the fact three new books on men and masculinity have come out within four weeks of each other? (Your own, Jack Urwin’s and Rebecca Asher’s.)

I haven’t read the other books yet, so can’t really comment on what they are saying – but I guess men and masculinity is starting to hit the Zeitgeist which can only be a good thing.

6.) What has been the reaction to your book so far?

Who Stole My Spear? has had a great reaction so far…  We’ve been picked up by the national press, radio and television – and people really seem to want to have the conversation about good masculinity. And women have been really engaging with it too – and there’s hardly been any of the usual ‘what have men go to whinge about’ stuff. So, I’m strangely hopeful that it might generate some new thinking around the challenges that man face today

7.) What is the most important thing / understanding you would like readers of your book to take away from it?

That these really are challenging and absurd times to be a man, living in our caveman-designed bodies but following lives totally out of kilter with our design and how we have lived for thousands and thousands of years. But there are things that we can do, changes to how we live and work, that will make us more in tune with our masculinity – and ultimately make us happier as individuals and better as a society.

8.) Anything else you’d like to add?

It would be great if men could spread the word about all this stuff. We really need men on a grassroots level to start sharing these ideas and getting some momentum behind some of these really big ideas which affect all our lives. Viva la revolution.

Who Stole My Spear? How to be a man in the 21st century is available from Amazon

‘Masculinity isn’t toxic — our attitudes to it are’

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On Thursday night the world-famous, 200-year-old Cambridge Union Society — whose speakers have included everyone from Stephen Fry to the Dalai Lama — hosted a debate entitled: “This House Believes Masculinity is Damaging to Everyone”.

The six panelists debating the motion included insideMAN’s Features Editor, Dan Bell; Samaritans CEO, Ruth Sutherland; Marketing Director of the Lad Bible, Mimi Turner and Clinical Psychologist, Mental Health Campaigner and friend of insideMAN, Martin Seager.

Here’s the presentation Martin made as part of his powerful argument in opposition to the motion:

  1. Masculinity isn’t harmful or toxic, just our attitudes to it including the title of this debate! The implication is that masculinity requires genetic or social engineering! The masculine gender is the only group not protected by political correctness – the only group whose identity we can publicly demonise and get away with it – we don’t ask women, homosexual or disabled people or faith or ethnic groups to change who they are – we celebrate their identity – but we never celebrate things masculine – even Shakespeare is never celebrated for his gender – soldiers are never thanked for their gender — we only ever see the bad side of masculinity.
  1. Masculinity and femininity of course are the Yin and Yang of the Universe – they come as a system and shape each other.
  1. Masculinity isn’t something we choose or a role we play – that would insult transgender people for a start – it is an embodied and evolved part of our species. Gender is not a stereotype — it’s in fact closer to a universal archetype: You can’t split the mind and the body.
  1. It’s equally bad science to see gender as fixed and completely separate from each other – in science differences are measured by averages and there is room for a lot of individual variation and no human is 100% masculine or feminine.
  1. Even if masculine gender was just socialisation – males are raised largely by female adults – so what would that tell us about femininity and the origins of masculinity?
  1. My main point, however, is that males have evolved to protect the social group – the opposite of damaging it.
  1. Our freedom and democracy is based on much male sacrifice. Even at the height of “patriarchy” soldiers without the vote had to die in WWI because of their gender – the Battle of the Somme was near enough exactly a century ago – think Baldrick not Lord Melchett! – we never celebrate the gender of all these soldiers – and on the Titanic the average male survival rate was 20%, but for females 74% — so masculinity has always been about protecting women and children even at times of so called “male privilege”.
  1. Society to this day tolerates massive inequalities in risk, harm and death to males: There is an “empathy gap” — work related deaths are 97% male, homelessness 84%, addiction 75%, life expectancy — a four-year gap, suicides are 78% male, without any gender policy or strategy to tackle these issues. This “male gender blindness” reflects the assumed role of the male as protector. Working class male life (builders, soldiers, servicemen, miners, deep sea fishermen, bin men) carries on as before, unchanged – we all depend on it – it protects us and the risks are necessary.
  1. Masculinity, like anything, can be damaging when taken to extremes – macho culture is clearly not helpful, but this is only one extreme version of masculinity, not the norm.
  1. When damaged, genders do show different patterns of behavioural disturbance – men can be physically violent, sexually aggressive and abusive – but these are a damaged minority, an extreme that is not representative of a whole gender.
  1. Domestic violence in any case is 40% female on male but no-one takes male victimhood seriously and it is under-reported. Social psychology street experiments show that the same level of physical force used by male-on-female perpetrators elicits serious and horrified responses from the public, but female-on-male abuse elicits disregard or even humour.
  1. In the discourse around mental health, masculinity is not respected – it’s seen as emotionally illiterate and men are blamed for not opening up, when it is we who need to listen differently and honour the male gender and emotional style in the way we design services. When this happens  men do talk, open up and get better – men are not emotionally illiterate but differently literate.
  1. The positive value of masculine emotional life is never celebrated – e.g. control and focus in dangerous situations.
  1. It is not men or masculinity that’s toxic, it is our society that is toxic towards things masculine – just as society needed to change to support female identity, rights and needs, it’s also society that needs to change to help men, not men who need to stop being male.

