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Why I asked the ‘Newsweek’ journalist when he last ejaculated

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I spent many hours chatting to Newsweek journalist Finlay Young, even before he joined in one of our men’s groups. Fin had asked if he could meet up to help with a ‘Newsweek’ cover story article he was writing — they had included my comment and picture, plus The Man Whisperer chapter, in the latest ‘Newsweek’ book about the crisis of male suicide, entitled ‘The Descent of Man’.

For all our lengthy and fascinating discussions about modern masculinity and mental health, there was clearly one simple question that most caught Fin’s attention, and perhaps the attention of his readers as well:

“I was asked my age (29), my name (Finlay), my Western Sign (Libra), my Chinese sign (unknown), and the last time I ejacula … Sorry what? I am a man. I am a man who is not scared of his emotions. But I did not think I was a man who would ever sit in a circle at MenSpeak with Kenny D and talk about when I last ejaculated.”

At MenSpeak men’s groups, men show up with who we really are, beyond old restrictions. We laugh, listen and grow together. We are accepting, accountable, share experiences and feelings. The key is knowing when to ask the right questions, often responding to hidden invitations that shine between the lines of what’s actually said.

‘Why are you asking me this?’

The object of the exercise is to find out who you no longer need to (pretend to) be in the world and your life and let it go, making space for who you really are to emerge and give him a good test-drive amongst other men. It’s about building a bridge from the best of who you are into the world, rather than the group being a safe little haven away from the big bad world. We change our worlds and make the world a better place in the way we live our lives.

We open MenSpeak to the men in the room with a ‘check-in round’, so everyone’s voice is heard and we have an idea of who, what and why is in the room – including elephants. The tone is set and our boundaries are subtly stated. This is essential. It helps to define a point where we feel safe to meet each other in our stories and revelations.

The question ‘The last time I ejaculated…’ opens the floor to all sorts of issues. Most obviously it may open curtains on issues of sex and sexual expression, physiological problems, potential health issues and addictive habits and of course relationship difficulties. Equally importantly, it also flushes out the occasional defensive reaction: “Why are you asking me this?”

The question is but one of twelve which get us started on every open MenSpeak men’s group. Perhaps someone would not understand why I would ask that question unless they also understand why I ask all such questions. If you are interested, let me explain.

‘I’m fine!’

Questions begin with the man to my left, unless it’s his first group, then we move on around the circle to his left where man might simply say “pass”, to move us on to the next man.

‘My name is…’ is the obvious place to start and breaks the separation of the men. Some men enter the room and shake everyone’s hand introducing themselves. Others don’t. Both choices are fine. First, full, or false name for the evening, it’s not an issue.

Secondly, ‘I feel…’ which can sometimes take time to get to, as men begin to feel how they feel and tell the truth. Others are immediately “fine!” which is sometimes challenged, other times allowed by, while that man settles in and feels respected and safe to explore what’s behind ‘fine’. (I’ve heard it said that “FINE” is an acronym for F**ked-up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotionally unavailable).

Many are gently invited to focus on their breathing and move from thinking to feeling. It’s not about getting the answer right or being caught out, it’s about being present with what’s going on for a while and getting real, making space for pennies to drop, options to appear and life to provide.

‘So… What’s your sign?’

‘What I want from this evening…’ is the landing pad question for every man to take ownership. Men state why we are here. For some it is an urgent, burning issues, for others mild curiosity or a wish to explore male company with depth. Some feel as if they have outgrown the boy’s life and are in need of some man tips, tools and techniques for living. Often one senses that something heavy is being carried and the bearer will make it to the table once the legs have been tested and found strong enough to take it. So we all name our needs and take responsibility for getting them met, whilst probably hoping for the group, or facilitator to take an interest and help meet those needs.

‘Age / Chinese sign / Western sign…’ Often gets the eyes rolling, but is great for those who have issues with their age, while allowing a space for “I don’t believe in all that rubbish!” rebellion in the room as our collective authority is challenged and shared beyond the facilitator. Some know that “38, Virgo, Dragon” is their simple answer but are eager to hear from everyone else and see what happens next in this live game of show-and-tell for men. Groups like this often toe a line between the touchy-feely-esoteric, and the logical-linear-scientific problem solvers at this stage. This question helps to marry those two dynamics so they pull together rather than pulling us apart.

