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

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I pulled the handbrake and leaped out of the car.  Grabbing a plastic bag, I desperately started to scoop 160 miles worth of Costa cups and terribly naughty, sugar-based snack wrappers out of sight before InsideMAN’s Dan Bell found me at our meeting point in Portsmouth.  I had travelled on only a few hours sleep and by the end of the journey had accumulated a bag full of insomniac fuel wrappers.

“Hey Chris, good journey?”  Busted.

“Hi Dan, yep, thanks, yourself?” I asked, throwing another coffee cup out of sight. I offered him a leftover doughnut.

We were meeting in Portsmouth to film a short clip for InsideMan’s promotional video, seeking funding support for their new book, to which I am a contributor amongst other writers such as Martin Daubney, of Telegraph Men and former editor of Loaded; Guardian regular Ally Fogg and so many more.   Our plan was to find a nice spot where I could endure a small interview on camera.  Dan would take any usable clips, all I had to do was answer some questions honestly…while casually tensing every possible muscle for maximum “casual buffness”.

Despite retakes around the horrendously loud and invasive coffee machine in our chosen restaurant spot, it was going okay.  Occasionally I would blurt out a sentence that caused Dan to silently “double thumbs up” from behind the camera.  Who doesn’t like that?  Then, he veered from questions I had quietly expected such as why I write on men’s issues and gender equality or what my experiences of being a male victim of domestic violence were like.

“What’s great about being a man?”

I didn’t actually see the bucket of ice water that I felt he had just thrown over me…but I was left silent and shocked.  Why didn’t I have a ready and articulate answer for this one?  I like being a man!  Why do I like being a man?  I mumbled some completely unusable footage -something about fatherhood, camaraderie…being able to be silly in a pub…I don’t know.

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Everything that came into my mind had an immediate, opposing argument stand against it.  I love being a parent, but what I know of male parenting is to stand aside while everyone smiles at the pregnant partner while telling me they hope I’m doing my bit around the house while she’s making a baby.  What I know of fatherhood is to be ignored at medical or educational meetings, considered a secondary carer by law and culture, having diminished rights but equal financial pressure upon divorce.

If we’re going to divide parenthood into gender roles, my personal experience and research evidences fatherhood as a secondary parental position, from pregnancy to post-divorce Christmas Day arrangements.  Sure, I am more likely to morph into a growling, tickle-monster and throw my children about as they giggle and tumble until they’re nauseous, but is that a particularly ‘male’ way to be a parent?  Dads are known for rough and tumble, but is that a fatherhood perk?  Or are men and women simply different enough that men are more likely to do it? I questioned myself and hesitated as I spoke. I know what’s great about being a parent, but as for being a male parent, I could only identify drawbacks and many frustrations.  So, I couldn’t say fatherhood.

Dan’s silent, inanimate, digital camera seemed to roar like a vintage reel to reel, capturing every desperate second as my mind scrabbled to find a suitable answer to the question. Dating?  I’ll be honest, I have a healthy, full and interesting sex life but, these days, I’m not one for relationships.  Surely, dating is where I could identify the “grrrr”, the victorious and powerful roar of that male, king of the jungle beast, prowling the clubs and establishing the dominance of penis power I keep hearing about.  Whether in packs or as lone wolves, we style our manes and strut into the bar, the ladies turn, they dance around us like in the music videos and movies; we’re all rap stars and buff, action movie protagonists just enjoying another female populated visit to the dance floor…and soon we’ll be having slow-motion, breath-halting, lip-biting sex…because that’s how a man finishes a night out.  That’s what’s great about being a man!  Isn’t it?  Guaranteed.

Beards, tattoos and muscles…

Or not.  Actually, men have to amp each other up before they walk over and try to speak to the pretty woman, because it’s a nerve-wracking task to go and show interest and risk rejection in front of your mates and whoever else is watching.  And we know the fine line we have to tread: interested but not desperate, complimentary but without cliche and typical compliments that you’d use on any girl; funny and witty but not offensive….oh, and relax!   OH, and bring your wallet.  You’re buying the drinks if you get that far.  In fact, even if you buy a drink, she may thank you and leave.  If rejection at the bar and in public becomes too tough or expensive that men retreat to dating websites, we can be greeted with such open statements as

“I like a man to be a man and also to be chivalrous and open doors for me and the like.  I like beards and tattoos and muscles.  Must be taller than me and not a shorty.  I won’t message first, if you like me then you know what to do, but put some effort in, if you just say “hi”, I’ll simply delete.  First date?  Surprise me. I like to be wined and dined.”

And most dating profiles just quote Marilyn Monroe and get it over with: “I’ll be morally reprehensible to you, but if you want the good of me, then you have to take the bad because I’m not changing”, (I paraphrased).

So, what’s great about being a man in dating?  We make the nervous approach, we buy the drinks, we fund the date, we open the doors, we shake our tail feathers and display our colours and, even worse, women are comfortable enough to actually demand it?  Even if we do get to the slow-motion, lip-biting sex…it’s on us to prove consent afterwards, just in case she has a change of heart.  I couldn’t say dating.

‘Women can do that too!’

The truth is, I was struggling because I did not want to seem like a typical writer on gender issues who would only see the negatives for myself and the positives for the opposing side.  I desperately wanted to show some maturity and demonstrate to Dan and to all my readers that we can take, acknowledge and appreciate the good…and work to improve the bad.  That’s why Dan asked the question!  InsideMAN, with Dan Bell  and Glen Poole at the helm, is approaching the subject and position of ‘the male’ in a comprehensive, objective and positive manner.  To celebrate the positives, to talk about and improve upon the negatives.

