By Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, November 10, 2011
There’s a young man I know called Ben, whose story has become familiar. Ben is 24. He finished high school, but university was not for him. He’s bounced through a lot of low-paid jobs in retail and fast food, with spells of unemployment in between. Nothing has quite caught on, and he has no plan for his life. Like many twentysomethings, he can’t afford to live on his own, so he’s moved back in with his mother. It’s not clear – least of all to him – how he’ll establish himself as an independent adult.
The recession has been particularly hard on guys like Ben. Even so, he’s luckier than many. In Canada, the jobless rate for young adults is a relatively low 14 per cent. Across the European Union, the jobless rate is more than 20 per cent. In the U.S., the jobless rate for high-school-educated men between 20 and 24 – Ben’s generation – has reached 22.4 per cent. That’s more than double what it was four years ago. The situation of young American blacks is much worse. In Illinois, for example, only about 25 per cent of young black male adults have a job. And this time, nobody, anywhere, expects the job market to pick up any time soon.
Despite what the Occupy movement says, the biggest economic challenge we face today is not income inequality, greedy corporations, Wall Street corruption or the concentration of wealth among the top 1 per cent. It’s the increasing failure of young men with high-school degrees or less to latch on to the world of work.
Young men without work aren’t just an economic problem. They’re a huge social problem. “We’re at risk of having a generation of young males who aren’t well-connected to the labour market and who don’t feel strong ownership of community or society because they haven’t benefited from it,” Ralph Catalano, a professor of public health at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Wall Street Journal.
Young men without work are trapped in a twilight world of failure to achieve adulthood. They don’t move out and they don’t get married (although they’re increasingly likely to have kids). In the U.S., four out of 10 men between 18 and 30 are living with their parents. In Britain, it’s five out of 10. In Italy, it’s eight out of 10 (although that also reflects the extraordinary attachment of Italian parents to their grown-up kids).
But young men who live at home also have less incentive to find work. The longer they go without work, the dimmer their prospects become. And the more likely they are to drink, do drugs and develop other habits that will make them even less employable.
There’s a reason this downturn has been called the “mancession.” Jobs in manufacturing and construction have dried up, while employment in female-friendly fields such as health care has stayed steady or even grown. But something else is going wrong. A lot of young men seem to have given up. In an age when having a university degree matters more than ever, large numbers have gone AWOL from higher education. Even the ones who have degrees face higher unemployment than women do, a British study found. Bahram Bekhradnia, the director of a British think tank on higher education, blamed the men’s underachievement on complacency and “general hopelessness.”
Psychology professor Jean Twenge, the author of Generation Me, also thinks behavioural factors are holding young people back. She argues that an epidemic of narcissism has created millions of young adults who think they don’t have to work or study hard because they’re already smart. “It’s delusional thinking,” she told a conference of psychologists in Australia.
Joblessness is not the same as poverty. It’s worse. There’s lots of evidence to show that the scars of joblessness can last a lifetime. And fixing the problem will be very hard, because the problem is not simply economic. It’s also structural and social. We’ll need more than an economic upturn to reconnect a lot of our young men to work. But it matters more than we think – because without work, there’s no path to manhood.
A mancession?
General hopelessness?
An epidemic of narcissism?
Complacency?
AWOL from higher education?
There is simply no doubting the statistical data. Men are in profound difficulty, and as a result, the society itself faces an increasing and potentially insurmoutable problem.
But the story does not start with the useful data to which Ms Wente refers.
It goes farther back to young boys looking for mentors, models and supportive coaches. Of course, we make much of the honourable few who serve in that capacity. But there are so few, compared to the need.
There is a culture, at home and in the elementary schools, for starters, that favours female children and students. The last fifty years have seen a triumph of feminism, and a resulting demographic swing in professions like teaching toward women practitioners. Schools have become the domain of women, both in the front of the classroom and in the principal's office. Male students are "necessary evil" making disturbances when they should be quiet; rough-housing when they are supposed to be solving problems, doing math, learning history, or even playing organized games.
Male students far too often replace "school" and the many potential opportunities for socializing, learning and growth with some high-tech gaming device, preferring a virtual reality to one with people many of whom find his "gender" second class, to put it mildly. Too many boys are put on ritalin because they are diagnosed with ADHD, and need "more control." Too many boys are sent to the office for discipline because they are bored, alienated from the compliant-dependent school culture which is much more suited to compliant female students.
Reading and writing, both involving skills in which girls develop earlier and more easily, and it would seem naturally, are relegated, in the boys vernacular to "girl" subjects. Math and science, formerly an arena in which boys could hold their own, with interest, motivation, curiosity and some inherent skill, are now less attractive because, for one reason, the "game-boy" is more complex than most school science experiments.
If the early signs of what a boy considers "the establishment" are more supportive and encouraging of female students, and if his home life lacks a male figure, where does he go for male fraternity, collegiality and even just hanging out.
He has no trouble finding other males his age who are equally "turned off", tuned-out, seeking the comfort of their own "victim" (without ever condescnding to that word) and school work is the last thing he thinks about when the school day ends.
So while we are diagnosing the societal symptoms of what is now called a "mancession": a recession based almost exclusively on males without work, the fork in the road was taken many years before the unemployment numbers were gathered.
Our faculties of education, and our school boards and our principals associations and our colleges of teachers and our teachers' unions have to step up to the plate, and they will only do so if and when the epidemic of men withdrawing from the society reaches proportions where the public demands an affirmative action recruiting program to recruit male teachers for elementary schools, and for secondary schools and when teachers federations demand gender equality for men when hiring for positions of responsibility, and when curriculum designers ask boys what and how they would commit to learn, in order to qualify for seats in universities and colleges now either unfilled or filled by women, and thereby take their place as willing participants in a society that so trashes the current stereotypes of masculinity that almost every television ad contains another dumb, sexually driven, and socially inept male figure, not to mention the billions of dollars being generated by programs like The Big Bang Theory, in which highly educated males demonstrate their almost total estrangement from society and the female gender, with whom they are constantly trying to connect.
To overcome the potential tragedy of the impending mancession, we will need a commitment from all sectors in the society to recognize the blind spots in our vision of equality, in our modelling of respect and tolerance for both genders and a receptive culture for masculine and feminine qualities in all humans, celebrating the androyny bestowed on all of us by nature.
That will take generations....and we really don't have that long!
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
To all Canadian males 16-25: challenge yourself to achieve your potential
By Kate Bolick, The Atlantic, November 6, 2011
Over the past half century, women have steadily gained on—and are in some ways surpassing—men in education and employment. From 1970 (seven years after the Equal Pay Act was passed) to 2007, women’s earnings grew by 44 percent, compared with 6 percent for men. In 2008, women still earned just 77 cents to the male dollar—but that figure doesn’t account for the difference in hours worked, or the fact that women tend to choose lower-paying fields like nursing or education. A 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30 found that the women actually earned 8 percent more than the men. Women are also more likely than men to go to college: in 2010, 55 percent of all college graduates ages 25 to 29 were female.
By themselves, the cultural and technological advances that have made my stance on childbearing plausible would be enough to reshape our understanding of the modern family—but, unfortunately, they happen to be dovetailing with another set of developments that can be summed up as: the deterioration of the male condition. As Hanna Rosin laid out in these pages last year (“The End of Men,” July/August 2010), men have been rapidly declining—in income, in educational attainment, and in future employment prospects—relative to women. As of last year, women held 51.4 percent of all managerial and professional positions, up from 26 percent in 1980. Today women outnumber men not only in college but in graduate school; they earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded in 2010, and men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma. ...
But while the rise of women has been good for everyone, the decline of males has obviously been bad news for men—and bad news for marriage. For all the changes the institution has undergone, American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity. Even as women have seen their range of options broaden in recent years—for instance, expanding the kind of men it’s culturally acceptable to be with, and making it okay not to marry at all—the new scarcity disrupts what economists call the “marriage market” in a way that in fact narrows the available choices, making a good man harder to find than ever. At the rate things are going, the next generation’s pool of good men will be significantly smaller....
(T)ake 1940s Russia, which lost some 20 million men and 7 million women to World War II. In order to replenish the population, the state instituted an aggressive pro-natalist policy to support single mothers. Mie Nakachi, a historian at Hokkaido University, in Japan, has outlined its components: mothers were given generous subsidies and often put up in special sanatoria during pregnancy and childbirth; the state day-care system expanded to cover most children from infancy; and penalties were brandished for anyone who perpetuated the stigma against conceiving out of wedlock. In 1944, a new Family Law was passed, which essentially freed men from responsibility for illegitimate children; in effect, the state took on the role of “husband.” As a result of this policy—and of the general dearth of males—men moved at will from house to house, where they were expected to do nothing and were treated like kings; a generation of children were raised without reliable fathers, and women became the “responsible” gender. This family pattern was felt for decades after the war.
Indeed, Siberia today is suffering such an acute “man shortage” (due in part to massive rates of alcoholism) that both men and women have lobbied the Russian parliament to legalize polygamy. In 2009, The Guardian cited Russian politicians’ claims that polygamy would provide husbands for “10 million lonely women.” In endorsing polygamy, these women, particularly those in remote rural areas without running water, may be less concerned with loneliness than with something more pragmatic: help with the chores. Caroline Humphrey, a Cambridge University anthropologist who has studied the region, said women supporters believed the legalization of polygamy would be a “godsend,” giving them “rights to a man’s financial and physical support, legitimacy for their children, and rights to state benefits.”
While the Bolick piece focuses on the future of marriage and coupling, there are serious implications for men in the numbers. And those implications apply to Canadian males between 16 and 25...We cannot afford a lost generation!
Why, for example, are men not attending university in greater numbers, to acquire what most people, including the academic researchers, agree is one of the best ways to, if not guarantee then certainly to access, healthy and rewarding employment, access to health care, and not incidentally enhanced access to the most qualified and most interesting women in your town or city?
Rather than withdrawing into a cocoon of resentment about the economy and job losses especially among men, and rather than acceding to the stereotype of males as "dead beats" or "playboys", neither of which are attractive to healthy women looking for a mate, why not hit the books, or the desktop, depending on where and how you do your homework in grade and secondary school, aim for the best marks you can achieve, seek the support and coaching from your favourite teacher and crack the vault by opening the scholarship and bursary money available to see that your education does not stop prematurely.
If senior males suffer from Erectile Dysfunction (sometimes known as premature ejaculation) why should younger men suffer from premature elimination from the brain development pool?
