The Masculine Heart

Porn Humor . . . Porn Pain

2012-02-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

First the humor - and this comes from The Onion - because pornography really is not funny, and it is not an innocent diversion for many guys, which is what we will get to below.

Area Man Finally Sees Enough Images Of Bare Breasts For Entire Lifetime
98,344th Pair Leaves 32-Year-Old Man Entirely Sated
February 3, 2012 | ISSUE 48•05

BOISE, ID—With what he described as "a deep sense of satisfaction," local man David Glean closed his laptop Tuesday after viewing his 98,344th pair of naked breasts, telling reporters he had seen enough bare bosoms in his 32 years to last him the rest of his life. "Well, I guess that's that," said Glean, letting out a contented sigh more than two decades in the making. "As soon as I locked eyes on that last set, something clicked in my head and I said to myself, 'Dave, if you don't see another pair of nude breasts again, you'll be fine.' I had never felt that way before." Glean estimated he could still watch another 1,446 ejaculated-upon female faces and at least three more Filipino dwarf fistings.

It was partly luck and partly good timing that I found something about Porn in The Onion. These other two articles have been with me for a while now, and today was the first chance I have had to put together a coherent post.

First, from The Good Men Project, Gary Wilson and Marnia Robinson look at the question of "Why Does Porn Seem Hotter Than My Partner?"

Here is the beginning of that article:

An explanation of the neurological repercussions of porn and how it can affect your love life off of the Internet.
Editor’s Note: The quotations (all italicized text), unless otherwise cited, were taken from the comments sections of posts and message board conversations where men were talking about sex.

♦◊♦

It’s really hard to get erections when I’m trying to [have intercourse]. Takes about 20 minutes or so to get it up. Really embarrassing. But if I’m sitting and watching my pornz, it’s almost instant.—Porn user in his 20s

Are you a heavy porn user who, during lovemaking, cannot consistently produce/sustain an erection or penetrate a real partner, feel much sensation, or climax (without difficulty)? If your doctor has ruled out organic causes for your woes, he/she is likely to hand you a trial pack of Viagra and refer you to counseling for your “sexual issues.” The medical assumption is that your issue is psychological (performance anxiety) rather than physiological. After all, if you can get it up for porn, your penile health is fine.

Growing evidence suggests that the problem is indeed in your head, not your penis, but that it is primarily physical. Specifically, overstimulation has produced plastic changes in your brain, which make you less responsive to pleasure—and yet hyper-responsive to Internet porn. These addiction-related changes are called desensitization and sensitization, respectively. Together, they explain why porn does the job and your hot babe doesn’t.

Before you panic, know that these brain changes appear to be reversible—most easily in guys who wired to real sex before highspeed Internet arrived. Guys who stop masturbating to porn generally regain their responsiveness during sex within a few months (often after a nasty withdrawal and a disconcerting, temporary absence of libido):

(Age 30, 4 months) From the reboot standpoint, I’m doing spectacular! Any time my girlfriend and I make out, caress etc., I get rock hard and it lasts. I really just don’t worry about penile function anymore.

Keep reading.

This last article comes from my comrade in helping men live happier lives, Jayson Gaddis. He recently posted a good article called, The Cost of Porn on Men. Certainly, as the above article shows, porn use can destroy normal arousal patterns and make having sex with a real, live, willing woman difficult or even impossible. But wait, isn't that the goal and porn only a pale substitute for the real thing?

Jayson speaks from a personal level to this issue - and he is clear that unless men can talk to each other about it, the shame and the hiding will persist.

I have nothing against sexuality, masturbation, or sexual aliveness. But porn has co-opted our sexuality and is now dictating the rules of how men and women are supposed to be with each other intimately. And, if I’m not paying attention, porn will teach my son an incredibly narrow form of sexuality.

In my own life, porn was a big distraction. A distraction away from my feelings, my body, and my experience. Along with other “checking out” behaviors, it served to relieve me temporarily from my suffering. Quickly, shame and guilt would settle in, as would more behaviors to hide it all. I was never an “addict.” I never paid for sites or spent hours online. I would get in, get out, then hide. Even still, it felt like shit.

It wasn’t until I was able to talk openly with my male friends about it, that I began to gain some power, control, and choice around the matter. Through my connections to my male friends, the shame virtually went away and we discovered that nearly 100% of the time, we surfed to avoid something, typically discomfort, pain, or unwanted feelings.

The cost? It took me away from the very thing I wanted — intimacy with Self and other. And that’s what I’d argue it’s doing to the male psyche.

Keep reading.

I want to add one more paragraph from Jayson, because this sums up precisely what I see in male clients who use porn to self-medicate. It may not have the legal issues of using drugs, or the health risks of drugs and alcohol, but the shame is the same - and shame can destroy us from the inside out.

When men are in pain, disconnected from their bodies, and stressed out in their lives, porn offers instant, easy, ongoing relief. Porn is also one of the most accessible, seductive distractions to take a man out of his center. Men and adolescent boys who have rarely ‘worked on themselves’ hardly stand a chance against porn. With few effective tools to engage this fight, a man will often loose. What will he loose? His center, which is the core of his integrity. Shame will fill the void. He will be run by shame and instead of owning it, will posture over it like Beowulf until he chooses to face it.

For Spiders, "Remote Copulation" Results in "Eunuch Phenomenon"

2012-02-03T05:29:00.001-07:00

Whatever issues human males have with sex, at least we do not get eaten, literally, by the female following copulation. In some spiders species, however, the males have learned to "cut and run," so to speak. They end up sterile, but they live to see another day.

This sort of humorous story comes from the Wired UK edition. Maybe I just have a twisted sense of humor.

Male spiders castrate themselves during sex to avoid being eaten
By Olivia Solon
02 February 12

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Biologists have identified a new sex technique used by certain spiders, called "remote copulation", where the males castrate themselves during sex to avoid being eaten, yet still successfully transfer sperm.

This method not only allows the males to transfer more sperm -- making paternity more likely -- but it also allows them to scuttle away from cannibalistic females. The broken male parts may effectively plug the female genitals, preventing them from mating with other males. The flipside is that they are left sterile. This has come to be known as the "eunuch phenomenon".

Evolutionary biologists Daiqin Li and Joelyn Oh from the National University of Singapore, along with Simona Kralj Fier and Matjaz Kuntner from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, studied the sexually cannibalistic orb-web spider Nephilengys malabarensis. The findings are likely to apply to other spiders such as the Herennia and Tidarren. They published their findings in Biology Letters.

Li, Oh, Fier and Kuntner collected wild virgin spiders and monitored them until adulthood. When they were mature, the researchers introduced a virgin male to a virgin female web. According to the study "all trials ended with copulation and genital damage, either through entire palp (spider penis) severance or only partial palp damage". Both male and female spiders could cause the castration, but when the female was responsible the male was generally eaten.

Once the not-so-sexy time had taken place, researchers removed the palp from the female spider's reproductive organs and then dissected the female genitals so that they could check how much sperm could be found -- this was done by counting them under a compound microscope.

The results showed that remote copulation allows for continual sperm transfer from the severed spider peen to the female genitalia even after complete detachment from the male body. This prolongs the duration of potential sperm transfer and increases the amount of transferred sperm.

The authors suspect that remote copulation evolved as a male counter-adaptation to female aggression towards mates, the short average duration of spider sex, and the high prevalence of female sexual cannibalism, which can be as high as 75 percent.

You can read the full study, entitled Remote copulation: male adaptation to female cannibalism here.

Donna Nebenzahl - Beyond Macho: Defining a Man's World

2012-02-02T19:00:00.002-07:00

This article was published in The Province, a newspaper out of Canada. The article looks at the demise of traditional macho masculinity and the struggle to prevent academic pissing wars between men's studies and feminism. Certain segments of the feminist community have not been kind to men, but setting feminism against men's studies (as the MRAs tend to do) is not a good solution.

Beyond macho: Defining a man's world
By Donna Nebenzahl, For Postmedia NewsJanuary 30, 2012

Marc Lafrance teaches courses on masculinity at Concordia University. "If we can get men to feel that their lives don't need to correspond to this mythic machismo, that will open them up to life experiences," he says.
Photograph by: Allen McInnis, THE GAZETTE

MONTREAL — The male stereotype of the all-powerful protector and provider is doing a disservice to men -- pressuring them to conform and ultimately, leaving many powerless to face the challenges of modern society.

That’s the thesis that binds many academics in the new area of masculinity studies, who say their examination of how the culture of maleness impacts men, rather than those around them, has been a long time coming. While women’s studies have been gaining a foothold at universities across the country since the early 1970s, academic courses and research on men could barely be found, most often hidden under the umbrella of gender studies.

Now, however, researchers who focus on the study of men and masculinity are coming out of the cold. They are the vanguard, whose theories are often used in newspaper and magazine stories about how men are faring.

“Clearly it’s at a very nascent stage in its development, in the humanities and social sciences,” says Concordia University sociologist Marc Lafrance, who teaches about men and masculinity as part of several courses on gender and sexuality at the Montreal university.

But even though there are just a few courses in masculinity studies given at the university level across Canada, and no departments of men’s or masculinity studies, Lafrance, 35, says that since arriving at Concordia in 2006 after completing a PhD at Oxford, “I went from supervising nothing on masculinity over my first two years to supervising four students and then five and now, we’re waiting to hear about the status of three new applications in our graduate program in the upcoming year.”

The push to study masculinity might be viewed as a logical extension of women’s studies, which examines the problems of gender and the social construction of sexuality mostly from a female perspective. In addition, there’s the “masculinity crisis” widely discussed today — males under pressure from societal changes.

“These two things together have created a fertile context for study, and we’re starting to see concrete evidence that this is becoming a full-fledged area of inquiry,” Lafrance says.

But rather than looking only at men’s behaviour through the tired lens of their power and destructiveness, he believes we need to look at how masculinity “as a structure, as a lived experience, can also be fundamentally disempowering to men.”

The aggressive arena of men’s sports and its connection to serious emotional damage is being studied by Concordia sociology graduate student Cheryl MacDonald, 24, who interviewed a number of major junior hockey players about what masculinity means to them.

“I find that hockey players are socialized to adhere to more traditional forms of masculinity, being very tough and competitive, and sometimes those practices become more problematic — men committing suicide, drugs and alcohol and those head shots,” MacDonald says.

The research attempts to understand how these “masculine” behaviours are linked to the way in which young men are socialized, how they express their values.

MacDonald began considering men’s studies when she took an undergraduate course with sociologist Anthony Synnott, who discussed the importance of studying both genders.

“In my undergraduate experience in sociology, a lot of courses on women and even courses about gender focused on women and not much on men,” she says.

Synnott, who has been teaching a course on the sociology of men for 10 years, wrote the 2009 book, Redefining Men: Heroes, Victims and Villains, and currently writes a column on men for Psychology Today. He believes that the rallying cry of “male chauvinist pig” has ignored important realities that men face. “Men dominate at the top and also the bottom,” he points out. “The vast majority in prisons, victims of accidents, victims of work fatalities, 99 per cent of military fatalities — are all male.”

Men, argues McGill University professor Paul Nathanson and his colleague Katherine Young, suffer from the myth that they are the gender with the power and therefore cannot be damaged by criticism and ridicule. The physical, political and economic power that a small percentage of men do wield renders women, they believe, “either unwilling or unable to see men as fully human beings, people who can indeed be hurt, both individually and collectively.”

Nathanson and Young have written five books chronicling the rise of misandry, the hatred of men, which they view as a culture war being fought because of the feminist activism that led to the changed role of men.

But Lafrance and many of his colleagues are eager to avoid setting men and masculinity studies up against women’s studies. “We need to figure out what it is about masculinity in our culture that is oppressive not just to women, but to men,” he says.

“Since the 1960s and ’70s, the push was issues relating to the lives and experiences and injustices faced by women. In my view, it was totally appropriate that this kind of scholarship should have taken centre stage, mainly because those forms of knowledge had been silenced for so long.”

At this point, he considers it counterproductive for theorists of men and masculinity to “organize our analysis around who has more power and who’s in more trouble. There’s evidence to suggest men have lots to deal with but it’s also true about women who confront injustice on a daily basis.”

Only by looking at the issues contextually can you understand where the gender balance really lies, Lafrance says.

“There’s lots of anti-male stuff out there and anti-female stuff,” Synnott agrees, “and a lot of people are badly hurt by men versus women. We should be noting the glory of female and male achievements.”

These scholars note an increasing restlessness in the academic community over the last decade, a need to shift the gaze to focus on men.

Acknowledging “there’s sometimes a sense that we’re trying to re-appropriate centre stage for the straight white guy,” Lafrance points out that in much of the ongoing study claiming to be about women’s experiences, there will be reference after reference to men — about their bodies, desires, behaviour — without any real theories being put forward.

What this means is that “men constitute a present absence around the work that’s going on in the university,” Lafrance says. “There are assumptions about men in gender studies, but men themselves aren’t being seen as a legitimate object of inquiry.”

Never has an understanding of masculinity been more urgent, because the stereotypical macho man is not going to survive very long if he doesn’t adapt, Lafrance believes. “The irony is the dominant norms of masculinity, what the academics call hegemonic masculinity — the breadwinner, the guy who never gets scared, the guy who is extremely successful — really make for an unlivable life for men.

“These structures distance men from themselves,” he says. “You can’t be a person who can feel, you can’t be weak, you’re not allowed to be sad, to fail.”

Although he discusses issues of masculinity with male friends, and many are actively thinking about their roles as men, one of the reasons there’s no coherent movement around this rethinking is precisely because talking is so taboo among men, Lafrance says. “Talking about stuff in a meaningful, considered way has always been associated with femininity — traits like caring and sensitivity that many men are taught to eschew.

“One of the key challenges is going to be how you form a movement when dealing with a part of the population systematically taught not to talk.”

Undergraduate courses on men and masculinity still attract slightly more women than men, but the majority of graduate students are men, Lafrance notes.

In doing her graduate research, MacDonald has certainly come up against a code of silence among the hockey players she has interviewed. “When asked about something like hazing, it’s really hard to break through,” she says. “The coach would say everything’s fine and we’re all best friends, but there are players who are struggling with the common rituals of the sport and tell me about the darker side of hazing and competition.”

After 14 interviews and 20 surveys, she has concluded that the code of silence prevailed in her research. “It seemed that half of the people I spoke to gave me the same story about how great things are and the other half told stories about what they are able to get away with.

“We can’t really solve any of these problems of masculinity and hockey if people aren’t going to speak out.”

But even in the classroom, Lafrance says, “my female students are more than happy to talk about these issues, but the men are silent.

“Men are not talking, especially not with other men. Just talking about masculinity, acknowledging there’s something to talk about, seems to transgress the conventions of our society.”

But when you understand how power functions, the context in which men operate, you realize it’s no way to live, he says. “It’s a model of masculinity built on competition, success at all costs, it’s emotionally empty and ruthless and focuses on a need to be constantly invulnerable.”

Men have got to realize, he says, that their silence reinforces the social structures.

“If we can get men to feel that their lives don’t need to correspond to this mythic machismo, that will open them up to life experiences.”

Synnott says he believes the models of gender are slowly shifting. There was the “romantic model in which we become a couple, the patriarchy model characterized by unequal rights and the feminist model of female superiority,” he says.

“Now we have the postmodern model in which gender is completely irrelevant.”

UTNE - Man Up: Talk About Paternal Postpartum Depression

2012-02-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Paternal postpartum depression is a hidden scourge - it's about as common for new fathers to suffer depression as it is for new mothers. The incidence is even higher in men whose wives suffer postpartum depression.

I created an educational flyer for this issue - you can view it/download it here.

As a side note - I'm not fond of the idea that men need to "man up" around this issue. For too many men, this will be taken as a directive to stuff it down and keep going as if nothing is wrong.

Man Up: Talk About Paternal Postpartum
1/30/2012
by Danielle Magnuson

“How are you feeling, emotionally? Any long periods of sadness or worry?” In between ultrasounds and heartbeats and blood pressure readings, my obstetrician asks about my mental health during every prenatal visit.

She also brings up the possibility of postpartum depression once this kid is born in a few months, reminding me that many women experience it at some level and how important it is to seek help if persistent feelings of anxiety, sadness, or detachment last longer than a couple of weeks.

It’s reassuring to know my doctor is alert to this overwhelming condition that has affected so many of my friends and acquaintances, from milder cases to a severe case of wanting to die and having intrusive thoughts of hurting the baby. Between 9 and 16 percent of new mothers suffer from postpartum depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I’m confident that if I experience PPD in any form, I’ll have a sympathetic professional ear and immediate medical treatment available to me as a new mother.