‘Single / partner / married / divorced / player / on the market / parent / other’ leaves space for stories of loneliness, split-parenthood with access issues, “my wife sent me here!”, I’m a sex addict / sex starved, don’t know how to not be my short-tempered father to my son. Relationship status and shadow stories are touched upon to invite hearts and hurts into our circle.

‘My greatest fear right now…’

Is it flippant to throw ‘Sexuality…’ straight in there so early? Maybe a man is here to explore sexuality issues that are best closeted for now, or until there’s safe, consistent space in a closed group to unpack sexualised shadows. We name it from the outset, put it aside, get on the same side with the dominant and the shy, the straight and the gay, the experienced and the virginal swapping tips, advice and guidance.

The ‘Ground Rules’ clearly states that this is not a therapy group, not an encounter group, not a w*nk group or a place to pick up men for sex, not a group for or against men or women, not a religious or spiritual group, not a political group, not a group of anything apart from whatever the men present make it. Such boundaries are designed to keep our circle clean and free of expectation and ulterior motives.

Another eye-roller is ‘Favourite piece of clothing / label / gadget…’ which allows people to express individuality, nonchalance, love of the Leatherman pen knife, an i-something, power tool, or the dapper designs of Paul Smith. It is so important to throw a couple of annoying questions in the mix, to balance the power in the room and prepare for shockers, like ‘the ejaculation question’ that instantly changes tone from the safety of insufferable questions like this one!

Question nine (of twelve) is ‘My greatest fear, right now…’ With cages rattled and shadows cast, we dive deeper. Men might disclose their greatest fear in life, their greatest fantasy, or their greatest fear in this present moment. Some are here because they are living their greatest fear, so we are straight into the thick of things. The ‘right now’ part of this question is a key, designed to explore from the present, beyond pain from the past and fear of the future.

‘The last time I cried…’

Then comes ‘I hate…’ which gives space to spillages of honesty where the unspeakable is spoken and cats roam far outside of their bags. Often men express how strong the word ‘hate’ is and how they don’t go there, then they offer niggles, narks and nuisances instead. However, as the floor is opened to the bottom-line, strong opinions and deeply-buried obsessions begin to spill out with various proportions of confession, performance and showmanship. Often it is as if the group is at once donning and discarding the myriad masks of masculinity: Hero; victim; savior; mummy’s boy; martyr; monkey; lion or mouse.

‘I love…’ follows naturally, now the air has been cleared and space is opened to the free sharing of life’s loves: Self; wife; kids; quiet; money; a peaceful life; dog; smoking; sometimes nothing.

‘I am…’ is a right humdinger to end the check-in round. ‘I am’ are the most powerful words from which we create who we are and who we want to be. Again, this is not a trick question, but an opportunity for self-awareness and realignment into the here and now, with opportunity to adjust sails to catch more favorable winds in this world.

I’ve run many mixed groups and even women’s groups. Ejaculation didn’t quite hit the spot with the women, so I replaced it with ‘The last time I cried…’ and it works a treat!

I do ring my bell in darkness for two minutes at the beginning and at the end of a group, as ‘Newsweek’ Fin slowly counted down beyond the thirteen reverberating seconds that took us into quiet space. Only once in over a dozen years of holding the space for men’s groups has a man asked where men go in the silence. Two minutes can feel like a long time. Some meditated, some pretended to meditate, some power-thought (because they thought that’s what meditation is), some looked around at everyone and possibly freaked out a bit inside.

I usually take some slow deep breaths, concentrate on relaxing into my body as I get present in the room in this circle of men around the wee flame in the middle. I find my own space from the thoughts, feelings and niggles of the day, getting here and now with myself and the other men in the room, in this moment. Our space.

By Kenny D’Cruz

Kenny’s group facilitation handbook: “How to run a men’s group” will be out this year with full training programmes to follow. Contact him to stay in the loop and receive free chapters, updates, special offers, exclusive invitations, video tutorials, demonstrations and blogs for a better life.

“I understand why Kenny D, for his eccentricity, is a very good person for them to see. He sensitively prodded and cajoled, smiled and provoked, and almost in spite of myself I found myself talking honestly. He is a gentle voice in the ears of the many men who come to him for help with life – a man whisperer.” Finlay Young (Newsweek)

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‘If you don’t initiate your young men into the tribe, they will burn down the village’

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There is an African proverb that says, if you do not initiate your young men into the tribe, they will come back and burn down the village just to feel the heat. Are we seeing the consequences in the UK of a failure to provide our young men with a proper path to manhood? Here Peter Chaplin, who organises male rites of passage retreats, explains what this ancient tradition means to him.

