Men: Where Are We Now?

By Paul Hennig

Not an easy or quick answer. Depends on who you are talking to and who you are talking about. Men, like any other large population, encompass a wide spectrum of consciousness. At the higher end, we see encouraging activity such as the New Warrior Training, the Redwood Men's Center, the Mankind Project and the work and writings of Robert Bly, Allen Chinen, David Whyte, John Bradshaw and a number of other good writers and thinkers whose work is finding interest and acceptance among men from the upper end of the spectrum.

These men are asking questions such as, "What is it to be a man?" They are rejecting the false image of masculinity projected by the macho patriarchal mind and culture and creating an authentic male identity. They are reaching out, raising their consciousness and asking, "What is our soul's path as a man?" Joseph Jastrab's, Sacred Manhood, Sacred Earth: A Quest into the Wilderness of a Man's Heart and his workshops is a fine example of this outreach of consciousness

But the macho culture is alive and well and propagating its model of masculinity from an early age on up. The competitive credo of Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach who said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" is repeated in locker rooms across the entire land. This macho competitiveness pits men against each other and they lose the old cooperative masculinity when men came together to raise barns, harvest crops and fight fires. They lose real relationship and camaraderie with each other.

Another tenant of the Macho Code is "Never let your feelings show. Dr. William Pollack did a study, "Listening to Boy's Voices." One of the voices was Glenn, age 18,

"I'm always thinking: don't let your feelings show."

Ian, age 14,

"You've gotta really keep your guard up. If you don't, the guys will... tell people that you're not cool."

Jason, age fifteen, wrote:

"If something happens to you, you have to say: 'Yeah, no big deal,' even when you are really hurting… you have to punch things and brush it off. I've punched so many lockers in my life, it's not even funny. When I get home, I'll cry about it.

Adam told Pollack,

"I get a little down, but I'm very good at hiding it. It's like I wear a mask. Even when the kids call me names or taunt me, I never show them how much it crushes me inside. I keep it all in."

There it is, the code: "keep it all in," and woe onto those who break with the code because things will get even worse, many times worse. Those who are unable to maintain the Code are ruthlessly hounded and scapegoated. Pollack writes, "While girls may be shame sensitive, boys are shame phobic... they fear it... they are exquisitely yet unconsciously attuned to any signal of "loss of face" (or "dissing") and will do just about whatever it takes to avoid shame." Shame is a denial or an insult to one's selfhood, hence, one's manhood. Growing up with the Code leaves a man disconnected and disassociated from his feeling self. He does not seek that kind of connection with others nor does he does he give it. He believes that feeling and connection is a threat to his masculinity.

But it does not have to be like this. When my son, Jesse, was four. We were out on my sailboat, Wizard, when I ran aground on a sandbar just off Ward's Island. The Queen City Yacht Club launch came by and offered to tow me off if I came on board to tend the line so it would not foul up in his prop. I explained to Jesse what I had to do. He said, "I will be afraid." I tried to reassure him, but as soon as I stepped off the boat, he began to cry. As soon as I pulled Wizard off I jumped back on board, picked up Jesse, held him tight and told him that I was sorry that I had to do that and make him feel bad. In other words, it was OK for him to have those feelings. It was OK to cry. The Code would have had me say, "Stop your crying and be a big boy. You got nothing to cry about. What are you, some kind of little sissy?" and the message, loud and clear, would have been, "It's not OK for you to have these feelings and even worse to express them. It is not the stuff of manhood; it's not the right stuff." This coming from the most important male figure in his life would have been crushing. Well, today Jesse is very solid, assured, masculine, twenty-four year old, young man. Breaking with the code, did not hurt him one bit.

Another tenant of the Code is; "Running risks is how real men prove themselves." When I was taking flight training in the Air Force, a guy named Nixon had the unofficial record for the number of spin turns in a T-28, sixteen, hence, his nickname, "Spinner." The standard number of turns for this maneuver was three. Sixteen turns involved a major loss of altitude and a high rate of descent. One day Spinner went up to break his own record. After he was two hours overdue with no radio contact, they sent out search planes. They found him in a hole in the desert. There wasn't a piece of his aircraft much bigger than a playing card. They figured he went into the ground in excess of 300 Knots. He left behind a young wife with a one-year-old boy. What was he doing up there? He was proving his manhood by pushing the envelope beyond what anyone else has done. He was listening to the Macho Code. Being a husband and a father wasn't enough; it didn't register with the Code. He had to be the top guy, another by-law of the code.

Professor Don Long of Washington University calls anger the "emotional funnel" through which boys have been taught to express their feelings of frustration, vulnerability and powerlessness. The more tender and real emotions, the ones more close to the bone are too shameful to show. Shame is the denial of selfhood. So anger becomes the OK emotion for men and boys to express and, hence, their quickest response to a difficult situation, hardly the best preparation for close relationships.

So this is how the Code works. It ill prepares men for intimacy and relationship with women and so they resort to aggression, control, even violence. "Men are beginning to open themselves up to the wounds and shadow they have acquired from the Macho Code and they are healing.

But not all men, for some the code is their only mode of masculinity and so this work is a threat to their masculinity and they write it off as "bullshit" or "stuff for faggots." They see any softening of themselves, any discussion of their feelings or their feminine side as threat. It stirs their fear of homosexuality. Joseph Jastrab tells of sending out e-mails of an up coming workshop, "The World Needs a Man's Heart." One response was, "Take me off your mailing list immediately" John Bradshaw and Robert Bly speak of being "savaged" and ridiculed in the media. Bly for his rituals and Bradshaw for his inner child work. The reporters were men.

As well, we men have been recoiling from the some of the furious male bashing and scapegoating from hostile feminists. Naomi Wolf, when asked if she was going to have her son circumcised, replied, "No, I'll have him castrated." She was speaking in jest, of course, but still where is such jest coming from. Carolyn Baker, Confessions of a Recovering Feminist, writes, "Feminists need to get in touch with the shadow side of feminism first," just as we men need to get in touch with the shadow of our masculinity. We are doing just that in our men's movement. We men need to unite with women and women need to unite with men. We need each other and we need to come together. The men's movement is working to make that happen.

About Paul Hennig

Paul Hennig writes out of his long experience and personal struggle with the Macho Code ranging from the fraternity house and locker rooms at the University of Buffalo and Cornell to the bachelor officer's quarters and squadron rooms of the U.S. Air Force flying as an Electronic Intelligence Officer. He left the USAF to study theology, philosophy, metaphysics and literature at the University of Toronto while considering the priesthood. Then to graduate studies at Canisus Collage and Buffalo State. He wrote his book "The Macho Code" while living and working on a thoroughbred horse farm in Ontario where he still lives.

"Breaking the Macho Code." is available from Amazon.com and www.trafford.com

You may write Paul personally at hennigpaul@yahoo.ca

Photo by Lori Longstaff