What it means to be a man

I think we've gotten to a point in history where it's safe to say that men have certain disadvantages. Sure, we've traditionally had more of an advantage in school and careers and even church, but those advantages are mostly ego-centric. The advantages revolve around money and positions of power or authority. What of our emotional health though? How many books and organizations exist that further the emotional health and development of women? How many books and organizations seek to do the same thing for men? For men, it's all about how to become a better provider, how to make more money, how to further your career, how to fix a car. I think we assume that just because that's how our culture is currently, that's how it always has been and that's just how it's supposed to be. It's part of our gender roles as males. I say bull shit. :)

My friend Krisanne recently sent me a link to this post on The Exponent. The article discusses how sometimes in books and movies and popular culture, the man is portrayed as the bumbling idiot while the wife is the more evolved force in the relationship. The author also mentions how this mentality has kind of leaked into church culture. An explanation that is often given for why women don't have the priesthood is that it's because they are inherently so much more spiritually minded/evolved than men and we need the priesthood to help us evolve. I don't really buy that. It sounds like a really bad made up reason, kind of like blacks couldn't have the priesthood because they were less valiant in the pre-existance. It's like we're setting ourselves up for everyone to expect much less of us. We aren't naturally nurturing and charitable and kind and warm like women, so please bear with us. It also kind of sounds like we're just patronizing the women and hoping that by doing so, they'll stop asking why they can't have the priesthood.

This isn't about the women though, this is about the men! My friend David sent me some more quotes by James Hollis, who I quoted in my Resonance and Rhythm post. These quotes come from his book Under Saturn's Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men. I've added this book to my list of books to read that keeps growing more quickly than my ability to read them. Here are some passages:

Because men are so insecure in their sexual identity and propped-up gender roles, they fear and deny those parts of themselves that don't fall within narrow collective limits. When they see those aspects being lived out by others, they reject them violently. Homophobia is a prime example. Gay men have the same heart, same soul, same courage to go into battle as their heterosexual brothers. It is time to come out of the macho closet and name the real problem--that men fear those who incarnate their unlived life. The enemy is not the other guy, but rather our fear that we are not what patriarchy demands.

Men are terrified of their feminine side. They associate their feeling life, their instincts, their capacity for tenderness and nurturance, with the culturally defined nature of woman and distance themselves accordingly. This also distances them from their own anima and occasions a profound self-alienation. In fact, it may be misleading to speak of a man's "feminine side," for the anima is actually a necessary part of what it means to be a man. Men seldom risk this part of themselves, but it is as much in their nature to relate to the world and to their own inner life as it is in the women's.

Virtually any man will recall occasions when he expressed himself and suffered ridicule or rejection. Men pay a heavy price for being seen to be fragile and vulnerable. They are shamed by other men, sometimes by women, but, most of all, by themselves. So they collude in keeping quiet about what damages them. The word "conspiracy" derives from the Latin conspirare, "to breathe together." Men breathe silently together to protect their frightened souls, prolonging the wounding of all.

Again, one comes to the issue of honesty. Individual men must risk speaking the truth, their personal truth, for it will be the truth for many others. An old Chinese saying suggests that the one who speaks the right word will be heard a thousand miles away. For men to stop lying, to stop participating in the conspiracy of silence, they must risk showing their pain. Others may, reflexively, leap to shame them, or, out of their own fear, disassociate from them. But in time all will come to thank those who speak their truth aloud.

Thank you, K and D.