But Radish Magazine points out that postpartum depression in dads (p. 29) is just as common as in moms—and the same culture that has learned to open up about the condition in women isn’t quite as prepared for it in men.

A study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association finds that “14 percent of men suffer depression either during their partner’s pregnancy or during the first year after the birth of their child.” Says study author James Paulson:

There is a stigma surrounding depression, especially in men. If you look at the Internet forums where people are talking about this study, you’ll read so many people saying that these guys just have to man up or that the men suffering from this are just sad that they’re no longer the center of attention.

In my circles, we do tend to cluck sympathetically when hearing of a new mom struggling through dark thoughts in the months after her little bambino is born, while simultaneously coming down on a new dad who feels anxious or sad during the same time period. Paulson’s study is a great reminder that the partner is experiencing just as profound of a life change as the mother. It's important for men suffering from depression to overcome the stigma and seek help, just as women are counseled to do. “Having a child changes a person’s life in dramatic way,” writes Radish. “This can be overwhelming to even the most stable of new fathers.”

Does porn make males insecure about bodies?

2012-01-31T17:48:00.001-07:00

This article comes from Canada.com - Casey Scheibling, an honors sociology student at Concordia University, is looking at how porn usage impacts the rise in men using pec implants, calf implants, and penile enhancement, all of which are "very aligned with hegemonic or hyper masculinity."

For men who watch porn, it must seem that all men are very well-endowed, can jackhammer a woman for hours without orgasm (no worries that the women often seem to be in pain), and then orgasm like a small geyser. Many of the men, especially in gay porn, look like bodybuilders - highly muscled and very lean. None of these depictions are realistic and must make men (often young men) feel very insecure about their own bodies and performance.

Does porn make males insecure about bodies
By Donna Nebenzahl, For Postmedia News |January 30, 2012

Scheibling's research will examine the relationship between habitual or chronic porn consumption and excessive body dissatisfaction, says his adviser Marc Lafrance, because the men featured in heterosexual porn -- the subject of the study -- are buff males who perform on demand in a highly mechanized way.
Photograph by: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images
MONTREAL — There's more to pornography than how it sexualizes or demeans women, says Casey Scheibling, an honours sociology student at Concordia University.

"Most of the literature on pornography tends to focus on women, and that leaves out half of the people involved."

How, he wonders, do the portrayals of men in pornography influence body and genital satisfaction among male viewers? “I’m not talking about men’s addiction to pornography,” says Scheibling, 23. “I’m more interested in the studies on how pornography consumers make sense of their own masculinity.”

Scheibling’s research will examine the relationship between habitual or chronic porn consumption and excessive body dissatisfaction, says his adviser Marc Lafrance, because the men featured in heterosexual porn — the subject of the study — are buff males who perform on demand in a highly mechanized way.

“Is this sort of porn consumption among extraordinary numbers of young men creating expectations around their own bodies that are difficult to approximate?”

Part and parcel of the crisis of masculinity is the kind of collective anxiety men are now suffering about their bodies and their sexual potency, says Lafrance, who also teaches a master’s level course titled the Sociology of the Body.

"There's a link to be made between this so-called crisis of masculinity . . . and the extraordinary proliferation of erectile dysfunction products, the rise of body building and cosmetic surgery, the high-energy drinks, and let's throw in for the good measure the boom in grooming products," he says.

"All of these suggest in my view an increased preoccupation with male bodies in which they’re all trying to increase the maleness of the male.

"Pec implants, calf implants, penile enhancement — these are very aligned with that hegemonic or hyper masculinity.

"Just as all those female products speak to women’s insecurity,” Lafrance says, "these are tapping into a growing anxiety around masculinity and an alpha male ideal."

Valter Viglietti - The End of Feminism (as I Knew It)

2012-01-30T13:55:00.002-07:00

This post has received over 270 comments at The Good Men Project. If you want to read Jasmine Peterson’s response (she is a feminist) to this post, it's called Toward Equality (For Everyone): A Response To ‘The End of Feminism (As I Knew It).’

Viglietti argues that feminism (or a good part of it) has "changed from seeking equality to “world domination” and men-bashing. All of a sudden, for these people, I wasn’t a friend or an ally anymore: I was an enemy." He acknowledges that not all feminists believe this, but it's gotten to the point where women want men, or it so it seems, to be more like women.

The End of Feminism (as I Knew It)
January 13, 2012
By Valter Viglietti
If you say you’re for equality, Valter Viglietti writes, then you’re for everyone’s equality.
I have a confession to make: I have been a feminist for most of my life.

Since when I was a child, watching how my father treated my mother, I sensed a strong injustice and instinctively sided with women. Even growing up (it was the 60s and 70s), I noticed how often women were considered or dealt with as inferior, and that deeply enraged me.

Perhaps I became even too much of a feminist, because for a long time I thought women were morally superior to men; I didn’t think much of my own gender.

With time, I became wiser (well, I hope I did). My opinions became less black and white, and more nuanced. I realized how much both men and women can be good—or faulty, deceiving, manipulative, and just plain awful. I noticed that every “typical” gender fault, had an equivalent fault in the other sex.

I came to think God must be really impartial, because He (She? It?) made both genders equally “flawed” (at least, we have equality in this).

But I still thought of myself as a feminist, because there has been so much injustice to remedy, and I wanted to give women my support. I wanted to be their friend and ally. Besides, I really like women.

Then I met The Good Men Project.

What happened then?

I began reading comments (and even some articles) where I was “charged as guilty” just for the fact of being a man. I was accused of things I never did. I felt I could not think, feel, or (politely) say some things, because some women could be offended by them. In short, for some women I was a “bad man” by default.

And all this was happening on a website meant for men to express themselves.

Read the whole article.

The Life of a Bouncer - Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope

2012-01-29T17:25:00.001-07:00

Most of the jobs that men do almost exclusively are high danger jobs, like mining and oil rigs, and bouncers. I have never seen a female bouncer . . . this is one of the high-risk, low-reward jobs that falls nearly exclusively to men. This documentary looks at the lives of bouncers.

Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope

A chronicle of the lives of bouncers – the burly boys who guard both sides of the door in nightclubs across America.

The documentary takes an inside look at the mindset of these frequently ridiculed, but always feared enforcers of the night and examines whether they are skilled experts in security, hired to anticipate trouble, or just hired thugs meant to intimidate.

Revealed within is a world of notorious nightclub bouncers, including New York’s Terence “The Black Prince” Buckley and British legend Lenny “The Guv’nor” McLean who appeared in “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”

Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 1 hour, 10 minutes)

Why Men from Rural Communities Avoid Seeking Mental HealthCounseling

2012-01-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

New research identified self-stigma as the primary reason that men from rural areas do not reach out for help. This research essentially confirms prior knowledge - that men in more traditional communities are "trained" to see asking for help, or even needing help, as a weakness. These beliefs prevent men in these communities (or men who hold these values) from asking for help.

This was posted at GoodTherapy.org.

Why Men From Rural Communities Avoid Seeking Mental Health Counseling
January 27th, 2012

Men, in general, are far less likely than women to seek professional help for mental health problems. But a new study, led by Joseph H. Hammer and David L. Vogel of the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University, suggests that men from rural communities are even more resistant than urban-dwelling men when it comes to getting psychological counseling. The study expands upon previous research by the team and explores the factors that create barriers to treatment. For example, in the study, Hammer and colleagues identified self-stigma as the primary reason that men from rural areas do not reach out for help.

Masculine norms of success, power, emotional control, and self-reliance are evident throughout Western cultures. In America, men are taught early on the significance of these norms. Asking for help and showing emotional vulnerability is perceived as a sign of weakness and often makes young boys the target of ridicule by family members or peers. To avoid this victimization, young boys and teens will resort to internalizing and will transfer external stigmas regarding counseling to themselves as self-stigmas.

For this most recent study, the researchers interviewed 4,748 men from both urban and rural communities. They discovered that the men from rural areas were twice as likely to conform to traditional masculine norms as their urban peers, which led to concerns about treatment. In particular, there are fewer clinicians in rural communities, so confidentiality was of major concern to the men. Also, the targeted treatment designed to address specific mental health problems could require travel to another town, resulting in time away from family or work, threatening self-reliance and role fulfillment.

Although income did not influence men’s motivation to seek help, education did. In all communities, men with the least amount of education resisted treatment because of self-stigma more than any other group. The researchers believe nonconventional treatments, such as adventure therapy or internet treatment programs, could provide resources that would appeal to men with strong masculine norms, particularly those in rural communities. Literature aimed at dispelling the stigma of treatment, available in doctors’ offices or through community clinics, could also help these men overcome their resistance. The researchers added, “Working to build greater trust in the therapeutic relationship may also reduce the perceived threat of seeking help to clients’ self-esteem and conﬁdence.”

Reference:
Hammer, J. H., Vogel, D. L., & Heimerdinger-Edwards, S. R. (2012, January 23). Men’s Help Seeking: Examination of Differences Across Community Size, Education, and Income. Psychology of Men & Masculinity. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026813

If you want your child to be a writer, go bankrupt

2012-01-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

This interesting article about Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was posted at Humanities. They begin the piece with a rundown of great authors who fathers went bust or put their kids, for whatever reason, through serious challenges. It seems sons are so deeply affected by fathers that they can self-destruct (what I see with some clients) and aspire to greatness - perhaps all in different ways an attempt to get the love and validation they always sought but never received.

If you want your child to be a writer, go bankrupt.

The evidence confirms it. Failing that, at least suffer a severe financial reversal, obliging your son or daughter to endure the social opprobrium of changed schools and dropped friendships. Let him know the shame of fallen status, that he might grow ever more attuned to the minutest of slights, real or imagined. Careful scrutiny of his fellows will likely become a habit, a good sense of humor his first line of defense. Imagination will be his refuge. If you want your child to be a writer, do all this, and you may yet join an impecunious fraternity of writers’ parents that includes John Shakespeare, John Joyce, John Clemens, John Dickens, John Ernst Steinbeck, and Kurt Vonnegut, Sr. (Apparently, you might also want to consider changing your name to John.) Not convinced? Throw in Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, Edward Fitzgerald, and Richard Thomas Hammett, too.

Charles J. Shields interviewed Vonnegut a couple of times for his biography, And So It Goes, and found the author still obsessed with ill feelings toward his parents and still angry about his lack of acceptance as a literary figure (from a review of the book):

Shields makes noise early about his subject’s sense of being overlooked, a feeling that went back to his relationship with his parents and his older brother Bernard, a noted physicist who died in 1997. During their final meeting, Vonnegut asked Shields to look up his name in Webster’s Dictionary; when Shields couldn’t find it, he directed him to look up Jack Kerouac. The implication is that Kerouac (or Norman Mailer or Nelson Algren or Truman Capote, all of whom make cameos in these pages) was taken more seriously than Vonnegut, whose early work was ghettoized as science fiction.

In his interview with NPR, Shields offer this perspective:

Shields persuaded Vonnegut to let him write the book, and he spent hours talking to the Slaughterhouse-Five author during the last year of his life. He says he was surprised during their very first conversation when Vonnegut began by complaining about his parents.

"For all the world, I thought I was talking to a much younger person who still had a real beef with the way he had been raised," Shields says. But that oddly youthful outlook was what endeared Vonnegut to generations of disaffected kids.

With that background, here is a taste of the Humanities article, Unhappy Camper.

The late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., whose most productive decade has just entered the Library of America pantheon with the publication of Novels & Stories 1963–1973, is no less classic a case than the rest.

Born into a prosperous German-American family in 1922 Indianapolis, the son and grandson of architects, his mother a privileged beer heiress soon unstrung by the Depression, Vonnegut was rudely yanked out of private school as the thirties began. “A wise use of resources,” he once ruefully called this step down in the world, still smarting in an interview quoted in Charles J. Shields’s fine, undeluded new Vonnegut biography, And So It Goes.

The hijacking of Vonnegut’s early education embarrassed him not just at the time but down the road, when his career would bring him into contact with writers more well-read than he was. “Who’s Keats?,” he once innocently asked of his writing students at the University of Iowa, and then, mortified at their laughter, fled the room. Two years later, a “Who’s Keats?” banner hung above his thronged, adoring going-away party.

Vonnegut may not have read his Keats, but he found his way early to the models he’d need most: the black humorists Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, and H. L. Mencken. Together they form a too often unacknowledged tradition in our letters, that of the Great American Dyspeptic. (Later, Hunter S. Thompson would join their raffish parade.) If he’s lucky, a reader finds them in adolescence, perhaps first as a suspiciously recurrent presence in Bartlett’s Quotations or other bathroom books. Of them, only Twain was a novelist, and therefore the only one likely to stray onto a school syllabus. Twain has also become the one most strongly identified over the years with Vonnegut, and the one likeliest to wind up alongside him on the business end of some bluestocking’s library or curriculum challenges.

All that dubious glory lay far in the future when Vonnegut first embarked on the genre fiction career that ultimately led to Library of America’s first volume of his writing. That nonprofit publisher has collected four consecutive midcareer Vonnegut novels and a miscellany of incidental writing into its customary handsome volume. Hemmed into its 1963–73 rubric, the book includes only a couple of his short stories, preferring to take Vonnegut from 1963’s Cat’s Cradle, perhaps the purest distillation of his novel-length genre work; through the pointed social satire of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater; past his breakthrough, Slaughterhouse-Five; to 1973’s Breakfast of Champions, which Vonnegut described as his “fiftieth-birthday present to myself . . . as though I am crossing the spine of a roof—having ascended one slope.”

The downhill slope was gentler, but no breeze. The collection forms a fitting tribute to a beloved novelist who peaked late but fast. One year Vonnegut was still writing paperback originals for not much money. The next he was opining darkly on television about the moon landing with Walter Cronkite and Gloria Steinem. The difference was Slaughterhouse-Five, a book with, depending how you count them, at least two titles and two plots, and without which his other novels might, incredibly, not be in print from anyone, let alone the Library of America.

Vonnegut had been trying to shape the material that became Slaughterhouse-Five for twenty years. Rare for writers—rare for anybody—this most formative experience may have befallen him not as a child, but in young manhood. As a World War II POW, he had narrowly escaped the Allied firebombing of Dresden in an underground slaughterhouse. He emerged the next morning to find the whole city transformed into an abattoir, as if his hole had somehow expanded overnight to swallow what was left of the world. The experience, naturally, haunted him, not least because he must have suspected he had found, early on, by far his most important material.

After mustering out of the army, Vonnegut knocked around a bit, newspapering in Chicago and then flacking for General Electric. Always, he was writing. The arc of Vonnegut’s eventual career proceeds steadily from escapist yet thoughtful science fiction to fragmentary personal history. It’s only at the midpoint, Slaughterhouse-Five, that these two axes, the outlandish and the autobiographical, almost perfectly cross. The novel combines stroboscopic flashbacks to Vonnegut’s war experiences with the science-fiction overlay of a character called Billy Pilgrim who has become, in this seemingly plainspoken writer’s lovely formulation, “unstuck in time.”

Slaughterhouse-Five became a counterculture sensation, joining Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 and anticipating his fellow Cornellian Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in their time-scrambled use of the same “good war” to indict the absurdity of any war at all. Lost amid the eminently deserved praise heaped over the years on Slaughterhouse-Five has been Vonnegut’s only other novel-length treatment of the war, the vastly underrated Mother Night. Preceding Slaughterhouse-Five by seven years, Mother Night takes the form of a condemned man’s suicide note, the long jailhouse affidavit of an American spy who rose through the ranks of the Third Reich to become Nazi Germany’s star radio apologist.

This tightly plotted and structured book lacks most of its successor’s capering narrative pyrotechnics, concentrating instead on the story of a pathologically rationalizing man’s divestment, one by one, of all his cherished alibis. At the end, bereft of his sweetly loving marriage, his sense of mission as the deepest of deep-cover moles, he stands exposed as the quintessential hypocrite, the Gorgon who can no longer hide from his own reflection. It’s a mordantly thrilling novel, one whose potential eclipse behind the four newly enshrined by Library of America would be an outright shame.

Read the whole article.

Men and Women: Still Both From Earth - Joan C. Williams & Rachel Dempsey

2012-01-26T19:00:00.001-07:00

This was posted on Joan C. Williams' Family Friendly blog at Psychology Today (and co-written with Rachel Dempsey). It's a response to The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality by Marco Del Giudice, Tom Booth, and Paul Irwing - a bit of nonsense that I responded to myself a while back.

Men and Women: Still Both From Earth
Gender differences aren't born - they're made.

Published on January 13, 2012 by Joan C. Williams in Family Friendly
co-written with Rachel Dempsey

A few weeks ago a group of European scientists published a study claiming that sex differences between men and women are much larger than we previously thought. The study found a very small overlap between men and women for personality traits such as sensitivity and warmth (much stronger for women) and emotional stability and dominance (much stronger for men).

