“Please don’t use healthy masculinity, as if “masculinity” isn’t healthy.”
That is a comment I received once from a Tantra coach when I wrote something on contemporary problems of masculinity at World Men’s Day. Of course I agree with her that masculinity doesn’t equal unhealthy. But I also think it would be senseless to deny that there are some people out there expressing harmful ideas while waving the flag of masculinity.
And of course it raises the question of what is masculinity in the first place? And how does it relate to being healthy or not?
When I was flying home from Japan in 2019, I got separated from my friend in the airplane. Instead, I got a seat next to a man my age, who turned out to be a fellow teacher. We had very pleasant conversations during most of our night flight over Russia about many things. The other day, he reached out to me and asked very important questions that are linked to this theme. I failed to answer his questions right away, so now I’m doing it this way, extensively and publicly. The core of his question was:
[My boy students] seem so lost in this world and it’s so easy for them to turn ever-increasingly misogynist and scornful. What is it you and your group try to do? And what kind of advice would you give your teenage self?
Recently, I was trying to organise debates between my students. And in trying to find a topic that would make them not all adapt to a single identical opinion (teenagers are very fixated on being part of the majority, especially these days), they came up with the topic of the redundancy of feminism. All boys chose pro, all girls chose contra.
What happened in the first group, was that one of the boys climbed a chair, while orating about how it is the men’s duty to earn money so their women can – or rather should – stay home. About that men are more powerful and basically better at everything and on top of that uniquely entitled to sexual conquest.
The boy was cheered by the other boys, but I saw serious agony in the eyes of the girls. The boys thought it was very funny and I do not believe any or at least most of them sincerely supported the claims. Still, the debate was emotional and I didn’t allow for it to last all too long.
I tried to make the boys realise that what most of them really wanted was to be seen and admired by the girls. But how would they ever achieve such a thing if they did not respect them, take them serious and make them feel safe?
TopG
After that debate, I realised that it had been Andrew Tate talking there in my classroom, even though no one had spoken the name. This self-proclaimed King of Unhealthy Masculinity is hugely popular among boys nowadays. (actually, when I was writing part of this at school, one of the students saw the word “TopG” and called the others and they all went cheering…)
As long I have been teaching (ten years), the boys almost always mentioned “success” as one of their main values – and defined it as having “a good job” (= earning a lot of money) and often owning an expensive house and/or car. If I asked them to what end they would need such means, they usually react puzzled. There’s nothing really beyond that yet and so this “succes” feels like their ultimate goal.
Tate typically liked to show off this specific “success” in his videos, which appealed to the boys. When I, as an adult teacher bring up Tate, this often gets the boys on the defense. They automatically assume I must reject his ideas, so often they try to convince me that everything that is being said about Tate is taken out of context, and afterwards they try to reassure me, saying that they do not endorse everything Tate is saying. This reaction, I think, implies there is some unease within themselves. Anyway, still they recognise him as a very inspiring motivational speaker, who teaches them about focus and discipline.
It’s not really my point here to start judging whether just striving for such wealth is an attempt for patching up emptiness in life or not, but what I’m a more concerned with is that the young ones swallow the bad with the good.
Most of them may just think Tate’s ideas about women are funny because they feel them as somewhat ridiculous and repeat them in good humor, in the sense of a typical 10-year old’s “boys are cool and girls are stupid”-vibe. However, there may be some of them, and mostly the ones who grow up without a safe home or with dysfunctional parent’s examples, who think it is acceptable to look down upon women and abuse them whenever they arbitrarily feel it is justified.
Because that is the way in which Tate describes women: they are much more equipped to be housewives than anything else, and he basically regards them as property of men – or at the very least as inferior to them.
I am quite happy that when I tell students I’m a men’s coach as well, they often ask my opinion about the man on their own accord. That way I can level somewhat by mentioning that like Tate, I’m a kickboxer, and that I respect his prowess in martial arts. But I also tell them that as a men’s coach, I do have to fix some of the mess men like him have made: machismo, toughening up men by burying and denying any form of sensitivity, and of course their respect for the feminine.
Many adults feel that Tate’s ideas need to be battled. And even though I think they are toxic, I think such things need to be understood before they can be transformed.
Woke and masculinity
I think Tate’s popularity was partly rooted in his unabashed critique on the woke ideology that has become increasingly dominant in many public discussions, especially in urban areas. Now, I probably must define what I mean by woke first, because this term has become somewhat overused of late. To me woke means the fight for social justice taken too far, with toxic traits like taking an intolerant and authoritarian stance, dividing the world in perpetrators and victims (while shaming the first and glorifying the latter) and doing away with open debate by silencing (“canceling”) opposing opinions after dismissing them as “racist”, “misogynist”, “transphobic”, etc.
Now, I’m not going to say that I do not find the likes of Tate misogynistic. The point is that the woke culture has branded masculinity as a whole in a very negative way. Men (the “white cis-gendered” ones in particular) are often regarded as perpetrators. It is men who upheld the patriarchy, it’s men who form old boys networks, it’s mostly men who are raping women, it’s men who were on those ships colonising the world… For that, men should shut up and listen to all oppressed minorities and apologise for basically everything. A sense of guilt and shame is applied to them.