To read about the excellent presentation made by Samaritans CEO, Ruth Sutherland, see their release here

Photo credit: The Samaritans

Is motoring still a typically masculine pursuit?

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Motoring has long been a common subject matter for gender stereotyping. In the early stages of child development, the choice of toys to play with is still largely gendered. Even when parents are supportive of boys playing with so-called ‘girly’ toys, the fact that there is still a strong recognition that there are ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ toys speaks volumes.

This distinction appears to lay the foundation for the generally macho image of motoring, but how far has this image endured in the 21st century?

There are some strong indications that the connection between motoring and masculinity is as strong as ever. The idea of men as more aggressive drivers, particularly young male teenage racers for instance, is not only still a common social stereotype, but also corroborated by DVLA records. The Telegraph reports that, according to the DVLA, 654,263 men were caught speeding in 2015, compared to only 267,290 women.

One explanation for this stark contrast is an inherent risk-taking tendency in men, which is less present in women, at least according to a 2012 psychological study. This disposition was “genetically shaped by evolution”, where men’s role as hunter-gatherers necessitated risk-taking, according to the study’s author Geoff Trickey.

‘Masculinity isn’t fixed’

Nevertheless, it still seems a bit of a stretch to contend that men speed chiefly because it is a ‘manly’ thing to do, at least not consciously. The fact that men can be seen to drive more recklessly doesn’t in itself display that men identify this behaviour with their masculinity per se. That is, this correlation arguably establishes a connection between men and certain driving habits, but not necessarily between motoring and their identity as men. More specifically, how individuals self-identify with their masculinity. It appears an entirely different question to ask to what extent men take pride in their motoring habits and interests, rather than merely their observable behaviour.

This aspect of identifying motoring with one’s own masculinity is somewhat harder to grasp, and one that appears to be changing with time. Masculinity as a concept isn’t fixed – the emergence of metrosexuality challenges this for example. Bearing that in mind, it’s something of a typical image of the baby boomer generation of men that they’re keen on cars, not merely taking control of driving, but also taking an interest in tinkering with running repairs and improvements to their car. In contrast, one survey found that 70% of young men (under 35) can’t change a tyre, and 60% can’t replace windscreen wipers, whereas 65% of men over 50 can change a tyre.

In some sense this is surprising, given the immediacy of ordering replacement parts through sites like this, and the ubiquity of ‘how to’ guides on the internet – something older generations didn’t have the luxury of. The greater willingness of older men to dedicate efforts to caring for their car demonstrates a closer connection, perhaps even pride, to motoring than their sons and grandsons have. Even on an anecdotal level, it appears that at least young men are taking less pride in motoring, which indicates a shift in the association between masculinity and motoring.

The perception of cars and motoring as a masculine pursuit, then, is at best hazy and difficult to pin down. As the concept of masculinity develops in the 21st century, along with individuals’ self-identification with it, the connection with cars seems to be becoming more tenuous. This is not to say, of course, that a certain association between a ‘pedal to the metal’ attitude and ‘manliness’ persists. However, in the context of a society where men are being challenged more than ever to scrutinise their own gender identity, the nature of this attitude is evolving.

By Peter Riley

Photo: Flickr/Collector Car Ads

Female counselor says men are increasingly ashamed of their masculinity

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As a woman, I first began to realise that something was amiss with male identity perceptions when I began counselling training in 2001.

Sitting in a personal development group with only two men present (one was a trainer, one was a student) I asked the males how they felt about being men in a predominantly female environment.  The trainee had no answer – but the trainer said: “well…I don’t really consider myself to be a man as such in this setting – we are just all people and we are all different”.  That answer got me pondering and was the start of my own research into male identity issues in the UK.