These results are being used as proof that men and women's brains are fundamentally different, but what's important what the study doesn't measure.

It doesn't measure differences in brain structure. It doesn't measure any sort of inherent difference at all. The differences are based on a survey in which men and women self-reported answers to a series of personality questions based on the 16PF model. In other words, the study measures responses that fully-developed adults give when measuring themselves on traits that are socialized along a distinct gender binary.

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The results can't possibly come as a surprise to anyone who has ever walked into a toy store, or turned on the television, or, you know, left their house. Humans are taught literally from birth what is appropriate behavior for a woman and what is appropriate behavior for a man, and the fact that fully grown men and women have learned to exhibit different behaviors isn't exactly groundbreaking news. Little girls are given dolls and called pretty, little boys are given trucks and called strong. In fact, in her book Delusions of Gender, psychologist Cordelia Fine points to a study of how pregnant women described the movement of their fetuses in the last three months of pregnancy - male activity was described as vigorous, while female activity was "not violent, not excessively energetic, not terribly active." Gendering, it seems, actually starts in the womb. (For more, the website Sociological Images keeps an exhaustive - and exhausting - list of pointlessly gendered products; see also Riley on Marketing).

The study has generated sensationalizing headlines like "Men and women really are living on different personality planets" and "Gender wars: Men, women more different than thought". And the researchers that conducted the study haven't exactly been helping - one of them was quoted on the Huffington Post saying the results show men and women might as well be "different species." (Not only is that statement irresponsible, it also does nothing to increase the scientists' credibility. Neither Rachel nor Joan is a scientist by any means, but we both took ninth-grade biology, and that's enough to know that the definition of a species is a group of organisms capable of interbreeding. Which usually involves both a male and a female.)

We propose a different interpretation of the study's results. Regardless of gender, humans are extraordinarily good at internalizing social cues, and their behavior as adults reflects decades of learning about "how men are" and "how women are." If we take that fully plausible interpretation of the study as fact, it's great news for equality advocates. Overcoming stereotyped gender binaries is as simple as socializing people from birth to see personality traits from warmth to liveliness to emotional stability as human rather than as male or female.

Okay, so maybe that won't actually be that simple. Our stereotypes run pretty deep. But studies like this one don't justify these stereotypes; they reinforce them. That's not science. Let's not make it more complicated than that.

Researchers - Male sex drive 'to blame for world's conflicts'

2012-01-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

According to a bunch of nutjob evolutionary psychologists, in a new study published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, a review of the "evolutionary evidence" supports the so-called "male warrior hypothesis" as the origin of all human conflict.

Yep, it's that simple. Turn off the male sex drive and there will be no more wars, no more religious disputes, and no more English soccer hooligans (I'd bet cutting off the beer would have more impact on this last one).

People actually believe shit like this.

This was published in The Telegraph UK.

Male sex drive 'to blame for world's conflicts'
The male sex drive is to blame for most of the world's conflicts from football hooliganism to religious disputes and even world wars, according to scientists.
Men are programmed to be aggressive towards anyone they view as an outsider

By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

23 Jan 2012

The "male warrior" instinct means that men are programmed to be aggressive towards anyone they view as an outsider, a study claims.
In evolutionary terms an instinct for violence against others helped early men improve their status and gain more access to mates, but in modern terms this can translate into large-scale wars.

In contrast women are naturally equipped with a "tend and befriend" attitude which means they seek to resolve conflicts peacefully in order to protect their children, researchers said.

The study, published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, is a review of evolutionary evidence for the so-called "male warrior hypothesis".

It claims that in every culture throughout history, men have been more likely than women to use violence when confronted by people they saw as outsiders.
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The "tribal" attitude of men, ultimately aimed at boosting their chances of reproducing, is similar to the territorial behaviour of chimpanzees, it was claimed.

The study also examined evidence which suggests men have a stronger sense of group identity than women, and that they will develop closer ties with others in their group if they are in competition with rivals.

Although men's hostile responses most likely evolved to combat the threat from outsiders, they "might not be functional in modern times and are often counterproductive," experts said.

Over time this has resulted in full-scale wars between countries and empires, and also in scraps and skirmishes between rival groups of football supporters and urban gangs.

Prof Mark van Vugt, who led the study, said: "A solution to conflict, which is an all too common problem in societies today, remains elusive. One reason for this might be the difficulty we have in changing our mindset, which has evolved over thousands of years.

"Our review of the academic literature suggests that the human mind is shaped in a way that tends to perpetuate conflict with ‘outsiders’."

Prof van Vugt said the research established that conflict with other groups of men presented our ancestors with opportunities to improve their status and gain more access to territory and potential mates.

He added: "We see similar behaviour in chimpanzees. For example, the males continuously monitor the borders of their territory.

"If a female from another group comes along, she may be persuaded to emigrate to his group. When a male strays too far, however, he is likely to be brutally beaten and possibly killed."

Research by Californian scientists in 2008 showed that the evolution of aggression and bravery in men was down to competition for mates and territory.

Their study showed that our genes can have a significant impact on traits like belligerence, meaning that in the course of our history the most aggressive group was singled out by natural selection.

Hunter-gatherer communities engaged in frequent skirmishes with other, neighbouring groups, taking land, goods and women as a reward for victory.

This meant belligerence was rewarded with reproductive success, and the benefits of the trait were genetically passed down to future generations, while those lacking aggression were filtered out.

There are several historical examples linking the male sex drive and conflict, such as Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan who studies suggest has 16 million direct male descendants today as a result of his appetite for women.

Vikings also left a strong genetic fingerprint in areas like the Scottish Western Isles, the Isle of Skye and Iceland because raiding parties would take local wives as a reward for successful raids.

The Good Men Project - Is Society Neutering the Men in Our Nation?

2012-01-24T20:54:00.003-07:00

"The Editors" posted this article the other day at The Good Men Project. They discuss the work of Jim Wysong, author of The Neutering of the American Male, and his belief that the "roles of men and women have become intermingled to the point that it is difficult to define the difference between sexes, confusion has continued to increase, resulting in bewilderment and frustration" (from the product description at Amazon.com).

Personally, I think there may be some truth to this, for traditional males, but for those men who have worked to integrate their gender polarities and have embodied a more fluid notion of gender roles, this is not very relevant.

That said, I see this struggle quite often in the men who seek coaching and/or counseling. Especially in counseling, traditional gender roles seem to be losing their relevance. For these men, this does result in confusion and frustration. But to me, the answer is not regression.

I see it as thesis (hyper-masculine men, i.e., traditional masculinity), antithesis (feminized men), and we are now moving toward synthesis (fluidity in gender roles without losing the biological gender identity).

Is Society Neutering the Men in Our Nation?
January 23, 2012 By the Editors
Increasing gender role reversals create stressed men.
In the popular NBC drama “Parenthood,” character Joel Graham represents a growing number of American men: the stay-at-home dad whose go-getter wife brings home the bacon.

On the show, Joel is usually content building furniture in the backyard and hosting play dates for his young daughter. But, every now and then, his lawyer wife Julia makes a unilateral decision that leaves him angry and doubting himself.

It’s a natural reaction, says Jim Wysong, author of The Neutering of the American Male, a look at the psychology of confused gender roles.

“Most men are wired to be in charge; it’s part of their DNA,” Wysong says. “They come into the world with a tendency toward certain masculine characteristics, for instance, a preference for building blocks over building relationships.

“Over the past century, gender roles have blurred, leading to some women developing more masculine qualities by necessity – think World War II, when they had to take the men’s place in factories – and some men developing stronger feminine qualities, like sensitivity and compassion.

“The man’s feminine characteristics overdevelop so his psychological needs can be met by the masculine woman in his life, be it his mother or his wife.”

While everyone has both masculine and feminine qualities, problems occur when a person loses balance and is living opposite his or her core, Wysong says. The incongruence leads to stress, distress and dissatisfaction. And, increasingly, thanks to the economic tailspin, some very confused men and women.

In 2010, there were 154,000 “house dads,” a number that’s been climbing steadily since 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Experts say that what began as a small trend of choice, as wives outdistanced their husbands in earnings, has become one of economic necessity in many families. The construction industry, one dominated by men, has been one of the hardest hit in the economic downturn.

♦◊♦

How can these men tell if their emotional distress stems from psychological neutering? Wysong offers some telltale signs:
If they have lots of friends who are girls, but no girlfriends. Feminine females will enjoy the company of a man they can talk to and feel comfortable with, but they won’t be physically attracted to him if he doesn’t possess a masculine presence. It’s a law of nature in the same way opposite poles of a magnet attract while like poles repel.
If they’re more comfortable around women than men. Masculinity tends to be more confrontational – men will test one another, push each other. Femininity tends to avoid confrontation. Men who have developed a stronger feminine side are not comfortable with confrontation and feel threatened. They feel more supported by and less threatened by women.
If they consistently look to others for approval. While a certain level of self-confidence is healthy and necessary for both men and women, masculinity tends to have a self-confidence that’s almost unwarranted. Masculinity remains self-confident even when they know they don’t have the answers. When that confidence is muted in men, they often doubt themselves and seek approval from others.
If you recognize yourself, Wysong says, don’t worry.

“A lot of times people worry there’s something wrong with them; they worry they’re weird,” he says. “You’re not. There are logical reasons behind it.”

With self-awareness, it’s possible to make changes to bring your male and female qualities into balance – even to choose from which to draw in different situations.

“Masculine and feminine qualities are equally important for both sexes,” Wysong says. “Problems arise when a person gets stuck living their life incongruent from their gender core.”

About Jim Wysong: Jim Wysong is a businessman, contractor and real estate investor who spent more than 30 years observing and studying psychology and human behavior through workshops, seminars and textbooks. His efforts to better understand his own emotional discomfort led to theories that have universal applications in modern society.

Jack Kornfield - Set the Compass of Your Heart

2012-01-23T07:46:00.001-07:00

In this brief teaching from Tricycle, Jack Kornfield offers some wisdom on approaching life with an open heart. No matter the challenges in our life - and we all have our own collection of challenges - we always remain free to choose to be present and to choose to be willing to love.

[The beautiful image at the top, The Compass of My Heart, is by Beth Surdut and it is for sale.]

Set the Compass of Your Heart
Jack Kornfield
You need a reliable compass to set your direction and steer through the rough waters when you are going through hard times, when you’ve been betrayed, when you’ve lost your job, when you’ve lost friends or loved ones, when you’re in conflict with your family, or when you’re going through illness.

But how can you set your direction when you can’t see any clear harbor? And how can you navigate through difficult waters when you’re swamped by overwhelming emotions, when so much of your awareness is taken over with trying to figure out who’s at fault and who did what to whom, or creating stories about who’s wrong and who’s right and why?
When we’re overwhelmed by a difficult situation, sometimes we know we’re behaving in a way that is only making matters worse, but we don’t know how to stop.

No matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can always set our compass to our highest intentions in the present moment. Perhaps it is nothing more than being in a heated conversation with another person and stopping to take a breath and ask yourself, “What is my highest intention in this moment?” If you can have enough awareness to take this small step, your heart will give you an answer that will take the conversation in a different, more positive direction. With simple steps like these, you can behave in ways that at least will not fuel your difficulties—or anyone else’s.

Whatever your difficulties—a devastated heart, financial loss, feeling assaulted by the conflicts around you, or a seemingly hopeless illness—you can always remember that you are free in every moment to set the compass of your heart to your highest intentions. In fact, the two things that you are always free to do—despite your circumstances—are to be present and to be willing to love.

Adapted from A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path through Difficult Times by Jack Kornfield © 2011. Reprinted with permission of Sounds True.

Gender Controversy Stacks Up Against 'Lego Friends'

2012-01-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

This was on NPR a couple of weeks ago - it seems LEGO has introduced some new toys that are aimed at girls, but there are a lot of people who object to this and would prefer to see LEGOs be more gender neutral in thier toys.

Aside from simply promoting archaic sexual and gender stereotypes for girls, the new toys violate the LEGO mission of promoting toys that encourage children's creativity and individuality.

Gender Controversy Stacks Up Against 'Lego Friends'

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January 18, 2012

Lego introduced a new lineup of toys earlier this month meant to appeal to girls. But a petition posted on Change.org is calling on the toy maker to stop distinguishing between toys for girls and those for boys. So far, the petition has amassed over 47 thousand signatures. Host Michel Martin speaks with one of the sponsors of that petition, Bailey Shoemaker Richards.

Here is a little piece of the transcript:

MARTIN: Now, Lego argues that these new toys are the result of four years of research into how to make its toys more appealing to girls and, if this is what girls are saying that they want, what's so terrible?

RICHARDS: Well, I think part of the problem with Lego's marketing is that it's very market research based. I mean, they've looked at what is going to sell to girls, so when you market pink princesses and beauty to girls from the time they're infants, by the time they're in Lego's target market for this line, which is about five and up, they're going to associate pink, pretty, you know, this very specific gender role with what they think they're supposed to be playing with. It's all they've been marketed their entire lives, so of course, that's what Lego's marketing research is going to find.

The problem that we have with that is that it doesn't really mesh with Lego's core values in their mission statement about wanting to create innovative products that help kids develop creativity. I mean, this fails that on all counts.

All they've done is sort of throw in with Barbie and Bratz and that sort of very, very narrow stereotypical type of marketing.

Comics Alliance - The Myth of Sexy Superman and the Search for Superhero Beefcake [Op-Ed]

2012-01-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

In this editorial from Comics Alliance, Andrew Wheeler looks at the absence of superhero beefcake in comic books and films. Part of his argument - and I agree - is that comic book superheros might as well be eunuchs. I grew up with Superman, in part, and his total inability to own his attraction to Lois and finally move beyond the chaste longing and subtle flirting.

On the other hand, part of what makes Christopher Nolan's version of the Dark Knight so interesting is that Bruce Wayne has a physicality that he sometimes struggles with - he is a man, even if we do not see too much of his body.

Here is a key passage:

Superhero men are idealized, yes, but they're rarely sexualized. While women are presented as broken-backed boob hostesses whose every move is a bend-and-snap designed to flatter and entice the presumed-male, presumed-straight reader, the men are sexless paragons of strength, with propaganda poster good looks that serve as visual shorthand for their masculine, heroic bona fides.

As a gay man, I want more from my objectification. I can't speak for straight women, but I suspect they want better as well. [Editor's note: We do.]

Read the whole article below.

The Myth of Sexy Superman and the Search for Superhero Beefcake [Op-Ed]
Jan 19th 2012 By: Andrew Wheeler

2011 was a good year for superhero beefcake. Not in comics, of course, but at the movies. And not in terms of quantity, but in terms of quality. What I'm saying is that Chris Hemsworth took his shirt off in Thor, and it was great.

All right, Chris Evans took his shirt off as well for his Charles-Atlas-ification in Captain America, and I understand Ryan Reynolds was briefly featured in his scanties before having his body replaced with a cantaloupe-skinned wire-frame in Green Lantern. That was it, though. The bar for superhero beefcake is set pretty low. And the bar is set low because the source material -- actual superhero comics -- has never been fertile ground for the shameless sexual objectification of men.

I know that sounds extraordinary to fans who insist that the men in superhero comics are objectified just as much as the women, but I speak as someone who spent his teen years hungry for comics that featured half-dressed supermen.

As a hormonal gay adolescent in the pre-internet age I cherished those very occasional -- and usually incidental -- moments of shirtlessness. Marc Silvestri's Havok in a torn-up costume as the Goblin Prince? John Romita Jr.'s Matt Murdock in tighty whities? Alan Davis's Captain Britain in drawstring pajama pants? Joe Mad's Banshee flashing his abs as he pulls on a sweatshirt? Any comic set in the Savage Land? These were my sacred texts. (And yes, I was a Marvel kid.)

Straight boys never have to hunt for that sort of fan service. The whole industry caters to their libidos. Gay boys and straight girls do not enjoy the same level of pandering. Sure, the men in these comics are usually buff and handsome, and they're all dressed in skin-tight clothes and they all have six-pack abs. If you enjoy looking at athletic, attractive men, you will find athletic, attractive men in these books, especially when drawn by artists like Chris Sprouse, Dale Eaglesham, Nicola Scott and Olivier Coipel.

But it's not equivalent. Superhero men are idealized, yes, but they're rarely sexualized. While women are presented as broken-backed boob hostesses whose every move is a bend-and-snap designed to flatter and entice the presumed-male, presumed-straight reader, the men are sexless paragons of strength, with propaganda poster good looks that serve as visual shorthand for their masculine, heroic bona fides.