However, any positive that I considered was met with my internal dialogue reminding me of the prominent message in our media that “woman can do that too!”

I considered physical strength, but we’re told just how strong and capable women are….physical strength is not something that men can own and identify with, these days.  It’s not exclusively male…unless there’s a moving van that needs emptying, or a burglar to be tackled.  And our strength counts for nothing as the equal, but silenced, victims of domestic violence.  What about sexual objectification and harassment?  Okay, tough one with many layers, as on one side of this coin is the fact that men are sexually objectified by women in an overt manner, more than the feminist movement would concede to and in a way it would never deem appropriate for women to be treated.

However, on the flip side,  as the gender that has to shake our tail feathers and prove ourselves against our competitors, do women really think men aren’t pressured into getting to the gym, dressing with trend and sophistication in mind, styling with the latest “metrosexual” or “lumbersexual” style, simply to be noticed?  Or does everyone think that evolution recently increased beard growth in the human species to the point where we simply can’t shave enough and keep on top of it?  And from personal experience, try being a male musician without being wolf-whistled, groped, danced upon or even kissed while performing.  Perhaps, as a male, our biggest handicap with sexual objectification and harassment isn’t the frequency with which it occurs, although it occurs more than people will acknowledge, but it’s our powerlessness to do anything about it when it does happen, as we’re regarded as lucky, up for it…and, anyway, it’s just a joke.  Right?

So, what’s great about being a man?

I could go on, but the truth is that we live in a culture that celebrates the female adoption and dominance of the positives associated with the typical male, but denies men the positives of the female world: equal parental rights and acknowledgement, equality in dating, sexual objectification and harassment awareness and so on.

But, I like being a man…more because I like being myself and not because I have privilege dangling between my legs.  Being a man is not such a positive experience, when all is weighed and measured.

So, what’s great about being a man? As an advocate for equality for men and women, my personal opinion is that this question should be one that both sexes can answer, just as we should be able to acknowledge the positives of being a woman.   Men and women in our society should be able to answer the question in celebration of diversity but, as it stands, we’re involved in a battle between the sexes where everyone is proving the privilege of the other.

Unfortunately, we need books and articles that address men’s issues and put our position into context.  Unfortunately, it becomes a question that needs answering in order to highlight the need for equality where men and boys are lacking.  Unfortunately, acknowledgement of men’s diminished rights and the position of the ‘male’ in today’s society is lacking…and sorely needed.  Fortunately, a collaboration of top writers on gender issues has come together, with insideMAN’s latest collaborative project; the goal being to increase awareness of the issues faced by men and boys in our society today and to highlight ways in which men suffer and face inequality.

As for myself, I bid Dan farewell and drove home from the meeting, battling with that question for every mile of the journey, until my desperation and Costa coffee intake got the better of me.  I found myself hastily pulling over to run into a field.  I stood there, in the sun, up against the tree…and I realised…

“I can pee standing up”.

Win.

This article first appeared in Thought Catalog. Photo: tom_bullock

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Why The Hobbit shows we still think it’s OK to laugh at men who are afraid

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There are a lot of ugly characters in the latest and last of Peter Jackson’s over-blown adaptation of The Hobbit, but one of the most repellent isn’t an orc or a goblin, he’s a man.

At the heart of the film’s opening sequence, in which the dragon Smaug lays fiery waste to a lake-side town, is the comical greed and cowardice of the town’s despotic chief and henchmen as they try to escape with coffers of the town’s gold.

The chief soon meets a satisfyingly grizzly end, but one of his henchmen, Alfrid, is washed up alive and goes on to become a source of derision throughout the film. The reason? He’s a man who is an unrelenting coward.

Now let me be clear, I loved the first three Lord of The Rings films, in which evil is defeated by loyal friendships, high ideals and shining deeds – there are heroes and cowards in all of them. But unlike slippery villains such Wormtongue, the sole purpose of Alfrid’s character is for us to jeer at his cowardice.

Hate figure

With hunched back and revolting yellow teeth, Alfrid is essentially a gendered hate figure – it’s because he is a man and a coward that we’re invited to hate him. Even the goblins and orcs, revolting as they are, command more respect as fierce warriors.

Or to put it another way, Alfrid’s character could not have been played by a woman. Firstly, our culture does not shame women who are afraid and run away – in this sense cowardice is a uniquely male shame. Secondly, two hours of ridiculing and vilifying a female character simply wouldn’t be funny, it would be offensive.

But it’s when you see Alfrid in light of the female characters, that it’s clear this isn’t just an expression of outdated gender roles, but something altogether more complicated and unpleasant.

To be sure, most of the primary characters are male, but of the female characters, there are those who are heroic – such as the elves Tauriel and Galadriel – and those who are afraid and deserving of protection, such as the townswomen; but none are shamed or ridiculed. The women can be either strong or weak, while the men have only the age-old choice between bravery or humiliation.

‘You’re not a man, you’re a weasel’

All of this was dawning on me in a peripheral kind of way, until one completely contrived scene threw the whole tangled knot right in my face.