That may sound like a flippant question but the implications are very serious.
Getting a quality education, in a field in which you as a male are interested, may be the most significant decision of your first quarter century. By taking such a decision, you rebuild the reputation of men on the North American continent, a reputation badly in need of shoring up. By taking such a decision, you also invest, not only in your own intellectual, social and cultural development, (and income-earning potential) but in the enhanced potential for your children, and your family. A university or college grad is far more likely to witness his children enrol in post-secondary school, and also to graduate from those schools. And that is no small accomplishment.
It may be true that high school culture is not "your cup of tea" especially with all the rules and regulations imposed without much logic other than the need of the system to keep control. It may also be true that your gameboy and/or your I-Pad, are far more interesting and more fun and more attractive than your algebra equation, or your chemistry experiment, and it may seem difficult, if not nigh on impossible, for you to make the connections between macy of the shards of information and light and the larger picture of your professional career, and the development of your highest potential.
However, we need each of you, each male in the 16-22 age range, to climb on the seemingly horseless wagon that bears the address (University/College of X) without the kind of cynicism and resentful withdrawal that accompanies what looks like alienation from the system, and separation from the public culture of corporate greed and job losses, and female empowerment, and broken marriages and families...and jump into the challenge that is obtaining first an undergraduate and then a graduate degree in your choice of discipline.
If playing a sport is your best expression, then go at it with vigour, including both finding an outstanding coach and a team mate whose mentorship you can share. Search all the best schools where your sport is being played. Search the best coaches and the best lecturers in the academic discipline of your interest.
Say "YES" to your commitment to your self, and forget about the late nights, and the term tests and the essays and exams that will accompany your decision. Keep your eye fixed on completing that degree, and the admittedly only potential (not guaranteed) access it will give you to a job in your field and demonstrate to your friends and family that your goal is worth pursuing.
You do not have to be a "type A" personality nor do you have to be a "nerd" nor do you have to be a "genius" to enter the most challenging academic stream of your capacity to learn....you just have to believe that your fullest development is more important that a million oilsands for the recovery of the energy within.
If Canada is not a nation of "intellectual, cultural and social" developers, and merely a developers of technology for the extraction of heavy oil, and soft and hard lumber, and expensive minerals, then we will have sacrificed our most precious resource, our human resource on the altar of profit, greed and reductionism.
And, while young women are, or seem to be, committed to their own full development, and men are loath to compete with the same women they may seek to date (wisely) it is time to reverse the image of attempting to compete with the female cohorts of your graduating class.
Your competition is not the narrow one of "besting" the women in your class; your competiton is to "best" the best of the young men and women from every major country in the world, where your next generations peers and intellectual mentors will come from. Whether they speak Mandarin, or Hindi, or Farsi, or German, or Norwegian...we need a huge cadre of well-education Canadian male brains connected to their bodies and their imaginations and their highest ideals and best angels and so do your children and your grandchildren.
And, while, as Red Green says, "We are all in this together, we are also counting on you!"
No one has been hurt more by the arrival of the post-industrial economy than the stubbornly large pool of men without higher education. An analysis by Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT, reveals that, after accounting for inflation, male median wages have fallen by 32 percent since their peak in 1973, once you account for the men who have stopped working altogether. The Great Recession accelerated this imbalance. Nearly three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the depths of the recession were lost by men, making 2010 the first time in American history that women made up the majority of the workforce. Men have since then regained a small portion of the positions they’d lost—but they remain in a deep hole, and most of the jobs that are least likely ever to come back are in traditionally male-dominated sectors, like manufacturing and construction.
Over the past half century, women have steadily gained on—and are in some ways surpassing—men in education and employment. From 1970 (seven years after the Equal Pay Act was passed) to 2007, women’s earnings grew by 44 percent, compared with 6 percent for men. In 2008, women still earned just 77 cents to the male dollar—but that figure doesn’t account for the difference in hours worked, or the fact that women tend to choose lower-paying fields like nursing or education. A 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30 found that the women actually earned 8 percent more than the men. Women are also more likely than men to go to college: in 2010, 55 percent of all college graduates ages 25 to 29 were female.
By themselves, the cultural and technological advances that have made my stance on childbearing plausible would be enough to reshape our understanding of the modern family—but, unfortunately, they happen to be dovetailing with another set of developments that can be summed up as: the deterioration of the male condition. As Hanna Rosin laid out in these pages last year (“The End of Men,” July/August 2010), men have been rapidly declining—in income, in educational attainment, and in future employment prospects—relative to women. As of last year, women held 51.4 percent of all managerial and professional positions, up from 26 percent in 1980. Today women outnumber men not only in college but in graduate school; they earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded in 2010, and men are now more likely than women to hold only a high-school diploma. ...
But while the rise of women has been good for everyone, the decline of males has obviously been bad news for men—and bad news for marriage. For all the changes the institution has undergone, American women as a whole have never been confronted with such a radically shrinking pool of what are traditionally considered to be “marriageable” men—those who are better educated and earn more than they do. So women are now contending with what we might call the new scarcity. Even as women have seen their range of options broaden in recent years—for instance, expanding the kind of men it’s culturally acceptable to be with, and making it okay not to marry at all—the new scarcity disrupts what economists call the “marriage market” in a way that in fact narrows the available choices, making a good man harder to find than ever. At the rate things are going, the next generation’s pool of good men will be significantly smaller....
(T)ake 1940s Russia, which lost some 20 million men and 7 million women to World War II. In order to replenish the population, the state instituted an aggressive pro-natalist policy to support single mothers. Mie Nakachi, a historian at Hokkaido University, in Japan, has outlined its components: mothers were given generous subsidies and often put up in special sanatoria during pregnancy and childbirth; the state day-care system expanded to cover most children from infancy; and penalties were brandished for anyone who perpetuated the stigma against conceiving out of wedlock. In 1944, a new Family Law was passed, which essentially freed men from responsibility for illegitimate children; in effect, the state took on the role of “husband.” As a result of this policy—and of the general dearth of males—men moved at will from house to house, where they were expected to do nothing and were treated like kings; a generation of children were raised without reliable fathers, and women became the “responsible” gender. This family pattern was felt for decades after the war.
Indeed, Siberia today is suffering such an acute “man shortage” (due in part to massive rates of alcoholism) that both men and women have lobbied the Russian parliament to legalize polygamy. In 2009, The Guardian cited Russian politicians’ claims that polygamy would provide husbands for “10 million lonely women.” In endorsing polygamy, these women, particularly those in remote rural areas without running water, may be less concerned with loneliness than with something more pragmatic: help with the chores. Caroline Humphrey, a Cambridge University anthropologist who has studied the region, said women supporters believed the legalization of polygamy would be a “godsend,” giving them “rights to a man’s financial and physical support, legitimacy for their children, and rights to state benefits.”
While the Bolick piece focuses on the future of marriage and coupling, there are serious implications for men in the numbers. And those implications apply to Canadian males between 16 and 25...We cannot afford a lost generation!
Why, for example, are men not attending university in greater numbers, to acquire what most people, including the academic researchers, agree is one of the best ways to, if not guarantee then certainly to access, healthy and rewarding employment, access to health care, and not incidentally enhanced access to the most qualified and most interesting women in your town or city?
Rather than withdrawing into a cocoon of resentment about the economy and job losses especially among men, and rather than acceding to the stereotype of males as "dead beats" or "playboys", neither of which are attractive to healthy women looking for a mate, why not hit the books, or the desktop, depending on where and how you do your homework in grade and secondary school, aim for the best marks you can achieve, seek the support and coaching from your favourite teacher and crack the vault by opening the scholarship and bursary money available to see that your education does not stop prematurely.
If senior males suffer from Erectile Dysfunction (sometimes known as premature ejaculation) why should younger men suffer from premature elimination from the brain development pool?
That may sound like a flippant question but the implications are very serious.
Getting a quality education, in a field in which you as a male are interested, may be the most significant decision of your first quarter century. By taking such a decision, you rebuild the reputation of men on the North American continent, a reputation badly in need of shoring up. By taking such a decision, you also invest, not only in your own intellectual, social and cultural development, (and income-earning potential) but in the enhanced potential for your children, and your family. A university or college grad is far more likely to witness his children enrol in post-secondary school, and also to graduate from those schools. And that is no small accomplishment.
It may be true that high school culture is not "your cup of tea" especially with all the rules and regulations imposed without much logic other than the need of the system to keep control. It may also be true that your gameboy and/or your I-Pad, are far more interesting and more fun and more attractive than your algebra equation, or your chemistry experiment, and it may seem difficult, if not nigh on impossible, for you to make the connections between macy of the shards of information and light and the larger picture of your professional career, and the development of your highest potential.
However, we need each of you, each male in the 16-22 age range, to climb on the seemingly horseless wagon that bears the address (University/College of X) without the kind of cynicism and resentful withdrawal that accompanies what looks like alienation from the system, and separation from the public culture of corporate greed and job losses, and female empowerment, and broken marriages and families...and jump into the challenge that is obtaining first an undergraduate and then a graduate degree in your choice of discipline.
If playing a sport is your best expression, then go at it with vigour, including both finding an outstanding coach and a team mate whose mentorship you can share. Search all the best schools where your sport is being played. Search the best coaches and the best lecturers in the academic discipline of your interest.
Say "YES" to your commitment to your self, and forget about the late nights, and the term tests and the essays and exams that will accompany your decision. Keep your eye fixed on completing that degree, and the admittedly only potential (not guaranteed) access it will give you to a job in your field and demonstrate to your friends and family that your goal is worth pursuing.
You do not have to be a "type A" personality nor do you have to be a "nerd" nor do you have to be a "genius" to enter the most challenging academic stream of your capacity to learn....you just have to believe that your fullest development is more important that a million oilsands for the recovery of the energy within.
If Canada is not a nation of "intellectual, cultural and social" developers, and merely a developers of technology for the extraction of heavy oil, and soft and hard lumber, and expensive minerals, then we will have sacrificed our most precious resource, our human resource on the altar of profit, greed and reductionism.
And, while young women are, or seem to be, committed to their own full development, and men are loath to compete with the same women they may seek to date (wisely) it is time to reverse the image of attempting to compete with the female cohorts of your graduating class.
Your competition is not the narrow one of "besting" the women in your class; your competiton is to "best" the best of the young men and women from every major country in the world, where your next generations peers and intellectual mentors will come from. Whether they speak Mandarin, or Hindi, or Farsi, or German, or Norwegian...we need a huge cadre of well-education Canadian male brains connected to their bodies and their imaginations and their highest ideals and best angels and so do your children and your grandchildren.