As a gay man, I want more from my objectification. I can't speak for straight women, but I suspect they want better as well. [Editor's note: We do.] There's a popular perception that women aren't as shallow about appearance as men, and maybe that's true, but they're more than capable of being just shallow enough. Many women of my acquaintance prefer the pale, skinny men of BBC costume drama rather than the Hollywood jocks I like, but whether you want Chris Hemsworth or Tom Hiddleston, Paul Walker or Paul Bettany, Colin Farrell or Colin Firth, we all like to look.

Our culture is slowly shifting towards equal opportunity ogling. TV is leading the way both with shows that load their casts with obvious hunks, like Glee, Hawaii 5-0 and The Vampire Diaries, and with shows that shamelessly pander to a man-fancying audience with previously unimagined acres of muscled male flesh, like True Blood, Spartacus, and MTV's Teen Wolf.

Movies are catching up as well. The scene in 2006's Casino Royale when Daniel Craig stepped out of the water in tiny square-cut shorts was a watershed moment that opened the door to Taylor Lautner's abs in Twilight: New Moon, Ryan Gosling's abs in Crazy Stupid Love, and Ryan Reynolds's abs in... every movie he makes. Marvel Studios has been smartly on-message in casting leads in its man-friendly movies that might appeal to the oft-neglected other major demographic.

Yet while Marvel Studios is moving in the right direction, actual superhero comics are about as backward as it gets. The see-saw is so tilted towards the exploitation of women that when Wonder Woman put on a pair of trousers there was an outcry, whereas no-one blinked when Namor swapped his swimming trunks for long trousers and a shirt, and Namor is not a character who is coy about his sexuality.

Male superheroes are not written sexy, they're rarely drawn sexy, and they do not dress sexy. While maybe half of all female characters belong on a skin-baring scale from Star Sapphire to Wonder Woman, most male characters fit on a scale from Superman to Spider-Man. Batman has about as much skin showing on his chin as Power Girl shows on her boobs.

There are exceptions. Hercules, Hawkman and Grunge stand apart as heroes happy to flash the flesh, and they each have their fans. The other most scantily clad guys are monsters like the Hulk and the Thing, and even the Thing now wears a leotard, while no-one thinks the Hulk wears cut-offs to bring the girls to the yard. (If Hulk were drawn to be attractive, the way She-Hulk is, he'd look less like a sack of angry walnuts and more like a green Randy Orton.)

Most male heroes actually wear considerably more than wrestlers. They wear more clothes than gymnasts, rugby players or soccer players. Because so many heroes wear gloves and masks, they're even overdressed compared to most soldiers. A thousand justifications are given for female characters to wear as little as they do, from "she's a ninja who needs unrestricted movement" to "she's an alien who isn't hung up on our repressed human notions about sexuality," yet male characters never benefit from the same excuses.

For example, why does Aquaman wear a shirt? Why does Thor wear armor? Why does Gambit wear high collars and metal boots when he would look better and be more in character in an open-neck shirt and long leather riding boots? Why did Superboy trade in the tight black t-shirt for Tron cosplay? And Northstar must have some idea what looks good on a guy, so why does he dress like a Christmas elf in a nunnery? I can't think of any gay man with arms like that who keeps them covered up.

Then there's the definitive example; Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy (let's please not call him Protector). He was meant to be a young, dumb, sexy character, especially as drawn with a J.G. Jones pout. He was a boyband babe who wore tight shorts and short sleeves, but now that vision of the character has been traded in for a guy in the standard spandex burqa of the superman.

Despite the convention for square-jawed heroes with broad shoulders and perfect abs, superhero comics are not courting the half of the world that likes a pretty guy. The industry has the talent -- especially with an increasing number of straight women and gay men at the drawing boards -- but it doesn't have the will to pander to that audience. Comics lag behind other media because the dominant genre remains devoted to one demographic, while the rest of our culture increasingly wants to appeal to everyone.

In 2012 the best superhero beefcake will probably still come from the movies.

TEDxCambridge - Nate Ball: What Moves You?

2012-01-20T05:26:00.000-07:00

This is a cool TEDx Talk on letting go of the self-imposed limitations that keep us from pushing ourselves deeper into the experiences that move us, that make our body, mind, and soul resonate with joy and freedom.

TEDxCambridge - Nate Ball wants to know what moves you

Beatboxer Nate Ball is on a constant quest to push the limits of his body to create new sounds. It's all about letting go of embarrassment and doubt. He wants to know what moves you and what you need to let go of to keep moving.

Research - Changing One Stereotype Can Alter Another Stereotype

2012-01-19T07:38:00.000-07:00

Peer-reviewed by my neurons posted a research summary that shows that changing one stereotype can also alter related stereotypes. The blogger mentions briefly how this might relate to gender issues, but it seems worthy of a little more thought.

In terms of the political reality, Eric Horow (he's the blogger) notes that this knowledge can be used to enforce party allegiance because any movement away from the stereotype of the party (the GOP favors small government, for example) can be used to weaken the party's identity. This is good for voters but bad for the political parties. [I'm not convinced this is true - Bush II created a massive government without seriously damaging his party's image.]

However, with gender issues, this can only be a good thing. Every time we see a male who is sensitive and strong, caring and directed, gentle and powerful, the old stereotypes of one-dimensional masculinity get broken down. These stereotypes are limiting and destructive, so the more we can change them, the better for all of us (and for women as well).

This is definitely one case where we can be the change we want to see in the world.

Changing One Stereotype Can Alter Another Stereotype
January 15, 2012

Stereotypes tend to be bad, and therefore understanding what causes them is worthwhile. Research shows that a variety of information about a particular group or its members can change a stereotype, but that’s not the only thing. A new study finds the stereotypes of two groups can become interdependent and therefore one grou’s stereotype could change based on information about a different group.

More specifically, when there are two mutually exclusive groups (e.g. men and women) with different stereotypes (e.g. men are dirtier, women are cleaner) information that is incongruent with the competent group’s stereotype (e.g. Sara and Stacy are messy) can alter the stereotype of the other group (Men aren’t that dirty). This is not a good thing for society. When a reputation is based on something irrelevant, suboptimal decisions are bound to be made.

I also can’t help but think this is a bad sign for the U.S political system. According to reasoning laid out in the study, when a Republican is shown to support government spending it would not only weaken the stereotype of Republicans as fiscal conservatives, it would also lessen the stereotype of Democrats as big spenders. The depressing takeaway is that enforcing party discipline is even more important because any deviation will harm your reputation and improve the reputation of your opponent. It’s yet another reason that we’re bound to arrive at an equilibrium in which both parties voluntarily censor themselves.
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Maris, S., & Hoorens, V. (2012). The ISI change phenomenon: When contradicting one stereotype changes another Journal of Experimental Social Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.01.001

Sh!t New Age Guys Say

2012-01-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

In the ongoing new (and annoying) fad of Shit ___________ Say, here is a funny one of Shit New Age Guys Say. Most of you have probably seen this already, but I have been busy lately, so it's new to me.

Sadly, some of this is stuff I have heard guys say. Hell, I've said a couple of those things. So please pardon me while I go flog myself.

Directed by Liz Cross-Thompson
Starring Jeff Thompson, Liz Cross-Thompson, and Cameron Kincaid Richardson

Bookforum - Positionings of Gender

2012-01-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Bookforum offered up a collection of links on issues related to gender - it's a pretty eclectic mixture of material, sure to please and/or piss off most anyone. Contrary to my usual practice, I've broken these links down into discrete entries for your browsing pleasure.

Positionings of gender

Jan 16 2012 9:00AM

Colin Farrelly (Queen's): Patriarchy and Historical Materialism.
Chandrakala Padia (BHU): Resisting Logocentrism: Mainstreaming the Gender.
From Qualitative Sociology Review, Annalisa Murgia (Trento): "Flexible Narratives": Discursive Positionings of Gender and Identity in Precarious Times; Jeni Loftus (Purdue) and Paul Namaste (PHE): "Expectant Mothers": Women’s Infertility and the Potential Identity of Biological Motherhood; and a review of Erotic Mentoring: Women’s Transformations in the University by Janice Hocker Rushing.
The reality of sexist abuse online: Female bloggers speak out about misogynist comments, rape threats and death threats.
A review of Duels and Duets: Why Men and Women Talk So Differently by John L. Locke.
Battle of the sexes: Traits that help one sex but hurt the other are not sufficient for maintaining genetic variation.
No, men's magazines aren't written by "rapists": Melissa Petro says to give the guys a break — women are writing and editing these magazines too.
Why is "white male" the default? Maria Pawlowska wants to know.
Geoffrey Arnold on how heightism is a social construct based in gender norms.
Mark Manson on the truth about universal masculinity.
Gay vs. straight: What’s a sexy man?
Peter Lawler on what we can learn about courage from the philosopher of manliness Harvey Mansfield.
A look at 4 evolutionary explanations for modern annoyances.

Dads Unplugged Discuss Dan Ariely - Who is really in control of our life?

2012-01-16T08:34:00.001-07:00

Dan Ariely is author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions - in this recent podcast, Dads Unplugged talk about his book and how it relates to parenting and being fathers.

Who is really in control of our life?
Posted on 11 January 2012.

When we make decisions we think we’re in control. But are we? Dan Ariely has written many books on decision making, but this one struck a chord with Kent and I. Because not only did it talk about the decisions we make on a day to day basis and how predictably irrational we are, but we saw it as a perfect carryover to parenting.

Who is more predictably irrational than children and we as parents can easily and quickly be sucked down into that vortex. Sometimes parenting resources come in different shapes and sizes and books. Check out this one as Kent and I break down some of the chapters that related directly to what we as Dads have to do every day: Parent.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Teaching Young Men to Stop Rape

2012-01-14T18:54:00.000-07:00

This looks like a worthy program especially for inner city kids - but I would love to see programs like this in the Tucson barrio, or in the rural south, or anywhere else where men believe that it's okay to hit women, rape women, or otherwise treat women as objects.

One of the important points is that the male teachers who lead these groups act as father figures for the boys who do not have fathers - I think alone can change how these boys grow up.

Young men mobilize to stop rape
LINDSAY GOLDWERT
Monday, December 26, 2011
The federal government estimates that one in five women will be raped in their lifetime — and a group of young men in city schools are hoping to change that.

They’re part of the an afterschool program called Men of Strength (MOST) that teaches boys they should be allies for girls and that violence is inexcusable.

Cherno Barry, an eighth grader at Junior High School 217 in Briarwood, Queens, said the club has taught him to treat all girls like he treats his mother.

“No one is beneath another person,” he said.

Neil Irvin, the executive director of Men Can Stop Rape, the Washington based organization behind the program, said the boys who take part can become protectors in their communities.

“We discuss how traditional masculinity contributes to sexual assault and other forms of men's violence against women,” he said.

There are MOST clubs in three city schools and others scattered across the nation.

Once a week, the kids and group leaders talk frankly about what it means to get a woman’s consent, sexual health and responsibility.

Parents are also involved.

“It’s an education for them too,” said Irwin. “They start to realize that they’ve passed these stereotypes onto the next generation without meaning to.”

Stephen Bradshaw a teacher and club facilitator at JHS 217, said he’s seen first-hand how the program opens eyes among his 27 members.

“The club gives kids a chance to check in with each other talk about the issues that concern them,” he said. And he can serve as a father figure for those who don’t have a male rodel model in their life.

Barry said Bradshaw created “an atmosphere of real brotherhood” and showed him being a man goes beyond the stereotypes in popular culture.

“Fighting in the school yard to prove we are not punks, video games, rap songs -- this is not the way to prove manhood,” he said.

Organizers say many of the boys stick with the program through high school. “They want more time,” laughed Bradshaw, who is paid by Irvin’s group and the school.

“For these kids, one day a week is not enough.”

Rick Hanson - Love the World

2012-01-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

For some reason, it seems as though Rick is speaking to men (me?) in this post, so I thought it would be a good Friday share.

Love the World
Rick Hanson, Ph.D. - Neuropsychologist and author of Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time
Posted: 1/8/12

Your brain evolved in three stages (to simplify a complex process):
Reptile -- Brainstem, focused on AVOIDING harm
Mammal -- Limbic system, focused on APPROACHING rewards
Primate -- Cortex, focused on ATTACHING to "us"
With a fun use (to me, at least) of animal themes, the first JOT in this series -- "Pet the Lizard" -- was about how to soothe the most ancient structures of the brain, the ones that manage the first emotion of all: fear. The next one -- "Feed the Mouse" -- addressed how to help early mammalian neural systems feel rewarded and fulfilled. The third one -- "Hug the Monkey" -- was about weaving the sense of being included and loved into the primate cerebral cortex.

Of course, these three practices go way beyond their anatomical roots. The three primary motivational systems of your brain -- avoiding harms, approaching rewards and attaching to "us" -- draw on many neural networks to accomplish their goals. In fact, one motivational system can tap the two other ones; for example, you could express attachment to a friend by helping her avoid harm and approach rewards.

Lately, I've started to realize that a fourth fundamental human motivational system is developing out of the other three.

Whether it's our hunter-gatherer ancestors depending upon their habitats for food and shelter, or modern folks making use of the settings of home and work, or the nearly 7 billion members of the human race pressing hard up against the limits of "Lifeboat Earth" -- to survive and flourish, cultural evolution alone and perhaps biological evolution as well are calling us to love the world.

The world is near to hand in the matter/energy, nature and human-made objects all around you. And then in widening circles, the world extends out to include society and culture, the planet itself and ultimately the entire and still often mysterious universe.

When you love the world, you both appreciate and care for it. Each of these actions makes you feel good, plus they help you preserve and improve everything you depend on for air and food, livelihood, security, pleasure and community.

During the last several million years of human evolution, our emerging species had neither much capacity for harm nor much understanding of the effects it did have upon the world.

But now, humanity has great power for good and ill, as well as undeniable knowledge of its impact on both the natural and built world. As the planet heats up and resources decline... and as a species -- us -- that evolved in part through being lethally aggressive toward its own kind must now live cooperatively and peacefully if it is to live at all. It is critically important that a fourth major motivation guide our thoughts, words and above all, deeds:

Love the world.

How? In terms of the aspect of love that is about appreciating, routinely look for opportunities to enjoy, value and feel grateful for little things in your environment.

These range from whatever is close by -- soft pillow cases, flowers blooming, traffic laws, sun rising, libraries, tree shade, shared language -- to the increasingly vast nested nests we all share: the Internet, global institutions, oxygen/CO2 exchanges through which animals and plants give breath to each other, the incredibly rare and fortuitous occurrence of a rocky planet -- Earth -- surviving the early formation of a solar system to find an orbit that allows for liquid water on its surface... all the way out to this universe which bubbled out of nothing: the largest nest of all, the extraordinary miracle in which we make our ordinary days.

In terms of the aspect of love that is about caring for, this means to me a combination of cherishing, protecting and nurturing the world. You naturally cherish what you love. Cherishing something, you want to keep it safe; once it's protected, you want to help it flourish. (As an aside, it's interesting that these three inclinations map to the three underlying motivational systems: the attaching system cherishes, the avoiding system protects and the approaching system nurtures. As with other aspects of evolution, new capabilities and functions draw on preceding, "lower" systems.)

So much could be written -- and has -- about cherishing our world and protecting and nurturing it, yet I must be brief here, with just three suggestions.

For a minute, an hour, or a whole week, touch natural and human-made things around you like you truly cherish them. If you cherished an orange or a cup, how would you hold it?

Protect something from harm. You could save something you might otherwise throw away, from water running in a sink to food in a restaurant. Security is a wholesome aim of the avoiding system, which is achieved in large part by conserving what we've got.

Pick one thing and focus on helping it grow and thrive. Perhaps a plant, or a business, or a project at a local school, or a collaboration among some friends, or a fix-it repair at home.

At the heart of it, I experience this practice as a matter of our relationship with the world. Do we relate to it as an adversary or distant acquaintance?

Or do we relate to the world as a friend, a child, a beloved nest?

Here and there and everywhere, let's all live in a world we love.

For more by Rick Hanson, Ph.D., click here.

For more on mindfulness, click here.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (in 20 languages) - and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and Affiliate of the rget="_blank">Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he's taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, and U.S. News and World Report and he has several audio programs. His blog - Just One Thing - has nearly 30,000 subscribers and suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. If you wish, you can subscribe to Just One Thing here.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-hanson-phd/love-the-world_b_1161781.html

Secret Lives of Men - The secret power of middle children: Catherine Salmon

2012-01-12T18:44:00.001-07:00

This is an interesting discussion - coming from a two-child family, I am not familiar with the middle child thing. Dr. Chris Blazina interviews Catherine Salmon about her recent book, The Secret Power of Middle Children: How Middleborns Can Harness Their Unexpected and Remarkable Abilities.

