What Is It Really Like to Be a Man?
I am writing from my perspective as a heterosexual white man who lives in a rich Western country. I am aiming to be as vulnerable and honest as I can, to write as if I am receiving attention and am discharging—it is impossible for me to think about these things in any other way. What I write may not apply to all men.
We adult men are often those who hurt others in society. We are typically the ones who carry out violent attacks, abuse positions of power, cut employee salaries to make more profit, capture and sell enslaved people, act out sexism, and so on. Unfortunately, the list is long.
In RC we know that to mistreat people, we ourselves have to have been hurt and not allowed to heal from the hurts. Therefore, we know that men have been badly hurt to behave the way they do. This means that men are also victims—victims of men’s oppression. A large portion of the victimisation occurs in men’s early years. The oppression of young men is brutal and painful. It also shuts down men’s ability to feel and recover from their hurts.
The following are four areas of men’s oppression. They are the areas in which I currently notice the impact of the oppression the most, in my work with men and in my own sessions.
MEN ARE MADE TO HIDE HOW THEY FEEL
As young boys, we males have to hide our feelings in order to get by [do okay] or simply to survive. We quickly realise that showing our feelings, including talking about them, is not wanted by those who care about us—that it is stressful, humiliating, or embarrassing for them. As we grow up, it becomes actively dangerous for us to show our feelings. In no part of our lives are they wanted or welcomed. Fortunately, Co-Counselling directly challenges this.
“What are you feeling?” is not a simple question for men to answer. We are trained to feel humiliated about our feelings, to regard them as a weakness or a big problem that needs to be stopped quickly.
I recently asked an adult man to talk about his feelings from the week, but it was too much for him. He wanted to share, but as soon as he started, he was overwhelmed with powerful emotions that took him back to an early terrifying place. He could not answer my question, or you could say that his response—silence and tension—was his answer.
MEN'S VALUE IS DEFINED BY WHAT THEY DO
As men we are trained to think that our worth is based on our ability to earn money. Previously it was about our ability to fight—we were expected to defend the family, the feudal lord’s lands, our country.
It can be difficult to find comfort or feel confident apart from in our work. Work can give us a feeling of self-worth. This often leads to a compulsion to work so we can feel the self-worth we are unable to feel anywhere else. When we are unable to earn money, we may experience heavy feelings, including thoughts of suicide.
Work sets up difficulties in our relationships with women. Women are usually not given the same opportunities to work as men and can feel like this is unfair (which it is). At the same time, we men may feel like we are doing the only thing we can do to contribute to the family or society and that if it is taken away, then who are we? This view of our value is so strong that we struggle to answer the question “Who am I?” without it being about our job or the work we perform.
Men’s bodies are often treated like tools to do a job. We are the disposable tools of war or the disposable workhorses of the economy. Illnesses are to be ignored or worked around. It is hard for men to have judgement about this.
MEN ARE STOPPED FROM CONNECTING WITH OTHER HUMANS
Men have to be disconnected from other humans to behave in harmful ways, to be the tools of the oppressive society—to kill people, to fire people, to carry out acts of violence, to dominate women.
Boys’ relationships with other boys are often considered unimportant or even dangerous. Almost all close relationships are mocked from an early age—for example, “mummy’s boy.” Society suggests that the only way for men to get closeness is through sex.
I read about some research in which adults were given the same baby to be with for a short period of time. Some of the adults were told that the baby was a boy; others were told that it was a girl. The “baby boy” was touched less often and received less verbal intimacy. Some research about teenage boys (I think in care homes) revealed that one of the boys had no physical contact with another human being for a whole year. These are heartbreaking examples of what it is like to be male.
Early on, wrestling is allowed for boys. However, as they grow up, such contact is often regarded as dangerous because young men are seen as physical threats.
Homophobia is a brutal weapon used against all men. For men to openly love each other challenges the societal status quo. Gay and Bisexual men are viciously and continuously attacked for loving each other and are made to seem different or wrong. Homophobia keeps heterosexual men from being affectionate with each other. When they are, they are treated in the same way that Gay and Bisexual men are treated.
The severing of men from close relationships is brutal, violent, and humiliating, and it impacts our society in many ways. For example, suicide is the biggest killer of men in certain age groups in the United Kingdom and the United States. And the men in those age groups are three times more likely to commit suicide than the women. The conditioning to be disconnected also makes men vulnerable to being manipulated into being the tools of the oppressive society.
MALES LIVE WITH FEAR AND VIOLENCE
Males experience violence and the threat of violence from an early age. Many boys experience a constant threat of violence—on school playgrounds, at home, even with friends.
Many males feel fear on a daily basis, as young boys and therefore also as adults. We may struggle to believe that other men feel fear because they have been trained to hide it. Men I have spoken to talk about constant anxiety, a complete lack of a secure foundation, or a foundation that at any moment could disappear.
People are so used to constant violence, particularly male violence, that they don’t realise the impact it has on young boys. Young boys come into the world without violent thoughts or actions, but they are quickly shown a world in which men kill other men and people use violence on a daily basis to get what they want. It is not surprising that some young boys spend a lot of time playing war games and fighting games. These games help boys deal with the information they have received. As beautiful, kind, loving young boys, we see a world and a history full of violence. We could play war and fighting games for decades in an attempt to discharge about that!
A little boy is left alone and terrified on a daily basis. All he wants to do is escape the feelings of horror and fear. He doesn’t want to feel them, in part because his natural recovery process has been taken away. Later in life he may be able to control and dominate his relationships, the household, the company, so that his feelings are not so constantly restimulated. He may become a controlling person who does anything to avoid feeling that scared again.
A first step for us men is to be honest and vulnerable as we talk about how men’s oppression has impacted us. Perhaps if we understand ourselves and each other a bit better, we can challenge the brutal mistreatment of men and the devastation it causes in our world.
England
(Present Time 201, October 2020)