Intoxicating Masculinity
A client I have known for many years, who has often wrestled with his gender identity put words to the societal tension that festers and alienates men: “In the way manhood has been described to me throughout my life I do not see a place in it for me.” To be clear the client did not say that he wished to be a woman. Rather, in his own way he described the shame and alienation he felt in the narrowness of how manhood has been prescribed to him.
Think of the parts of a man that are jettisoned during his childhood in order to fit the social environment he finds himself and the confines of being a ‘man.’ Most notably he is compelled to detach from the greater range of feelings he has. Shame, is the alienation of parts of the self that cannot be included in relation to peers, parents and others in our lives, and so are disowned. Thus, the self is divided, split into fragments and the boy (and later the man) is hyper-aware of how other’s perceive him. In contrast, the initiated man (who has moved from boyhood to manhood with more of a compliment of his inheritance) integrates the varied facets of his developmental early life as a boy in concert with his inheritance from women and peers and older men as well as his deepest wounds into a grounded male human being. I am calling this intoxicating masculinity because it implies a man who does not need to dominate and control, but is instead purposeful, meaningful and powerful, and importantly, pulls others closer to him.
The phrase toxic masculinity features in articles, conversations and worries about the behaviors of men and poor role-modeling for boys, youth and young men while on their trajectory to ‘being a man.’ Masculinity and men in general are often mentioned to me as threats, fearful, antiquated or lost. I believe that many men are indeed lost. Some men envision a return to a previous era, or another time they perceive as more clear-cut, when ‘men could be men.’ From such a place I often hear men say, “You can’t even tell a joke now without offending someone; I can’t just be myself.” Others subscribe to a softer or ‘feminine’ identity that frees them of being lumped into part of the toxic abuser group. But when asked about who they are a pause, a silence and reluctance is followed by a list of superificial identities. We men, today, have often very little understanding of who we actually are.
Indeed, society makes different demands of men at different times, but an underlying aspect that I find missing in many of my male peers is knowing the great emotional body within themselves that can encompass a full way of being a man and that allows us to be more of what we actually are: powerful, gritty, connected, full of delight, sorrowful, and real. Manhood can and needs to be about finding ways of taking responsibility for knowing the self of the man.
This internal space of a man includes the wounds, abandonments, the injuries, shame, failures that the boy has endured in early life. Without doing internal work and exploration and having the initiation of coming to know these core wounds how is a man to know himself and take responsibility for that self with other men, women and children?
To do these things is to find an intoxicating manhood that includes facing up to the depth of the internal experiences of a man. It is older men who help younger men to include a growing understanding of their wounds and how to make great use out them, to begin to integrate them as key parts of their unique wisdom. This process is historically understood as initiation. From boyhood to manhood we must ‘walk into’ the core places where we have been wounded, shamed and unnurtured.
Our current government and president feature superb examples of toxic masculinity, or more accurately older men (chronologically) who are developmentally adolescent (or much younger), using control and threat in lieu of an ability to forge contact and relationship in their engagement with other people. They are little selves masquerading as adults. As an elder family member says of Trump, “He’s America’s abusive father.” Trump is a fantastic trope of an old ‘50’s era man that rules over a household, or a whole country using fear, threat, domination and control. Trust doesn’t enter the equation as it would involve having to locate feelings other than fear and disgust within himself.
I have been gifted to know many older men who have shared their fullness of manhood with me, an embodied masculinity that offers power in their way of using deep connection and wisdom to create real change and guidance to those that know them. I loved the silent experience of being with my maternal grandfather, who I felt truly loved me and cared for me. I have been a steward of my relationships with many older male therapists who are regularly fierce, who put themselves in challenging circumstances and don’t let other’s get away with bullshit, but who in the next breath, are there to nurture the vulnerable places their clients go to in their therapeutic work.
As a father of an adolescent young man I am eager for ways that he can be initiated into manhood. I see that as he nears his adulthood that I too and going through my own initiation as a fifty-year-old man, as I more clearly experience how I am losing him to the greater world and his inevitable push away from home. I attempt to give him opportunities to locate the places within him that are difficult to reconcile and to meet directly. An ancient truth is that what we find most difficult within ourselves is exactly where our treasure and gifts for ourselves and the world lie.
As I look at our society, nation and world I see a widespread need for initiation, for real contact with our very core selves, our deepest wounds, joys and despairs. I believe we need older and embodied men to serve as guides and supports to usher boys toward the fullness of what their adult manhood could be. At 50 I have returned to the work of Robert Bly’s book Iron John, which I read as a young adult. Bly’s potent piece about initiation as a decent into the core wound of the self as the critical feature of initiation holds a key. For each person a core wound exists. It is not enough to be tough, callus, and stoic, or the mythical cowboy embodied in a Clint Eastwood film. Instead, a complete man is in dire need, and older and emotionally available men are needed by him.