We are suddenly shown a group of townswomen huddled in a corner, before another woman charges in and declares they are as brave as the men and should go and fight alongside them. One woman however stays bent over and whimpering, refusing to go. The other woman pulls her round, only to reveal it’s the villain Alfrid dressed in women’s clothing. She spits in his face: “You’re a coward. You’re not a man, you’re a weasel.”

In one short scene, the film simultaneously celebrates a woman for emancipating herself from the traditional female role of being weak and in need of protection, while at the same time she shames a man who doesn’t conform to the traditional role of brave protector.

But The Hobbit isn’t the only recent piece of light entertainment set in a mythical past that argues both ends at once. In the first episode of the second series of the BBC series The Musketeers, a show based almost entirely on the male characters maintaining their honour by wise-cracking in the face of fear, we’re suddenly offered a soliloquy by one of the female characters on the unique shame faced by unwed women.

‘Chickens’

“If I left my husband, my family would cut me off and my friends would cross the street to avoid me. I would be nothing more than your whore… I’m a woman, d’Artagnan, a woman in a world built for men.”

OK, fine, but what about the two dozen-odd men that just got slaughtered rather than face the shame of cowardice? Why didn’t the writers invite us to have a look at that through the lens of gender too?

But the most astonishing example of all is Sky’s comedy series, Chickens, about how a village of women treat the only three men from their town who have not gone to fight during WW1.

The show is essentially a series of set pieces in which the three men – a conscientious objector, a man who is medically unfit to fight and man who is simply afraid – are shamed, laughed at and humiliated by scores of empowered and emancipated women.

Clunking double standards

In one scene, after a woman demands that Cecil – who incidentally is the one discharged as medically unfit – justifies why he hasn’t enlisted, he says: “I really believe in this war and I’m really keen to help.” She replies: “Rubbish, if you were really keen to help you would have killed yourself to raise morale.”

The writers describe Chickens as “a quasi-feminist sit-com” and according to one of the lead actresses: “What’s great is to see a village full of women who are just really getting on with it, just couldn’t give a toss that the men have gone, really, except for basic plumbing issues and the occasional need for someone to shag them.”

The thing that’s frankly bizarre, is that the people who wrote each of these clumsy dramatic expositions on gender, seem to think they’re actually making a stand for equality. It seems they don’t even realise the clunking double standards and ethical inconsistencies of what they’re saying.

There’s an old saw that says science fiction tells you a lot more about the values and prejudices of the present, than it does about the future. It seems the same can be said for stories set in the past.

By Dan Bell

— Picture credit: PinkMoose

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

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Should dads encourage their sons to play with dolls?

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Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem equalities minister, thinks parents should encourage their sons to play with dolls. Glen Poole shares his on thoughts and experiences on the matter as a father.

I have no experience of raising boys. I only have experience of raising one girl and my intention—as far as gender is concerned—has been to try and ensure that being female in a gendered world isn’t a barrier to her fulfilling her potential.

For me that was never about going against the grain of her unique nature. It was never about preventing her from doing “feminine” things and forcing her to do “masculine” things. It has been more about trying to cultivate and model an attitude of “anything is possible”.

Of course I haven’t always succeeded, but the intention is always there.

Match of the Day

Shortly after my daughter started to walk I proudly taught her to dribble a soft football while humming the Match of the Day theme tune. I allowed her to explore nature, get muddy and play with snails (though not slugs and puppy dogs tails, I’m not that clichéd). I bought her “boys’ toys” like trucks and cars as well as “girls’ toys” like dolls and prams.

A defining moment for me came when she was about two. Through her own preference, the trucks had disappeared into the back of a cupboard through lack of play and I’d all but forgotten them—until a friend with a son came round and discovered them in seconds and started charging around the house with them making engine noises.

The next toy he picked up was a pretend broom—“ah they’re going to play house  together I thought”—but no, he used the broom as weapon and he started hitting things with it. I’d never seen my daughter play in this boisterous way, she was more……”girl-sterous”.

My own experience is that my daughter went through many phases and I tried to embrace them all. When she got her first bike she was in a princess phase and wanted the pinkest bike in the world and I had great fun obliging. By the time she was seven and needed a bigger bike she was going through a “tom boy” phase and actively wearing “boys’ clothes” and wanted a “boy bike” which was blue and had a Dennis the Menace bell on it. Again i enjoyed playing along.

Which box do we belong in?

She was navigating a culture that puts boys and girls into boxes, trying out those different boxes for and discovering how it felt to to be her natural self, not the self others though she should and shouldn’t be.

It’s an ongoing process and as a teenager she’s happily studying science and maths through her own choice; dresses in jeans, Converse and t-shirts most days; has a shelf full of “woman’s things” that are alien to me and can glam up like a movie star when she chooses to.

I hope, as a parent, that I have, in some small way, made it easier for her to make the choices that are right for her in life—-but who knows?

Is the male brain different? 

And what I certainly don’t know is how this approach would have worked for a son. Would he have wanted pink bike? Would the doll I bought him ended up gathering dust at the back of the cupboard? Would he have worn skirts to college and tuxedos at the weekend. I’ll never know.

However, as I started writing this article, I was reminded of the book “The Male Brain” by Louann Brizendine and in particular a section about boys and toys, in which she says:

“Researchers have found that boy and girls both prefer the toys of their own sex, but girls will pay with boys’ toys, while boys—by the age of four—reject girl toys and even toys that are “girl colours” like pink.”