And, while, as Red Green says, "We are all in this together, we are also counting on you!"
No one has been hurt more by the arrival of the post-industrial economy than the stubbornly large pool of men without higher education. An analysis by Michael Greenstone, an economist at MIT, reveals that, after accounting for inflation, male median wages have fallen by 32 percent since their peak in 1973, once you account for the men who have stopped working altogether. The Great Recession accelerated this imbalance. Nearly three-quarters of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the depths of the recession were lost by men, making 2010 the first time in American history that women made up the majority of the workforce. Men have since then regained a small portion of the positions they’d lost—but they remain in a deep hole, and most of the jobs that are least likely ever to come back are in traditionally male-dominated sectors, like manufacturing and construction.
Monday, October 17, 2011
"Sometimes I need God to be male!" Hugo Schwyzer
By Hugo Schwyzer, from Good Men Project website, October 12, 2011
Hugo Schwyzer has taught history and gender studies at Pasadena City College since 1993, where he developed the college's first courses on Men and Masculinity and Beauty and Body Image. He serves as co-director of the Perfectly Unperfected Project, a campaign to transform young people's attitudes around body image and fashion. Hugo lives with his wife, daughter, and six chinchillas in Los Angeles. Hugo blogs at his eponymous website and at Healthy Is the New Skinny.
In one of the first religious studies courses I took in college, the professor made a point that the God of the Bible is neither male nor female. We learned that to call the Lord, “He” misrepresented the original intent of the Torah, and that we’d be better off not using pronouns at all. If anything, my professor said, citing Genesis 5:1-2, God was both male and female—and more as well. After all, how could both men and women be made in God’s image if God didn’t have a feminine aspect?
A few years later, when I was auditing courses at the Graduate Theological Union and exploring a possible vocation to the priesthood (an idea that didn’t last long), I encountered feminist theology. I learned about God’s feminine aspect. For example, Hosea 13:8 describes God as a mother bear robbed of her cubs, while Jesus compares himself to a mother hen in Luke 13:34. I remember one of my classmates, a woman studying for ordination as an Episcopal priest, remarking that the more she studied Scripture, the more she realized that God was more female than male. “God is a nurturer,” she noted, “more like a mother than a father.”
While considering that career as a Catholic priest, I saw how the refusal to acknowledge the feminine aspect of God led to an intense devotion to Mary. The Virgin, I was told, was the tender intercessor who could plead for humanity to a more judgmental (or at the very least, less gentle) masculine God. The implication was clear: not only was God male, God’s masculinity was a barrier to empathy—hence the need for a woman to intercede to remind Him to go easy, like a mother pleading with her husband to lighten up on the discipline.
♦◊♦
What I found frustrating was that the feminist theologians arguing for the primarily feminine aspect of God and the conservative Catholics wrapped in Marian devotion were essentially saying the same thing: maleness can’t be nurturing. My friend, the liberal Episcopalian, believed God was tender—and therefore female. My traditionalist Catholic buddies believed that a thoroughly masculine God had largely outsourced His compassion to Mary. Both ignored the obvious other possibility.
Of course, many people have excellent reasons to be put off by masculine language and imagery for God. For men and women who’ve had strained or abusive relationships with their own fathers, calling God, “Father,”doesn’t happen easily. For many straight Christian men, the romantic vocabulary of evangelical culture can also be off-putting. (One of the standard critiques of contemporary praise music is the ubiquitous “Jesus is my Boyfriend” theme in so many worship songs.) For people who have been wounded by father figures, or who struggle to imagine intimacy with a man, using exclusively male language for God can be a real barrier to spiritual connection.
But at the same time, we need to acknowledge the radical and simple truth that men can be as tender as women. A father can nurture his children with every bit as much love and devotion as their mother. A fully adult man doesn’t need women to intercede to remind him of his responsibility to be compassionate. But when our only vocabulary for gentleness is feminine, we don’t acknowledge men’s capacity to be gentle. And when we label every loving action of God as evidence of God’s femaleness, we miss the point that God’s male aspect is every bit as kind.
From both a spiritual and historical-grammatical standpoint, God is neither male nor female—and at the same time, both male and female. It’s vital that we listen to what feminist Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Wiccan theologians are saying about the feminine aspect of the divine. Yes, God is a mother figure. But that’s only half the story. The paradox is that God is also a father figure—just a very different kind of father than the one celebrated in Western culture.
♦◊♦
We need to see that from a biblical perspective, God isn’t “being male” when he gets angry and “being female” when he weeps over human suffering. God is both when he does both. In that light, perhaps the rigid gender roles we prescribe in our culture aren’t God’s plan, but instead a man-made consequence of our inability to discern God’s intent for our lives. By embodying what are stereotypically male and female characteristics simultaneously, God just may be reminding us that we too are called to break out of the gender straitjacket.
In a world where so many men do abandon their responsibilities and where violence (almost) always wears a male face, there’s something revolutionary about acknowledging that a father figure can be forgiving, empathetic, gentle, and reliable. There’s also something equally significant about acknowledging that a mother figure can be a passionate, bold, relentless—even angry—advocate for justice. Anything less not only robs God of God’s full divinity, but robs us of our full potential as human beings.
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the gender of God. But I do know that following God means moving beyond the confines of traditional, limiting roles. As a dad, I appreciate the reminder that papas can and should be every bit as tender and loving as mamas. And so sometimes, this professor of gender studies calls God “father.” Not because that’s all God is, but because those of us who are also daddies need a reminder of just how loving, passionate, and tender we are called to be.
In a world where so many men do abandon their responsibilities and where violence (almost) always wears a male face, there’s something revolutionary about acknowledging that a father figure can be forgiving, empathetic, gentle, and reliable.
I lifted this quote from the Schwyzer piece, because it jumped out at me, and I recall my own classes in seminary where God was championed as female, by all the feminists in the class, and those of us of the "other gender" were quite happy to remain compliant. I even recall attempting to get the attention of a rural parish meeting when someone near the end of the meeting opined, "May God Bless our little church and the people in it"...to which I interjected, "I am confident She will!" to the amazement of those present.
Androgyny is not part of the normal discourse in contemporary society; not the androgyny of the female population, nor that of the male population, and certainly not the qualities attributed to God.
Needing God to be male is a completely normal and expected reaction to the tsunami of talk about the feminized God.
Another observation on the piece above is the "mother" does not constitute the total female character, nor father the whole male character, of either humans or God. And such a reduction, as is the case with almost all reductions, perpetuates the "parent" God, as opposed to the "male" or the "female" God.
One of the most heinous aspects of Christian ministry is the rendering of parishoners as children before a parent God...as if such a metaphor appropriated the normal, accepted and expected relationship between God and humans.
The church has, for far too long, abrogated the parent role, as its way of cozying up to power and control, premised on an out-of-control, savage, even undisciplined race called homo sapiens. Telling its parishoners what to do, when to do it, how to pray, and when to do that, how to "love" and when to do that, how to donate and when to do that, the meaning and purpose of sexuality including when and with whom to engage in that activity...these are all controlling interventions in order to demonstrate the utility of the church's role in one's life...as a regulator.
Whereas, there is considerable evidence that the regulator role is based on the fear of the church hierarchy that those in its "charge" will bring dishonour and disrepute upon the organization, if left free to make autonomous choices. There is also considerable evidence that the regulator role simply does not work, but certainly creates an virtually insurmountable wall between those "inside" and those "outside" who do have, have not, or will not fully comply with whatever rules the church sets out.
I always thought/believed/felt/intuited...that God wanted me to be "alive" in all aspects of my existence, not regulated by some permanent parent whose regulations were more important than my own rebellion. Perhaps if the church were to begin from the premise that humans are innately "good" and "seek to do good" although can also be deceived by self and others, then the premise of "sin" as a starting place for the definition of human beings would rightly atrophy, and perhaps then we could proceed to experience the awesome nature of God's gifts of life and grace in our lives, regardless of the specific "umbrella" or membership we chose, or not.
So long as we are still struggling with our definition of a deity, we will continue to struggle with our definition of our own gender, given the intimate link between our identity and our picture and relationship to God.
Hugo Schwyzer has taught history and gender studies at Pasadena City College since 1993, where he developed the college's first courses on Men and Masculinity and Beauty and Body Image. He serves as co-director of the Perfectly Unperfected Project, a campaign to transform young people's attitudes around body image and fashion. Hugo lives with his wife, daughter, and six chinchillas in Los Angeles. Hugo blogs at his eponymous website and at Healthy Is the New Skinny.In one of the first religious studies courses I took in college, the professor made a point that the God of the Bible is neither male nor female. We learned that to call the Lord, “He” misrepresented the original intent of the Torah, and that we’d be better off not using pronouns at all. If anything, my professor said, citing Genesis 5:1-2, God was both male and female—and more as well. After all, how could both men and women be made in God’s image if God didn’t have a feminine aspect?
A few years later, when I was auditing courses at the Graduate Theological Union and exploring a possible vocation to the priesthood (an idea that didn’t last long), I encountered feminist theology. I learned about God’s feminine aspect. For example, Hosea 13:8 describes God as a mother bear robbed of her cubs, while Jesus compares himself to a mother hen in Luke 13:34. I remember one of my classmates, a woman studying for ordination as an Episcopal priest, remarking that the more she studied Scripture, the more she realized that God was more female than male. “God is a nurturer,” she noted, “more like a mother than a father.”
While considering that career as a Catholic priest, I saw how the refusal to acknowledge the feminine aspect of God led to an intense devotion to Mary. The Virgin, I was told, was the tender intercessor who could plead for humanity to a more judgmental (or at the very least, less gentle) masculine God. The implication was clear: not only was God male, God’s masculinity was a barrier to empathy—hence the need for a woman to intercede to remind Him to go easy, like a mother pleading with her husband to lighten up on the discipline.
♦◊♦
What I found frustrating was that the feminist theologians arguing for the primarily feminine aspect of God and the conservative Catholics wrapped in Marian devotion were essentially saying the same thing: maleness can’t be nurturing. My friend, the liberal Episcopalian, believed God was tender—and therefore female. My traditionalist Catholic buddies believed that a thoroughly masculine God had largely outsourced His compassion to Mary. Both ignored the obvious other possibility.