Fourteen years on, in what I would call a “post-feminist” society, I see evidence on a regular basis of men who seem to feel that they need to apologise for being male, and who definitely feel intimidated by some of the powerful females in the workplace.  For my MA in Integrative Counselling (2008) my dissertation was called “Exploring Male Identity in a Therapeutic Setting.”[1]  The focus group that I set up produced some interesting data:

“I have come up against some extremely competent females who have made me…embarrassed about my…maleness being so weak in comparison…”

“…manager who has got phenomenal…intelligence, capacity, empathy, sense of self, kind of blows me away – I really admire and respect her – and feel very small in comparison”

“I am absolutely convinced that I have been bullied…as a man…I think sometimes people wear their sexuality as an attacking armour”

Bazzano (2007) talks about “the emasculation of men in contemporary psychotherapy” and this is something that my research appeared to confirm.

There was a time when society celebrated the differences between male and female.  After all, it is difference that sparks off inspiration, difference that attracts, difference that inspires.  Now we seem to be in a fearful hermetically sealed capsule where we are so afraid of the “thought police” that we dare not come out with any “sexist” statements.

A retired teacher explained to me recently how the need to conform is hard wired in children from the start.  He observed over 30 years of teaching that certain patterns are always reproduced.  Asked to draw a picture of a house, a child routinely would come up with a square, windows in the four corners, door in the middle, smoke coming out of a central chimney, a line for the sky and a sun that looks like a spider to one side.  Such a house does not really exist anywhere – but it is none the less reproduced continually.

Anyone who suggests an idea that does not fit in with the normal status quo is always suspect – and scientists and inventors in the past often had a very hard time of it.

We now live in an age where it is fashionable in the West to slate the male – and to exalt the female – and to hint that for a strong woman, a man can be superfluous to requirements.

Speaking personally, I celebrate the differences between male and female, and appreciate the mysterious attraction that exists for me in male to female encounters.  It does not need to be analysed – but I am so glad that it is there at all in the first place.  Even gay men[2] [3] admit quite openly to finding women attractive – just not in a sexual way – but the “oppositeness” is still present.

The dilemma remains, whether men will end up by apologising for their existence or not, as women demand and demonstrate increasingly the need for their independence and autonomy?

What should the male response be?  I suggest that men need to find and play to their natural strengths – that is, to be men…and to resist the subtle pressure to become “tamed and manageable” for the women in their lives – whether at work or at play.

Comments welcome!

Jennie Cummings-Knight, MA, MBACP, PGCE, FHEA

www.goldenleafcounselling.com

[1] Exploring Male Identity in a Therapeutic Setting, Cummings-Knight, J (2008) York St John University

[2] http://www.realjock.com/gayforums/1808546

[3] http://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-to-look-good-naked Gok Wan

 

Sometimes men want to be rescued too

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The poet Shaky Shergill confronts his vulnerability as he rises to the new challenge of becoming a counsellor.

As a trainee counsellor who will soon be seeing clients I’m always on the lookout for tools or theories which I believe will help me support clients who may feel that they are stuck. After having seen one of my tutors using them I recently bought a set of archetype cards to include in my toolbox. As is my way and I think that a lot of other trainees do the same thing I decided to try them out on myself.

Shuffling the deck of cards I expected to draw one, look at it, read the message on it, have some kind of recognition and move on. So imagine my surprise when the archetype card that I pulled at random from the pack was that of ‘the damsel’. As I saw it and read what it represented, the line that read ‘always beautiful, vulnerable and in need of rescue’ struck a nerve. There was a part of me which felt anger at that line. The rest I could discount as not relevant to me, but the words ‘vulnerable and in need of rescue’ grated against something within me.

Over the years I’ve learned to not turn away from those feelings of discomfort and once again I decided to look at the card and the lesson it had for me. What was it about the card, that particular sentence and what it represented that had raised my ire? It wasn’t the ‘beautiful’ bit as I could accept that there are times when I am beautiful in a variety of ways.

It was the ‘vulnerable and in need of rescue’. The more I thought about it the more I realised that it was true, digging deeper I could see that part of what I felt was the indignation that stemmed from the messages I had about being a man; as a man I didn’t need rescuing, as a man I should be able to look after myself, as a man I shouldn’t need or want to feel vulnerable.

The more I looked at the card the more I realised that in so many ways society had done its job very well. I had bought into the belief system that as a man I should be ‘big and tough’ and not need anyone else. However I also began to realise that alongside that big and tough man there was also a little boy who at times did feel vulnerable and wanted rescuing. Sometimes the world can feel like a scary place regardless of how big or tough you or others think you are.