— This is article #29 in our #100Voices4Men and boys series

It’s a 500-mile drive from where I live in Surrey to Perth, Scotland, where the annual Men’s Rites of Passage event takes place. The long journey is part of the process for most of us – the separation from work, cars, supermarkets, families, wifi. The road rises after Preston on the M6 and that’s where I feel the distance beginning to have an effect. By the time I arrive, I’ve forgotten how long I’ve been travelling.

When I finally turn the engine off and hand over my keys, phone, books and music, it’s to spend five days under canvas in a field in company with 45 other men, who are also scratching their heads and wondering what they’ve let themselves in for.

Reframing a man’s life

My turn came in 2010, and it was a memorable journey back into a fuller appreciation of the eldership of mature men, something so badly lacking in the west.  Most of us have no initiations for such moments. Granted, we can be confirmed by our local bishop (a bit of a milk-and-water affair, as I recall) if we’re in a mainstream church, or can go through initiations in military and sometimes in sporting environments.  We go through rites of passage when we are named, married, produce children and die, but nowhere else.

But the rites of passage was very male, very masculine, full of power, passion, failure, humour and brokenness, grief and release. It was earthy and humane, carried a recognition of the inevitability of loss and a reframing of the second half of a man’s life in which the graph levels out and starts to turn south, the time when fighting and striving stop.

I and the men around me found a safe space to confront and experience our failures and griefs among a team of elders who had taken the same journey earlier. Our feet were gently held to the fire, so to speak. It’s not a retreat, and it’s not therapy either. We didn’t have to negotiate any language with women, or apologize for the parts of ourselves that we hide from them.

Bad traditions need to be retired, but having no traditions at all seems to me to be much worse

There’s even more need for this type of eldering/mentoring for adolescents. It’s a challenge to devise meaningful rituals for young men to bring them into conscious and competent manhood. There’s an old African saying that if we don’t do this, the young men will come back and burn down the village. Isn’t that what’s happening right now all over the west? Young men don’t know who they are – though it’s not so surprising, since we as their fathers don’t really know either.

We have cast aside the old ways and the wisdoms of our ancestors without a second’s thought, all in the name of individual rights, self-expression, my freedom, all of which are good and necessary things. Bad traditions need to be retired, but having no traditions at all seems to me to be much worse.

On the way home, we find out later, most men say little or nothing, and when asked at home how it went, they say “I don’t really know what to tell you.” Weeks later it can be the same. For that short space of time up in Perth, these men, many for the first time, got outside their heads and into something altogether deeper and less tameable by language and thought. Sometimes their partners just nod and smile and wait for clues to begin leaking out, for conversations they’ve longed for over many years. Something has changed that they recognise before we do.

To find out more visit the Men’s Rites of Passage website here.

Photo: Flickr/Michael Pollack

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 necessarily the views of the 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.

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Why are some young men drawn to terrorism?

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By David Plummer, Griffith University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

Recent coverage of counterterrorism raids in Australia featured hard-core gyms, anabolic steroids, nightclub bouncers, gangs and weapons. Footage from the Middle East regularly depicts truckloads of young bearded warriors bristling with ordnance.

Is this a view of masculinity that merely happens to be violent? Or does masculinity actively underwrite and sustain extremist movements?

The paradox is that while the world sees extremism as dangerously anti-social, the men themselves appear to see it as a profound social duty.

They exhibit dogmatic conformity to group social norms, they see an opportunity for masculine notoriety and to have a risky “boy’s own” adventure. Above all, they see it as the ultimate demonstration of manhood.

Understanding how this occurs should be a top priority – especially how young boys go down the path of terror – because this understanding ultimately paves the way for interventions, de-escalation and peace.

From quiet kid, to terrorist warrior

A number of alternative explanations exist for the prominence of hypermasculine imagery in reports of terrorism. The imagery may well reflect Western media biases and serve the propaganda purposes of Western governments. That is to say, the reports largely speak to Western cultural viewpoints and political agendas.

While this may well be the case, there is clearly much more to the story. It is also possible that hypermasculinity is a side-effect of the posturing of war. But this merely reinforces the view that masculinity is indeed a potent force at work here.