Of course, many people have excellent reasons to be put off by masculine language and imagery for God. For men and women who’ve had strained or abusive relationships with their own fathers, calling God, “Father,”doesn’t happen easily. For many straight Christian men, the romantic vocabulary of evangelical culture can also be off-putting. (One of the standard critiques of contemporary praise music is the ubiquitous “Jesus is my Boyfriend” theme in so many worship songs.) For people who have been wounded by father figures, or who struggle to imagine intimacy with a man, using exclusively male language for God can be a real barrier to spiritual connection.
But at the same time, we need to acknowledge the radical and simple truth that men can be as tender as women. A father can nurture his children with every bit as much love and devotion as their mother. A fully adult man doesn’t need women to intercede to remind him of his responsibility to be compassionate. But when our only vocabulary for gentleness is feminine, we don’t acknowledge men’s capacity to be gentle. And when we label every loving action of God as evidence of God’s femaleness, we miss the point that God’s male aspect is every bit as kind.
From both a spiritual and historical-grammatical standpoint, God is neither male nor female—and at the same time, both male and female. It’s vital that we listen to what feminist Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Wiccan theologians are saying about the feminine aspect of the divine. Yes, God is a mother figure. But that’s only half the story. The paradox is that God is also a father figure—just a very different kind of father than the one celebrated in Western culture.
♦◊♦
We need to see that from a biblical perspective, God isn’t “being male” when he gets angry and “being female” when he weeps over human suffering. God is both when he does both. In that light, perhaps the rigid gender roles we prescribe in our culture aren’t God’s plan, but instead a man-made consequence of our inability to discern God’s intent for our lives. By embodying what are stereotypically male and female characteristics simultaneously, God just may be reminding us that we too are called to break out of the gender straitjacket.
In a world where so many men do abandon their responsibilities and where violence (almost) always wears a male face, there’s something revolutionary about acknowledging that a father figure can be forgiving, empathetic, gentle, and reliable. There’s also something equally significant about acknowledging that a mother figure can be a passionate, bold, relentless—even angry—advocate for justice. Anything less not only robs God of God’s full divinity, but robs us of our full potential as human beings.
I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about the gender of God. But I do know that following God means moving beyond the confines of traditional, limiting roles. As a dad, I appreciate the reminder that papas can and should be every bit as tender and loving as mamas. And so sometimes, this professor of gender studies calls God “father.” Not because that’s all God is, but because those of us who are also daddies need a reminder of just how loving, passionate, and tender we are called to be.
In a world where so many men do abandon their responsibilities and where violence (almost) always wears a male face, there’s something revolutionary about acknowledging that a father figure can be forgiving, empathetic, gentle, and reliable.
I lifted this quote from the Schwyzer piece, because it jumped out at me, and I recall my own classes in seminary where God was championed as female, by all the feminists in the class, and those of us of the "other gender" were quite happy to remain compliant. I even recall attempting to get the attention of a rural parish meeting when someone near the end of the meeting opined, "May God Bless our little church and the people in it"...to which I interjected, "I am confident She will!" to the amazement of those present.
Androgyny is not part of the normal discourse in contemporary society; not the androgyny of the female population, nor that of the male population, and certainly not the qualities attributed to God.
Needing God to be male is a completely normal and expected reaction to the tsunami of talk about the feminized God.
Another observation on the piece above is the "mother" does not constitute the total female character, nor father the whole male character, of either humans or God. And such a reduction, as is the case with almost all reductions, perpetuates the "parent" God, as opposed to the "male" or the "female" God.
One of the most heinous aspects of Christian ministry is the rendering of parishoners as children before a parent God...as if such a metaphor appropriated the normal, accepted and expected relationship between God and humans.
The church has, for far too long, abrogated the parent role, as its way of cozying up to power and control, premised on an out-of-control, savage, even undisciplined race called homo sapiens. Telling its parishoners what to do, when to do it, how to pray, and when to do that, how to "love" and when to do that, how to donate and when to do that, the meaning and purpose of sexuality including when and with whom to engage in that activity...these are all controlling interventions in order to demonstrate the utility of the church's role in one's life...as a regulator.
Whereas, there is considerable evidence that the regulator role is based on the fear of the church hierarchy that those in its "charge" will bring dishonour and disrepute upon the organization, if left free to make autonomous choices. There is also considerable evidence that the regulator role simply does not work, but certainly creates an virtually insurmountable wall between those "inside" and those "outside" who do have, have not, or will not fully comply with whatever rules the church sets out.
I always thought/believed/felt/intuited...that God wanted me to be "alive" in all aspects of my existence, not regulated by some permanent parent whose regulations were more important than my own rebellion. Perhaps if the church were to begin from the premise that humans are innately "good" and "seek to do good" although can also be deceived by self and others, then the premise of "sin" as a starting place for the definition of human beings would rightly atrophy, and perhaps then we could proceed to experience the awesome nature of God's gifts of life and grace in our lives, regardless of the specific "umbrella" or membership we chose, or not.
So long as we are still struggling with our definition of a deity, we will continue to struggle with our definition of our own gender, given the intimate link between our identity and our picture and relationship to God.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Manlands at IKEA, perpetuating the baby-man meme
By Katrina Onstad, Globe and Mail, Occtober 8, 2011
Last month, in a ham-fisted effort to minimize spousal unit tension, an IKEA in Sydney, Australia temporarily installed Manland. Much like Smaland, IKEA’s bubble room and crafts centre for children, Manland is filled with stimulating diversions (foosball, hot dogs) for men unable to shop without a meltdown. “Some men may pretend to enjoy the shopping experience,” a reporter enthused in a news clip on Australian TV. “We all know they’d prefer to be playing an Xbox or watching the footy than pushing a trolley!” Word! High five!
The set of assumptions behind Manland doesn’t flatter either sex. Once again, here comes the baby-man meme, wherein men are unable and unwilling to participate in the rote side of domestic life. These are the same guys who steal breakfast cereal from their kids in ads or are played by Jim Belushi on sitcoms.
Upholding the clichés of masculinity – real men hate shopping and love Space Invaders – doesn’t make men manlier; it makes them seem a little pathetic. To be a man – or any kind of adult – is to participate fully in your relationship and muster up a civil opinion on a bath mat from time to time. Manland is a country populated by the lowest form of manhood: the whiner who can’t even put aside his own (adolescent) proclivities for an hour to help his wife carry a Shrömpfken – one that he’s probably going to enjoy sleeping on himself.
I’m not sure what’s less appealing: a man who wants to go to Manland or a woman who wants to “drop off” her husband there. Every baby-man in pop culture has his counterpart in the eye-rolling/arms-across-the- chest bemused female killjoy. Manland perpetuates the myth that ladies love shopping only slightly more than they love demoralizing their husbands.
The baby-man meme...where the undeveloped, immature, withdrawn and self-indulgent narcissistic male of the species is 'dropped-off' by his more mature, gregarious, interdependent and integrated female partner in order to reduce the potential for a "melt-down" usually associated with two-year-old temper tantrums...hmmmmmm!
This is not a good picture for any "Y" chromosome-bearing "homo sapiens". In fact, it is so regressive, so insulting and so pathetic as to be another sign of the tragedy that is 21st century masculinity, or at least its portrayal and even its widely held stereotype in the minds, eyes and hearts of many women.And apparently, in the boardroom of IKEA.
There is a pattern to much of what is perceived as "reality" in current vernacular, and thereby current perceptions. Just as the definition of depression in the DSM IV is derived from the descriptions of female patients/clients from practicing psychiatrists, so too is the definition of healthy masculinity derived, we suspect, from the cynical, victimized and too-frequent female conversation in all workplaces, coffee shops, docctors' offices, and soccer practices. Women talk about their men to other women. Men, on the other hand, are sworn to silence, as if it were a code of honour, both to other men and to women.
Fifteen years after I left a marriage of twenty-three years, a marriage that included three daughters, I met a former colleague with whom I had worked and commuted for well nigh twenty years. His first comment, not having spoken with me in the interim, was, "I never heard you say anything negative about your former spouse!"
To which I responded, "Well, no one else did either! Those are private matters left better in that private file."
On the other hand, at this very moment, in hospitals, police stations, ambulance stations, banks, professional offices of every genre, schools, universities and even corporations, women are, among other things, "drubbing out their men" for irresponsibility, for negligence, for passive aggressive attitudes and behaviour, for missing an important date on the calendar, for "going out to play" when the family, or the leaky faucet needed serious attention. Women seem to be fed by such conversations, perhaps because it reinforces the victim archetype in which many have been stuck for many decades.
It was Carol Pearson (The Hero Within) who pointed out barely a decade or two ago that North American society was/is (?) dominated by two archetypes, the victim (women) and the warrior (men). In the public media, in advertising, in film and television, such archetypes (morphed into stereotypes) set the "norm" and billions of dollars of television programming in both revenues and expenditures circulate around the depiction of these two archetypes, sometimes in exclusively male conversation (Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory) or in exclusively female conversation (Desperate Housewives)...Of course, the women's liberation movement was originally designed to point out the legitimate stengths, capabilities and leadership qualities of all women, in the hope that most, if not all, would rise to the top of the corporate, professional and even political ladder in their field, thereby levelling the playing field in status, in pay and in role modelling with men.
The men of my acquaintance, who have done the work of acknowledging our single-minded pursuit of power/money/status to the neglect of our families and our emotional development for the first half century of our lives and have followed that 'confession' with a new, less stressful and less ambitious path to a greater degree of both inner peace and relationship accord, without having in any way abandoned our masculinity, are clearly not the majority. In fact, we threaten other mostly younger men who, so far, have not hit their wall, or seen the light, depending on the "fish-in-the-face" that has struck them in a painful epiphany.
So there is not only a macro division between women and men, but a slightly less macro, but still not micro separation among different groups of men. And this division, including how "macho" men react to gay men in such a frightened and alienating manner, is at least as problematic to the evolution of masculinity, as is the continuing sandpaper roughness that comprises many male-female partnerships.
There is a significant need for straight men to embrace (not in the physical, but in the political sense) gay men. Men like Brian Burke, hardly a male insecure about his masculinity, attending and putting a public face on the Gay Pride Parade in Toronto, in honour of his deceased gay son make a significant contribution to the integration of gay and straight men. Of course, the current Mayor of Toronto's refusal to attend that same parade, preferring the "cottage" for the weekend, tip the scales back into the predictable, proverbial separation between the two groups.