As I sat with those feelings I became aware of the emotions of sadness and anger for both the little boy and the big man (both equally vulnerable) who had wanted to be rescued and how he had stepped back into the shadows by isolating himself or frozen in place ‘waiting for it to all be over’. I realised how over the years that took me from a boy to a man I had slowly frozen into place the image of a strong and confident man. Someone who always had to be ‘on’ as a protector and guardian. I wondered if one of the people I’d been protecting had been the vulnerable part of my self who I believed wouldn’t be accepted by a world that thinks men should be a certain way.

As a father my thoughts then turned to my son, what would I tell him about this experience, what could I share about how as he grew others would see and judge him on his outer appearance or more specifically his size and gender and have certain beliefs about him. Would those beliefs include that it is OK for him to be vulnerable and if not want rescuing then at the least want to be supported as he walked difficult parts of his path. Also, what is my role in my son learning to express and accept his own and others’ vulnerabilities? Is it enough that I tell him it’s OK to be sad? Is it enough that I can acknowledge the times I’m feeling sad, lonely or vulnerable and if not be able to deal with them then show that I am at least trying to accept those feelings rather than hide or suppress them?

Before beginning this article I discussed the card and what it meant to me with a friend who then thought it might mean something else and perhaps it does, but I think that’s for another article.

—Photo: Flickr/Christopher Crouzet

See other articles from Shaky on insideMAN:

 

 

 

What does it mean to be a man in the 21st century?

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About three years ago I started writing my first novel, The Beasts of Belmont Park, inspired by someone I’d seen in the street; a handsome man, pushing two kids in a buggy. I saw him a couple more times over the next few weeks, and each time, he looked unhappy. I wondered why? It made me think back to the times when my own daughter was young enough to be pushed in a buggy and how much I enjoyed fatherhood, even as a single man, co-parenting my child when society assumed the only true course of happiness was to be part of that über -cliché, the happy family. I wondered whether this man was a stay-at-home dad, with a bread-winning wife. Maybe he didn’t like his role? Maybe his wife was more successful than him? What issues would that raise for a man?

This scenario formed the basis of The Beasts of Belmont Park, which explores the nature of manhood in this most egalitarian of centuries, not earnestly or stolidly, but very much in a darkly comic vein. Not that I wish to make light of such a serious subject, but I find with humour you can often take your readers on a journey they might otherwise avoid.

Paul, the protagonist, is deeply unsatisfied with his lot, feeling emasculated by his role of househusband and envying his best-selling novelist wife’s success. In attempting to square this circle, Paul encounters several strong male characters, each representing a different aspect of manhood, against which he measures himself. Ultimately the answer, for Paul, is to return to work; for that is the only way he believes he can hold his head up again as a man.

Are men expected to play a role that’s now obsolete?

Paul’s internal conflict resonates at the deepest level with many men I’ve met over the years, and is reflected in the conventional wisdom many ascribe to: that a man’s role is as a hunter, bringing home the bacon, not as carer, or nurturer, changing nappies and looking after the kids. In the conservative world of football, which I partake in regularly, this kind of attitude is commonplace.

But is there actually any basis in reality for this view of masculinity? I think today, more than ever, this concept is severely challenged by the facts. Women are just as strong and capable as men. Many women, maybe the majority, are, like my daughter, economically independent. What need is there for a man in the role of provider and protector? Nevertheless, many women I know tell me they still prefer this idea of a man, and they still want him to play this role, even if it’s a pseudo-role and not actually necessary.

Hud aged 22 resized

 

Hud, aged 22…

Many years ago I read The Descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan, written, in part, as a response to Desmond Morris’s (at the time) seminal The Ascent of Man. Her view of human evolution opened my eyes, for the first time it seemed, to a far more complex notion of women than I had previously contemplated. But what about men? In Morris’s book he paints a vivid picture of man the hunter and provider, a picture that even then, back in the 1970s, was at odds with the image of the average male I encountered in West London. Yet this atavistic throwback formed the basis for the popular consensus on what being a man was all about. And as a young man myself, I too ascribed to this view.

‘I was called a male chauvinist, aged nine’

I had particular reasons to do so. I was raised with my brother by an ardently feminist single mother, who along with her coterie of friends, subjected to me to a tough regime for a young man: being called a male chauvinist aged nine, being taken on a two-week long women’s camp in Wales when I was twelve (where I was the oldest male), hostelling with the women and kids from Erin Pizzey’s ‘Battered Wives Home,’ these were experiences that severely challenged my idea of manhood. So in order to right these ‘wrongs’ (as I perceived them), I developed a relatively macho personality that was in many ways at odds with how I truly felt about myself. But back then, it was a matter of survival.

