2. 'Guys are
in trouble'
If men are
going to experience healing to any degree, then a thorough diagnosis of the
problems faced is the starting point. The Women’s movement has paradoxically
thrown a lifeline to men – it has acted as spur for men’s self-examination,
personally and collectively. As a result, men are realising that inherited
gender roles can be just as imprisoning for men as for women. Back in 1978, men
were arguing that 'our power in society as men not only oppresses women but
imprisons us in a deadening masculinity which cripples all our relationships -
with each other, with women, with ourselves.'[1]
At the same time, the loss of traditional roles in society has cut away so many
anchors for men that there is no longer any secure ground that can be called
'male territory'.
Yet while
women have successfully been articulating their oppression, men have to deal
with the legacy of having been the 'generic being', “mankind”, for centuries -
and having no concepts by which their role can be defined as men. Having
never been talked about as a distinct gender, they have effectively been made
invisible to themselves, and it is only dissatisfaction and a lack of comfort
that is finally making it clear to them that they need to be able to 'see', and
to be seen. Yet all they have is a vague notion that they '...are in trouble.
Manhood, once an opportunity for achievement, now seems like a problem to be
overcome.'[2] What are the main symptoms and causes of
this 'problem'?
Father
hunger
“My father
never laid a finger on me…..Bastard.” NSPCC
poster
In the novel
High Fidelity, the main character, a 'nineties man', longs to be able to
talk about 'being a bloke in the twentieth century' with his father.[3] This reflects a notion that in a real sense
men need to be taught how to be men. Steve Biddulph even argues that
there is a biological need for boys to have several hours’ one-to-one
male contact every day.[4] But at their time of need, when it seems
that they are being 'castrated by the culture’ Richard Rohr states that ‘no one
has given us the energy…fathered us, authored us, created us, believed in us in
a way to allow us to believe in ourselves.'[5] Thus the root of men’s wounds lies in the
experience of the absence of a father.
To
illustrate the reality of this absence, Steve Biddulph tells a story of how in
the mid-1970s the Mattel toy company tried to market a family of dolls called
“The Heart Family”. In trials, however,
numerous children removed the “father doll” from the family. When they were asked why they weren’t
playing with him, they replied, “He’s at work.”[6] Patterns of life and work formed by the
Industrial Revolution can be blamed for a breakdown of the relationship between
children and fathers, for a situation in which, as fathers’ work is removed
from the family environment, intimacy becomes replaced by suspicion, mistrust,
and finally disillusionment. Knowledge of the father is received second-hand
through mothers, and the ideal of the old wise man, who will guide men through,
is usurped by a society which would rather idolise twenty-year olds.
Father
hunger can thus produce a lack of motivation and power in men to be creative or
life-giving at any deep level. Especially in their emotional life or in the
domestic arena they become passive rather than active. Fr Richard Rohr
illustrates this point through the story of the man with the withered right
hand, who lacked the energy to do anything but react socially to the initiative
of others.[7]
But father hunger also forces men towards a 'hegemonic masculinity', where only
one set of values can be embraced, those of the dominant male stereotype in
Western society.