Brizendine says she didn’t know this when here son was born and so she set out, with good intention, to give him lots of unisex toys to avoid gender stereotyping.

The shocked feminist 

“I bought him a Barbie doll,” she says. “I though it would be good for him to have some practice playing out nonaggressive, co-operative scenarios. Once he freed her from the packaging, he grabbed her around the torso and thrust her long legs into midair like a sword, shouting, “Eeeehhhg, take that!” toward some imaginary enemy.

“I was taken aback, as I was part of the generation of second-wave feminists who had decided that we were going to raise emotionally sensitive boys who weren’t aggressive or obsessed with weapons and competition. Giving our children toys for both genders was part of our new child-rearing plan. We pride ourselves on how or future daughters-in-law would thank us for the emotionally sensitive men we raised. Until we had our own sons, this sounded perfectly plausible.”

Brizendine goes on to make the case that it is natural for boys to be more interested in competitive games and girls to be more interested in co-operative games; with boys spending nearly twice as much as their free time playing competitive games and girls ”taking turns” in their co-operative play twentiy times more than boys.

Another study she cites found that boys were six times more likely than girls to use domestic objects (like my daughter’s play broom) into weapons. Even Rhesus monkeys, says Brizendine, show sex differences in toy preferences with male monkeys more likely to choose trucks than dolls to play with when compared to female monkeys.

Will boys be boys? 

Brizendine believes that nature is at play here. She cites the condition in girls called CAH (congenital adrenal hyperplasia) which is cause by exposure to high levels of the masculine hormone testosterone in the womb. Researchers have found that girls with CAH are more likely to choose “boys toys” to play with than other girls.

I strongly believe that boys and girls should be free to explore all sides of their personality, but there is a word of caution here. I am wary of people who think there is something fundamentally wrong with boys, such that their behaviours and beliefs need to be conditioned out of them.

Jo Swinson MP wants to encourage boys to play with “feminine” toys like dolls, others, like Yvette Cooper MP, want boys to be taught to be feminists others, like the Great Men Value Women project that runs workshops for teenage boys in schools want a  a “de-gendered” future where  men and boys have “dropped the concept of masculinity altogether“.

My personal belief is that men and boys, like women and girls, should be free to choose—and yes our choices can be restricted in various ways by the culture and society we grow up in. At a cultural level, I  think dads should encourage and challenge boys to be who they want to be, to think what they want to think and to play with whatever toys they want to play with—whether that’s cuddling dolls or turning Barbies into weapons, either way, let them have their fun and discover for themselves what it means to be a man.

—Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

See Also:

In the run up to the launch of a new film on Fatherhood called DOWN DOG, insideMAN will be publishing a series of articles about fatherhood and we’d love you to get involved. You can join the conversation on twitter by using the hashtag #MenBehavingDADly; leave a comment in the section below or email us with your thoughts and ideas for articles to insideMANeditor@gmail.com.  

Down Dog is released in selected cinemas on 14 February 2015. For more information see www.downdogfilm.com

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What does Lynx gay kiss advert say about the changing nature of masculinity?

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Lynx, one of the world’s most shamelessly heterosexual brands, has shocked consumers in Australia with an advert that includes a gay kiss.

The male grooming brand claims to be be used by “over 8 million blokes across UK and Ireland” every day.

 

It has proudly positioned itself as a brand that “helps guys get the girls” by producing “products that guys love” and  “ads that quickly become part of the British guy’s psyche”.

http://youtu.be/qmdlPBY7c8U

So is this a sign that the male psyche is now a bit more bisexual than it once was? Is modern masculinity more willing to accept that heterosexual sex isn’t the only way to enjoy your lynxed-up body?

Lynx’s previous adverts have shown the incredible power of the “Lynx effect” to turn average men into irresistible sex gods who cause angels to fall from the heavens, mermaids to drag them into the sea and thousands of bikini-clad babes to charge after them.

Celebration of heterosexuality 

The brand  is an unapologetic celebration of young, male hetereosexuality—until now. The latest offering from the laddiest of man brand’s shows a man on a sofa flicking through TV channels, showing clips of all the things he should do to celebrate his masculinity while he’s still got his youth.

The suggestions include “go out, see amazing things, get an amazing job, kiss the hottest girl, or the hottest boy, experiment with your hair and learn from your mistakes.”

The suggestion to “kiss the hottest girl, or the hottest boy” are accompanied by our hero in a film noir scene first pulling a hot girl to his lips and then turning away from her to  kissing a hot boy.

The advert has run in Australia and has attracted some great comments on the Lynx YouTube channel which include:

“Man, cool advert… I like many of Lynx’s scents, but never normally buy them as I’m normally turned off by Lynx’s desperate-and-horny-teenage-hetero-boy vibe in their adverts, but this advert was pretty cool especially vis-a-vis who you could kiss… may have to rethink my self-imposed ban on buying Lynx!”

“Kiss a girl or a boy! YAY you guys rock! That’s such a positive message, kiss who you want it’s all good. I saw this add on telly and automatically found it on here so I could share it with all my friends.”

“So I saw this feminism advocate comment about pushing away a woman to kiss a man… CALM DOWN WOMAN. CALM YOURSELF. You’re such a sexist freak.”

Can masculinity be a bit gay?