How many other young men defaulted to the macho paradigm in order to survive childhood? Especially in a culture that did not celebrate the manifold aspects of masculinity, but focused on just a few: strength, power, dominance. It was a cliché that was simultaneously parodied as absurd and declared as fact in every form of media, from fairy tales to adverts. And now, a mere 30 years later, we have the converse: men conventionally mocked as bumbling idiots by the media and by the advertising industry in particular.

In reality, we are of course neither of these extremes, but in fact represent an incredible spectrum of everything that lies between. We have been bracketed and branded by the media for far too long. We are not narrow beings, and we are not tongue-tied lumps, incapable of expressing our feelings. We are every bit as subtle and sensitive as women. Yet I find even some of the most progressive of my female friends still propagate this reductive, emotionally unintelligent stereotype. Often gleefully. It makes me wonder how they expect men to live up to their expectations (the caring, strong, silent sexy, sensitive, emotive everyman we are told women want), when they keep forcing us into these cultural straitjackets.

We have all been guilty, at one time or another, of purveying this cultural narrative. But the time has come for us to stop. Men like Grayson Perry show us how wonderful it is to be a man who is truly himself, just as much as Bear Grylls or David Beckham do. And the army of stay-at-home or single dads shows us just how capable men are at being nurturers and carers. The only thing preventing us from fulfilling our true, wide-spectrum natures are the conventions of society itself. Brothers, let’s stand up and be counted for the marvelous, multi-faceted characters we really are.

By Hud Saunders

Innovative publisher The Pigeonhole releases Hud’s novel The Beasts of Belmont Park on the 5th of November. You can read more about it and an extract here

The poetics of manhood

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It was one of those familiar rituals of my childhood, as familiar as the smell of Sunday dinner and the sound of the dog barking to go out.

Every Wednesday night my dad would sit down in the big chair in the lounge and, with his pipe fixed between his teeth and his glasses tipped half way down his nose, he’d set about his deep contemplation of the pools coupon.

To me at the impressionable age of ten this weekly observance was the quintessence of manhood. There was something about the pipesmoke, the arcane poetry of names that meant nothing whatsoever – Port Vale, Leyton Orient, Queen of the South – as well as the pin-point dedication to the tiny grid that, together, seemed to have a tweedily priestly air to it.

Nowhere in this tableau do my mother or my sister feature. The family’s fortune lay entirely in the brown freckled hands of the old man. He’d insist it was a matter of the most acute judgement, requiring considered scrutiny of the sports pages and a deep concentration. It was the sort of concentration that, of necessity, called for an easy chair and a full pipe.

Time passes and things change. The pools have gone. Thirty years on and it’s my wife who buys the Irish national lottery tickets and who picks the same numbers with a faintly familiar ritual consistency. Birthdays, anniversaries and one for your age because you need at least one number over 40…

And whilst she goes about the business of chasing that still elusive family fortune, it’s now me – husband and father – who puts the roast in the oven, and it’s me who walks the dog.

My old man’s not around to see it anymore, but he’d be upset by this arrangement. It would strike him as somehow unmanly – there’s an old fashioned word – not to be steering the big dreams and the big numbers, just as he’d look askew at any man who knew how to turn the oven on.

He was a dab hand with a broken fuel pump or a recalcitrant alternator, but the kitchen was a foreign country to him. He was extraordinarily proud the day he fried an egg. On the one occasion when my mother was not there to cater for him the glow of triumph on his face as he turned from the hob to bring us his masterpiece was lastingly unforgettable.

The hot pan scorched a perfect black circle across the table top.

He copped for a fearsome rollocking when my mother saw the damage he’d done to her table.  He took it remarkably calmly for once, simply repairing to the haven of the big old chair in the lounge to draw what little comfort he could from his creaky old pipe.

That was the first time I realised he might be in some way hiding there, behind the smoke, the sports pages and his pools coupon.

By Will Turner

Image:  Flickr /  JD Hancock 

Man or woman, be yourself, and do what you want!

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insideMAN recently posed the question why is it difficult to celebrate being a man? I find the question very interesting because there is no specific answer. Any answer is subjective and relative to one’s perception. I don’t have any problem these days celebrating being a man in this modern era of equality. Also the same question can and should be put to women because I hear many a woman intimate the same about themselves in discussions.

I was born a man, I had no choice, option or involvement. Nature gave me the qualities of a man, the personality that goes with it. It’s nature that decrees as humans if we are a man or woman. Men are given a penis, women not, but they are given two breasts and a womb and this difference is simply for reproduction, the survival of the human race. After that men and women are the same, with feelings, emotions, laughter, sadness, two arms, two legs and thankfully one head! Apart from subtle differences like average body size and strength although there are quite a few women out in the world who can match any man in these two respects, we are basically the same.