The secret power of middle children: Catherine Salmon
by Secret Lives of Men
Tue, Jan 10, 2012

Listen to internet radio with Secret Lives of Men on Blog Talk Radio

In this counterintuitive book, psychologist Catherine Salmon and journalist Katrin Schumann combine science, history, and real-life stories to reveal for the first time that our perception of middle children is dead wrong.

Using unpublished and little-known research from evolutionary psychology, sociology, and communications, The Secret Power of Middle Children illustrates how adaptive strategies middleborns develop during childhood translate into stronger friendships, lasting marriages, successful careers, and effective parenting.

Over seventy million adult Americans are middle children, and forty percent of young American families have middle children. With constructive advice on how to maximize the benefits and avoid the pitfalls of being a middle child, Salmon and Schumann help middle children at any age (and their parents) use birth order as a strategy for success.

Is Monsanto's RoundUp Destroying Male Testosterone?

2012-01-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Here is another story about the way toxic chemicals are destroying male sex hormone levels and reproductivity. Even very minute levels have serious negative effects on male hormones.

This was reprinted from the Sovereign Independent.

Is Biotech Terrorist Monsanto’s RoundUp Destroying Male Testosterone?
Kevin Hayden – TruthisTreason
Here’s the key phrase:
What is more disturbing is that even at a lower, presumably “non toxic” concentration of 1 ppm of Roundup, testosterone concentrations were observed to decrease by 35%.
In a disturbing study published last month (Dec. 2011) in the Journal of Toxicology in Vitro, researchers found that Monsanto’s popular “weed killer” known as Roundup, which has already been linked to over 25 adverse health effects, is also capable of interfering with and/or harming the male reproductive system.

Researchers tested Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, on mature rat testicular cells at a concentration range between 1 and 10,000 ppm, which they described as “the range in some human urine and in environment to agricultural levels.” They found that within 1 to 48 hours of Roundup exposure testicular (Leydig) cells were damaged or killed.

What is more disturbing is that even at a lower, presumably “non toxic” concentration of 1 ppm of Roundup, or glyphosate by itself, testosterone concentrations were observed to decrease by 35%.

Keep in mind that 1 ppm of Roundup is an infinitesimal concentration. Distilled water, as a reference point, contains between 5-10 ppm of dissolved solids. How can such a small concentration of Roundup/glyphosate cause such a profound disruption of biological activity in testicular cells? The phenomenon is known as endocrine disruption.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that interfere with the “synthesis, secretion, transport, binding, action, or elimination of natural hormones in the body that are responsible for development, behavior, fertility, and maintenance of homeostasis (normal cell metabolism),” and are capable of interfering with hormonal health even in minute concentrations. Whereas a higher concentration of Roundup might result in immediate cell death, a much lower one can alter the hormonal and genetic expression of that cell, perhaps taking it down the path towards pathological dysfunction, or even cancer.

truthistreason.net

Julie Gillis - Masculine? Or Just Human?

2012-01-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I shared an article by Nicole Johnson from The Good Men Project that was decidedly traditional in its praise of masculinity, ascribing traits to men that could just as easily be human traits and not at all gendered. The article got some discussion at Facebook.

So this new article from Julie Gillis is more in line with my own thinking - while there are certainly attributes that are more masculine than feminine, many if not most of the adjectives used to describe masculinity - courage, loyalty, decisiveness, leadership, strength (physical), strength of character, self-sacrifice - could just as easily describe femininity.

Perhaps physical strength (although I have female clients at the gym who are stronger than a lot of men) is more masculine, but only on average. Does masculinity = maleness? Perhaps, but transgender people bring this into question, as well. I know FtM transmen who are very masculine and they do not have a Y chromosome, or a penis for that matter.

It may be time to stop thinking in terms of masculine or feminine - we are human beings capable of a wide range of traits.

Having said of all that, I will now crawl out on a limb and suggest that masculinity is an energetic quality that is closely associated with male bodies, but not exclusively found in them - what exactly that means, I have no real clue. For now, it's just a working hypothesis . . . .

Masculine? Or Just Human?
January 5, 2012 By Julie Gillis
Julie Gillis wonders if there are universally masculine traits, or just universally human ones?
Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
—William Shakespeare
Recently, an email popped up in my inbox asking for submissions to The Good Men Project on the topic of…. “So, what’s good about masculinity?” And I thought, foolishly, that this would be an easy piece to write. I could think of so many positive traits, the piece would write itself. Then I saw Neely’s piece. And the piece after that. I wrote a few drafts. I got a bit stuck.

The curators helpfully provided some examples of masculinity as a jumping off place, “Some thoughts to get you started: courage, loyalty, decisiveness, leadership, strength (physical), strength of character, self-sacrifice (in defense of others, through long and inglorious work), etc.”

But, still I just couldn’t get that “click” as a writer. Because each of those qualities I’ve seen in men, women, children, the elderly, gay, straight, rich and poor. I’ve seen men be courageous in the line of danger. I’ve seen women make immediate and difficult decisions, I’ve worked with straight female business executives and gay male artistic directors (and I’ve worked with other wildly varied combinations of gender and sexual orientation as well), each exemplifying the best of leadership.

Physical strength…well, on average the men do have more of that, no argument from me there. They can certainly open the jars I can’t. But my mother could also do that. She had really strong hands.

Also? My mother could fix cars and equipment like nobody’s business. I recall her telling me that when they first married in the early 1960’s, my father, a composer, would get ruffled when he couldn’t fix a piece of recording equipment and she could. She told him, “Don’t you cook far better than me?” “Yes,” he admitted that was true. “Well,” she said, “I can stay out of your studio and your stuff will stay broken, if you stay out of my kitchen and we eat food that we both don’t like.”

My father had a tremendous sense of humor, immediately understood, let go of his feelings about who should do what, and they ate well while his equipment stayed fixed.

As for strength of character? I’ve been highly impressed by a few 11 year old boys recently, standing up for their friends in the face of bullying, and I’ve sat back in awe at women like Lisa Hickey standing up for peace and dialogue in the face of all kinds of pressure from anonymous commenters and emailers on both sides of the gender fence.

Self sacrifice? There are the obvious examples-our fire fighters and police, our armed services members (which currently include men and women), and there are probably millions of people, male and female alike, in the world who work in back breaking conditions, sweatshops, fields, all to produce goods for us here in the western world so that they can feed their children.

There are men and women both who persevere in their lives against lay-offs, mortgage payments, divorces, doing whatever it takes for the kids to get good educations even if it means less gratification for them.

I can’t say for a fact that any of those traits listed above are inherently masculine, any more than I could say traits such as dedication, grace, thoughtfulness, kindness, flirtatiousness, shyness, or vulnerability are inherently feminine traits.

The chicken or the egg question becomes are “masculine” and “feminine” traits mirroring some biological truth about male and female bodies, or do we create traits to align with roles we’ve historically played out due to biological differences?

Being me, I suspect it’s both.

At that point I wiki’d. Here’s a link about gender which takes that chicken or egg question on with various theories. We do have physical differences to a large degree. Based on XX or XY, males get more testosterone and females get less, even in the womb leading to differences in brain structures, though researchers point out that brains are not all “masculine.”

“Animal studies also show that in any male, some regions make connections typical of males, but some parts remain feminine. ‘There’s really no such thing as a completely male brain,’ McCarthy says. ‘It’s a mosaic of male and female.’”

Those hormones create differences in how male and female bodies develop during early childhood and then again during puberty (and hormone levels of testosterone change for both men and women during later middle age, creating another shift in how the body looks and behaves).

Even so, it is possible and even common to see a wide variety of “male” bodies; short, tall, slight, heavy, highly muscled, softer skinned. The same goes for “female” bodies. Of course intersex is another matter all together and adds to the conversation about what traits are what.

If the traits listed above are found in both male, female and intersex people, and if brains aren’t one “sex” or the other, and in fact are subject to influence by hormonal changes over the course of a life (as well as a multitude of personal experiences that influence beliefs) if there aren’t character traits that belong to one sex over the other, why do we still create binary attributes such as “masculine” and feminine” when we are talking about those traits?

Because it’s easier to say “men are like this and women are like that?” Because in earlier periods we had little to no scientific knowledge at all about how the body and brain work and we went with what we saw? Because there is, perhaps, some bell curve of average tendencies for males to take on certain roles and for women to take others (even though those themselves may vary culture by culture)? Because picking the two most common points on the bell curve creates a binary? Bear in mind, we here at GMP may be focused on these traits from a Western-centric POV. Other cultures may value and thus places emphasis on different traits.

I favor the argument that a lack of scientific understanding led to survival roles becoming based on physical attributes. This may have led additional tasks becoming the purview of male or female over long periods of time, thus creating a cultural and social expectation connected to tasks and thus qualities assigned to those tasks.

But what happens when society changes? When technologies are introduced that allow survival to be more of an afterthought? When it takes less time and physical energy to rear children, clean clothes, eat meat and build homes? This is when those traits come into question and when roles begin to shift. If women and children need no protection from lions, what good does courage do? If we can play equal roles in our work (which many many more of us could than at any time in history) how do we claim that one sex has particular traits that would place one gender in one work role and another in the other.

Thus, I think, began a period of Western cultural existential angst, starting up round the time of the Industrial Revolution and gaining tension around the Computer Age. What does it mean to be a man? To be a woman? To be neither? Both? These questions make us grumpy. You can see it here on the site.

Perhaps like Hamlet above, also experiencing such deep moments of thoughtful maudlin questioning, we also have of late lost all our mirth.

We are knee deep in it this cultural moment (or maybe waist deep depending on who you talk to) and I don’t have many answers myself except to try to look at character traits as universal and brave the coming change of roles. Yes, it’s likely those changes will affect economics, politics, history, even. And it’s happening now. Which is why we should be doing exactly what we are doing here at GMP, which is talking about all that is so very good about men and asking the questions.

What purpose do we serve? What qualities of reason, what faculties admirable, what pieces of work are we made up of if not all of them, together, wonderfully beautifully human?

Linda E Savage - Spiritual Sex: Ecstatic Love Beyond The Physical

2012-01-09T08:01:00.001-07:00

This was posted at Huffington Post a while back - it's a nice article on the difference between basic physical f**king and a more spiritual approach to making love. Too many men get caught up in sex as performance, especially when we are younger. We are taught that we have to please our partners first and foremost, resulting in performance anxiety that takes us out of the experience.

How can we connect emotionally and spiritually with our partner if we are caught up in doing it right?

For those who are interested in knowing more about this topic from those who have experienced it in very profound ways - like in nonduality, loss of self, and other truly transpersonal experiences - check out Jenny Wade's book, Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil (2004).

Spiritual Sex: Ecstatic Love Beyond The Physical
Linda E. Savage: Psychologist, Marriage and Family Therapist and Sex Educator
Eleven minutes: that's the estimated time most couples spend making love and sometimes its not even much fun. Between one quarter and one half of long term relationships are beset with low desire and it is common for spouses to find other sexual outlets. We are living in a time when all the marital roles and rules have changed and old solutions don't seem to be working.

Even with these facts, I'm not at all pessimistic about the possibilities of lasting sexual love, but I do believe we are looking in all the wrong places. We cannot mandate thrilling, connected sexual encounters and just because one is married and "should" be having lots of fulfilling sex, doesn't make it so. The fact is we do not have any idea just how deep and all encompassing sex can be because we are stuck with a model of sex that I call, "The Performance Model: Sex equals intercourse": the goal of sex is orgasm, and great sex is a virtuoso performance.

As recent as one hundred years ago, women were thought to be incapable of orgasm and sex was intended purely for procreation. Not that everyone accepted this view, but everything in our Western culture supported women's sexual ignorance and encouraged men to use sex in very limited ways. Now, women are supposed to have orgasms every time and men are supposed to last all night as perfect sexual athletes. It's a recipe for disaster which the invention of Viagra has not averted.

So imagine living in a culture where sex was sacred and not a sin and sexuality was seen as a positive expression of the life force. This perspective was the norm in many cultures pre-dating Greek and Roman times and these societies date back 30,000 years. Even as late as 3,500 years ago those who lived on the island of Crete recognized sexual pleasure as a wonderful way to connect with spirit, renew the abundance of the land, and unite deeply with one another. In this culture sexuality was widely understood as a pathway to spiritual ecstasy.

The fact is that sexuality and spirituality were never split until well into the first millennium of the Common Era when denial of the body became the popular theology of the day. It may seem outrageous to view sexuality in such lofty terms. Yet, it no longer makes sense to deny the spiritual dimension of our sexuality, as if we had "lower," physical urges and "higher," spiritual functions, disconnected from the body.

Before you read on, let me define what I mean by spiritual sex: it is sexual energy that goes beyond physical sensations of pleasure and genital orgasms. It is not limited to genital stimulation and the release of tension through a quick and simple orgasm. When spiritual sex is consciously practiced, there is a quality of "mindfulness," which is heightened awareness and expanded consciousness. The more cosmic experiences utilizing sexual energy create ecstatic states. The essence of spiritual sex is enhanced awareness, extraordinary inspiration, and a sense of merging with the life force.

For simplicity's sake, I've divided spiritual sex into two levels: the first is conscious loving which is sexual energy that generates intense, loving feelings for the partner. The result is greater partner connection, reinforcing commitment in a long-term relationship through loving communion, enhancing the bond. The second level is spiritual union which is the ultimate expression of sexuality. Often one receives inspiration and illumination that can be translated into divine guidance or simply experienced as pure bliss. These transcendental sexual experiences produce a sense of merging with the source of energy and losing physical boundaries during orgasm. It is often described as "being in the moment of boundless bliss." Many ancient and modern visionary experiences are described as feelings of being "bathed in pure light." It is cosmic orgasm, the direct experience of the self as pure energy, in union with a divine source. This level of spiritual sex may occur without a partner and even without any physical stimulation.

Many of you intuitively know the link between spirituality and sexuality through direct experience. One woman, I'll call Carrie, related the following; "At the moment of orgasm I knew that I was in a great, golden light and I experienced myself as transparent, luminous energy. I saw seven star-like, golden, swirling points that lined up in my body. I did not know about the chakras at the time but later I discovered that that's what I saw. My energy centers looked like radiant golden lights in my body." What she had visualized was the life force freely flowing through all seven energy centers that were illuminated and energized by her orgasm. Many people who become interested in spiritual sex have had initial spontaneous ecstatic experiences such as Carrie's.

Since sexual energy is the source of our connection to the life force, the benefits to physical, emotional, and mental health are obvious. Developing conscious rituals and techniques allow you to become more open to such transcendent experiences. It prepares you to be receptive to the possibility of connecting in higher states of awareness from peak sexual moments. The teachings of ancient sacred sexuality traditions are a veritable garden of suggestions that I will be offering in this blog which I plan to use as a way to inspire you to practice a deeper connection with sexuality. Through this blog, I would love to answer questions and have you share your experiences, including those you have had with ecstatic sexuality.

Nicole Johnson - The Magnificent Appeal of Masculinity

2012-01-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

From The Good Men Project's special series on What's Good About Masculinity, Nicole Johnson offers her appreciation of the power of masculinity.

The Magnificent Appeal of Masculinity
January 5, 2012 By Nicole Johnson
If you can’t appreciate the gender traits of your partner, Nicole Johnson writes, you may not be with the right person.
I’m madly in love with my husband. The adoration I feel for him is indescribable. I am mesmerized by Rob’s manhood; his masculinity is intoxicating.

Rob and I have been together for 13 years. During this time, we have been married for 10 perfect years. I am truly the luckiest girl in the world.

Our marriage has been successful for a myriad of reasons. I have expressed my sentiments on sustaining relationship longevity in previous articles. Aside from the obvious factors that are necessary for marital success, I believe men and women should derive pleasure from each other’s femininity and masculinity. Regardless of sexual orientation, if you can not revel in your partner’s distinct gender traits, I firmly believe you are with the wrong person.

It is an effortless joy to celebrate my husband’s masculinity. I love Rob’s physical manly prowess and the way he moves in his powerful six foot frame. I love his chest hair and facial hair, as well as his shaved balding head. His manhood can be seen in every pore. I love Rob’s deep baritone voice. His words shape my world; I continually receive a refreshing perspective on life and love.

My husband’s masculinity is incredibly sexy. I love how our bodies interlock with intense passion. I love feeling the weight and size of his body pressed against me as we snuggle in a warm cocoon. When I am enveloped by his physical and emotional nakedness, I feel exceptionally loved and protected.

♦◊♦

I love being a woman. However, I’m thrilled my husband does not share some of my feminine attributes. I am drawn to Rob’s logic, courage, composure, assertion, capability, and humility. At times, I wish I could emulate my husband’s character, especially his poise. When I am confronted with adversity, I strive to be as controlled as Rob.