In contrast
to women who form their identities by a continuing attachment to their mothers,
as men approach adulthood, they are characterised by the need for separation
from the maternal, to be defined as 'other'.[8]
At this point, the lack of the father forces men to turn towards other
influences as guiding models, abstract images reinforced by the media. But
these 'modes of life available to men — the ‘Rites of Man’ being war, work, and
sex — only serve to impoverish, delude and alienate them. The harm done to men
in and through these structures distorts their relationship with women and with
one another.'[9]
P Culbertson suggests that concentration of masculinity in these areas has led
to four marks of the American (Western) male: penis pride, rugged
self-sacrificing independence, professional success and status, and a mixture
of sexual activity with women and a pathological homophobia.[10]
Men and
relationships
The
difficulties attached to the task of ‘separation’ are only compounded by the
values outlined above - from all quarters men seem required to exercise
emotional self-sufficiency. It is interesting that in the UK 'The Nation’s
Favourite Poem, 1996', Kipling’s 'If', echoes these sentiments: 'If you can keep your head when all around
you are losing theirs…Then you will be a man, my son!' Yet this way of 'being a
man' leads to a fear of failure and vulnerability. James Nelson compares men’s
'castration anxiety' with its modern equivalent: 'performance anxiety': only
success will provide wholeness![11]
The result of this is that man (who is not anatomically accommodating) finds it
hard to accommodate 'messy' intimate relationships.[12]
Just as
circumstances must be continually manipulated in order to ensure success, so
boundaries in relationships are negotiated so as to guard against vulnerability
and need. The main character in High Fidelity has all possibilities
covered:
'Everything that's ever gone wrong for me could
have been rescued by the wave of a bank manager's wand...or by some quality -
determination, self-awareness, resilience - that I might have found within
myself, if I'd looked hard enough...If people have to die, I don't want them
dying near me. My mum and dad won't die near me, I've made bloody sure of that.
When they go, I'll hardly feel a thing.'[13]
A growing
awareness of death poses a great threat to the Western male, and the male
'mid-life crisis' can be interpreted as a running away from its growing
reality. Men can increasingly withdraw
from intimate involvement in family life, perpetuating the cycle of the absent
father, and adopting a 'positional', rather than a personal role.[14]
In the inner cities especially, men can eventually find themselves being driven
to the edge of communities, as well as of families, as society conspires to
continue this pattern. A vicar from an inner-city parish in Bristol notes:
'There
will be occasions when they don't really know where they fit in families. That
they are not really welcomed, and that women would rather be on their own than
risk sharing their children and their families with men, and therefore there's
quite a model now of men being on the edge of family life rather than at the
centre of it.' [15]
There is a
danger that not expressing intimacy or emotion must lead to not experiencing
it. This will lead to less insight, less awareness of one’s inner self and a
self-destructive non-recognition that things are going wrong.
However, it
also seems that for the majority this is not the case, that such emotional
poverty now 'has to be worked at.'[16]
Men and women in the Church can rejoice at cracks in the armour of 'masculine
hegemony'. The crisis can be an opportunity. We can see '…the current fashion
for male loutishness, for Men Behaving Badly, as a desperate cry for help -
hopefully female help - from a drowning gender.'[17]
Christians must explore and model manhood in order to find a place where
masculinity and intimacy are not bought at the expense of each other, but are
combined. It is here that hope lies for men, both inside and outside the
Church.
[1] Achilles Heel, 1978, quoted in M Pryce, Finding a Voice (London: SCM,1996) p43.
[2] Garrison Keillor, The Book of Guys.
[3] N Hornby, High Fidelity (London: Indigo,1996) p102.
[4] S Biddulph, Manhood (Hawthorn, Stroud, 1994) p113.
[5] Fr R Rohr, A Man's Approach to God, Lee Abbey tapes 1,2,3,4
[6] S Biddulph, Manhood (Hawthorn, Stroud, 1994) p111.
[7] ibid.
[8] ibid.
[9] M Pryce, Finding a Voice (London: SCM,1996) p68.
[10] P Culbertson, New Adam - The Future of Male Spirituality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1992) p23.
[11] J Nelson, The Intimate Connection (London: SPCK,1992) p34.
[12] P Culbertson, New Adam - The Future of Male Spirituality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1992) p17.
[13] N Hornby, High Fidelity (London: Indigo,1996) p184.
[14] R Bowl, Changing the Nature of Masculinity, Social Work Monograph, (Norwich: UEA,1985) p19.
[15] From an interview with Rev Will Donaldson, 25th March, 1998.
[16] "...she knows that I'm someone who doesn't really bother, who has friends he hasn't seen for years, who no longer speaks to anybody that he has ever slept with. But she doesn't know how you have to work at that." N Hornby, High Fidelity (London: Indigo,1996) p121.
[17] Fay Weldon, Pity Poor Men, in the 'Guardian'. Date unknown.