MASCULINISM

           I have been reading about the rise of feminism, particularly in the art world but also in the culture at large in the late 1960s and early 1970s. More about that when I’m finished reading. In the meantime, though, I’m reminded how much I regret the absence of a corresponding rise in masculinism.

It’s not even a word! We hear a lot these days about toxic masculinity and it’s not hard to see what that means. A glance around the world, the country, even the neighborhood is enough to remind us what misused, abusive male energy has wrought, and continues to wreak upon our benighted species. Warfare is one deeply horrifying thing. Abuse of the planet through its ruthless exploitation is an even greater imminent peril for us all.

Here “at home”, in our country, the distorted model of masculinity embodied in the grotesque machoism of our former president is embraced by millions of our men. A Supreme Court dominated by the energy of four damaged males and one female trained in submission to men continues to endanger not only the lives of women but even our children and our planet. Young men are permitted to purchase weapons of war—and use them to devastating effect. Heavily armed, too, the police kill with impunity. Money becomes malignant power in the hands of corporate executives. And so on.

            We need a masculinist movement, in which men subject the whole culture of their gender to the kind of critical self-examination that led women to question, then revolt against the status quo. We need to be not more like women, but more like men, and for that we need a new model of manhood. We see those pathetic public figureheads of manhood—Johnson, Putin, Trump--clinging desperately to the last vestiges of power. Those who support and enable them are too often in deep resentment, anger, and fear of disempowerment. They assert themselves with the exercise of violence against those they fear usurping their supremacy.

            Why have we men spurned the path that pioneering women took, this past half century, to validate themselves and their fellow women? Why no “masculinism”? We men have been watching women gain in power with envy, fear, and condemnation, even ridicule. Clearly, we have had no motivation to change our selves. Patriarchy has worked well for us. We have been sitting in the catbird seat for centuries and wish to keep things as they aways were—with us in charge. 

            All of which is not intended to denigrate my fellow men.  Quite the contrary. I love men. And there are many of us who seek to modify the old models without sacrificing what it is to be a man. Indeed, to capitalize on our peculiar strengths. I had the good fortune, many years ago, to fall in with an organization of men that works consciously to “save the world, one man at a time.”  (For those interested and not yet informed, it’s called The ManKind Project). Less active now than I was for many years, I am still grateful for the awakening I received at the hands of other awakened men. Reduced to its simplest formulation, it is the recognition that male power resides not merely, not even primarily in the genitals or physical superiority, but instead where we have been taught to least expect it (and never look for it): in the heart.

            I claim no originality for these thoughts, but am grateful to have been challenged to rethink them in the light of what I have been reading.