Masculinity has often been conceived as a homophobic construct. In 1976, for example, David & Brannon proposed that there were four standard rules for traditional, American masculinity. These included

Rule 1: No sissy stuff—distance yourself from femininity, avoid emotions, be homophobic

Who would though that masculine Lynx, whose adverts have previously been banned for objectifying women, would present homosexuality as standard expression of masculinity.

Certainly not the gay website Pink News which has described the advert as “a step forward for the men’s deodorant and haircare giant, which normally only depicts straight men, and their quests to attract more women”.

What do you think? Is the inclusion of a gay kiss in a Lynx a positive sign that men are being given more choice in how they express their masculinity or another example of the creeping feminisation of men? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Why men need to master “psychological androgyny” if they want a creative 2015

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Are you a man? Do you want to tap into your creative side in 2015? Then you need to think like a woman! (If you’re a woman the opposite applies).

The pioneering psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi made a fascinating discovery about masculinity while researching his book Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Described by the Brain Pickings website as “one of the most important, insightful, and influential books on creativity ever written”— the book highlights how masculinity and femininity are both at play in the creative mind as the result of a “predisposition to psychological androgyny”.

Csikszentmihalyi explains:

“In all cultures, men are brought up to be “masculine” and to disregard and repress those aspects of their temperament that the culture regards as “feminine,” whereas women are expected to do the opposite.

“Creative individuals to a certain extent escape this rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers”

You don’t have to be gay to access your feminine strengths 

This tendency to show traits more generally associated with the opposite sex is not linked to sexuality but to our masculinity/femininity. A man can have “feminine” strengths (and a woman can have “masculine” strengths) without being gay or bisexual.

“Psychological androgyny a much wider concept” explains the psychologist “referring to a person’s ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender

“A psychologically androgynous person in effect doubles his or her repertoire of responses and can interact with the world in terms of a much richer and varied spectrum of opportunities. It is not surprising that creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.”

The findings were based on extensive interviews with nearly 100 individuals from various fields who were recognised for their creative thinking.

Creative men are connected to family and environment 

“It was obvious that the women artists and scientists tended to be much more assertive, self-confident, and openly aggressive than women are generally brought up to be in our society,” says Csikszentmihalyi.

“Perhaps the most noticeable evidence for the “femininity” of the men in the sample was their great preoccupation with their family and their sensitivity to subtle aspects of the environment that other men are inclined to dismiss as unimportant.

“But despite having these traits that are not usual to their gender, they retained the usual gender-specific traits as well.”

—Photo Credit: Flickr/Amanda Hirsch

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Does BBC’s Boy in The Dress drama signal the liberation or the emasculation of boys?

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Watching straight men in frocks in the name of entertainment is a great British tradition, but the BBC’s Christmas comedy, The Boy in the Dress, is a thoroughly modern entertainment which marks a new phase in our cultural conversation about masculinity, says Glen Poole.

The British love laughing at men in frocks.

Take the Christmas pantomime, where fairy tales are brought to provincial theatres by casts of cross-dressing “celebrities”, who subvert gender norms by casting men as pantomime dames and women as the principal boys.

When Sir Ian McKellan, the actor who is known around the world as Gandolf and Magneto, received rave reviews for Widow Twankey in Alladdin in 2004, he joined a long line of male actors who have thrown on a frock to give us all a topsy-turvy titter that’s as traditional as the Christmas turkey.

So at first glance, there was nothing remotely revolutionary about the BBC presenting it’s star-studded Christmas comedy—The Boy in the Dress—as prime time family viewing on Boxing Day.

Is the BBC promoting cross-dressing for boys?

And yet I suspected there may be something more radical being expressed in David Walliams’ frothy, cock-in-a-frock-com and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw a comment by one of my my socially conservative Christian friends on Facebook.

“I’ve seen enough,” he declared in his status update. “Now we have the BBC using prime time to promote cross dressing for kids. For pity’s sake!”

So for those who think The Boy in The Dress was just another slice of traditional, cross-dressing, Christmas fun I say: “Oh no it wasn’t!” Because there was something far more radical happening in terms of how we think about manhood in the 21st Century.

The key difference is this. In pantomime, men pretend to play female characters for laughs. It’s subversive because only women are allowed to wear dresses in public without transgressing the cultural gender norms that we collectively and unconsciously police.

We all police what men and boys can wear

In The Boy in The Dress, the main character is an ordinary boy who plays football and seems to be attracted to girls, but also happens to love dresses. He fulfils his dream of wearing a dress by creating a female alter ego—because pretending to be female is the only way it is culturally permissible for men and boys to wear dresses in public, without being policed by the rest of us.

When his pretence is discovered, he is expelled from school and (spoiler alert) is sidelined from a cup final match, right up to the dramatic climax when the entire team rebels and comes out to play the victorious second half with every player wearing a very camp dress.

It’s a brotherly show of masculine solidarity that’s not quite “I’m Spartacus”, more “I’m in a party dress!”

So why does this very silly comedy—conceived by Britain’s campest straight comedian—qualify as a revolutionary piece of “gendertainment”?

Well look at how far we’ve travelled. When I was a boy in the Seventies and eighties I captained my school football team and dressed up as one of the Nolan Sisters in front of 3,000 people as part of the cast of the Blackpool scout gang show.

Cross dressing isn’t just for girls

One of my favourite films was Gregory’s Girl, where a beautiful, blonde Scottish lass, who is brilliant at football, pretends to be a boy so she can play on the school team.