I’m an alpha female, and Rob is an alpha male. Despite our alpha status, I compliment his type of masculinity and he is a beautiful balance to my type of femininity. By “type”, I am referring to subdivisions of womanhood and manhood.

There are varying degrees of femininity and masculinity. Certain women are extremely feminine, while other women do not display dainty female characteristics. If a woman is not delicate or nurturing, this does not make her less of a woman. Conversely, there are men who are not manly. If a man’s manliness is not prominent, can he still be masculine? Absolutely! Every man is not designed to be a strapping, strong stud.

I appreciate the flexibility of femininity and the malleability of masculinity. Men and women should never be confined to stereotypes.

True love means loving someone without condition. If you do not love your man’s masculinity and respect his manhood, you are not with the right man. Set him free.

Vicki Larson - Why Men Need to Cheat (Really?!)

2012-01-06T22:12:00.000-07:00

I'm sharing this primarily so I can call bullshit on this evolutionary psychology crap that says men are slaves to a biological impulse to procreate as often and with as many different partners as possible. To believe this is to accept that we are essentially unconscious and unable to control where and how we procreate.

This is an interview with Eric Anderson, an American sociologist at England's University of Winchester and author of the provocative new book, The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating. The fact that this is based on the responses of college males makes it highly suspect right up front - these are not guys who are known for their desire to settle with one woman. An accurate study would have a much broader age range, education range, and ethnic range.

My take is that a great deal of male cheating is the product of socialization that teaches young men that masculinity is based, at least in part, on getting laid frequently and with many different partners. The fact that women are cheating more often now is likely an element of their adoption of what are considered male freedoms.

I think that men would like monogamy, in general (obviously some men are more satisfied with multiple partners, as are some women - for whatever reasons), but to be monogamous, they must override their conditioning and the subtle (and not so subtle) cues that tell us "men are dogs."

As in so many other areas of our lives, biology is not destiny.

Why Men Need To Cheat
Vicki Larson - Journalist, mother, thinker
Monogamy is failing men.

Not only is it failing them, but it's a "socially compelled sexual incarceration" that can lead to a life of anger and contempt, or so says Eric Anderson, an American sociologist at England's University of Winchester and author of the provocative new book, The Monogamy Gap: Men, Love, and the Reality of Cheating (Oxford University Press, $49.99).

Cheating, however, serves men pretty well. An undiscovered affair allows them to keep their relationship and emotional intimacy, and even if they're busted it's a lot easier than admitting that they wanted to screw someone else in the first place, he writes.

In his study of 120 undergraduate men, 78 percent of those who had a partner cheated, "even though they said that they loved and intended to stay with their partner." Contrary to what we may think, most men aren't cheating because they don't love their partner, he says; they cheat because they just want to have sex with others. And society shouldn't pooh-pooh that.

Monogamy's stronghold on our beliefs -- what he calls monogamism -- brings ostracism and judgment to anyone who questions or strays from its boundaries. That doesn't make sense to Anderson, who wonders why we stigmatize someone who has a fling more than couples who divorce -- throwing away a marriage rich in history and love, upsetting their kids' lives -- over something like sex.

Monogamy isn't the only "proper" way to be in a relationship, and he says it's time that society finds "multiple forms of acceptable sexual relationship types -- including sexually open relationships -- that coexist without hierarchy or hegemony." It's especially important for today's young men, for whom monogamous sex seems more boring than in generations past because of easy premarital sex and pornography.

Dr. Anderson was kind enough to answer my questions by email:

Your study includes just 120 undergraduate men, straight and gay; isn't that too small a sample to really know what's going on for men?
If I were attempting to determine what percent of men cheat, then, yes. Large-scale surveys show us that cheating remains the norm... I wanted to examine the very notion of monogamy, not morally, but rationally. I wanted to know why men want monogamy but nonetheless cheat.

You say men want to be emotionally monogamous, but their "body craves sex with other people somatically." People crave food, drugs, booze, sometimes to disastrous results. If there can be self-control with other cravings, why can't men control their body urges?
Humans are largely lousy at controlling our bodies' desires. We say we don't want to eat that Snickers bar, but we also really do want to eat it. We eat it, we feel guilty about it, and afterwards we promise ourselves not to eat one again; but we nonetheless do. It is this same phenomenon, only with cheating, that I explore.

The men in your study experienced a sharp decrease in the frequency and enjoyment of sex after two monogamous years. Since no one can sustain the kind of thrilling sex couples have in the beginning of a relationship, isn't it a healthy thing that it decreases?
I wish young men got two years of good sex before it dropped off; it's a lot less than that! It may, however, be good that the sexual desire for one's partner weans; it means that we end up staying with our long-term partners for the socioemotional connection and not for the sex. If a couple is going to raise a family, it is the emotional connection that counts, not the sexual.

Our physical desires don't die; they just change from our partner to people other than him/her. We falsely believe that when the sex dies, the relationship has also died. The reality is the opposite; when the sex dies the relationship has just begun.

What about the idea that long-term relationships make sex become deeper, more intimate and more meaningful?
The diminution of sex is simultaneous to one's emotional bonds growing stronger. Long-term partners may have more intimate sex (most just have very little) but when men see a guy or girl who turns them on, it's not intimate and meaningful sex they are craving.

Honesty is a huge part of a relationship. How good a relationship can one have when there's deception, especially since you say after men cheat spontaneously, they are more likely to plan cheating?
Honesty is good sometimes, and horrible other times. There are good reasons to lie; it is an essential skill for keeping community and relationship peace. The reason men lie about cheating is mostly because they know that if they ask for permission to have recreational sex: 1) they will be denied 2) after they are denied, they will be subject to scrutiny and increased relationship policing; 3) they will be stigmatized as immoral, and most likely broken up with. Thus, honesty doesn't meet their desires of having both a long-term partner and recreational sex with others.

The way cheating men see it, it's either cheat or don't cheat, but telling their partners they want sex outside the relationship, or telling their partners that they actually cheated, is viewed as a surefire way of achieving relationship termination. When men cheat for recreational sex -- not affairs -- they DO love their partners. If they didn't, they would break up with them.

Wouldn't it be less harmful to relationships if we became serial monogamists -- marrying two, three or four times as our sexual needs change?
Rather than marrying 20 times or more in one's life via serial monogamy, we can keep one emotional lover and just have casual, meaningless -- and hot -- sex with strangers. This gives us the long-term emotional stability we desire psychologically, alongside the hot, carnal sex we desire somatically. It makes much more sense than lying and cheating, or the difficulty of breaking up with a loved one simply because you want someone else's body for an hour.

Infidelity breaks up many marriages, but often it isn't the act of sex that's so upsetting -- it's the deception and lying, clearly problematic for the emotional intimacy you say men want. So cheating for sex may be "just about the sex" for him, but not for his partner.
Infidelity does not break marriages up; it is the unreasonable expectation that a marriage must restrict sex that breaks a marriage up. One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I've seen so many long-term relationships broken up simply because one had sex outside the relationship. But feeling victimized isn't a natural outcome of casual sex outside a relationship; it is a socialized victimhood. I'm not advocating cheating; I'm advocating open and equitable sexual relationships. When both in the couple desire this, when both realize that extra-dyadic sex makes their partner happy, and they therefore want their partner to have that sex, a couple will have moved a long ways toward facilitating emotional honesty, while simultaneously withering at jealousy scripts, which can be very damaging to a relationship. But if one can't achieve this with a partner that's hostile to the idea, cheating is the reasonable action.

Most of the men in your study were OK with sex on the side for them, but not their girlfriends. That seems unfair and incredibly selfish.
Monogamy is culturally compelled, so the decision has been made for us. How much of a chance would a man stand to have a second date if on the first date he said that he was interested in an open relationship? At the point men enter into relationships they, too, think they want monogamy. It's only after being in a relationship for months or years that they badly want sex with others. But by this point, they don't want to break up with their partners because they have long-standing love. Instead of chancing that love by asking for extradyadic sex, they cheat. If they don't get caught (and most don't) it's a rational choice.

But it is indeed selfish for men to want sex with others but not to want their partners to do the same. This however is not just a "man" thing. Women also cheat; they also lie about it; and they also want to be able to cheat without their partners doing the same. Monogamy is a problem for all sexes; it builds in an ownership script regardless of gender.

You say love is a "long-standing sense of security and comfort." So, wouldn't open relationships potentially pose a threat to that security since, even if couples play by their own sexual rules, there's always a chance one could end up preferring a new lover over one's partner?
People in open relationships structure their engagements as to reduce emotional intimacy. But, yes, of course it can happen. What I find from those in open relationships, however, is that once they have had sex with that person they fancied, they tend to get over them.

If we really want to prevent our lovers from developing the lust of others, or worse, emotional intimacy with others; if we really want to prevent men and women from cheating, we would be best to sex-segregate our jobs, our classrooms and social arenas, too. Emotional intimacy is the real threat to a relationship, not a one-off hour with a stranger from Craigslist. Ultimately, there are no guarantees that one's partner won't find love elsewhere. But controlling one's partner to prevent it only makes matters worse -- it makes them want to leave you. A better strategy is to be open, emotionally and perhaps sexually, too.

Chelsea Newton - Masculinity: why being male matters

2012-01-06T15:40:00.001-07:00

It's always interesting to me to read what women think about the very limited and limiting ideas of masculinity we adhere to and impose on boys in this culture. In the end, until such time that men become equal partners in raising children, it is mothers who teach boys what masculinity is from birth through school age, so it is women who can do the most to change the prevailing gender roles for boys.

~ Sexuality Matters is a new monthly column produced by graduate students studying human sexuality at Widener University, offering insights into issues related to human sexuality to encourage individuals to think about and discuss these issues.

SEXUALITY MATTERS: Masculinity: why being male matters
Published: Thursday, December 29, 2011

By Chelsea Newton

“Man up.” “You throw like a girl.” “Sissy!” These are common phrases boys and men encounter when they aren’t being ‘man enough,’ and being ‘man enough’ is important if you’re a male. Ask my eight-year-old brother, Zachary. He says, “If you don’t act man enough than nobody will want to play with you. All the other boys will be tough, and you’ll be the wimp.”

From the earliest days of their lives, males are socially conditioned to be masculine. Through series of implicit and explicit lessons on how to perform ideal masculinity, young males begin to develop a social framework for gender. This framework is created through many years of subtle prompting from family members, educators and peers on how to be a boy. Dads scold sons for running like girls; teachers guide boys away from dolls and toward trucks; peers have sophisticated notions of gender role expectations. We teach boys to repress their emotions, use masculine language and be strong competitors among other males. We bombard them with media images of strong, tough men who exude masculinity, and we expect them to live up to these expectations.

In creating such strict gender expectations for males, we have created a culture where being male means being tough and being straight. We have eliminated any possibility for expressions of masculinity outside of strong, aggressive and powerful. In part, I think we socialize boys this way to protect them. We know that boys who behave outside of the expected gender norm or act or appear effeminate will likely face adversity at the hands of their peers.

Another part of me can’t help but think that the reason we socialize boys to be masculine is to maintain the hierarchy of power and control among males. It’s a vicious cycle, don’t you think? We train our boys to be tough, aggressive and competitive so that they are socially accepted as male, but then we are shocked by violent male bullies who prey upon the weaker, softer boys. By teaching males to be aggressors, we are giving them the tools to maintain the systems of power and control, keeping males trapped in the confines of masculinity in the first place.

What if we expanded the social scripts of what it means to be a man and allowed males a broader range of gender expression? Imagine what it would be like if we focused less on toughening boys up and more on giving them tools for communication. What if we gave boys the language required to express their emotions, like we do so often with girls, rather than telling them to “quit crying” or “suck it up?” In doing this, we could alleviate a huge burden placed upon males to live up to the machismo that so few men can actually achieve. If we could eliminate the strict limitations of masculinity, men would be allowed to freely express emotions without fear that they may no longer be socially accepted or perceived as weak or damaged.

We are beginning to expand our notions of what it really means to be a man because the old, macho model does not encompass the wide range of masculinities that naturally exist among men. As I watch my brother navigate the complex world of masculinity, I am fearful that he will get trapped in the strict emotional limitations required to survive the male world, yet I am hopeful that changing notions of masculinity may lead him to a place of less rigid expectations. The ultimate gain from expanding the scripts of masculinity is to allow males to express their own masculinities without having to be shamed or ridiculed for not being “man enough.”

~ Chelsea Newton is a graduate student pursuing dual master’s degrees in social work and human sexuality education at Widener University.

New Study: Male and female personalities 'strikingly different'

2012-01-05T15:58:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure what to make of this study - it refutes an enormous body of research that makes the case for only minimal differences in male and female personalities. On the other hand, it looks good on paper.

I am skeptical about a couple of things - (1) they did not control for gender identity development (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional), which would have an impact on the self-reported gender-related traits - (2) none of the scales (see below) assess for gender identity in any way - all of the traits can be stereotypically applied to one gender or the other.

My sense is that they have identified conventional-stage gender differences, not sex-based personality differences.

The Study

Part of their argument in this study is that using any of the Big 5 models of personality testing is essentially useless. They argue (and I agree):

Personality traits can be organized in a hierarchical structure, from the broad and inclusive (e.g., extraversion) to the narrow and specific (e.g., gregariousness or excitement seeking).

They feel that the Big 5 models are too broad and inclusive, so they went for a more a narrow and specific analysis.They also make some arguments for a specific type of statistical analysis (multivariate vs. univariate) that would bore you to tears.

Here is the crucial part - they advocate a much more sensitive personality profile - I'm not familiar with this measure, so I am only able to present what they have written about it:

The 16PF 5^th Edition (16PF5) contains 185 items organized into 16 primary factor scales [67]. The 16PF5 contains 15 primary personality scales, a 15-item Reasoning scale, and a 12-item Impression Management Scale. The current analysis utilizes the 15 personality scales: Warmth (reserved vs. warm), Emotional Stability (reactive vs. emotionally stable), Dominance (deferential vs. dominant), Liveliness (serious vs. lively), Rule-Consciousness (expedient vs. rule-conscious), Social Boldness (shy vs. socially bold), Sensitivity (utilitarian vs. sensitive), Vigilance (trusting vs. vigilant), Abstractness (grounded vs. abstracted), Privateness (forthright vs. private), Apprehension (self-assured vs. apprehensive), Openness to Change (traditional vs. open to change), Self-Reliance (group-oriented vs. self-reliant), Perfectionism (tolerates disorder vs. perfectionistic), and Tension (relaxed vs. tense). The internal consistency of the 15 scales (α) ranged from .68 to .87 (see Table 1).

Table 1. Correlations and univariate effect sizes for observed scores.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029265.t001

The 15 primary scales can be further organized into 5 global scales: Extraversion (Warmth, Liveliness, Social Boldness, Privateness, and Self-Reliance), Anxiety (Emotional Stability, Vigilance, Apprehension, and Tension), Tough-Mindedness (Warmth, Sensitivity, Abstractedness, and Openness to Change), Independence (Dominance, Social Boldness, Vigilance, and Openness to Change) and Self-Control (Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, and Perfectionism. The global scales of the 16PF are similar to the 5 FFM domains; in particular, Extraversion overlaps considerably with FFM extraversion, Anxiety with Neuroticism, Self-Control with Conscientiousness, and Tough-Mindedness with (negative) Openness. The Independence scale, however, has no clear-cut analogue in the FFM [68].

It sounds like a useful scale if it is both reliable and verifiable.

The major differences identified between the sexes are "in Sensitivity, Warmth, and Apprehension (higher in females), and Emotional stability, Dominance, Rule-consciousness, and Vigilance (higher in males). These effects subsume the classic sex differences in instrumentality/expressiveness or dominance/nurturance (see [11])."

For those who want to "Cliff Notes" version of this study, here is a brief article that sensationalizes the outcomes. The link to the actual study is found below.

Male and female personalities 'strikingly different,' study finds
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus - seriously
Men and women share just 10pc of personality traits
Study has been branded "uninterpretable" by critic
GENDER plays a major part in determining people's personalities, with men and women sharing just 10 per cent of the same personality traits, European psychologists claimed.

In a study of 10,000 Americans, researchers from Italy and the UK said Wednesday that they found women were much more sensitive, warm and apprehensive, while men were more emotionally stable, dominant, vigilant and rule-conscious.

The study, published in the journal Public Library of Science One, claimed just 10 percent of the sexes' characteristics overlapped and that the finding may help explain why some professions are gender-dominated.

The researchers, led by Dr Marco Del Giudice from the University of Turin, wrote, "The results were striking: the effect size for global sex differences in personality was ... an extremely large effect by any psychological standard."

They added, "These effect sizes firmly place personality in the same category of other psychological constructs showing large, robust sex differences, such as aggression and vocational interests."