What is it then that really muddies the waters with these two groups of humans and can make some not want to celebrate being a man, or being a woman? The answer is a very simple one. We live by labels, stereotypes, traditions expectations. We have a need to categorise everybody and everything to a specific, humans, or the majority of, cannot cope otherwise. Humans are not made in factories, specific to the millimetre nut and bolt. We are all different, all individuals in every aspect of human life. Society, its attitudes/behaviours/pressure put me under a counsellor in 2011/2012. She showed me how to be proud of myself, me, an individual, a man, look at what I have, I am, rather than what I don’t have or what others expect. Why try and get the world to look at you? We are simply many worlds within one, concentrate on your own world.

I. Am. A. Man

Life does and will offer challenges to all regardless of gender, both good and not good. It is how we deal with them positively that allows you to celebrate yourself. It helps if you can create a focus, an aim or target, not dwell what isn’t or cannot be. I/we do not have children and cannot. It is a hole in my/our life. Individuals insisting their ethos, beliefs and expectations upon me simply because they do not agree, understand, or even try to, can bring negativity about myself as well. That I must adhere to their expectations of a man which are rarely applied to women does not help. The fact that discrimination towards men in many aspects of life are ignored in comparison to society’s persistence in talking only about women’s discrimination, when so often both overlap each other, is another reason. Since 2012 I have spoken out, verbally and on social media as me, for me and on behalf of men generally — and yes I also support issues that do not affect me. I am me whether you like it or not, but I celebrate being me. Why shouldn’t I? Who in the outside world is so perfect they can make me feel that I should not celebrate me, a man!

Many humans associate masculinity as being a real man. Noting Karen’s observations in her article about men and boys being the predecessors of making the world turn, and now losing their lineage due to women taking over these roles, I applied masculinity to me as a man. I celebrated because I must be a man. I can do all aspects of building work. I can plumb, do electrics. I can do work on the car but choose not, but I could. I have established a successful self-employment, I have my wife’s well-being at the forefront. I have looked after her in sickness, I have supported her when a few years back a certain section of society dealt her a crushing blow. My wife prefers me to lead even though it is a role I would share and do so at times. I can climb hills and mountains faster than my wife and carry heavier backpacks. I could go on. These are all traits of a man’s masculinity, the gatherer, the provider, the carer all things that apparently are these days taken away from men due to women moving into men’s roles and thereby not allowing some men to celebrate being a man.

But then I stopped. I thought about the whole perspective. Yes I can celebrate being a man but so too can my wife as being a woman, just like any woman can and for their own justified reasons and perspective. Women can actually do all what I do including my DIY activities — including my self-employment and climbing hills/mountains as fast and at times faster than me. I’ve seen women with huge backpacks. My wife has looked after me in sickness and supported me when society temporarily crushed me. Yet even though they can and do all of this and more in other aspects of life they still hold the label femininity. But surely its masculinity, the role of the man isn’t it?

Be yourself

I do not disrespect or un-recognise all the world’s achievements of the past, mostly by men, or the lives laid down by men. It is the past, it is history, and this modern era and the future I acknowledge women will play a vital role, and yes men too, if they continue to celebrate themselves, believe in themselves and work as a man. You are still men alongside women. The future never dwells on the past and so too for men. You cannot celebrate if you do.

It is labels and stereotypes placed upon society as expectations on gender and it is these constraints that I think stop allowing people to celebrate being themselves. Traditional and expected masculine roles that men and boys claim to be devalued by women really are not masculine at all. They are just labels and stereotypes placed within society for men by society. Nature decrees man or woman — humans decree roles and expectations.

Be yourself, and do what you want. If you have the intellect, strength and ability go for it. My life was dictated to by society because of its expectations upon me because I am a man. It ground me down during school years, in my early working life and again in 2011. You will be far more content and happy with yourself if you are your true self not what others dictate to you due to labels, stereotypes and expectations. You can be anything you want if you try and work at it.

I am a man, an individual, who embraces freedom of choice, expression and respect and true equality for all, not selective respect/equality but above all I believe in myself, as a man.

I am a man, one of many men, who wears skirts or clothing that society still labels as women’s wear with regards men but any-wear when it comes to women. Yes, like those other men and yes the many women who now adopt male style clothing, even actual male-style clothing, as their wardrobe, I am not ashamed or embarrassed.