And one of my favourite comedy sketches was the Two Ronnies’ “The Worm That Turned“, a mini sitcom set in a dystopian future where women ruled and men were subjugated under the rule of a matriarchal dictatorship headed by another blond bombshell, Diana Dors.

There’s a great speech in which Dors’, the commander of the state police, reveals how the key to women’s rise power, was forcing men to wear dresses and take on the domestic duties:

“Trousers have always been the symbol of the male overlord,” declares Dors’ character in the opening scene. “Our master stroke was to insist on the change over in traditional dress. Once the men had to wear the frocks they were subjugated. As soon as we took their trousers away, they were putty in our hands.”

The cultural belief, reflected in these comedies, created in the early years of Thatchers’ first government, was that entering the masculine realm of trousers, football and work, was the road to empowerment for women, while entering the feminine realm of dresses, emotions and domesticity, would be emasculating for men.

Experiencing the feminine realm can liberate men

It’s now so normative for women to live their lives in both these “masculine” and “feminine” realms, that principal boys have all but disappeared from mainstream pantomimes. For female actors, subversion is no longer dressing up as a boy to play the male lead, it’s having Jack in the Beanstalk rewritten so that the main character is a girl.

Men have yet to go on an equal and parallel journey into the feminine realm. While pretty much everyone in Britain thinks it’s normal for women to wear trousers, play sport and create whatever life-work balance they choose; men wearing dresses, sharing their emotional experiences and putting home life ahead of career are still not considered to be mainstream expressions of masculinity.

There are people who fear that giving everyone equal access to the masculine and feminine realms, will breed a generation of girls who are butch or laddish and boys who are effeminate or gay. And yet there is a great deal for both women and men to gain from experiencing aspects of life that were traditionally restricted to one gender or another.

What is worth celebrating about The Boy in the Dress is that unlike The Worm That Turned thirty-odd years ago, it doesn’t present the feminine realm as a space that will emasculate men and boys, it presents it as a place that can liberate us by allowing us to express our masculinity however we want to.

Does this mean all men and boys should start wearing dresses? No! But this very camp, very British, very silly slice of “gendertainment” does present the opportunity to ask ourselves, what opportunities are men and boys missing out on by our continued failure to make the “feminine” experience of life equally available to all human beings.

 —Picture Credit: BBC

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Do men blame themselves and women blame others?

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This isn’t a sexist question. I don’t buy into the notion that “all women are x” and “all men are y”.

I do accept there are male and female tendencies that mean that “women are more likely to be x and men are more likely to be y”.

So when I ask, in the headline of this article, “do men blame themselves and women blame others?”, what I’m really asking is “are men more likely to blame themselves and women more likely to blame others?”

I’m talking generally.

I’m not talking about all men and women and I’m certainly not pointing the finger at any individual man or woman. And I’m really not talking about you. I don’t know you and I don’t pretend to know whether you personally are more likely to blame yourself or to blame others.

Who do we blame for gender inequality?

I do believe there may be some truth in the statement “men are more likely to blame themselves and women are more likely to blame others”. Let me explain why.

Over the years of studying gender inequalities I’ve noticed a distinct pattern:

  • When women experience inequality we tend to blame men
  • When men experience inequality we also blame men

Violence against women; the “gender pay gap”; the under-representation of women in positions of power—men’s fault.

Boys lower educational outcomes; the high male suicide rate and men’s poor life expectancy—men’s fault.

Our collective view of gender problems is that men CAUSE them and women SUFFER them, that women HAVE problems and men ARE problems—as one video on the matter says “we’re psychologically inclined to separate people into two categories, actors and acted upon”.

Men are actors and women are acted upon

The actor is generally seen as being a masculine role, while the “acted upon” is considered to be feminine. This can be good and bad news for both men and women.

As men, we expect (and are expected) to be strong, assertive actors who are 100% at the cause of our lives—fully responsible and totally to blame for whatever happens to us.

Women in this scenario may expect (and be expected) to be weak, submissive, acted-upon victims who are 100% at the effect of their lives—-never responsible and never to blame.

The downside of these gender binary constructions of femininity and masculinity is that men are denied the opportunity to be vulnerable and get support and women are denied the opportunity to be strong and take full responsibility for fulfilling their dreams.

Where’s the evidence for this?

Of course it isn’t quite so simple. There are men who are able to get help and support and there are women who take responsibility for their lives, but this arises against a cultural narrative that shapes men as the actors and women as the acted upon.

If this is all a bit too conceptual for you, let’s take a look at some data from two recent surveys that inspired this article.

The first was a survey of career aspirations which asked men and women to name the main reasons for falling short of their career goals.

Men pointed to internal factors like laziness and lack of motivation—they blamed themselves.

Women pointed to external factors like family commitments and competition for jobs. They also cite lack of confidence, a problem that is significant enough for there to be a book called the “confidence gap” aimed at women.

Who’s to blame when your confidence is low?

The premise of the book is that lack of confidence holds women back and addressing this can expand a woman’s opportunities and outcomes. The feminist Jessica Valenti does not like the idea that women can be the actors in life and made it clear in her review of the book that when it comes to self confidence, women are being acted upon saying:

“The ‘confidence gap’ is not a personal defect as much as it is a reflection of a culture that gives women no reason to feel self-assured.”

