Tag Archives for masculinity

Exploring Toxic Masculinity


 

 

–by Neal Lemery

 

What is it to be a man in these times?

There are a lot of mixed messages, and outright confusing and contradictory “principles” and models for behavior. It is easy to get lost in the wilderness of our social contract.

The “#MeToo” Movement and the rhetoric and behavior of popular politicians and popular culture figures send conflicting messages. One is often left confused about what is accepted, what is appropriate moral behavior and thinking. Political and religious leaders, who should be exercising healthy leadership and conversation about these issues, are themselves in the center of the storms of outrage, of being called out for their own transgressions and immoral acts.  And, their failure to be effective spokespersons for what should be healthy masculinity.

For many of them, there seems to be no consequence for their words or their actions.

The goalposts of morality and decency seem to have fallen into quicksand.

For most of my life, the most popular “templates” for manhood involved being the tough, aggressive guy, who was focused on “scoring” with women, drinking, smoking, and pushing others around in order to get his way. Aggression and being emotionally cold were the benchmarks of a true man, the battle flags of male privilege.

The “soft” man was seen as weak and sissified, certainly not a real man.  The consequences for that were brutal: verbal and physical abuse, ostracism, and being branded as “not a real man”, inadequate, a failure. Shame and guilt were powerful weapons to destroy a boy’s soul.

When I was growing up, the real question of the day was “how tough am I?” The unforgiving world of the school playground was also the world of work and the world I grew up in and raised a family.

That methodology of raising boys unfortunately remains a part of our culture today, often perpetuated by our language, marketing, politics, and acceptance of the idea that such thinking and acting are just who we are, inadequate and deficient as men. A big challenge I faced when I was raising my kids was to not repeat the harmful actions and words of those who raised and influenced me as a kid.

Treating others with kindness, being artistic and creative, being one of those “sensitive, soft men”, was subject to being thought of as not a real man, not “macho”, and certainly not a role model.  Unless, of course, you wrapped yourself in the armor of a warrior, and couched your rhetoric in the language of the soldier, the athlete, and an all-around tough guy. Only a few savvy men were able to pull that off.

I struggled to find a new template, new words, and new actions. The role models for that were few and far between. Yet, I am grateful for their courage, and for showing me that there was an alternative path to masculinity.

A lot of that attitude of intolerance, of cloaking one’s self in armor, so no one could see your tenderness, or get close to your kind heart, has eased off lately, in spite of the power and tenacity of the “old thinking”. Change is scary, and acting differently leads one into uncharted waters, marked with fear and self-doubt. Even toxic familiarity offers comfort.

Today, I see young men publicly being attentive, kind fathers. They speak out about treating others with kindness and compassion.  They not only “talk the talk”, but they “walk the walk”.

Expressing your creativity, and being open about one’s fears and uncertainties, and struggles to be a good person are becoming widely accepted and appreciated. The times, they are a changing, and that is good news.

The good role models, the brave men who cracked open their own armor, and were able to express their worries, their doubts, their insecurities, have taken a lot of heat.  They have often been shamed and derided, mocked and scorned.  Years later, when we take another look at what they’ve said and what they have done, what they have revealed about their innermost selves, we often just take such courage for granted, and assume that we as a society have always explored those issues, and those personal stories, with sensitivity and appreciation.

We live in challenging times, but we always have.  Engaging one’s own courage, determination and self-confidence to know and live your own core values, to truly be yourself, to be genuine, has always been challenging.  You need to take risks, and to step out on shaky ground.  Each one of us has those doubts, those uncertainties inside of us.

“What is it to be a man?” I still ask myself.  Each day offers a new challenge, with obstacles both inside of me and in our society.  I often think it is easier if I just kept quiet, if I just put these questions aside, and focused on something else, anything else, for the day ahead.  But, healthy masculinity, true manhood, calls me to take on these questions, and to take a hard look at myself, and to take steps today to be a real man.

 

 

–1/23/19

Looking for the Real Men


–—Neal Lemery

It is football season, but instead of team rankings and excited discussions about last night’s game, we are talking about domestic violence and criminal charges filed against macho guys who are supposed to be the big stars, the tough heroes of the very essence of he-man professional sports in this country.

There are public expressions of outrage and deep discussions are happening. Advertisers and sponsors are flexing their own muscles, not wanting to be seen as paying athletes who are violent, even criminal. How should we respond when the strong, he-men heroes of the gridiron are caught on tape beating their lovers unconscious with their fists, or leaving bloody wounds after beating their four year old sons with sticks and whips in the name of “family discipline”?

What does it mean to be a man in our society? Who should we look to for role models on how to be a healthy American man? For once, the answer to that doesn’t seem to come from the gridiron on a Sunday afternoon. It’s not about scoring the winning touchdown anymore, but how are you supposed to behave with your wife, how are you supposed to raise your child and guide them lovingly through childhood, teaching them about a father’s love?

