GENDER EQUALITY FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS

These are some inspiring and insightful passages in “A Global Dialogue on Masculinity: 33 Men Speak Out” by Gayle Kimball

 

— We are limited by outdated gender stereotypes, both men in their lack of access to a wide range of emotions and caregiving and women in their limited access to leadership and power. It’s in our best interest to move towards flexibility and being instrumental or nurturant as circumstances require. This means we stop telling boys not to cry or be like girls and stop telling girls to be nice little ladies. We need to encourage girls to go into leadership and STEM fields of science and technology and boys into caregiving professions, like many of the men in this book, did as therapists, instructors, and heads of helping organizations.

The consensus of our experts is that boys and men are not permitted to show vulnerability, a word often repeated in this book. From the Netherlands, Stephan van de Ven, 32, said, “I don’t know how to really express my emotions, not having had that many examples in my environment from men around me, from movies, from TV series, or anything.” This prejudice shuts down even being aware of some emotions, which is why EVRYMAN and other men’s groups begin with identifying body sensations.

Asking for help may require being vulnerable, which fits in the “threat to masculinity” danger zone. This fear of being perceived as weak contributes to men’s health problems and a higher suicide rate. Being shut down emotionally also inhibits men’s intimate relations with people they love, one of the reasons why women in English-speaking countries are much more likely to initiate divorce than men. Femininity is seen by sexists as weakening precarious masculinity and can increase the fear of intimacy.

Divorce and poverty lead to an increase in single-mother households, which MIT Economics Professor David Autor links to worse outcomes for the boys than the girls with single mothers. This is part of the explanation of why boys are falling behind girls in higher education. This equation is shutting down boys’ expression of human feelings leads to health and relationship difficulties, which is especially harmful to boys raised by single mothers. As Jed Diamond said, mothers, can’t teach boys what it means to be a man. The solution is to educate parents and teachers about how to encourage boys to be in touch with the full range of human feelings, as modeled in countries like Denmark.[i] As with other social and environmental problems, solutions are available but the will to implement them is lacking.

Why are some men willing to advocate for changes in male socialization and risk being seen as outside the norm of masculine interests? We’ve learned that it’s mostly women who take men’s studies college courses. Our changemakers, similar to men I interviewed for 50:50 Marriage and 50:50 Parenting, were influenced by a very positive or very negative role model, either a loving involved father (the minority) or an absent father due to death, divorce, or long work hours.

Many of our contributors felt that they didn’t fit the masculinity standard as boys and were concerned about ways girls and boys were harmed by sexism. Gary Barker’s female friends told him about forced sex, leading him to want to take action as a man: “This kind of manhood, with so much violence and anger, is not who I think I am.” With feminist analysis, John Stoltenberg said, “I felt freedom from the cookie-cutter I was trying to fit into. I found it was possible to be who I am without constantly thinking about, am I male enough?”

Many of the contributors agree that schools need to accommodate boys’ need for more physical activity, especially with many boys being developmentally behind girls. Boys of color act out their own versions of masculinity, which may include looking at school success as “acting white,” as our men of color reported. Wanting improvement in gender liberation, changemakers organize men’s groups, teach courses, research and write about gender socialization practices and lobby for legislative change--particularly in child custody.

The common concern for gender liberation and equal opportunity doesn’t mean these activists are united. Every progressive or liberal group I know argues over who is most politically pure and the men’s movement is no exception. They debate who is most oppressed by traditional gender roles and if gender is more shaped by nature or nurture. As Michael Messner reports, “Those schisms between different groups run pretty deep and have been going on for many decades.”

Men’s rights advocates think men suffer more, while feminists think women suffer more from gendered power systems. The latter don’t want to talk with the former, thinking problematically in a zero-sum game so that if I win, you lose. Daniel Ellenberg reported, “It’s remarkable how many smart, professional people seem to think it's an either/or game. I think it's both/and. It tends to trigger a lot of vitriol from different folks. Until we change our mindset about it, we're still going to be at war.” Some blame the peer-led men’s groups for not being political and “getting stuck looking at our own belly buttons,” as Barker said. However, many of our men have been part of men’s groups.

What surprised me from interviewing these men of different ages, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and ideologies is that some felt disadvantaged in relationships and in school, including young men like Tristan Glosby. (I Hate Men is  the title of a recent book by Pauline Harmange, translated from French.) I was also surprised that young men still hear, “don’t be a sissy.” Some felt being male was under fire with the frequent use of the phrase “toxic masculinity.”

Progress certainly isn’t a straight line upward, as evidenced in the sexist cult led by Donald Trump. George Simons finds in international surveys that about one-third of men support gender equality. I’m hopeful because Generations Y and Z tend to not limit themselves in regards to their gender roles or skin color. They have models to emulate as they assume more political power, learning from Nordic gender equality programs, Danish emotional literacy instruction for children, research on boy’s development (like that done by Andrew Smiler and Warren Farrell), and support groups for boys like those developed by Jerry Tello and Ashanti Branch. Promundo and MenEngage provide models of how to involve boys and men in activism for gender equality for all human beings.

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