Similarly, the issue of fighting in pro hockey is an example of the divide between the "macho" defenders and the "evolved" agents of change. Don Cherry fills his bank account selling video of hockey violence, some of it acceptable, much of it potential career and/or life threatening, all of dedicated to preserving a "rough" and "natural" form of masculinity, to the denigration of a more sophisticated, intellectual and creative pursuit of the same rubber disc. While public opinion polls demonstrate that 74% of those asked would prefer to see fighting removed from the game, leaving only 24% supporting its being retained, fights are replayed on the television screens inside and outside the arenas, as a last gasp of air for the museum pieces they ought to have become decades ago.
Fighting about fighting is really analogous to the debates that have occurred for the last twenty years about the dnagers of cigarette smoke, both primary and secondary. Everyone knows about the dangers and the risks, and yet the ardevaarks prevail, because change will hurt the game, or (upspoken) change will reduce the opportunity for men to be real men.
In many ways, this is a clinging to a fossil of the past, for the sake of denying the present and the future. Men can be diligent, competive, resourceful and disciplined, and uphold their (and our) masculinity while playing any game, including professional hockey, without once raising their fist, or taking a deliberate shot at the head of an opponent. Fast-paced skills, anticipation, creativity, imagination, intuition including open-ice body checks do not, and will not downgrade the game. In fact, they will always enhance the game, and the spectators' appreciation for it.
It is a desperate clinging to a long-worn-out stereotype that infuses too much of North American life that must be put to rest. A story from a pulp and paper mill, relayed through a safety officer may illustrate my point. A new recruit was using a metal pole to roll a large roll of paper (several tons in weight) along the floor, when a veteran of the plant noticed. "That's not how we do it here!" he shouted, putting his shoulder into the roll to accomplish the procedure in his "manly" manner. When the young recruit attempted to regain his masculinity in front of the critic, he dislocated his shoulder, requiring medical attention, incurring significant costs for the health care system and failing to help the older generation evolve to a more safe, less "physical" in the body sense way of doing things in that plant.
It is the division between the "effete" males (words chosen by the stereotype of masculinity) and the "real men" (again words chosen by the same group) that is at issue here. And to paint this as a male-female conflict is to miss the essential ingredient of the conflcit. It is, essentially, an internal conflict within each man that has no, or very little. public expression in a conciliatory and collegial manner to guide men into full acceptance of their own complex reality.
Only if and when men, all men, both straight and gay, become comfortable in our own reality, and with each other will this chasm be bridged. When we come to acknowledge that 10% of all men are gay, including those in the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, the IFFA, and the World Cup of Football, and openly agree that they too are legitimate members of the "Y" chromosome fraternity, without fear, without rancour, without bigotry and without sepregation will there be some opening of the door and window of opportunity to bringing about healing of this age-old separation between and among men.
Last month, in a ham-fisted effort to minimize spousal unit tension, an IKEA in Sydney, Australia temporarily installed Manland. Much like Smaland, IKEA’s bubble room and crafts centre for children, Manland is filled with stimulating diversions (foosball, hot dogs) for men unable to shop without a meltdown. “Some men may pretend to enjoy the shopping experience,” a reporter enthused in a news clip on Australian TV. “We all know they’d prefer to be playing an Xbox or watching the footy than pushing a trolley!” Word! High five!
The set of assumptions behind Manland doesn’t flatter either sex. Once again, here comes the baby-man meme, wherein men are unable and unwilling to participate in the rote side of domestic life. These are the same guys who steal breakfast cereal from their kids in ads or are played by Jim Belushi on sitcoms.
Upholding the clichés of masculinity – real men hate shopping and love Space Invaders – doesn’t make men manlier; it makes them seem a little pathetic. To be a man – or any kind of adult – is to participate fully in your relationship and muster up a civil opinion on a bath mat from time to time. Manland is a country populated by the lowest form of manhood: the whiner who can’t even put aside his own (adolescent) proclivities for an hour to help his wife carry a Shrömpfken – one that he’s probably going to enjoy sleeping on himself.
I’m not sure what’s less appealing: a man who wants to go to Manland or a woman who wants to “drop off” her husband there. Every baby-man in pop culture has his counterpart in the eye-rolling/arms-across-the- chest bemused female killjoy. Manland perpetuates the myth that ladies love shopping only slightly more than they love demoralizing their husbands.
The baby-man meme...where the undeveloped, immature, withdrawn and self-indulgent narcissistic male of the species is 'dropped-off' by his more mature, gregarious, interdependent and integrated female partner in order to reduce the potential for a "melt-down" usually associated with two-year-old temper tantrums...hmmmmmm!
This is not a good picture for any "Y" chromosome-bearing "homo sapiens". In fact, it is so regressive, so insulting and so pathetic as to be another sign of the tragedy that is 21st century masculinity, or at least its portrayal and even its widely held stereotype in the minds, eyes and hearts of many women.And apparently, in the boardroom of IKEA.
There is a pattern to much of what is perceived as "reality" in current vernacular, and thereby current perceptions. Just as the definition of depression in the DSM IV is derived from the descriptions of female patients/clients from practicing psychiatrists, so too is the definition of healthy masculinity derived, we suspect, from the cynical, victimized and too-frequent female conversation in all workplaces, coffee shops, docctors' offices, and soccer practices. Women talk about their men to other women. Men, on the other hand, are sworn to silence, as if it were a code of honour, both to other men and to women.
Fifteen years after I left a marriage of twenty-three years, a marriage that included three daughters, I met a former colleague with whom I had worked and commuted for well nigh twenty years. His first comment, not having spoken with me in the interim, was, "I never heard you say anything negative about your former spouse!"
To which I responded, "Well, no one else did either! Those are private matters left better in that private file."
On the other hand, at this very moment, in hospitals, police stations, ambulance stations, banks, professional offices of every genre, schools, universities and even corporations, women are, among other things, "drubbing out their men" for irresponsibility, for negligence, for passive aggressive attitudes and behaviour, for missing an important date on the calendar, for "going out to play" when the family, or the leaky faucet needed serious attention. Women seem to be fed by such conversations, perhaps because it reinforces the victim archetype in which many have been stuck for many decades.
It was Carol Pearson (The Hero Within) who pointed out barely a decade or two ago that North American society was/is (?) dominated by two archetypes, the victim (women) and the warrior (men). In the public media, in advertising, in film and television, such archetypes (morphed into stereotypes) set the "norm" and billions of dollars of television programming in both revenues and expenditures circulate around the depiction of these two archetypes, sometimes in exclusively male conversation (Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory) or in exclusively female conversation (Desperate Housewives)...Of course, the women's liberation movement was originally designed to point out the legitimate stengths, capabilities and leadership qualities of all women, in the hope that most, if not all, would rise to the top of the corporate, professional and even political ladder in their field, thereby levelling the playing field in status, in pay and in role modelling with men.
The men of my acquaintance, who have done the work of acknowledging our single-minded pursuit of power/money/status to the neglect of our families and our emotional development for the first half century of our lives and have followed that 'confession' with a new, less stressful and less ambitious path to a greater degree of both inner peace and relationship accord, without having in any way abandoned our masculinity, are clearly not the majority. In fact, we threaten other mostly younger men who, so far, have not hit their wall, or seen the light, depending on the "fish-in-the-face" that has struck them in a painful epiphany.
So there is not only a macro division between women and men, but a slightly less macro, but still not micro separation among different groups of men. And this division, including how "macho" men react to gay men in such a frightened and alienating manner, is at least as problematic to the evolution of masculinity, as is the continuing sandpaper roughness that comprises many male-female partnerships.
There is a significant need for straight men to embrace (not in the physical, but in the political sense) gay men. Men like Brian Burke, hardly a male insecure about his masculinity, attending and putting a public face on the Gay Pride Parade in Toronto, in honour of his deceased gay son make a significant contribution to the integration of gay and straight men. Of course, the current Mayor of Toronto's refusal to attend that same parade, preferring the "cottage" for the weekend, tip the scales back into the predictable, proverbial separation between the two groups.
Similarly, the issue of fighting in pro hockey is an example of the divide between the "macho" defenders and the "evolved" agents of change. Don Cherry fills his bank account selling video of hockey violence, some of it acceptable, much of it potential career and/or life threatening, all of dedicated to preserving a "rough" and "natural" form of masculinity, to the denigration of a more sophisticated, intellectual and creative pursuit of the same rubber disc. While public opinion polls demonstrate that 74% of those asked would prefer to see fighting removed from the game, leaving only 24% supporting its being retained, fights are replayed on the television screens inside and outside the arenas, as a last gasp of air for the museum pieces they ought to have become decades ago.
Fighting about fighting is really analogous to the debates that have occurred for the last twenty years about the dnagers of cigarette smoke, both primary and secondary. Everyone knows about the dangers and the risks, and yet the ardevaarks prevail, because change will hurt the game, or (upspoken) change will reduce the opportunity for men to be real men.
In many ways, this is a clinging to a fossil of the past, for the sake of denying the present and the future. Men can be diligent, competive, resourceful and disciplined, and uphold their (and our) masculinity while playing any game, including professional hockey, without once raising their fist, or taking a deliberate shot at the head of an opponent. Fast-paced skills, anticipation, creativity, imagination, intuition including open-ice body checks do not, and will not downgrade the game. In fact, they will always enhance the game, and the spectators' appreciation for it.
It is a desperate clinging to a long-worn-out stereotype that infuses too much of North American life that must be put to rest. A story from a pulp and paper mill, relayed through a safety officer may illustrate my point. A new recruit was using a metal pole to roll a large roll of paper (several tons in weight) along the floor, when a veteran of the plant noticed. "That's not how we do it here!" he shouted, putting his shoulder into the roll to accomplish the procedure in his "manly" manner. When the young recruit attempted to regain his masculinity in front of the critic, he dislocated his shoulder, requiring medical attention, incurring significant costs for the health care system and failing to help the older generation evolve to a more safe, less "physical" in the body sense way of doing things in that plant.
It is the division between the "effete" males (words chosen by the stereotype of masculinity) and the "real men" (again words chosen by the same group) that is at issue here. And to paint this as a male-female conflict is to miss the essential ingredient of the conflcit. It is, essentially, an internal conflict within each man that has no, or very little. public expression in a conciliatory and collegial manner to guide men into full acceptance of their own complex reality.
Only if and when men, all men, both straight and gay, become comfortable in our own reality, and with each other will this chasm be bridged. When we come to acknowledge that 10% of all men are gay, including those in the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, the IFFA, and the World Cup of Football, and openly agree that they too are legitimate members of the "Y" chromosome fraternity, without fear, without rancour, without bigotry and without sepregation will there be some opening of the door and window of opportunity to bringing about healing of this age-old separation between and among men.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
"Men moving backward while women move forward" (Mark Kelly, CBC)
Finally, the words were spoken last night on CBC's Connect with Mark Kelly. It was not an official announcement. It was not part of the script for a news story. It was, ironically, the "disconnect" for the September 19, 2011 show.