But isn’t a man supposed to be strong, to be the winner, not showing any weakness, any sensitivity? Isn’t that the message we hear when we watch the “big game”? Aren’t those guys the heroes we seem to want to have to look up to?

“I have to remain strong,” a friend told me this week, as we talked about manhood and love, how we are supposed to act in this society.

Yet, strong isn’t necessarily tough. Strong isn’t what we need now in this country as the mantra of a good, healthy American man. At least, that kind of “strong” that we’ve been seeing in that videotape of the famous, and highly overpaid football player, punching his girlfriend into unconsciousness. And, it’s not the “strong” kind of abuse that another pro football player is trying to somehow explain to us, after he’s been indicted for assaulting his four year old son with a stick, bloodying the child as a way of expressing “discipline” and “love”.

“That’s how I was raised,” he says, as if that somehow makes violence and the teaching of fear acceptable parenting.

After all, it was a “good whupping”, about teaching his son to “behave”.

No, the “strong” man has other ways of expressing love, of raising a child, or supporting his girlfriend in their relationship, of truly being a partner, and not an abuser, a real domestic terrorist.

Isn’t the real domestic terrorism in this country the plague of domestic violence? Isn’t domestic violence and the terror it produces the real public health crisis in this country, the real warfare that is tearing apart families, and instilling fear and chaos?

Isn’t it time we said enough is enough, that we redefine what it means to be a real man in this country? To be a real hero?

It’s OK to cry, to cry about love and grief, and family. It’s OK to show love and emotion, to be open about how we feel, about how we care about the people we love, people that we hold close to ourselves, people who are family.

Maybe, just maybe, if good, big hearted men cried in public, and cried in front of their loved ones, we’d be better men; we’d have a gentler, safer world to live in.

In showing that compassion, that willingness to be honest and open about how we really are, how we really feel, we are truly being men, men who are healthy, men of integrity, men of moral character. Isn’t that part of being a good parent, being open and honest about how we feel, about how we care, about how we love? Don’t we want to teach our kids those values?

Yes, we can be good role models to our family, to our community. Maybe professional football players can be sensitive, caring, understanding men, men who model good child rearing, good partnering, good husband-ship. With all their money and prestige, and powerful influence on millions of people in this country who look up to their strength and athletic abilities as symbols of leadership and character, maybe these athletes can respond to the calling of being healthy, good men, true men who are the essence of healthy masculinity.

9/18/2014

Letter To My Son


March 2, 2014

Dear Son:

I struggle with this language. Greek has seven words for love. We have one. Often, what I really want to say doesn’t have a word that fits. Often, the better word is in another language. What I really want to say is still inside of my guitar, waiting for my fingers and my lips to get into gear, and write a really good song.

The best things in life don’t suddenly appear. They quietly show up, and slip into your life, until, one morning, over coffee, you realize they are there. The best things don’t make a lot of noise, and don’t draw a lot of attention. Yet, they become part of the foundations in your life, just part of the granite that you build your life on.

And when you need that strength, that presence of those things in life that are truly good, truly part of your heart, you realize that they are simply there, and have become a big part of who you are, and who you want to be, that what you’ve been dreaming about, has softly become a part of your life.

You quietly came into my life. And, looking back, I realized you were now part of my life, part of who I was, and who I was becoming. And, to be part of who I will become later on.

Living my life is sometimes like a jigsaw puzzle, looking for that particular piece, searching out patterns, trying to find a match, so that things that don’t fit together, can fit together. Often I don’t see the whole picture, until some pretty big pieces of the puzzle come together, and then, I get it. I see what I’ve been working on, what is really going on.

I was helping you, yet in that, I saw myself, and figured out some things that I needed some help on. But, that is how life works; helping others helps the helper, especially when you don’t realize what is going on.

In watching you work through the tasks you have had to get where you wanted and needed to go, I saw my own journey, and gained perspective on what that time in my life was like for me, and how I managed. I saw you struggle, and I gained wisdom on my own struggles. You gained wisdom, and shared it with me. In that, you held up a mirror and I saw myself, in ways I hadn’t noticed before.

Around my birthday each year, I try to take some time to “count my gold” in my life, to take inventory, and to reassess. Who am I? What am I becoming? Am I on the right path?

Seeing you on your path, hearing of your adventures, watching you face your challenges and move on with your life, realizing your dreams, brings a big smile to my face. You share all that with me, and bring me into your life, opening your heart.

That is a great gift, to me.

You may think I give a lot to you, and that what we have between us is a one way street, all flowing to you. But, the street goes both ways.