To you it may question my masculinity or what being a man is, to me it doesn’t, just like it doesn’t for the women in male-style clothing these days.  I am a celebrating man, secure with myself. Are you? If yes, why not celebrate being a man and the need to answer “why is it difficult to celebrate being a man?”

By Jeremy Hutchinson

You can read more of Jeremy’s writing on his blog here

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We don’t need to redefine masculinity, amazing men have always been all around us

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As a toddler and small boy my sisters and I often spent the weekend on an estate in Camden, Maine.  A place where the hills meet the sea, it’s what San Francisco would be if San Francisco were a small New England town.

The estate had a mansion and two other small houses.  My grandparents lived in one of the small houses.  The other was empty.  And except for a few weeks each summer the mansion was empty as well.

My grandfather, Fred Daley, was the groundskeeper (pictured as a young man, on the right of this photograph).  He kept the lawn manicured, grew vegetables on a small patch of land, went deer hunting in the woods every November, and plowed snow in winter.  My grandmother cleaned the houses and cooked when the owners were there.

The wealthy family that owned the estate could impress their guests with vegetables straight from the garden, and venison from their property.  Their appreciation for my grandparents was clear.

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Years later, after the property was sold and my grandparents had bought their own house, my grandfather showed me an officer’s sword from the First World War.  He told me his old boss, whose father was a captain in the Great War, gave him the sword as a gift.

Almost two decades later my grandfather died.  I asked my grandmother for the sword.  But she had already sold it.  I don’t think she understood the value of that sword.  And I don’t mean financial value.

Back in the day, it was quite the honor to be given a man’s sword.  That a man of wealth would give a family heirloom to a common laborer was an immense sign of respect.

And my grandfather was a well-respected man.  He was a quiet man.  People trusted him because his word was his bond.  But he was not a domineering man.  The only time I ever saw him get angry was during a television interview with a holocaust denier (he was an American GI during World War II and saw a concentration camp first hand).

Quiet self-confidence

He was also a man who could get things done.  He knew basic carpentry, plumbing, electric, automotive, and agriculture.  It was a matter of necessity.  The second of five boys, he finished high school in the early 1930s at the peak of the Great Depression.

He told me they were poor before the depression, so it didn’t make much difference.  Except for one thing.

His father was a marine carpenter, and New Deal farm subsidies meant that Maine potatoes would be sent by ship to larger American ports.  The increased demand for carpenters to build and maintain docks should have been a help to the family.  But his father was a Canadian citizen, and back then a man couldn’t get American citizenship by marrying an American woman.  (In fact, between 1907 and 1922 an American woman lost her citizenship for marrying a foreign man.)  My great-grandfather was barred from any job that involved government funds, and my grandfather worked what jobs he could find in the 1930s to help support his parents and brothers before being drafted into World War II.

His masculinity was conveyed with a quiet self-confidence and dedication to those closest to him.

A person, not a role

Pop culture, for better or worse, is a barometer of what our culture thinks of what it means to be a man or a woman.  The increase in strong female characters, and the recurring theme of women rejecting traditional roles (often after a man attempts to impose it on her) has been notable over the past few decades, and especially of late.  Men, meanwhile, are often buffoons, soft or ineffective “nice guys,” or the violent heroes of summer block buster action films.

We ask what it means to be a man because men’s roles in modern society are shifting.  Part of this is due to the diminished need for brawn.  Part of it is due to a dramatic expansion of women’s options, meaning that women aren’t dependent on men as they were in the past.  Part of it is that many men both want and are expected to take a greater role in child rearing.  And gay and transgender men are fighting for their equality as men.

But a man’s dignity has always been about who he is as a person, not the particular role he serves.  The self-possessed man who leads with a quiet self-confidence, who is a valued member of his family and community, has always been there.

And he’s still here today.  I think of the fathers and children I see everyday.  I think of my father, who tells me he loves me every time we talk, even though his father never spoke those words to him.  I think of my friends.  I think of my first boss after college, my sometime mentor, a gay Jewish man (now married with two kids) who also played a large role in the man and the social worker I am today.  I think of my boss ten years ago who gave me a hug when I told him my grandfather had died.  I think of the men who reached out to me a few years ago when I got divorced.

It is often said that masculinity is about domination and control.  Such men exist, but the domineering tough guy has never been the sum total of masculinity.  The notion of toxic masculinity, however, is presupposed in the question of how to redefine masculinity.  But this is a one-sided view.  We don’t need to redefine masculinity.  We need only look around us.

