How to Be a Real Man
A Short Guide For a Changing Landscape
There’s a lot in the zeitgeist right now about what it means to be a man. It’s come on the heels of the recent deluge of stories from women about just how pervasive sexual harassment and general poor behavior towards women actually is, although I suspect it’s been there lurking for a lot longer than the past year. Sure, it’s #NotAllMen who do these kinds of things, but this type of unacceptable experience is something that has happened to nearly all women, and as we are starting to have a greater understanding of that, it’s shaking up the conversation even further about what it even means to be a man.
This conversation may have catalyzed with the Harvey Weinstein story breaking open, but when it quickly became apparent that this kind of abusive behavior goes on not just in Hollywood, but in every industry and sector of the population, it became the topic for an even larger dialogue. We saw how harassment and abuse happens even to “strong” women who have been successful in male-dominated arenas. In November 2017, an open letter from women in national security was published which detailed some of these experiences.
“Signatories to the letter include 223 women who have served across the federal government — in the State Department, in the intelligence community, at USAID, and at the Pentagon — and at institutions within the national security space who all say that they have either witnessed or survived harassment and assault. Many women are held back or driven from this field by men who use their power to assault at one end of the spectrum and perpetuate-sometimes unconsciously-environments that silence, demean, belittle or neglect women at the other,” the letter reads.” One woman described a male colleague attempting to touch her breast and when she told him that he’d lose a hand if he tried that again, he went on to try to actively derail her career. “Assault and harassment are just as much as a problem for women working on the night-shift cleaning offices as it is for diplomats,” says retired Ambassador Nina Hachigian, who co-authored the letter with former State Department official Jenna Ben-Yehuda.”
These and other similar allegations have been met with a variety of responses from men, ranging from the dismissive to the apologetic. It also seems to have broken open a Pandora’s box of angst that has been lurking just below the surface for some time. What does it mean to be a man in the modern age? Even as a wide variety of men have come forward to grapple with the ways that they may have unconsciously contributed to the #MeToo world, another wave of men have gone into full-on defensive backlash mode. Instead of listening to what the women around them are saying and really taking it in, they want to counter with their stories of all the ways that men have suffered at the hands of societal and female expectations. But the fact of the matter is, trying to be “a man” in some culturally or societally prescribed manner creates problems for both men and women and is no doubt a contributing factor in the scenarios described above.
This past year I’ve read article after article and comment after comment from guys who reference what kind of traits they (and other men) should have and why those are either natural or desirable — as well as the ones that are not acceptable to them. It’s used to defend themselves when feeling under attack from the outraged and fed up women who have finally found a voice or to snark at the men who are sympathetic to women.
Here’s my recommendation for being a real man in the new landscape: stop talking about what a “real” man is and go out and figure out how to be the kind of man that you really want to be, irrespective of how it fits into some kind of box of acceptable masculinity.
No-one is saying that being a man today is simple or easy, any more than being a woman is. We’ve all been acculturated to a bunch of stupid shit that isn’t particularly helpful to anyone, but when you stop worrying so much about who you are supposed to be, you then have the chance to figure out who you really are and to enter into a relationship with other people who like you for that. It takes work to strip away what you’ve been socialized to in order to find what is actually underneath, but it is well worth the effort. You might discover that you are actually a lot like the man you’ve been brought up to be or you might find someone totally different inside. You might find that some of the pressures you feel are just stories that you don’t have to buy into and that some of the things you are resigned to can be changed when you get outside of your box of acceptable masculinity.
I am a middle-aged white woman who lives a fairly comfortable suburban lifestyle, with a husband, a child and some pets. By any standards, I’ve had a pretty good life, despite some significant challenges. But in my early 40s, I began to question all of the things I’d been told about who and how I was supposed to be. I started a new career and discovered that I wanted to get some tattoos, even though I was probably the only woman in my neighborhood who had visible ink. I started experimenting with dying my hair various fun colors and now go around most of the time with pink highlights. It’s not that I was having a “mid-life crisis,” unless what you mean by that is that I no longer cared about social convention if it went against my self-expression and pursuit of what I really wanted. My husband and I opened up our marriage at my suggestion and I now have a man who is my secondary partner as well as a couple of play partners, most of whom are female. We don’t even do non-monogamy in any typical fashion, preferring to figure out what works best for us as a couple. It took a fair amount of questioning of our stories about how we were supposed to live before we got comfortable with it all, but ultimately we did. We’ve taken our lives from very conventional ones to very unconventional ones, but in many ways, we are still always peeling layers. And that’s exactly the way that I want it to be. Where am I now and where do I want to go? What is standing in my way?
I’ll give you a big hint — what is standing in your way is always in large part You; your stories, your fears, your insecurities, your programming.
When you make the effort to examine that stuff and deal with it, then the way to a real you is going to be a whole lot easier. And yes, that applies to women as well. Women need to be doing their own examination of what’s keeping them from the lives that they want, including speaking up in the moment and continuing to advocate for themselves; in spite of not being taken seriously, in spite of retaliation, in spite of cultural conditioning to appease and accommodate.
It’s a better world for everyone when people get to be whatever blend of stereotypical feminine and masculine traits that they authentically are. Real men can be strong and stoic, or they can be vulnerable and emotional; they can be decisive or confused; assertive or shy; they can be good at sports or good at art or both. Stop trying to fit into a box that says you need to embody certain traits and stop trying to make other men fit into that box too. I get that it feels safer in there. When there are no rules, there is no road map and that can be a little bit scary. I have dealt with that experience in spades as we expanded our lives beyond typical boundaries and what I found is that when you are creating your own parameters, it brings an incredible sense of relief, despite occasional pitfalls and trepidation. It allows for a kind of wholeness that playing a role and wearing a mask will never offer. It’s hard work but I highly recommend it!
A while back someone asked me why I didn’t support raising children in traditional gender roles. My answer was this: Because when you are raising a child to be something, in particular, you are very likely going to run roughshod over who they actually are and that is very destructive. My son is a pretty typical boy in a lot of respects, but it’s because he’s chosen that for himself, not because we pushed him to go there. My mission in life is to help him to figure out who he actually is and then to encourage him to build a life that reflects that so that he can have the happiest and most fulfilling life that is available to him. I want him to be kind and empathetic and honest and to find something that he wants to do and to do it with gusto. In other words, I want him to be a good human being. Beyond that, he gets to be whomever he wants — whether that means he grows up to be a stockbroker, a lumberjack, a kindergarten teacher, a nurse or anything in between.
A real man is an authentic, decent human being who routinely looks at himself and decides where he needs to grow or evolve to keep getting better. He asks for what he needs from those around him without taking it; without demanding anything; without entitlement or expectation beyond basic civility. He asks for help when he doesn’t know how to go about that because he doesn’t need to always be in control and isn’t afraid to appear vulnerable or weak. He cares about those around him because he’s secure enough to see that someone else doesn’t have to lose in order for him to win. He knows who he is and he likes that person.