As he reviewed the progress made by women over the last few decades, using the interview with a Hugh Hefner Playboy Bunnie as his springboard, he closed with this thought...
As women have beeen making all this progress toward equality, men it seems have been moving backward. With the "dumb men" jokes and ads, men have become the idiots in the room....
Not only is it true, it is one of the tragedies of the last quarter century.
Men have, indeed, become the idiots in the room. We are being laughed at in many of the television shows currently playing in prime time. We are the butt of many of the "jokes" that wander through daily water cooler conversations. Listen to the staff of any department populated primarily by women and you will hear too much talk about the "dumb" or "insensitive" or "lazy" or "irresponsible" or...pick your own adjective husband, partner, back home.
And it is a regular subject for a circle of female bonding....and to put it mildly and bluntly, it sucks.
If men were to talk about their female partners in the same way, we would be accused of gender bias, in polite terms, and sexism in less polite terms, and reinforcing the "gossip" in ugly terms.
What has happened to the male "character" in our North American society?
Have we simply surrendered our spines and our needs and our aspirations to the closet or the basement or the garage where those things on their way to Value Village are stored?
Have we refused to step up in the face of "women's liberation" to provide the kind of counter-balance to healthy, self-respecting, assertive women who wish to attend school, get good grades, get good jobs and produce a good family?
Have we considered the "competition" not worthy of our best efforts, in support of those healthy, assertive, self-respecting women we call our daughters, our wives, our mothers, and even our grandmothers?
Having been raised by a mother born three years prior to the start of World War I, whose brand of assertiveness, and courage and self-respect was forged in the bush of Algonquin Park where she lived in a boxcar with her parents for the years from three to nine, while her father was shop foreman at the CNR roundhouse, I am too familiar with her references to Charlotte Whitten, the former mayor of Ottawa. It was Whitten who publicly uttered words that rang in our house for decades:
Unfortunately, in order to be considered equal to men, women have to work twice as hard;
fortunately, men have not made that achievement all that difficult.
Following her life in the bush, she attended nursing school, at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where she was "educated" by the nuns of the Roman Catholic church, not exactly a 'liberal' education in nursing. Upon graduation, she was hired by those same nuns for work in the maternity ward, before returning to her home town to marry.
Even prior to her marriage, she attempted to convince her then fiance, later my father, to attend university to study dentistry in the early 1930's, with her working to cover the costs. His confidence, not having completed high school, was insufficient for the challenge, something she held over his head for the sixty-plus years of their marriage.
She took a back-seat to no one ever. She took on the task of being President of the North Bay Canadian Club in her 80's, travelled on planned excursions throughout her retirement, engaged her granddaughters in conversations about their developing plans and interesting lives, and drove her car until three days before she died, following hip surgery after a fall on the front steps of her house in North Bay. She was then in her ninety-first year.
She competed with her two sisters-in-law, both nurses, for fifty years, sometime innocuously, sometimes overtly, to their disappointment. They never felt the need to compete, given their firmly established positions in the administration of two Toronto hospitals, The Hospital for Sick Children, and Mount Sinai Hospital, both teaching hospitals attached to the University of Toronto, and the various community colleges that sprang up in the 1970's under then Premier William Davis.
I watched my mother's unquestioned dominance in her marriage for many decades, wondering what had happened to my father's spine. There certainly were times when his firm, but unyielding hand on the tiller would have steadied their marriage and reduced our family's trauma, without in any way denigrating her significant contribution. She lacked a vigorous and assertive and self-respecting partner for those sixty-plyus years, and I have come to the realization of that "missing component" in my family of origin, and in my own first marriage, given the modelling I saw as a young man.
Working in both schools and churches, and in several corporations, I have witnessed various forms of male-female interractions, some of them downright viscious, others more compatible, and others a sheer delight to experience.
My three daughters owe much to their grandmother whose modelling gave them confidence and self-acceptance that has resulted in their many achievments in athletics, academics and later in professional life.
Nevertheless, I remain convinced that men, individually and collectively, have permitted the erosion of the "brand" called masculinity through a combination of indifference, some arrogance (mostly a mask) and some fear. We have not provided, in too many cases, the kind of self-confident, assertive and healthy modelling for our sons, and our grandsons over the last half century.
Were we tired folllowing the two world wars?
Were we too busy making a living to have any energy left over for polishing the male brand?
Did we leave the field to the Dubya's, of which there are far too many, who have put on the stereotype of Marlboro Man, and sacrificed their poetic, and their feminine qualities, as both embarrassing and irrelevant.
It was Carl Jung who taught us about the unconscious in all men; he called it the anima. And through a process, still somewhat ill-defined, of claiming the Shadow, we could find the "gold" in that effort.
There is a model of androgyny, that combines both masculine and feminine qualities in both men and women, and the model is far more acceptable to most women than it is too most men.
And the sooner men "get over" our fear of being gay, and our fear of those who are gay and we find our feminine sides, we might begin to fill the gaping hole that exists in too many families, organizations and even nations' schools, hospitals, churches and corporations and provide mentoring to our sons who wish to become artists, musicians, dancers and creative community organizers...and not have to funnel them into only the hard sciences, accounting, law and medicine.
As he reviewed the progress made by women over the last few decades, using the interview with a Hugh Hefner Playboy Bunnie as his springboard, he closed with this thought...
As women have beeen making all this progress toward equality, men it seems have been moving backward. With the "dumb men" jokes and ads, men have become the idiots in the room....
Not only is it true, it is one of the tragedies of the last quarter century.
Men have, indeed, become the idiots in the room. We are being laughed at in many of the television shows currently playing in prime time. We are the butt of many of the "jokes" that wander through daily water cooler conversations. Listen to the staff of any department populated primarily by women and you will hear too much talk about the "dumb" or "insensitive" or "lazy" or "irresponsible" or...pick your own adjective husband, partner, back home.
And it is a regular subject for a circle of female bonding....and to put it mildly and bluntly, it sucks.
If men were to talk about their female partners in the same way, we would be accused of gender bias, in polite terms, and sexism in less polite terms, and reinforcing the "gossip" in ugly terms.
What has happened to the male "character" in our North American society?
Have we simply surrendered our spines and our needs and our aspirations to the closet or the basement or the garage where those things on their way to Value Village are stored?
Have we refused to step up in the face of "women's liberation" to provide the kind of counter-balance to healthy, self-respecting, assertive women who wish to attend school, get good grades, get good jobs and produce a good family?
Have we considered the "competition" not worthy of our best efforts, in support of those healthy, assertive, self-respecting women we call our daughters, our wives, our mothers, and even our grandmothers?
Having been raised by a mother born three years prior to the start of World War I, whose brand of assertiveness, and courage and self-respect was forged in the bush of Algonquin Park where she lived in a boxcar with her parents for the years from three to nine, while her father was shop foreman at the CNR roundhouse, I am too familiar with her references to Charlotte Whitten, the former mayor of Ottawa. It was Whitten who publicly uttered words that rang in our house for decades:
Unfortunately, in order to be considered equal to men, women have to work twice as hard;
fortunately, men have not made that achievement all that difficult.
Following her life in the bush, she attended nursing school, at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, where she was "educated" by the nuns of the Roman Catholic church, not exactly a 'liberal' education in nursing. Upon graduation, she was hired by those same nuns for work in the maternity ward, before returning to her home town to marry.
Even prior to her marriage, she attempted to convince her then fiance, later my father, to attend university to study dentistry in the early 1930's, with her working to cover the costs. His confidence, not having completed high school, was insufficient for the challenge, something she held over his head for the sixty-plus years of their marriage.
She took a back-seat to no one ever. She took on the task of being President of the North Bay Canadian Club in her 80's, travelled on planned excursions throughout her retirement, engaged her granddaughters in conversations about their developing plans and interesting lives, and drove her car until three days before she died, following hip surgery after a fall on the front steps of her house in North Bay. She was then in her ninety-first year.
She competed with her two sisters-in-law, both nurses, for fifty years, sometime innocuously, sometimes overtly, to their disappointment. They never felt the need to compete, given their firmly established positions in the administration of two Toronto hospitals, The Hospital for Sick Children, and Mount Sinai Hospital, both teaching hospitals attached to the University of Toronto, and the various community colleges that sprang up in the 1970's under then Premier William Davis.
I watched my mother's unquestioned dominance in her marriage for many decades, wondering what had happened to my father's spine. There certainly were times when his firm, but unyielding hand on the tiller would have steadied their marriage and reduced our family's trauma, without in any way denigrating her significant contribution. She lacked a vigorous and assertive and self-respecting partner for those sixty-plyus years, and I have come to the realization of that "missing component" in my family of origin, and in my own first marriage, given the modelling I saw as a young man.
Working in both schools and churches, and in several corporations, I have witnessed various forms of male-female interractions, some of them downright viscious, others more compatible, and others a sheer delight to experience.
My three daughters owe much to their grandmother whose modelling gave them confidence and self-acceptance that has resulted in their many achievments in athletics, academics and later in professional life.
Nevertheless, I remain convinced that men, individually and collectively, have permitted the erosion of the "brand" called masculinity through a combination of indifference, some arrogance (mostly a mask) and some fear. We have not provided, in too many cases, the kind of self-confident, assertive and healthy modelling for our sons, and our grandsons over the last half century.
Were we tired folllowing the two world wars?
Were we too busy making a living to have any energy left over for polishing the male brand?
Did we leave the field to the Dubya's, of which there are far too many, who have put on the stereotype of Marlboro Man, and sacrificed their poetic, and their feminine qualities, as both embarrassing and irrelevant.
It was Carl Jung who taught us about the unconscious in all men; he called it the anima. And through a process, still somewhat ill-defined, of claiming the Shadow, we could find the "gold" in that effort.
There is a model of androgyny, that combines both masculine and feminine qualities in both men and women, and the model is far more acceptable to most women than it is too most men.
And the sooner men "get over" our fear of being gay, and our fear of those who are gay and we find our feminine sides, we might begin to fill the gaping hole that exists in too many families, organizations and even nations' schools, hospitals, churches and corporations and provide mentoring to our sons who wish to become artists, musicians, dancers and creative community organizers...and not have to funnel them into only the hard sciences, accounting, law and medicine.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
In Canada 10 suicides every day, 8 are men!
