I have a blurred memory of a helicopter taking off from a rooftop someplace far away.
Ed Bradley speaks to us on the CBS Evening News on April 30, 1975, as North Vietnamese and American forces close in on Saigon.
I am four years old, and I remember our wood-paneled living room and my father’s voice, “Peter* will be home then, I guess.” Peter is his brother, my uncle, and an infantry commander on the ground in Vietnam.
Three days later I stand at Logan Airport in Boston holding my father’s hand, looking down at Pete’s shining black dress shoes, and looking up at his crisp dress Blues and a chest of medals. When we got home, no one spoke. They popped the tab on cans of Miller Lite and stared at the television.
My memories of being introduced to masculinity are of riddled silences like this. I began to think about how those memories shaped who I am as a man.
I am 45 years old now, (although looking and feeling sometimes much older). How much wiser I am is up for grabs, but men are changing—some for the better, some for the worse. Men are at the epicenter of the tectonic cultural shocks rippling through our culture.
Modernity meets masculinity on the front-lines in the Middle East and North Africa where covert teams of special force operators take out bands of men whose vengeance is culled from scripture. Masculinity is barked at us in the bellicose, idiotic ravings of a Presidential candidate whose own overcompensation cannot be taken seriously. And yet he may very well sit in the White House next year.
Modernity encourages a father to send his wife and children across the sea to escape war and oppression. Masculinity (or lack thereof) is set decoration for the inexcusably lame and immature behavior of thebrogrammer culture of Silicon Valley , where rape was recently characterized as “20 minutes of action.” We should not wonder why boys act like boys when a Ward Cleaver proxy justifies Junior’s behavior with such callousness.
As western culture pivots towards mutuality and expanded definitions of gender, it also continues to tolerate male privilege. The sentencing in the Stanford case should warn us that no matter how many times Caitlin Jenner appears in the press in a new dress, no matter how much gender flux we hear about , it is still somewhat of a cultural novelty—or being made into that by the incessant media coverage.
The Stanford sentencing tells us that the Old Boy’s Club is up and running, all well and good. Human rights groups unequivocally condemn the legal systems in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, where rape is punishable by death and yet widespread. “Don’t do as we do, do as we say,” is not new to most people who encounter western hypocrisy.
As men, we are our worst enemies, and we know it.
Given existing media stereotypes about who men are supposed to be, it becomes pretty clear that many of us are utterly confused about the actual scope of our masculinity. Where does it start and, and how much of it is welcome or needed at work, at home, and in relationships?
Do we give in too quickly and drink the liquid-hero brew and end up wanting to kick ourselves in the teeth for giving too much, too soon, and frequently to the wrong people? Are we willing to cheat, even kill to protect our interests? How far will we go to ensure our children remain loyal to us and follow our wishes? What is family? What is sacred?
The list of questions we can ask—and should ask—ourselves before we are married or become fathers is a long one—and I’m quite sure most of us do not do the work of answering them.
Most of us do not stop to consider who we are today because of our fathers. Does it matter to us—who we are, what we stand for, what we do? What do the words, “yes” and “no”, mean to us?
Many men have a profound, unspoken need to save someone, to be a hero, to be — for better or worse — a real person.
I have found this echoed by other men, who admit that they too ignore their intuition and needs to satisfy the full emotional, financial and psychological needs of their partner without question. Why? Because that’s what men do, right? We offer support. We don’t ask for it. We do this more frequently than we think and often, we do it unconsciously. We give ourselves away in the process, willingly and stoically, and often without much thought of likelihood of getting our emotional needs met or even discussing them.
The problem is urgency.
Men are inherently reactive and wired to respond to threat and expectation too readily, for obvious and often regrettable reasons. More than once I have, like many men, attached myself to someone whom I thought would be responsive to my needs automatically (that’s what women do right?), but whose own needs quickly became paramount to my own. (That’s what men do right?)
We believe our macho, “I can handle this,” PR a little too quickly — without making a deliberate effort to find out what the hell is going on and who or what we are dealing. Here’s a piece of advice — just ask. Ask a new company or potential love interest what their values are before you get involved. You’ll be surprised at the answers you get — and more importantly, you’ll see if their actions back it up before you commit to anything.
Women tend to be more cautious and deliberate in some ways. They will often wait to make decisions and solicit the advice of friends. They are keen to see what’s what before taking action. Woman have a much more acute evolutionary and biological sense of ramifications for the simple reason that they might get saddled with another human being if their choice is not correct in a moment of passion. Don’t underestimate this power, ever.
Depending on upbringing; men are to supposed to be vigilantly aware of the “right thing to do.” However, I hear more and more men complain that they are not sure what the trade-off is. Like it or not, many men —good men—willingly sacrifice everything for families, wives, children, houses, and end up bankrupt emotionally and otherwise because they did not protect themselves.
Men need to start owning the fact that this powerful, heroic impulse of ours contains the seeds of emotional irresponsibility, dispossession, and neglect for our own needs.
Given even a cursory glance at the identity chasm between what is male chauvinism and what is well-adjusted masculinity, it’s not surprising that the latter categories struggle to find ways to keep the image alive. Can we blame the advertisers, sports fanatics, and gun-toting militias for fighting to save some semblance of an albeit misguided sense of masculinity?
I was raised in an environment of stoic military machoism, discipline and etiquette—an entire world wired with expectations of behavior for men and women. Today, I am worried about boys being brought up without male role models who reinforce anything active or adaptive. I am worried when younger male colleagues feel they need to make themselves more effeminate—like a straight man who feels the need sometimes to affect a faux-gay voice when speaking of something delicate. Often raised by women alone, more men do things like this to make their point without offending and hide their masculinity someplace. In so doing, they deceive themselves about their emotional needs and bandwidth.
Make men better not stronger.
There was never much room in the traditional role of stoic caretaker for men’s actual emotional needs, and this is what needs to be reevaluated.
There is a lot said about the obligation men have to love and support families. There are well-intentioned movements that encourage men to live up to these standards, and we should certainly honor our commitments. However, it is oft ignored that men have emotional needs which are equal to those of women. In fact, some psychologists have begun studying men’s emotionality and discovered that men need far more support than women do in some instances, because as a group, we are not prone to discuss those needs with one another. We end up relying too much on women for this reason, which is unfair to them, and a bad idea.
The roles men feel unconsciously compelled to play are the same ones that set us up for disaster because our expectations don’t match our actual emotional capacity—or worse, set up a host of problematic expectations from women, who have changed right alongside men.
Men who have not healed from childhood scarring take that legacy into their marriages and families, while men who have a developed sense of emotional intelligence are better leaders, fathers, and friends.
We need to encourage one another to open up, and let it go. The real question is whether or not our culture is ready for sensitized men. Does our culture have room for men who are vulnerable or emotional, for men with deep emotional scars and healing? If we do not , we’d better start to make room, because these are the very qualities that if held back cause the most trouble.
We can begin by tracking towards the middle ground—towards reciprocity, compromise, mutuality, and cooperation.
Exchange and warmth in relationships are not only necessary for all of us, both men and women, to thrive , they comprise true, real common humanity and the beginning of mutuality. We should celebrate when we find a mutual transparency that allows for our fragility and our frailty.
We should be thankful when we find someone who is capable of actually listening and validating our deep, natural need for affection and warmth. Indeed, we ought to seek out those with whom we can cultivate the natural dignity in ourselves as men — because that is what we need most of all.
* Names have been changed to protect individual anonymity.
~
Author: Louis D. LoPraeste
No comments:
Post a Comment