And in the last few years, there has been also a huge public discussion going on that started off as support for transgender people, but kind of escalated to the point where there are people now outraged by biologists for simply pointing out that sex and gender are different things. Woke promotes people identifying as whatever (sex) they want to identify as, which overturned traditional definitions of the human body, sex and gender roles and expectations.
On top of all that, there is a great deal out there that one can say, that is likely to offend someone. In woke culture, a sense of notability is derived from expressing offendedness. From the perspective of oppressed and oppressor, this is a one way street. So for young men out there often feels like that there is a lot that cannot be said anymore due to various sensitivities. There are many and very long toes in the world for young people. And then it can be awfully liberating to hear a guy just say the things they themselves feel they are not allowed to express. Especially if this guy seems unaffected by shame or guilt and is telling men to goddamn stand up for themselves.
Masculinity outlined
Now there is no point in denying that many men have committed heinous acts against the good of all, probably more so than women and often even in a institutionalised way. But this does not define masculinity itself.
But what then is it? To me, this proved to be no easy question, because it can be answered from various perspectives. In this article, I’ll look at it philosophically, archetypal and practical.
The first of them is philosophically. To the Tantra coach I referred to at the beginning, I answered philosophically that I believe masculinity is a force of nature. It is by itself not healthy or unhealthy, good or bad. Like gravity.
It is out there and within all of us. In my imagination, it is the feminine and the masculine that are the basis of duality, and together they create life on earth itself. We, man or woman, can draw energy from either or both to do whatever we need to to.
In my communication I like to use the sun emoji ☀️ for both putting forward radiant outward energy as the masculine. For things more mysterious and inwardly I’d use the moon🌕as the feminine.
Or in another imagination, the masculine is the steady orderly cliff, riverbed or mountain, that is able to hold the feminine ocean, sea or river, that is in constant motion ever changing and chaotic (in a creative sense).
But such comparisons are tricky and tend to differ in different times and places.
Now we could also look at it from a more archetypal perspective in which the masculine is tied to character traits like being to the point, rational and directive, while more feminine traits would be relational, emotional/sensitive, nourishing and reflective. While such qualities are not exclusively tied to gender at all, each category would on average be more represented with one of the sexes.
And more practical, we could also tie masculine/feminine to living life as a man/women.
So, what then is life as a man? This is the point of interest here. This is heavily influenced by time and culture. As I am observing it right now, there seems to be a conjuncture: sometimes the men are expected to me more masculine, leading to a counter movement that wants men to be more feminine.
In Robert Bly’s most famous book Iron John, he is describing the movement in the 20th century: In the first half, there was the tough cowboy archetype; the cold father, that needed to work hard to provide for his family and who didn’t show (let alone talk) about his emotions. This lead to a new generation of men in the ’60’s, who became total pacifists, soft, very sensitive and at all not manly in the traditional sense.
I think the same been happening now. For whatever reason we’ve had a peak in machismo by the end of the 20th century slowly changing into another wave of the opposite as described in the woke paragraph. (Of course none of this is absolute and as black and white as it maybe sounds, but it’s about the general sense of things.)
But what we need are not those extremes. The healthy is in the golden middle. A balance between powerful and sensitive. Eyes both on the ball and the teammates. Sharp minds combined with open hearts. We need men who dare to stand tall, while providing safety for those around them and taking full responsibility for the world they live in.
What to do?
So to finally answer the questions: “What is it you and your group try to do? And what kind of advice would you give your teenage self?”
In Wild and Sacred Men I am trying to get men to get more in balance, of the sort I wrote about. To embrace their power instead of being afraid of it, while at the same time feeling as a part of a whole, which will require them to take full responsibility for all decisions they make. This would definitely include treating the feminine – or women – with the same amount of respect as they would treat themselves. But what if they feel so bad about themselves they don’t think they deserve respect? That is something where the men’s work comes in. Essentially, it is healing, connecting and committing.
One of my brothers once described men’s work straightforward, something like this: “We come together as men. We’re fucking honest then about everything towards everyone, we cry and then we fight.” (btw, not in the sense of senseless fight club, but in Sacred Combat)
Would I have been ready for men’s work as a teenager? Not yet, probably, although the fighting would hold infinite appeal on me. But what I would tell my teenage self is that everyone feels insecure, even grown ups and the cool kids. You are valuable and you need to exist. But never try to feel better at to the expense of someone else; do not uplift yourself by trying to kick down others. Protect those who are vulnerable. If someone does something you think is stupid, try to understand them rather than judging them. Instead, forgive them and help them up.
Allow yourself to feel. Emotions are part of being human. The great do not deny their emotions, but are learning the lessons those feelings are trying to teach them. Give the right example by loving yourself truly, and others will follow your lead and love you too.
And about girls… Regard them as reflections of goddesses (yes, even the ones you don’t like) and need to be treated with the greatest respect, if you ever want to be celebrated by them.
Samhildánach 