By Andre Picard, Globe and Mail, September 6, 2011
Take a close look at the statistics and a trend becomes clear: The No. 1 risk factor for suicide is being male.
Of the 10 people who die by suicide daily in this country, about eight are men and two are women.
There are libraries full of research examining this phenomenon, which is not unique to Canada. There are many possible explanations but few easy answers.
We know that suicide is a vast societal problem that affects all age groups – in Canada, suicides have been recorded in children as young as 8 and in seniors over the age of 90 – and all socioeconomic groups....
The vast majority of suicides result from underlying mental illness coupled with profound emotional pain, and they are often triggered by some external event, such as a job loss, failing an exam, the breakup of a relationship or the death of a loved one. In other words, stress is the big trigger.
Yet, only a tiny proportion of those who suffer from depression die by suicide. (On the other hand, close to half of people with untreated schizophrenia will take their own lives.) There are also factors that increase the risk of depression and suicide, including a history of head injuries and alcohol/drug abuse.
Women are about twice as likely as men to suffer from depression. They are also far more likely to attempt suicide but tend to be less “successful” (and, yes, that is a horrific notion of “success.”) Still, the stats tell us that, in women, there are 20 attempts for every completed suicide while, in men, the ratio is 4:1.
One reason is that men use far more violent means to kill themselves, principally hanging and firearms, while women generally use poisoning (drug overdoses). Death though is just the tip of the iceberg: Another 48 people daily are hospitalized with self-inflicted injuries, most of them women.
The principal reason more men than women die by suicide is that men do not seek help and spiral into despair, hopelessness and self-harm.
Men also self-medicate, largely with alcohol, which tends to make their symptoms worse. When they are depressed, they don’t retreat into a shell, but act out, often violently. (Perhaps we should consider that the depressed are drawn to being hockey enforcers rather than the reverse?) Women, on the other hand, tend to self-medicate with food and sleep; they also cry out for help – literally and figuratively. They talk to friends, they talk to counsellors and they talk to physicians about their depression and suicidal thoughts.
One of the main enduring stigmas about mental illness, particularly for men, is that it is a sign of weakness. From an early age, boys are taught – or socialized – to be tough, to not cry. They internalize their pain. They repress their feelings and their fears.
This silence can be fatal. Yet the continuing carnage that results – more men die by suicide than in motor vehicle collisions – is largely hidden away and invisible.
When we have a rare glimpse of this grim reality, as we have had with the death of Mr.(Wade) Belak (formerly of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL), we owe it to ourselves to not be distracted by peripheral concerns like fighting in hockey and zero in on big issues like how to treat depression and prevent suicide in males. Obviously our current approach is not working.
When the black dogs of depression come growling, when the suicidal thoughts become overwhelming, boys need not be boys and men need not be men.
They need to learn – from an early age and regardless of how macho their profession – that they can seek help, they can be vulnerable, they can be sick and get better.
The hoary myths we cling to about toughness and manhood too often leave us with young men dangling by a rope.
Sadly, I recall the names of several males who took their own lives when I was a young boy growing up in a small Ontario town. A pharmacist, a wholesale, a men's clothing retailer, a retired gentleman, all come to mind, and all of them I knew personally, without even suspecting their outcome. Guns and a hose attached to the exhaust of the car in an enclosed garage were the methods I recall. I also recall, when I was twelve, one night being wakened around 3:00 a.m. by my mother and told to to the basement "right away!" I had no idea why, and did not bother to inquire.
When I arrived in the basement, I found my own father behind the charcoal-fired jacket heater used to generate hot water, holding a .22 calibre rifle to his head.
"Give me the gun!" I recall saying as calmly as I could.
He handed it to me and I took it upstairs, although I have no recollection where I placed it, or even whether or not it was loaded. I never checked. That was in 1954; he died in 1996, some forty-two years later, and in that time I never heard a word uttered about the incident from either my mother or my father.
What I did hear about many times, however, were allegations that my father's father, my grandfather, in my mother's words, "was crazy" because he attempted to take his own life, a story recounted by one of his adult daughters in a letter to me in the mid 1990's, yet when I attempted to confirm its veracity through my own father, he denied it ever happened.
While studying theology, I took a course entitled, "Death and Dying" from an outstanding pastoral counsellor. During that course, I inquired from the partner of another male suicide what follow-up support seemed to work for her. She confirmed that her deceased partner had returned to excessive alcohol consumption about which she had no idea. I also wrote a thesis on the liturgical suicide of a priest who was clearly depressed and wounded by many pains in his life a most recent rejection for a professional position to which he aspired.
Clearly, the culture of masculinity, not only the expectations of being male (including silence and resilience in the midst of pain, refusal to "talk" about pain to anyone, medicating the pain with whatever the choice of medicine: alcohol, work, drugs both prescription and non-prescription, sex, gambling etc. is more conducive to male suicide, especially to the much lower ratio of attempts to completions (4:1 as compared with women, 20:1)
Some men and women organized a conference on reasons why men do not seek professional help, in Kingston, ON. When I met one of the key-note speakers, I was moved to respond that men are men, are must not apologize for being men, just as a rose need not apologize for being a rose, and not a Lily.
A clinical, psychological approach to men, in my view, is not the answer to depression, nor is it the answer to mental illness, exclusively. Clinical approaches frequently involve one-on-one interactions although group interactions are also part of the available menu.
The clinical approach is to employ the medical model of treatment, as if there were a disease that needs to be made well, less toxic and less influential in a man's life. If he is too aggressive, he must be made to act out less, to repress his emotions and in order to achieve this result, both "talk therapy" and medications are prescribed. If he is too withdrawn, a similar chemical-talk duality is often prescribed.
Our society has become dependent on the medical model of treating most aberrant conditions.
I question the quality of "aberrant" that is allegedly found in many men. Have we not erred much too far in the direction of the "disease" model of defining what is wrong with a person whose attitudes, actions, speech and general demeanour do not conform to our "definition" of what is appropriate.
Using the DSM-IV, for example, the definition of "depression" in that "psychiatric bible" is derived from female patients, not from a cross section of both male and female patients. Consequently, the treatment modalities are also based on their relative success among women patients.
There is considerable evidence that North American society has made men the "scape-goats" for many of our social ills.
Men commit far more acts of violence that do women.
Men drop out of school at higher rates than women.
Men suffer from learning difficulties at a rate higher than women.
Men are considered "dummies," and/or "stupid" and/or "socially maladjusted" much more often than women.
Men do not adapt to a school curriculum that points them toward reading, writing and emotional identification nearly as effectively as do female students.
Men "hide" their shyness in their "tech" gadgets, and in their macho mask, and in their physical prowess whereas women seek out other women who are also shy and find comfort and solace with a comparable peer.
Men do not have a vocabulary for their emotions nearly as early nor as completely as do women, in fact many men consider such a vocabulary to be "effeminate" and therefore to be avoided at all costs.
Men are not taught, either formally or informally, the complexities of human relationships, especially with the opposite gender, when the need is measured in the number of divorces, reaching at least 40% by some studies and as high as 50% in other studies.
The male model of gathering and writing the daily news reports easily trumps the perspective of women: for example, it is the "horse race" of all political competitions that trumps the nuances of policy and their underpinning thought or philosophy. Consequently, a good idea will be far less likely to reach a headline than the score of the most recent poll.
The male model of measuring success in most organizations is seen in the inordinately high use of numbers, size, increased production and profits and dividends, not the drop in absenteeism, nor the rise in philanthropy by the company, nor the decline in frequency of personal conflict. This includes, tragically, the christian church, where, in my experience, a bishop's vision has been touted in corporate vernacular: 10% more people and 15% more money in the coffers. This example, a true story, demonstrates the abandonment of the principles of the gospel, and any attempt at removing gender from the calculations. It also engenders the opposite behaviours from clergy to those needed to grow integrated, and effective community circles when both men and women could and would learn from each other to talk about their spiritual lives, without fearing the embarrassment that often accompanies such a discourse involving both genders.
As our society moves to less and less authentic human contact, and more and more hiding our deepest feelings, including our deepest fears, anxieties and disappointments, men will "fit" into the model being created by both men and women, unconsciously, that not only permits, but actually encourages the cover-up of real pain, and real discomfort. It is as if we are addicted to the "story with the happy ending" as the one we are all pursuing....and look at the death-denying culture we have on our hands, our minds and our spirits.
A small sliver of hope might be seen peeking through the cracks around these three male suicides, as they stories prompt both more stories and more talk around the water cooler.
With profound thanks and encouragement for his insightful piece, to Andre Picard.
Take a close look at the statistics and a trend becomes clear: The No. 1 risk factor for suicide is being male.
Of the 10 people who die by suicide daily in this country, about eight are men and two are women.
There are libraries full of research examining this phenomenon, which is not unique to Canada. There are many possible explanations but few easy answers.
We know that suicide is a vast societal problem that affects all age groups – in Canada, suicides have been recorded in children as young as 8 and in seniors over the age of 90 – and all socioeconomic groups....
The vast majority of suicides result from underlying mental illness coupled with profound emotional pain, and they are often triggered by some external event, such as a job loss, failing an exam, the breakup of a relationship or the death of a loved one. In other words, stress is the big trigger.
Yet, only a tiny proportion of those who suffer from depression die by suicide. (On the other hand, close to half of people with untreated schizophrenia will take their own lives.) There are also factors that increase the risk of depression and suicide, including a history of head injuries and alcohol/drug abuse.
Women are about twice as likely as men to suffer from depression. They are also far more likely to attempt suicide but tend to be less “successful” (and, yes, that is a horrific notion of “success.”) Still, the stats tell us that, in women, there are 20 attempts for every completed suicide while, in men, the ratio is 4:1.
One reason is that men use far more violent means to kill themselves, principally hanging and firearms, while women generally use poisoning (drug overdoses). Death though is just the tip of the iceberg: Another 48 people daily are hospitalized with self-inflicted injuries, most of them women.
The principal reason more men than women die by suicide is that men do not seek help and spiral into despair, hopelessness and self-harm.
Men also self-medicate, largely with alcohol, which tends to make their symptoms worse. When they are depressed, they don’t retreat into a shell, but act out, often violently. (Perhaps we should consider that the depressed are drawn to being hockey enforcers rather than the reverse?) Women, on the other hand, tend to self-medicate with food and sleep; they also cry out for help – literally and figuratively. They talk to friends, they talk to counsellors and they talk to physicians about their depression and suicidal thoughts.