You show me courage, determination, how to love one’s self and strive to walk towards your dreams and challenges, shoulders back, ready to face the day head on. You show me the joy in challenging one’s self, and in going out in the world with determination, with strong values.

You don’t take no for an answer very easily. You question, you challenge obstacles, and you look for solutions.

And, I learn from that. I take notes. I look at who you are and who you are becoming, and I mirror that back to me, and assess who I am , and where I am going, and who I am becoming.

I take a bit of your strength, your energy, your mojo, and I grow it inside of my heart, and I try to share it with others. You probably do that with me, and what you get from me. But, this is a two way street, and we both are challenged and we both grow.

I expect both of us to be challenged in what we are to each other. I expect us to butt heads, to argue, to struggle at times. In that, we both become stronger, and we both have to confront who we are inside, and what our relationship really is. Yet, that is the power of a healthy relationship.

A real, a strong relationship has those struggles. Such a relationship will only grow stronger, and deeper. Out of those conversations comes strength, and a knowing, a deeper understanding of who each of us truly is, deep inside. Such a relationship makes each of us journey deep into our souls, and truly realize who we are inside.

I want you to have those struggles, and those challenges in the important relationships in your life, and with your relationship with your own soul. This is work, but it is good work. It makes you stronger, deeper, more complete.

Such is the journey of a real man, a complete person.

The Maori in New Zealand have a word for this value, this attribute of a healthy man, mana. The Aborigines of Australia, native Americans, and most cultures throughout the world have a sense of this value, this journey, this aspect of character.

This week, President Obama talked about this, as he talked about the crisis of African American young men, growing up fatherless and aimless. He shared about how he would smoke dope as a teenager, struggling with a father who abandoned him and his mother, about trying to find his way into manhood, as a Black kid on the streets, not sure where he wanted to go in life.

It is a familiar story, and an uncomfortable one. Most people don’t want to hear it. But, when the President of the United States tells that story, and says that it is his story, I hope that a lot of people listened.

It was a powerful speech, and his initiative is a powerful, thought provoking message to our country. He called for a conversation about how we raise kids, and how we need to bring boys into their manhood, and offer them a role in this world, and a purpose in their lives.

In my little town, heroin is the most popular street drug, and many of the people in jail are junkies. Our dropout rate in school is substantial, and a lot of young people are unemployed, under-employed, and not challenged to be a vibrant part of our community. Most of them are lost, too, just like the young men President Obama is talking about. The issues aren’t abstract, and they aren’t just a “national” issue. These are the issues in my neighborhood, too. The President could give the same speech right here on our Main Street, and just refer to what is going on here, right here in my “hood”.

Yesterday, I was a guest at “J’s” 21st birthday party (he is an inmate at the prison where I mentor young men), and we had a similar conversation. And, I saw such a hunger in the room, young men seeking direction and purpose in their lives, young men doubting their journeys and questioning their strengths. And, how they listened to the three mentors in the room, and to each other, talking about strengths and talents, and directions to take in their lives.

“J” wept at the words of others, words of value and admiration. And, when he spoke of his own strengths, and his own value in the world, we all wept.All of us needed that conversation, and needed to hear those words, and feel the pain and the love that was part of that conversation. I needed to hear a young man, talking about his values, and his strengths.

I felt honored to be in the room, to hear those words, to have that conversation, to talk about what really matters in life. And, if President Obama and “J” are on the same page, maybe this country is changing.

Son, I felt you in that room, your spirit of guidance and courage. You have journeyed in those questions and doubts, and you have found direction and answers, and wisdom.

And, when it was my turn to speak and offer wisdom and guidance to those young men, I heard your voice in my heart, and I felt your guidance and your wisdom in the room. And, I was filled with gratitude, gratitude for what you have brought to my life.

Thank you, son, for all of that.

Last summer, I shocked you, telling you that I don’t want a perfect son. I still don’t. But, I do want a son in my life who uses his brain, and is comfortable in his own soul, and who dares to question himself, and where he is going. I want a son who takes on a challenge, and who confronts his dragons and demons.

I want a son who isn’t afraid of saying no, who isn’t afraid of his weaknesses, and doesn’t run from the possibility of “failure”. I think the only time a person can “fail” is when you don’t even try.

I want a son who embraces his journey into manhood, and takes life’s challenges head on, and who is not afraid to ask for some tools and help as he goes about his work. I want a son who reaches out to the stars, and who lives life to the richest and fullest.

I’m not perfect either. I mess up, I run from challenges sometime, and I’m not the perfect father for you. I am on my own journey, and need to have my own challenges and make my own mistakes.

I’ve made mistakes in our relationship. I’ll make more. And, I expect you to call me on those, to be critical, to be a good observer, and a good communicator. I expect us to have rich dialogues about who we are, and who and what we are to each other. In that, our relationship will grow.