By David Dubay

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Celebrating masculinity: Men, do not check your privilege

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Last week we published an article by Chris Good, one of the brilliant contributors to our book, exploring why he finds it so difficult to simply celebrate being a man. Here Karen Woodall, a research practitioner working with separated families and another of the writers in our book, gives her own perspective on the question: “Why is it so difficult to celebrate being a man?”

London Pride Week is coming up and everywhere there will be opportunities to be proud. Unless you are a heterosexual man that is. For straight, white cis-gender men, the only thing you can do is “check your privilege” because being born “that” way, it seems, is something only to be ashamed of. And we wonder why boys cannot think of anything good about being a man?

What’s great about BEING a man I cannot say because I am a woman. But I observe how difficult it is for so many men to say how great it is to be a man because women have drilled the capacity for pride out of them, (unless of course they are skirt or dress-wearing warriors, in which case they are the epitome of masculinity for some).

In today’s world, showing off masculine achievements, drawing on the years of brilliance, tenacity and sheer muscle power that have brought us to the technological age we live in today, is a no-go for many men. For me that is one of the greatest damages we have done to men and boys; we have robbed them of their lineage and removed their ability to draw on their historical roots and feel inherent pride at what it is to be other than a woman.

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For me the world turns as it does because of men and what they have done. I recognise this as I drive my car, fly in an aeroplane, wait to enter the Blackwall Tunnel, read about life-saving technology, watch the fire engine fly by to rescue people in danger or look at the power and the grace of footballers. (I am sorry but no matter how good a woman is at football she will never match the sheer beauty and flow of men playing football — perhaps because all those things about football were designed to draw on the inherent physical abilities of men – not women).

Without men there would be none of the strides forward in drainage, sewerage, buildings that tower into the sky, technology that enters the body and mends it in carefully designed attacks on cancer and other life threatening diseases. And before anyone starts with the oft used ‘yes but that’s because women have been held back from doing those things‘, let’s just take a look at what that repetitive attitude does to boys.

I work with boys a lot. I work with them in vulnerable situations where there self esteem is low and their anxiety is high. I hear how difficult it is for these boys to speak with pride about who they are and who they are going to grow up to be. From home to school to the outside world boys are subjected to messages that they are either not as good as girls, or that girls are just as good as they are. Not for boys the motivational messages that are given to girls, not for boys the ability to draw upon strong role models or pride about the achievements of their ancestors.

Boys have lost the ability to be proud of themselves just for being born a boy. Masculinity has been derided, deconstructed, decapitated and destroyed by the rise and rise of the empowered woman. Boys, once seen as the future of the family line, are now prey to all manner of efforts to make them as much like girls as possible in order to a) check their inherent privilege and b) give the girls a better chance.

Why’s it so difficult to celebrate being a man?

What we have done to boys and to men in the process is rob them of their right to be proud of who they are simply for existing. It is as cruel a fate as any designer of a future feminist society could bestow upon them. Pity our little boys, for castration of their male pride starts on the day that they are born and follows them into manhood where they struggle to be able to recognise — never mind celebrate — what a wonderful thing it is to be a man.

When I watch men with their children I see them encouraging them, pushing them, making development possible, I watch them standing back and giving space and instruction and guidance and assurance ‘you can do it, go on, try again’…I watch men educating, advising, explaining, fixing, mending, playing and being in the moment. All of which are continuously ridiculed or negated by women who say repeatedly “yes well women can do that too,” a tired refrain which to my mind is designed these days to stop men being able to draw upon their collective achievements and experience pride in being a man.

We are allowed to be proud of just about everyone on the planet but we are not allowed to be proud of men and boys. And we wonder why men cannot easily say what is great about being a man. For me, I am utterly proud of men and boys, proud of my husband, my son and my grandson, they are wonderful, mysterious beings who live a different life to mine but one which complements it, supports it and graces it with their difference. They are half of the human race, they hold up half of the sky and without men and boys, I would not be here, now, sharing these thoughts on a computer.

My fight, is to help men and boys to restore the pride in the soul of their manhood and to enable them to reconnect to all the wondrous things that masculinity in all of its forms brings to our planet.

Because I am grateful to men for their historical achievements, for the selflessness and the sacrifice as well as the soaring risks that have brought great strides forward in the world. All of which are spurs to action and inspiration for the boys who will be men one day and all of which are things for us all, but especially men, to be utterly and unshamedly, proud of.

By Karen Woodall

Karen is a writer, research and practitioner working with families affected by Parental Alienation. She describes herself as a “recovering feminist” and is a fierce critic of current approaches to handling family separation and attracts a passionate international following at her personal blog.

Photo: Billy Bob Bain

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