One of the main enduring stigmas about mental illness, particularly for men, is that it is a sign of weakness. From an early age, boys are taught – or socialized – to be tough, to not cry. They internalize their pain. They repress their feelings and their fears.
This silence can be fatal. Yet the continuing carnage that results – more men die by suicide than in motor vehicle collisions – is largely hidden away and invisible.
When we have a rare glimpse of this grim reality, as we have had with the death of Mr.(Wade) Belak (formerly of the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL), we owe it to ourselves to not be distracted by peripheral concerns like fighting in hockey and zero in on big issues like how to treat depression and prevent suicide in males. Obviously our current approach is not working.
When the black dogs of depression come growling, when the suicidal thoughts become overwhelming, boys need not be boys and men need not be men.
They need to learn – from an early age and regardless of how macho their profession – that they can seek help, they can be vulnerable, they can be sick and get better.
The hoary myths we cling to about toughness and manhood too often leave us with young men dangling by a rope.
Sadly, I recall the names of several males who took their own lives when I was a young boy growing up in a small Ontario town. A pharmacist, a wholesale, a men's clothing retailer, a retired gentleman, all come to mind, and all of them I knew personally, without even suspecting their outcome. Guns and a hose attached to the exhaust of the car in an enclosed garage were the methods I recall. I also recall, when I was twelve, one night being wakened around 3:00 a.m. by my mother and told to to the basement "right away!" I had no idea why, and did not bother to inquire.
When I arrived in the basement, I found my own father behind the charcoal-fired jacket heater used to generate hot water, holding a .22 calibre rifle to his head.
"Give me the gun!" I recall saying as calmly as I could.
He handed it to me and I took it upstairs, although I have no recollection where I placed it, or even whether or not it was loaded. I never checked. That was in 1954; he died in 1996, some forty-two years later, and in that time I never heard a word uttered about the incident from either my mother or my father.
What I did hear about many times, however, were allegations that my father's father, my grandfather, in my mother's words, "was crazy" because he attempted to take his own life, a story recounted by one of his adult daughters in a letter to me in the mid 1990's, yet when I attempted to confirm its veracity through my own father, he denied it ever happened.
While studying theology, I took a course entitled, "Death and Dying" from an outstanding pastoral counsellor. During that course, I inquired from the partner of another male suicide what follow-up support seemed to work for her. She confirmed that her deceased partner had returned to excessive alcohol consumption about which she had no idea. I also wrote a thesis on the liturgical suicide of a priest who was clearly depressed and wounded by many pains in his life a most recent rejection for a professional position to which he aspired.
Clearly, the culture of masculinity, not only the expectations of being male (including silence and resilience in the midst of pain, refusal to "talk" about pain to anyone, medicating the pain with whatever the choice of medicine: alcohol, work, drugs both prescription and non-prescription, sex, gambling etc. is more conducive to male suicide, especially to the much lower ratio of attempts to completions (4:1 as compared with women, 20:1)
Some men and women organized a conference on reasons why men do not seek professional help, in Kingston, ON. When I met one of the key-note speakers, I was moved to respond that men are men, are must not apologize for being men, just as a rose need not apologize for being a rose, and not a Lily.
A clinical, psychological approach to men, in my view, is not the answer to depression, nor is it the answer to mental illness, exclusively. Clinical approaches frequently involve one-on-one interactions although group interactions are also part of the available menu.
The clinical approach is to employ the medical model of treatment, as if there were a disease that needs to be made well, less toxic and less influential in a man's life. If he is too aggressive, he must be made to act out less, to repress his emotions and in order to achieve this result, both "talk therapy" and medications are prescribed. If he is too withdrawn, a similar chemical-talk duality is often prescribed.
Our society has become dependent on the medical model of treating most aberrant conditions.
I question the quality of "aberrant" that is allegedly found in many men. Have we not erred much too far in the direction of the "disease" model of defining what is wrong with a person whose attitudes, actions, speech and general demeanour do not conform to our "definition" of what is appropriate.
Using the DSM-IV, for example, the definition of "depression" in that "psychiatric bible" is derived from female patients, not from a cross section of both male and female patients. Consequently, the treatment modalities are also based on their relative success among women patients.
There is considerable evidence that North American society has made men the "scape-goats" for many of our social ills.
Men commit far more acts of violence that do women.
Men drop out of school at higher rates than women.
Men suffer from learning difficulties at a rate higher than women.
Men are considered "dummies," and/or "stupid" and/or "socially maladjusted" much more often than women.
Men do not adapt to a school curriculum that points them toward reading, writing and emotional identification nearly as effectively as do female students.
Men "hide" their shyness in their "tech" gadgets, and in their macho mask, and in their physical prowess whereas women seek out other women who are also shy and find comfort and solace with a comparable peer.
Men do not have a vocabulary for their emotions nearly as early nor as completely as do women, in fact many men consider such a vocabulary to be "effeminate" and therefore to be avoided at all costs.
Men are not taught, either formally or informally, the complexities of human relationships, especially with the opposite gender, when the need is measured in the number of divorces, reaching at least 40% by some studies and as high as 50% in other studies.
The male model of gathering and writing the daily news reports easily trumps the perspective of women: for example, it is the "horse race" of all political competitions that trumps the nuances of policy and their underpinning thought or philosophy. Consequently, a good idea will be far less likely to reach a headline than the score of the most recent poll.
The male model of measuring success in most organizations is seen in the inordinately high use of numbers, size, increased production and profits and dividends, not the drop in absenteeism, nor the rise in philanthropy by the company, nor the decline in frequency of personal conflict. This includes, tragically, the christian church, where, in my experience, a bishop's vision has been touted in corporate vernacular: 10% more people and 15% more money in the coffers. This example, a true story, demonstrates the abandonment of the principles of the gospel, and any attempt at removing gender from the calculations. It also engenders the opposite behaviours from clergy to those needed to grow integrated, and effective community circles when both men and women could and would learn from each other to talk about their spiritual lives, without fearing the embarrassment that often accompanies such a discourse involving both genders.
As our society moves to less and less authentic human contact, and more and more hiding our deepest feelings, including our deepest fears, anxieties and disappointments, men will "fit" into the model being created by both men and women, unconsciously, that not only permits, but actually encourages the cover-up of real pain, and real discomfort. It is as if we are addicted to the "story with the happy ending" as the one we are all pursuing....and look at the death-denying culture we have on our hands, our minds and our spirits.
A small sliver of hope might be seen peeking through the cracks around these three male suicides, as they stories prompt both more stories and more talk around the water cooler.
With profound thanks and encouragement for his insightful piece, to Andre Picard.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Jack Layton's legacy: "He talked to men about men's issues" (Party President)
On this day that marks the death of the leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons in Ottawa, the CBC has dedicated several hours to commemorating his life, political contribution and personal legacy.
It is the comment of Brian Topp, President of the New Democratic Party that struck me. When asked what he will take away from the experience of working with Jack Layton, Mr. Topp commented:
"Jack always talked to men and he left that image in my mind, and I will try to learn to do that, as I pay respect to his legacy."
Imagine a political leader talking to men about violence committed by men, about the need to respect women, about the importance of being a male member of the human race....it is almost inconceivable!
And, in that moment, we saw, perhaps for the very first time in Canadian public life, a demonstration of the importance Jack Layton placed on the definition of masculinity in a world gone mad with hard power.
Jack's departure letter, composed on Saturday afternoon, a mere two days prior to his untimely death, with a few of his closest associates including his wife Olivia Chow, also herself a Member of Parliament for the NDP, closes with these words:
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
Here is a national political leader unafraid to acknowledge his optimism, his hope and his love...as important qualities in any attempt to "change the world"....
Sounds almost triumphal, certainly spiritually uplifting and undoubtedly unexpected coming from a male, in the current cultural climate in North America.
And there is not a person alive who knows Jack Layton who would permit his being dubbed a "wimp"...
He was a partisan, a fighter for justice and equality and fairness in the Canadian political debate, a champion of individual rights of gays and lesbians, of the underclass, of First Nations people and of those who needed a helping hand to make their way out of dependence.
For all of his many gifts, talents and indomitable spirit, Jack Layton undertook one of the most challenging and important tasks for any political leader in the twenty-first century...challenging and mentoring other men into their highest ideals and their best in all relationships.
And he not only used these words; he lived their importance in being able to bring people of different ideologies and points of view together to accomplish practical goals in the larger public interest.
Would that more men than the NDP President can and do hear and accept the challenge that Jack Layton posed for men in Canada and in North America.
Such a level of acceptance of that challenge will change our schools, our families, our corporations and our political discourse...and all of that change will be for the higher good of both men and women.
It is the comment of Brian Topp, President of the New Democratic Party that struck me. When asked what he will take away from the experience of working with Jack Layton, Mr. Topp commented:
"Jack always talked to men and he left that image in my mind, and I will try to learn to do that, as I pay respect to his legacy."
Imagine a political leader talking to men about violence committed by men, about the need to respect women, about the importance of being a male member of the human race....it is almost inconceivable!
And, in that moment, we saw, perhaps for the very first time in Canadian public life, a demonstration of the importance Jack Layton placed on the definition of masculinity in a world gone mad with hard power.
Jack's departure letter, composed on Saturday afternoon, a mere two days prior to his untimely death, with a few of his closest associates including his wife Olivia Chow, also herself a Member of Parliament for the NDP, closes with these words:
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
Here is a national political leader unafraid to acknowledge his optimism, his hope and his love...as important qualities in any attempt to "change the world"....
Sounds almost triumphal, certainly spiritually uplifting and undoubtedly unexpected coming from a male, in the current cultural climate in North America.
And there is not a person alive who knows Jack Layton who would permit his being dubbed a "wimp"...
He was a partisan, a fighter for justice and equality and fairness in the Canadian political debate, a champion of individual rights of gays and lesbians, of the underclass, of First Nations people and of those who needed a helping hand to make their way out of dependence.
For all of his many gifts, talents and indomitable spirit, Jack Layton undertook one of the most challenging and important tasks for any political leader in the twenty-first century...challenging and mentoring other men into their highest ideals and their best in all relationships.
And he not only used these words; he lived their importance in being able to bring people of different ideologies and points of view together to accomplish practical goals in the larger public interest.
Would that more men than the NDP President can and do hear and accept the challenge that Jack Layton posed for men in Canada and in North America.
Such a level of acceptance of that challenge will change our schools, our families, our corporations and our political discourse...and all of that change will be for the higher good of both men and women.
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