I’ll try to show you how I do my own journey in life, warts and all. I’l try to be open about my blunders and my errors, as well as my achievements and my successes. I won’t be perfect for you, but I will try to be honest with you. I’ll try to be open and transparent.

Let this journey continue!

Love,

Neal

Healing


“Until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex; but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories and make peace with them.”
—-Iyanla Vanzant

Today, I am healing from surgery, from lasers cutting eyelid skin, sutures lifting and resizing my eyelids, restoring my peripheral vision. I am healing so that I can experience the world in a richer, more complete way.

This morning, I walked down the lane, greeting the early morning sky with a new enthusiasm, with literally a new vision of the new day. I am re-experiencing the miracle of sight, and of experiencing the world.

Now, my task is to heal. I rest, I sleep, I eat healthy foods, I manage my pain, and I tend to my wounds. All of my day’s tasks is focused on my healing from my surgery. Time is on my side, as I rest and heal, and do the work that is needed to do to recover, to take care of my body, and to celebrate the precious gift of sight.

As I lay back, ice pack on my eyes, letting the cold sink into the skin, into my head, into the wounds, I let the miracle of the cold bring fresh blood to the wounds, more nutrients, more of my life force. My nature is to seek warm, to be comforted by heat, to soak up the sun and bask in the cozy comfort of my bed, reveling in the last bit of drowziness before my day begins.

Yet, it is the cold, the adversity, that brings the healing. To be tested, to be on the edge, and to have to struggle a bit, against the cold, that makes my body stronger, that brings the healing energies I need.

This process is a metaphor of my struggles as a man, to be able to see my wounds, and to take the steps I need to heal, and to be a complete, whole man.

As I grew up, and as I lived through childhood, teenage life, adolescence, and young adulthood, I was wounded. I struggled, and my questions of who I was and what I was all about were unanswered, even mocked, ridiculed. I faced violence, indifference, degradation, and falsehoods. I was led into the wilderness, and then laughed at when I became lost, uncertain as to where I should walk to find my future, my sense of place, my sense of being in this world.

Love of self, and love of others remained a mystery to me, and I was left in the cold, unsure of who I was, unsure of what my role in this world was to be. I was lost and needed to be found, and to find myself.

Those wounds did not bleed like the wounds on my eyes this week. Those wounds were not so easily treated, with sutures, and salves, and the healing powers and potions of my surgeons and nurses. Those wounds were not easily cleansed by sleep, and food, and the loving care of my family.

Yet, those wounds were the most painful, and the most dehumanizing. I was led to believe they did not exist, yet they were the most infectious, the most unnerving, the hardest to treat.

Other men embraced me, encouraging me to push my shoulders back, to open my eyes, and embrace these wounds, and to embrace the challenges of becoming a whole man, a healthy man, a man who has his place in the world, and a destiny to fulfill.

Yes, I am a good person, I am a child of God, I am healthy, and strong, and I have purpose in my life. I have a place in this planet, and I am valued. I am important, and capable of fulfilling my destiny.

I have work to do. I have missions to accomplish. I have tasks to complete, and I am called to be a citizen of the world, and to do good in my life. And, in preparing for that work, in undertaking that work, I must tend to my wounds, and I must do the healing that is needed in order to be healthy, to be strong.

Real health, and real strength comes from embracing my manhood, from seeing my wounds, and treating them. It is my task to open them, and let the pus and infection drain away, and then it is time for the healing. I have a duty to heal, and to give time to myself to be tender with myself, to clean the infection, and to medicate myself with unconditional love and understanding, with acceptance, and with a friendship with God, so that I become healed.

Others helped me. Others showed me the paths to take, and the medications to use. Others offered advice and direction, and comfort. But, most of all, they offered me unconditional love and acceptance, of who I was, and who I was becoming. They accepted me on my journey, and offered support, and kindness, and understanding. They offered patience with me, giving me time to grow, and to heal.

The real work was done deep inside of me. I needed time and confidence, I needed to find my own tools, and to learn how to use them. I needed to go deep, and to connect with God, and to find who I am really am.

I needed to be on my journey, and to take on the leadership that my soul needed to move ahead in life. I am the captain of my ship, and I needed to take the wheel, and to sail through the storms, and to plot my course to the safe harbors. Yet, I needed to be tested and to discover, for myself, that I am strong, that I am capable, that I am filled with love, and that, if I put my soul into a struggle, then I will succeed, and I will find my destiny.

Today, I heal. Today, I move on, learning, accepting, meeting the challenges of today. Today, I embrace my manhood, my humanity, my cloak of being a child of God. I am loved, and I am loving. I know my destiny.

—-Neal Lemery, 2/21/2014