However, the study, which used 15 tests on participants aged between 15 and 92, was criticized for allowing the subjects to assess their own personality quirks.

Professor Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin, whose 2005 paper on the subject claimed that men and women largely shared characteristics, branded the new study "uninterpretable."

For those readers who would like the science to go with the popular press interpretation of the study, here is the abstract. Because it was published in PLoS ONE, it's open access and freely available to anyone who wants to read the whole thing.

The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality
Marco Del Giudice, Tom Booth, Paul Irwing
Abstract
Background
Sex differences in personality are believed to be comparatively small. However, research in this area has suffered from significant methodological limitations. We advance a set of guidelines for overcoming those limitations: (a) measure personality with a higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five; (b) estimate sex differences on latent factors; and (c) assess global sex differences with multivariate effect sizes. We then apply these guidelines to a large, representative adult sample, and obtain what is presently the best estimate of global sex differences in personality.
Methodology/Principal Findings
Personality measures were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire. Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). We found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest univariate ES, the global effect size was D = 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological standards.
Significance
The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.

Citation: Del Giudice M, Booth T, Irwing P (2012) The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29265. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029265

Shalom Auslander - My Hard-Core [Porn] Obsession

2012-01-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

This lengthy article from GQ takes a hard look at hard core porn - not the relatively mild stuff of Playboy, but the porn men (and more and more women) actually look at. What I have heard from men who use porn regularly is that the x-rated stuff eventually does not cut it anymore, so it gets more and more extreme into the xxx realm.

If you think you might have a problem with porn use and would like to learn more, check out Your Brain on Porn.

My Hard-Core Obsession
Threesomes, fishnets, dirty talk—those are the vanilla sorts of fantasies we admit to. Then there's the truly filthy porn we actually watch when we're alone. Shalom Auslander discovers that everyone has his guiltiest pleasure

by Shalom Auslander
November 2011

I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in New York, where the Old Testament was believed to be the literal word of the Almighty God and where we obeyed, as closely as we could, all 613 commandments elucidated within its holy pages. To us, God was not simply a concept, but a very real, everyday presence in our lives and our community. Which is to say, I know pornography.

Hard-core, graphic pornography. My father had it buried beneath his mattress. My brother had it hidden under his dresser. Pornography, like God Himself, was everywhere. Sex was dirty.

Pornography was worse.

The really bad news was this: God, my rabbis told me, could only grant me forgiveness for the sins I had committed against Him; sins I had committed against my fellow humans could only be forgiven by them personally. If they didn't forgive me, my rabbis said, when I died and went to heaven, God would cause me to suffer in the exact way I had caused them to suffer.

At the time, though only 14 years of age, I had already tired of the porn magazines I found in my house and decided it was time for full-motion video. I went to Times Square, where a group of women stood outside a porn shop, protesting and carrying placards. On one placard was a picture of a naked woman tied to a bed. She had a ball gag in her mouth and clamps on her nipples. I ducked into the store, spent every dollar I'd stolen from my father's wallet, hurried home, and hoped the videos wouldn't work.

They worked.

Fuck.

I wondered what was wrong with me. I wondered how many gang bangs I would have to suffer in heaven. Was it like an eye for an eye—a gang bang for a gang bang—or was it some sort of eternal gang bang that never ended? Would I be anally violated? Would I be spanked? Did they have ropes and ball gags and Ron Jeremy in heaven?

I decided to watch them again. If I did, and they didn't work for me, surely I would be forgiven.

I watched them again.

Fuck.

It has been a guilt-filled few decades.

A while back, I read that a pornographer named Max Hardcore, having been convicted of obscenity charges two years earlier, was serving time in a federal prison in Texas. A few Googles later, I learned that over the course of his career, Max had made hundreds of films, ranging from the mildly rough in his early years to the truly disturbing before his conviction. A few more Googles later and I was watching one of his scenes.

Ext.—Somewhere in California—Day. Open on wooden deck. A bright yellow couch. Max and his co-star appear. Max wears his trademark cowboy hat, white tube socks, and nothing else. The woman wears a ponytail and pink high heels. She lies supine on the couch, legs spread, her head tilted back over the armrest, mouth open. This video seemed to be about a 5 on the Max Hardcore 1-to-10 Scale of Fucked-Upitude. Still, it was shocking. It was outrageous.

I didn't want it to work.

It worked.

Fuck.

It wasn't any one thing they did, not one specific act or position, and I suppose with fantasy it never is; it's a triggering thought, a concept that runs through the mind at just that apical moment, and for me that triggering thought was this: I can't believe she's letting him do that.

I hoped the woman was okay. I hoped she was acting. I hoped she hadn't been forced. I wondered if the founders of Google knew they were contributing to an exploitative, misogynistic industry that lets strange men watch this woman do these strange things. I wondered if I could find her and apologize.

And I wondered, most of all, what the hell was wrong with me.

Feeling Our Words - Words Have Weight

2012-01-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

This is the Daily Om from a while back - like December 26 or something. But it's a good topic - one that I often spend time on with some of my male clients, often the ones going through or heading for a divorce.

I wonder if it goes back to the old "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me"? It's like guys learn to believe that words cannot cause pain, when sometimes a word uttered in anger or with hurtful intent can cause more damage than a rock in the side of the head.

But it's not just relational words that matter.

How we speak and the way we choose our words has an impact in all areas of our lives. Think about it, do you respect someone communicating with street language when he is planning your retirement future? Do you want to work for the boss who tells "dumb blonde" jokes? I don't know about you, but I don't.

Feeling Our Words
Words Have Weight

The more conscious we become, the more we deepen our relationship to the words we choose to use.
Words carry energy and this gives language its power and its potential to heal or hurt. Most of us can remember a time that someone sent a word our way, and it stuck with us. It may have been the first time we received a truly accurate compliment, or the time a friend or sibling called us a name, but either way it stuck. This experience reminds us that what we say has weight and power and that being conscious means being aware of how we use words.

The more conscious we become, the more we deepen our relationship to the words we use so that we speak from a place of actually feeling what we are saying. We begin to recognize that words are not abstract, disconnected entities used only to convey meaning; they are powerful transmitters of feeling. For the next few days, you might want to practice noticing how the words you say and hear affect your body and your emotional state. Notice how the different communication styles of the people in your life make you feel. Also, watch closely to see how your own words come out and what affect they have on the people around you.

You may notice that when we speak quickly, without thinking, or rush to get our ideas across, our words don't carry the same power as when we speak slowly and confidently, allowing those receiving our words time and space to take them in. When we carefully listen to others before we speak, our words have more integrity, and when we take time to center ourselves before speaking, we truly begin to harness the power of speech. Then our words can be intelligent messengers of healing and light, transmitting deep and positive feelings to those who receive them.

Documentary - Johnny Cash: The Last Great American

2011-12-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

I really did not become a Johnny Cash fan until the mid 1990s when I went to see Mark Lanegan (former singer for the Screaming Trees) as the opening act for Cash in Seattle. Lanegan had released two moody, melodic, post-grunge solo albums that hinted at the blues-tinged work he would do later, and I was willing to pay the steep ticket price to see him do a solo show (stripped down, mostly acoustic). Besides, we could always leave at intermission before Cash played. But we didn't.

This was the era when Cash had begun working with Rick Rubin on the 4-CD series for American Recordings that would become the foundation for Unearthed, a 5-CD retrospective released shortly after Cash died. The song the grabbed me from that first album was "The Beast in Me," written by Cash's former son-in-law, Nick Lowe.

This album, and those that followed, resurrected his career, especially with his cover of Nine Inch Nail's "Hurt." This song seemed so personal for him at the time - which was recorded (I believe) shortly before his wife June Carter died, and showing his own ill health. He died seven months later.

Back to the concert - what amazed me at that show was the incredible numbers of middle-aged people who had shown up with arms full of his records (remember vinyl?) hoping to get them signed. The other thing that amazed me at that show was that I knew most of his songs.

Anyway, I am not sure that Cash was the last great American - but he was a man who made his own way in the world - having started with nothing. He overcame drugs and alcohol, prison time, and producers who wanted to make him the next Elvis when he was more in tune with being the next Robert Johnson.

He eventually found June Carter Cash, his last wife, who he credited with his redemption. They often performed together in the last decades of his life.

I admired Cash - through all of the struggles in his life, he found meaning and purpose through his music, his love, and his faith. I respect that in any person.

This documentary is from Top Documentary Films.

Johnny Cash: The Last Great American

Documentary profiling the life of legendary country music star Johnny Cash, who died in 2003 shortly after completing the retrospective Unearthed, a five-CD set of the acoustic performances with which he resurrected his career in the last decade of his life, and after losing his wife, June Carter Cash.

This first major retrospective of Cash’s life, times and music features contributions from his daughter Rosanne Cash and son John Carter Cash, his longtime manager Lou Robin and fellow musicians including Little Richard, Cowboy Jack Clement, Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard and Elvis Costello.

Cash was the son of a poor sharecropper from Kingsland, Arkansas, who sang folk, spiritual and country songs to himself while picking cotton in the fields. In the 50s he signed to Sam Phillips’ Sun Records, scored his first hits and was part of the ‘Million Dollar Quartet’ with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.

Watch the full documentary now

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. - Hug the Monkey

2011-12-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

This was a good post from Rick Hanson at Huffington Post - a follow up to Pet the Lizard (about the reptile brain) and Feed the Mouse (about the mammalian brain). Here he talks about the primate brain - the part of our brain that needs to feel included and loved. Too many guys develop into lone wolves during the tough teen years, while before then most boys had very close friendships that were important.

Either out of competition (for girls, grades, a spot on the team) or fear of being thought homosexual, most guys stop having close male friends in middle school and high school.

But we need male friends. Too many of us end up with our female partner as our best and maybe only close friend, so if the relationship ends, we are alone and isolated.

Hanson is not addressing men in particular here, but the message is important for us to hear and learn how to make it a part of our lives. We all need to feel included and loved.

Hug the Monkey
Rick Hanson, Ph.D.
Neuropsychologist and author of Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time

Your brain evolved in three stages (to simplify a complex process):
Reptile -- Brainstem, focused on avoiding harm
Mammal -- Limbic system, focused on approaching rewards
Primate -- Cortex, focused on attaching to "us"
The first JOT in this series -- "Pet the Lizard" -- was about how to soothe the most ancient structures of the brain, the ones that manage the first emotion of all: fear. The next one -- "Feed the Mouse" -- addressed how to help early mammalian neural systems feel rewarded and fulfilled. This JOT is about weaving the sense of being included and loved into the primate cerebral cortex.

In ancient times, membership in a band was critical to survival: bands with strong teamwork usually beat bands with weak teamwork at getting resources, surviving, and passing on their genes.[1] Today, feeling understood, valued and cherished -- whether as a child or an adult, and with regard to another person or to a group -- may not be a life and death matter, but it certainly affects one's happiness and effectiveness.

Unfortunately, many of us have encountered significant shortfalls of incoming empathy, recognition and nurturance -- or experienced wounds of abandonment, rejection, abuse, dismissal or shaming.

Therefore, both to satisfy an innate human need for connection and to remedy old pain, it's important to "hug the monkey" (an admittedly goofy phrase) inside yourself and thus absorb in one form or another that most fundamental human sustenance: love.

How?
Try to routinely get a basic sense of feeling cared about. Check out this JOT for how to do this. Basically, imagine being in the presence of someone you know wishes you well. It could be a human, pet or spiritual being, and in your life today or from your past; the relationship doesn't need to be perfect as long as you matter to this person in some way, such as liking, appreciating or loving you. Then, based on the fact that this person does care about you, open to feeling cared about in your body, heart and mind. Savor this experience and really take it in. Help it sink down into you, all the way down into young, tender layers of your psyche... and really far down into those ancient primate parts in you and everyone else that desperately need to feel bonded with others, included in the band, recognized and valued.

Next, get a sense of your own caring nature. Think of someone you naturally care for, and explore what caring feels like in your body, emotions, thoughts and inclinations toward action. In the same way, explore related experiences, such as being warm, friendly, affectionate, nurturing, encouraging, protective, acknowledging or loving. Here too, really know and take in the sense of what it is like for you to "hug the monkey" in other people.

Now imagine a "caring committee" inside yourself that is involved with caring both for others and for yourself. My own committee includes the plump fairy godmother in Sleeping Beauty, an internalized sense of my parents and others who've loved me, spiritual teachers, Gandalf and tough-but-kind coaches on my journey through life.

Who (or what) is on your own committee? And how powerful is this committee in terms of caring for you compared to other forces inside your own mind? Since the brain is a giant network with many nodes, the psyche has many parts. These parts often coalesce into three well-known clusters: inner child, critical parent, nurturing parent. (Another way of describing these three clusters is: vulnerable self, attacker, protector.)

In most people, the inner nurturer-protector-encourager is much weaker than the inner critic-pusher-attacker. So we need to build up the caring committee by frequently taking in experiences of feeling cared about -- and then to call on and listen to this committee!

So -- get a sense of parts within you that want to feel seen, included, appreciated, wanted, respected, liked, cherished and loved. Everyone has these parts. They often feel young, soft or vulnerable. As you open to hearing from them, notice any dismissal of them, or minimizing of their needs, or even disdain or shaming. Ask your caring committee to stick up for these parts, and to tell them their longings are normal and healthy.

Imagine your caring committee soothing very young parts of yourself... praising and delighting in older parts of you... offering perspective and wisdom about tough experiences you've had... reminding you of your truly good qualities... pulling for the expression of the best in you... hugging you, hugging those soft longing parts inside you, giving them what they need... and feeling down to the soft furry little sweet monkey inside you and every human being, holding and loving and hugging it.

And meanwhile, your young, yearning, vulnerable or bruised parts -- and even your inner monkey -- can feel that they are receiving what they've always needed, what everyone needs: recognition, inclusion, respect and love.

Reference:
[1] Nowak, M. "Five rules for the evolution of cooperation." Science 314:1560-1563. 2006.

~ Rick Hanson, Ph.D. is a neuropsychologist and author of the bestselling Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom (in 20 languages) -- and Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time. Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom and Affiliate of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, he's taught at Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, and in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, NPR, Consumer Reports Health, and U.S. News and World Report and he has several audio programs. His blog - Just One Thing - has nearly 30,000 subscribers and suggests a simple practice each week that will bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. If you wish, you can subscribe to Just One Thing here.

McSweeney's - A Post Gender Normative Man Tries to Pick Up a Woman at a Bar

2011-12-29T08:34:00.000-07:00

This is a funny fiction piece by Jesse Eisenberg from McSweeney's Internet Tendency. Terri, the male speaker in this satire, is the archetype of everything that has gone wrong with the feminizing of men.

We don't have to throw out our testicles with the old, worn-out masculinity models - we can be strong, powerful men with tender hearts and emotional integrity. We need not become "Terri" to move beyond the restrictive models of traditional masculinity.

By the way, the image is from The Times of India.

A Post Gender Normative Man Tries to Pick Up a Woman at a Bar
BY Jesse Eisenberg
- - - -

[Originally published July 21, 2011.]
- - -

Hey, how’s it going? Mind if I sidle up? I saw you over here sitting alone and I thought, that’s fine. A woman should be able to self-sustain. In fact a lot of women are choosing to stay alone, what with advances in salary equitability and maternity extensions, and I think it’s an important and compelling trend.

I noticed that you were about to finish your drink and I was wondering if I could possibly watch you purchase another one. And, at the risk of being forward, if you could possibly purchase one for me.

What do you do? And before you answer, I’m not looking for a necessarily work-related response. I don’t think we have to be defined by our industrial pursuits, especially when they’re antiquated and hetero-normative. I curse my mother, who is an otherwise lovely human person, for not buying me an Easy-Bake Oven when I was younger. I grew up idolizing male thugs like Neil Armstrong and Jimmy Carter. And, yes, I work at ESPN, but I spend more time being spiritual and overcoming adversity, for example, than I do working for some faceless corporation. And if I were to find a mate, be it you or someone else here tonight, I would be more than happy to tell the proverbial “man” that I quit so I can raise our offspring with gender-neutral hobbies, while my biologically female partner continues to pursue her interests, be they industrial, recreational or yes, even sexual with another mate.

So…

Crazy news about the first female African head of state and Liberia’s sitting president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, huh? Announcing her candidacy for 2011 so soon! Wow. What do you think of her chances? I think she’s a shoo-in, but I’m admittedly a bit concerned about Prince Johnson making some last minute strides, especially amongst the Gio people in the Nimba region. I’m thinking of launching a letter writing campaign on behalf of EJ-S or at least cold calling potential Nimba voters over Skype.