In addition to obvious hypermasculine imagery, three other features strike a chord with my own research:

  • First is the youth of the recruits, including many teenagers
  • Second is the transformation from quiet kid into terrorist warrior – think “lone wolf”
  • Third is the way that young men identify with a cause and affiliate with extremist groups

These features – young male, group identification, transformation into warrior – have much in common with, and should draw our attention to, the more familiar rites of passage that mark the transition from childhood to manhood.

The Boy Scouts is one way many Western countries have imparted masculine ideals to boys. Freeparking/Flickr, CC BY

The transition from boyhood to manhood is a crucial time in boys’ lives. Becoming a man is the ultimate social endorsement and personal accomplishment.

Most boys apply themselves to the task without question. In part, this is because the change seems so normal and because they rightly sense that failure is associated with some of the deepest social taboos of all.

Most cultures, including those in the West, have limited tolerance for members who “deviate” from accepted gender norms. For all intents and purposes becoming a man is compulsory.

Initiation to manhood invariably involves confronting fear

For most, becoming a man seems natural, probably because it appears to stem from the biological changes of puberty. But there are actually many pathways to manhood and many possible outcomes. The natural “feel” is deceptive.

There is plenty of research that shows that masculinity is highly variable and above all is a social achievement, which is largely independent of biology.

Different societies define manhood very differently: they define what a “real man” is, set the standards that boys ought to aspire to, and orchestrate the transition to manhood through a variety of mechanisms.

Indeed, becoming a man is potentially so variable that anthropologist David Gilmore reminds us that:

Boys have to be encouraged, sometimes actually forced, by social sanctions to undertake efforts toward a culturally defined manhood, which by themselves they might not do.

Traditional societies seem to have addressed the uncertainties in the transition to manhood by developing initiation rituals to guide young men through. These rituals typically entail some form of risky challenge, which boys use to prove their manhood and to earn the right to be called a man.

The boys always underwent initiation under the guidance of older mentors and in the company of their peers. The rituals served to make the transition orderly, meaningful and invested it with shared social purpose.

Boys teaching boys

Modern-day social change has witnessed a decline in all but the most basic rites of passage. Yet becoming a man is as important as always, and the transition to manhood remains very challenging.

This raises the question: how do boys navigate the transition now? I argue that many boys now invent their own rites of passage.

Research in the West Indies showed that social change has led to a loss of older mentors from boys’ lives due to long working hours and commuting times, fewer men in teaching, suspicion about men in youth clubs, changing family structures and so on.

These shifts have left a power vacuum that is vulnerable to exploitation. Boys are spending more time in the sole company of their peers: on street corners, in shopping malls and in their cars.

Instead of growing up with the role models and standards of older, more experienced men, most of their role modelling comes from peer groups. In the absence of alternatives, these groups resort to raw physical masculinity as the yardstick for what masculinity should look like, how boys should behave and who should dominate.

Terrorism as a passage to manhood

They also develop their own rituals to admit members, some of which are extreme, anti-social and high-risk. It is a willingness to take risks that is considered the hallmark of a “real man”.

So how does this relate to terror? Hypermasculine imagery is prominent in the media. Terror recruits are young, group-affiliated and primed to take risks. They are supposedly disaffected and therefore susceptible to mentoring by like-minded peers and older men, whose motives differ from those of their parents and community.

There are key similarities with classic rites of passage and key parallels with my own work on masculinity elsewhere. The social pressures and events around the transition to manhood are especially susceptible to exploitation.

It is difficult not to conclude that masculinity is a key force that underwrites and sustains extremism. In terrorism, we are witnessing a very specific configuration of the passage to manhood.

David Plummer does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

Read the original article.

Photo: Flickr/DVIDSHUB

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Land Diving: Courage, pain and the cost of becoming a man

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“While almost every culture had a rite of passage ritual, there existed a great diversity in what these ceremonies consisted of. The common thread was an experience that involved emotional and physical pain and required a boy to pass the test of manhood: to show courage, endurance, and the ability to control one’s emotions.”

For men who live in Vanuatu, a small island nation in the middle of the South Pacific, this takes the form of a ritual called Land Diving.

“Boys as young as five years old will take part in the ritual which is often preceded by circumcision. The boys start out jumping low, but will work their way up as they get older. The higher a man goes, the manlier he is considered by the tribe.”

Read the full story on The Art of Manliness

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