Of course the authors of the book never said that lack of confidence is a “personal defect”; what they say is that unlike the economy and the number of people competing for the same job (external concerns that you as an individual cannot change), your personal confidence is something you have some control over, because it’s something you can develop in such a way that it will improve your job prospects.

This is what psychologists refer to as having an internal or external locus of control. So “actors” are empowered because they have an internal locus of control, while the “acted upon” are disempowered because they have an external locus of control.

Being the master of your life is empowering

A second example of this at play can be found in CALM’s recent audit of masculinity, which found that men are three times more likely too feel pressure to be the breadwinner.

When asked where this pressure comes from, 81% of men looked inwards and said it comes from myself, compared with 67% of women.

More significantly, the same survey found that 47% of men with depression don’t talk about it compared with 26% of women. When asked why, more men (69%) than women (54%), say its because they prefer to deal with problems themselves.

This is where being the actor (or the acted upon) can work against us. Believing you have mastery and control over your life is empowering, up until the point where you’re faced with challenges that are outside of your control.

Why do men kill themselves?

How does a man beat depression if he believes the answer to his problems is always inside himself? Is the high male suicide the ultimate act of men blaming themselves when life doesn’t work out?

In contrast, believing you are “acted upon” and that the cause of any problem you face lies outside of you, can make it easier to reach out and get help. But does there come a point where always thinking you need the help of others, makes you helpless?

In my experience, there does seem to be a tendency for men to expect (and be expected) to be the actors in life, the problem solvers, the people with power who have no-one but themselves to blame if life doesn’t work out.

There is a similar and opposite tendency for women to expect (and be expected) to be acted upon in life, to have their problems solved, to be the people without power who can blame others when life goes wrong.

What can we learn from this? 

These are tendencies, not absolutes, they don’t apply to all men and women, but all of us can learn from these tendencies as they both have potential benefits.

The ability to look inwards and hold yourself responsible for your own life is deeply empowering—as is the ability to know when you need to get help and reach out for support. As the serenity prayer wisely says:

“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference”.

—Photo Credit: flickr/Cyberslayer

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Who’s the one man in TV ads British men aspire to be like…..?

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Seven out of ten men think we’re stereotyped in the media and yet half of us still aspire to be like one particular man from the world of TV adverts. Can you guess who that man is?

As part of its first national audit of masculinity published on International Men’s Day last week, the male suicide prevention charity CALM asked men which male character from TV advertising they most relate to and aspire to—and the result may surprise you.

WAS IT THE LYNX MAN?

No, apparently most British men don’t buy the idea that wearing an overpowering deodorant will cause millions of scantily-clad women to come charging towards you. Only 7% of men said they relate to the man in the Lynx ad and only 4% aspire to be that man.

WHAT ABOUT THE FAT BLOKE WHO CAN’T PLAY FOOTBALL?

No, only 8% of men relate to the fat bloke in The Sun’s fantasy football adverts and just 5% aspire to be like him!

HOW ABOUT THIS GUCCI SEX SYMBOL?

Would you be surprised to know that only 11% of men relate to this impossibly handsome man, though nearly one in five (19%) aspire to be like him.

IS DIY DAVE MORE OF A ROLE MODEL? 

More men (17%) could relate to the ordinary bloke in the B&Q advert though only 7% aspire to be like him.

WHO WANTS TO BE LIKE PAUL? 

http://youtu.be/VZlZ_6l8ul4

Yes apparently men want to be like the  overweight, beardy dad Paul Knowles who loves doing things for his family and puts “more effort into [their] holiday than most do at work. A total of 45% of men say they can relate to Paul and 51% say they aspire to be like him. As the advert says, “Paul, in our eyes, you’re already a winner”.

—Photo Credits: The Sun, B&Q and Gucci

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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The state of masculinity (and other things)

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Paul Howell has many years experience of “men’s work”. Here he offers his reflections on, amongst other things, the current state of masculinity.

—This is article #94 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

My friend Glen keeps hassling me for an article for the #100Voices4Men  series. I admire Glen, he’s an intelligent, stubborn and relentless man, leaning into a complex and messy arena, but I sometimes wonder why he bothers. What’s the point of gender politics?

I’m more often confused and frustrated by the lack of genuine debate than I am inspired by what can often seem like the man vs. woman vs. man vs. woman merry-go-round. For me, the term Man refers to someone who has made a sustained effort to carve his values from experience and walks a line somewhere between humility, wisdom and curiosity and has by some miracle, managed to retain enough vitality and a discerning vision to do some lasting good with what’s left.

My contributions to the conversation have been formed at the coal face of what is often referred to as ‘men’s work’, over the past 8 years. I’d like to be reporting back with some good news…unfortunately that seems to be illusive. Regarding the fate of humanity the great illuminator Carl Jung was ‘not optimistic’, neither was Freud. Dr Robert Moore, the grandfather of the men’s movement and a Jungian, who’s life’s work has distilled the core archetypal structures of the masculine psyche / soul (King, Warrior, Lover, Magician) will only say that he is not a despairing man, preferring hope and the hard work of awakening.

My personal journey started running a small men’s group, and moved personally and professionally into working with culture change in classically gender biased organisations, for example, the fire service, the police and engineering companies.

Through time with Moore, reading and listening to untold volumes of Jungian and other depth psychology texts, mythology, my own therapy and parallel explorations, working with abandofbrothers, attending The ManKind Project (MKP) New Warrior Initiation and being part of an MKP men’s group…

I naively attempted to set up the UK version of Boys to Men, which later became JourneymanUK (JMUK). Over 4 years I developed the USA boys to men material and delivered dozens of ‘man’ weekend intensives including the JMUK Rite of Passage Adventure Weekend and its associated mentoring circles for boys and men.

In addition to this my 1:1 client base has been consistently 50% male over 13 years.

The following is a summary of what I have learned so far…

The State of Masculinity 

Masculinity is adrift – rudderless and largely impotent in the face of manic passivity and denial. It has taken a blow to the solar plexus and is struggling to raise a meaningful heart felt and coherent response to the critical nature of our shared global ills. Stuck in a narcissistic trance, masculinity is spiralling down; cut away from its capacity for empathy, it’s failing to counter endemic political corruption and the daylight robbery (a phrase derived from 1690 and Tyrant King William III who taxed people based on the number of windows in their house) of true democracy which has long ago taken place.

The fatal blow to masculinity came through chronic shame, developmental and acute traumas accumulated over generations of war and the daily struggle to survive.  Beginning with the industrial revolution; we have been plotting our demise with great fervour ever since. Comfortably numb, we have simply lost touch of what is not just of utmost importance but now also urgent; our human connection to each other and our utter dependence on each other and the earth.

Masculinity, with a capital ‘M’ was dethroned; usurped, most recently by the shadow magicians of the corporate world and their shareholders who deny filling the trough with ungracious entitlements whilst systematically brainwashing future generations with the empty and destructive values of capitalism.

By replacing Justice with mere law and any kind of generative Realm with mere organisational and institutional power, we are deconstructing the psychosocial frameworks on which humanity depends.

On the side lines, religious fundamentalism opposes new age spirituality and somewhere in the distance the good earth faces the imminent catastrophic and systemic collapse of its (our) ecosystem; a fact we seem happy to remain ignorant of.

If mature masculinity is supposed to enable men to be stewards, protectors and servant leaders of noble communities and creative cultures we seem to have lost our way somewhere.

And this is nothing but a commentary on humans: all humans! We are all culpable, however, if denial is what you’re after – good news! The number of dissociative and numbing distractions are growing in direct proportion to the size of the problems we face. That’s how denial functions – until it doesn’t. When denial (the secrets we don’t know we are keeping through the active suppression of the facts by parts of the psyche that would rather not know or may indeed not be capable of dealing with the truth ) is illuminated, it presents as a crisis.

To read part two of this article see: Gender Roles – the primary task 

—Picture credit: Perspective 

Paul Howell offers personal coaching and counselling, training and facilitation, and workshops for men at Clarity Coaching.

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

So how could it be different?

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Part 4 of 4….so, how could it be different? What do we do? Simply this: a wise man once said ‘do what you can with what you have where you are’.

Initially, get directly involved in any way you are able with your own self development. Be discerning; you will meet many people with ‘good advice’–trust your intuition around what feels right for you, don’t stay anywhere that feels off to you. Read a book, go to a talk, watch a film, go to a workshop. Pay attention to your environment and be compassionately self-reflective, think about how you feel (that stuff happens in that thing below your neck!) about the world around you and let your responses guide you forward. Trust yourself.

After a while, when you have a good sense of where you are and what you need, look for like-minded people. Maybe you can mentor teenagers, maybe you want to join a community garden initiative, maybe you want to share your creative talents with a group, maybe you want to befriend someone, and in each case, listening is a good skill to have and usually the best thing to do! Try a few things out.

Learn about boundaries yours and others. Be affirming of yourself and others. Be vulnerable, take risks to connect and listen to the opinions of others, even perhaps about you. Challenge anything you feel is unhealthy, sign as many online petitions as you feel moved to. They do make a difference. Switch off your TV, think about what you watch / play / spend money on.

The most potent places of intervention are educational establishments –if you can work to influence those along the lines of Ken Robinson’s wonderful TED Talk. Connect with Nature, your nature and the earth’s. There is intelligence there beyond your current understanding, I can promise you that.

And, above all, try hard to move beyond your personal ideas of gender, of the limits you place on yourself and others. These are constructed social ideas that are increasingly obsolete. We need a new way, we have done for about 800 years. There are many wonderful ideas out there but most of them are solving problems that were obsolete a decade ago, such is the rate of change now upon us.

One of the major problems we face as a species (whatever our preferred gender identifications!) is that we are overwhelmed by the size and number of issues we are exposed to; defining the problem is a problem itself. I’d suggest anything that enhances esteem, connects individuals and groups of all ages to each other and the earth and actively opposes institutional abuse of human moral values is a good thing to do. Good but not easy. Waiting for someone else to give you permission, invite you or show you the way is passive and unnecessary. Act as if your life depends on it…it almost certainly does.

And, seeing as it was supposed to be a gender piece about men –men do listen to other men; if young men see you doing the above, they will follow your lead. In fact, they will follow your lead whatever you are doing, so wise up. Affirm young men whenever you can, itis likely they are waiting just for that- your attention and blessing. Tell them they count. Don’t fake it, they will know. Be sincere; what you say is not as important as where it comes from. A few words can really change someone’s life, or at least their day. Women ditto for each other and young girls. And never ever shame anyone, even in jest… especially yourself!

‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;

indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’

Margaret Mead’

 Paul Howell offers personal coaching and counselling, training and facilitation, and workshops for men at Clarity Coaching.