Oh, how gauche of me! I’ve just been chattering away incessantly like some kind of boy or girl who talks a lot. I haven’t even properly introduced myself. Although, one often gets the uneasy sense that patriarchy dictates a learned and ultimately damaging order of events with men taking an unearned lead. My name is Terri, with a heart over the i, instead of a dot. I have a heart, is what that says, and I’m not afraid to wear it on my sleeve.

So what do you think? Would you like to take me up on my offer for you to buy me that drink?

If you would like to respond, that would be wonderful. Of course, if you would like to continue to sit here silently, staring at me with that powerful gaze, which both breaks gender constructs and also scares me a bit, that would be fine as well.

What’s that? I should go fuck myself? I agree! Men should be more self-generative!

Thank you for your astute assertion. Why should women exclusively have to bear the burden of childbirth, when men are biologically doomed to fear commitment? It’s counter-intuitive and socially degrading.

Ahh, that beer is refreshing! Thank you for throwing it in my face on this warm summer evening.

Okay, okay! I’m leaving!

Thank you for your blunt rejection of me. It takes a lot of courage, which you no doubt have in equal measure to any other human. Now, if you’ll excuse, I’m going to the bathroom where I’ll cry silently in a stall, questioning my body and texting my mom, but for now, I thank you for your time, which was equal to mine.

Justin Maman's Tao to Earth™ Life Coaching

2011-12-29T05:42:00.000-07:00

My friend Justin Maman has launched his life coaching business - Tao to Earth™ Life Coaching - he specializes in work with men, so I wanted to give him a shout-out.

Here is a little description of his services:

Tao to Earth™ offers a variety of personal growth opportunities and support services for men. The ways in which we can relate to one another are unlimited, and range from our shared biology as males to our widely varied sexual identities and personal backgrounds. Tao to Earth's committed intention is to create a space where no condition is left unexplored and no territory left undiscovered. Life is a journey along which many destinations are visited. The journey begins and ends with our selves.

In our programs, some of the areas we will explore are:

Manhood: What does it mean to be a man? What constitutes a man? What differentiates a man from a boy?

Friendship: What is true friendship? Who are our true friends? How can we become true friends to others?

Work: What concepts and beliefs do we hold around work? What is the purpose of work? What kind of work are men supposed to do?

Money: What relationship do we have with and to money? How does a man's income reflect his self worth? What values do we hold in life as men?

Romance: How does romantic attraction emerge? What do we look for in a partner? What roles do we play romantically as men? How do romantic relationships impact and influence our lives as men?

Sexuality: What is sexuality? How do we express ourselves sexually? What feelings and assumptions around sexuality do we hold as men?

Health: What is health? What are the different dimensions of health? What aspects of health do we consider important as men? How can we approach our health in a healthy way?

Family: How significant is our relationship with our families of origin as men? What roles do our relationships with our mothers and fathers play in our lives today? How can we improve our lives by improving our relationship with our families?

Fatherhood: What is a father? What responsibilities does a father have to his child(ren)? What kind of father did we grow up having? What kind of father do we perceive ourselves to be currently or do we envision ourselves becoming? What values do we want to pass on to our children as fathers?

Purpose: What purpose does our life serve as men? What legacy do we intend to leave behind us when we pass away? What do we actively contribute on a daily basis for which no reward is consciously expected?

Spirituality: How do we perceive the mystery of life and the vastness of the universe? How do we resolve that which we cannot explain? What is the force which animates life? Who are we, really?

While these are some of the core issues which will be explored, many others may emerge. These discoveries profoundly benefit all those involved in discussion and often catalyze significant life transformation.

David Mayeda - The Sociology of MMA: Hegemonic Masculinity Unleashed

2011-12-28T05:59:00.001-07:00

The other day, I posted an article about how male MMA fighters can suppress fear, anxiety, and most other emotions, as well as compassion and empathy. The author of that article spent two years interviewing more than 100 MMA fighters about how they manage fear - here are some of the conclusions:

"Putting on a convincing manhood act requires more than using language and the body; it also requires emotion work. By suppressing fear, empathy, pain, and shame and evoking confidence and pride, males signify their alleged possession of masculine selves," Vaccaro said.

"By signifying masculine selves through evoking fear and shame in others, such men are likely to more easily secure others' deference and accrue rewards and status. Managing emotional manhood, whether it occurs in a locker room or boardroom, at home or the Oval Office, likely plays a key role in maintaining unequal social arrangements."

This would seem to lead naturally to the analysis of MMA culture offered by David Mayeda at the Sociology in Focus blog.

However, I want to make a disclaimer and admission. I watch UFC from time to time and enjoy the "sport" of mixed martial arts. I do not believe that all men who participate in this sport are violent toward women or violent in general.

That said, the sport likely appeals to violent men in that it provides a socially acceptable venue for them to act out their tendencies. And this may be where the study mentioned above becomes relevant - some men may not leave their suppressed empathy in the ring or the gym. It's likely that some men adopt that social role in all areas of their lives, which makes violence toward women (and others) much more likely.

Sociology of MMA: Hegemonic Masculinity Unleashed
December 21, 2011

Imagine if it was common place for prominent members of a billion dollar company to use glaringly sexist language in public. That would be crazy, right? Except over the last few months this is exactly what we’ve seen from the Mixed Martial Arts league called the UFC. In this post David Mayeda uses the sociological concept of hegemonic masculinity to help us understand what is going on with the men of the UFC.

In a sport so male driven, it is hardly surprising that some Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) athletes publicly express opinions reflecting a violent male dominance. Recently, MMA fighter Miguel Torres tweeted: “If a rape van was called a surprise van more women wouldn’t mind going for rides in them. Everyone likes surprises” (December 7, 2011). Torres was subsequently fired by UFC President, Dana White.

Torres’s comment came off the heels of other controversial comments made at a UFC press conference, former light heavyweight UFC champ, Rashad Evans, taunted his future opponent, Phil Davis, by saying, “I’m going to put my hands on you worse than that dude on those kids at Penn State,” referencing former Penn State assistant football coach, Jerry Sandusky, who faces 40 counts related to the sexual assault of children.

And back in November, UFC star, Forrest Griffin, tweeted, “Rape is the new missionary.” What on earth is going on here? The answer, for sociologists lies within an idea called “hegemonic masculinity.”

Hegemonic masculinity helps to outline the plurality of masculinities existing and shifting within a culture’s hierarchal structure. Which is a fancy way of saying that men within a given culture engage in a variety of practices which give them masculine currency and power over other men and women. These practices may include (among other behaviors) taking risks, dominating other men and/or women, flaunting wealth, or showcasing athleticism.

Additionally, hegemonic masculinity requires men to police one another, that is, punish and stigmatize men who engage in so-called feminine behaviors. And perhaps it also goes without saying that hegemonic masculinity acknowledges the general degradation women, girls, and so-called feminine behaviors (see Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005, for a thorough discussion). We can find nearly countless examples of hegemonic masculinity in sports. The world of MMA is no exception.

As I discussed previously, MMA’s most prominent organization is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). One clear example of hegemonic masculinity in this particular organization (and to a lesser degree the entire MMA industry) is the absence of female fighters. Women in the UFC when spotlighted, instead serve as ring card “girls.” Or, as seen in the picture above of five prominent MMA athletes, women emphasizing their feminine features may serve as sexualized visuals alongside the male fighters for the predominantly male crowd.

Returning to the concept of hegemonic masculinity, what these comments illustrate are first, the degradation of women. Torres and Griffin both make light of sexual assault in a type of locker room-based dialogue now widely disseminated via the internet. Secondly, the comments by Evans demonstrate how sexual assault victims can be used symbolically to denigrate others. Specifically, Evans works to disparage his opponent (Davis) by feminizing him – by comparing him to boys who (allegedly) have been sexually molested.

This recent rash of comments is an indication that hegemonic masculinity still pervades our society and that male privilege is perpetuated in sporting institutions. Even though males are in conflict with one another, what we see is a culture that depreciates women and all considered feminine. Whether or not sanctions against these athletes will change MMA’s hegemonically masculine culture remains to be seen, but in an organization where men are paid to engage in violent conflict, such change is highly unlikely.

Dig Deeper:
Thinking about the concept of hegemonic masculinity, identify other institutions in society where men (or boys) compete with and put down one another by feminizing each other.
What behaviors do you notice males engage in to display their masculine superiority over each other and over females? Explain how these behaviors change in different situations.
How can sporting institutions change so that they are more egalitarian along gender lines and alter their current hegemonically masculine culture?
Reference: Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept. Gender and Society, 19 (6), 829–859. DOI: 10.1177/0891243205278639.

Posted by David Mayeda

Mixed Martial Arts Fighters Manage Fear While Exhibiting Confidence

2011-12-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is interesting. Dr. Christian A. Vaccaro, lead author on this study, and his colleagues call the ability to feel fear and show confidence "managing emotional manhood," which they see as both an interactional strategy for managing emotion and a means for conveying a social identity to others.

I wonder if this is something specific to MMA or if athletes in other sports (not just combat sports) also have this skill or capability. And I wonder how these men score on emotional skills outside of the ring.

Exploring Men's Ability To Manage Fear In Ways That Allow Them To Exhibit Confidence
An Indiana University of Pennsylvania sociologist's study of mixed martial arts competitors found that these men have unique ways of managing fear that actually allow them to exhibit confidence.

This ability, which Dr. Christian A. Vaccaro and colleagues call "managing emotional manhood," is both an interactional strategy for managing emotion and a means for conveying a social identity to others. The study finds that successful management of fear by men in contact sports such as mixed martial arts may "create an emotional orientation that primes men to subordinate and harm others."

Vaccaro's co-authored article, "Managing Emotional Manhood: Fighting and Fostering Fear in Mixed Martial Arts" appears in the December 2011 issue of the American Sociological Association's Social Psychology Quarterly.

"Putting on a convincing manhood act requires more than using language and the body; it also requires emotion work. By suppressing fear, empathy, pain, and shame and evoking confidence and pride, males signify their alleged possession of masculine selves," Vaccaro said.

"By signifying masculine selves through evoking fear and shame in others, such men are likely to more easily secure others' deference and accrue rewards and status. Managing emotional manhood, whether it occurs in a locker room or boardroom, at home or the Oval Office, likely plays a key role in maintaining unequal social arrangements."

Vaccaro's research included two years of fieldwork and interviews with more than 100 mixed martial arts fighters, analyzing how they managed fear and adopted intimidating personas to evoke fear in opponents.

"We conceptualize this process as 'managing emotional manhood,' which refers to emotion management that signifies, in the dramaturgical sense, masculine selves," Vaccaro said.

"Whereas most scholarship on gendered emotion work focuses on how women manage emotions at work and home in ways that reinforce their subordination, we show how men do emotion work aimed at facilitating domination," he continued.

Reference:

American Sociological Association. (2011, December 25). "Exploring Men's Ability To Manage Fear In Ways That Allow Them To Exhibit Confidence." Medical News Today. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/239183.php.

Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D. - 10 Ways to Get and Give Emotional Support

2011-12-24T18:07:00.001-07:00

Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D., posted this cool little article on getting and giving emotional support, a skill that all men are capable of but few of us are ever taught we we grow up. Among the men I talk to who are getting or are divorced, a lack of emotional support seems to be one of the most common complaints. These men have no problem learning the skills, so it's sad to know that we are not teaching men this stuff as they grow up.

In the end, all ten of these skills come down to compassion and empathy for the people we love in our lives - how hard is that?

10 Ways to Get and Give Emotional Support
Some tips to help you nourish each other's hearts.
Published on December 16, 2011 by Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D. in Emotional Fitness

Emotional support comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. Having the desire and ability to be giving to your partner is far more important than doing it exactly right. Here are some tips to help you nourish each other's hearts.

1. Touch each other often. Most people are touch starved. Holding hands, walking arm in arm and cuddling on the couch are just some of the simple ways to share this very powerful experience.

2. Be respectful of your partner's feelings. If the one you love is dealing with a loss or a disappointment let him or her know that you are available to talk. Also, letting your partner have the space he or she needs to process feelings is a way of showing that you care.

3. Give small gifts just because. Being surprised every once in a while helps to keep the romance alive and lets your mate know you think he or she is something special.

4. Compliment your partner in front of other people. Saying nice things about your mate in the presence of friends or associates is one of the most supportive things you can do. Not only will it make your partner feel good about themselves, it will make him or her feel great about you.

5. Disagree with your partner in a kind and loving way. Never judge or reject your mates ideas or desires without first considering them. If you have a difference of opinion that's fine, as long as you express it with kindness.

6. Say "I love you". Actually hearing it is important to many people. Sure, there are many ways you show your love, but actually saying the three little words will reassure your partner.

7. Never ignore your loved one's presence. There is nothing more hurtful than being treated like you don't exist. Even if you're angry at the moment, it's no reason to be rude to the person who loves you. Stop and think what life would be like if your sweetheart wasn't with you.

8. Listen deeply and take in what your partner is saying. Knowing that you are being heard is very nurturing. It is also the best way to heal old wounds and prevent misunderstandings. Paraphrasing what your partner has said is a great way to let him or her know you are tuned in.

9. Speak in a loving tone and remember to smile. Almost half of communication is tonal and a little more than half is visual. Speaking in a sincere and loving tone will let your loved one know you are coming from a caring place.

10. If your partner is having a rough time, pull out all the stops. Don't hold back on helping or minimize your mate's troubles. Having the person you love by your side when things are rocky is a true gift.

Emotional support is about helping to lift someone to higher ground so he or she can see their way through the difficulty. Having someone to rely on when the chips are down is one of the best parts of being in a relationship.

Related Articles

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Learning Through Pleasure—How A Dating Buddy Can Transform Your Search For Love
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Dr. Helen Fisher: 4 Personality Types in Men

2011-12-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

Helen Fisher, PhD, is a Biological Anthropologist who has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love. She has identified four basic personality types that correspond to chemical system dominance (dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, estrogen).

These are the ways she defines the four types:

EXPLORERS (dopamine)

Traits: Seek novelty, risk taking, spontaneity, energy, curiosity, creativity, optimism, enthusiasm, flexibility, spontaneous generosity, autonomy, liberal, untraditional, irreverent, get bored easily, adaptable, many interests.

Words: 'Adventure' is the word most often used by Explorers as they describe themselves and what they are looking for in a mate. The other nine of their top ten most-used words (in descending order) are: venture, spontaneity/ spontaneous, energy, new, fun, travelling, outgoing, passion and active.

Friends: Adventurers

Doodles: Modern, off centre, open, active.

Foods: Spicy Foods: Mexican, Indian, Barbecue. Exotic foods: Indonesian, Ethiopian. Sugary foods: candy, chocolate. The body changes protein into tyrosine and then dopamine. The sources for building blocks for dopamine include: Apples, beets, blue-green algae, celery, chicken, cucumber, fish, leafy green vegetables, honey, cheese, sweet peppers, tofu, watermelon, almonds, avocados, bananas, dairy products, lima beans, pumpkin seeds, and sesame seeds. Alcohol, sugar and caffeine all reduce dopamine. If I were cooking a meal for a group of Explorers I would try to make it somewhat exotic, highly flavoured, untraditional, colourful and varied. I might cook Moroccan beef stew, with couscous, Indian relishes, yogurt, and dark chocolate, figs and candied fruits for desert, with plenty of exotic liquors.

Exercise: Dangerous, novel, exciting things, like mountain climbing, sky diving, car racing, scuba diving; and action oriented things like sailing, swimming, kayaking and running.

Dieting: Explorers may adopt crazy diets, such as 'just carrots,' or 'just meat,' or the 'drinking man’s diet'.

Income: Highest of the four groups

Education: Most of the four groups

**********

BUILDERS (serotonin)

Traits: Cautious but not fearful, calm, social, popular, networking, conventional, traditional, guardians, managerial, loyal, persistent, literal, fact oriented, fond of rules and schedules, orderly, conscientious, community oriented.

Words: 'Family' is the most-used word by Builders. Following this: honesty, caring, moral/morals, respect, loyal, trust, values, loving and trustworthy.  Friends: Social crowd.

Doodles: Repetitive, grids.

Food: Rice, potatoes, pasta, breads, crackers, cereal and fruit, all of which produce serotonin. Builders probably also like to eat turkey and other poultry, milk, cottage cheese, eggs and nuts, especially almonds. All loaded with tryptophan, the building block of serotonin. Other serotonin promoting foods include: avocados, bananas, eggplant, pineapples, plums, tomatoes and walnuts. For dessert, cakes and pies and lots of milk fats. If I were cooking a meal for Builders I would make it very conventional, such as roast chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, and cake.

Exercise: Social sports, such as golf which is relaxing, meticulous and social; also weekend baseball, basketball, volleyball.

Dieting: They may go for the whole grains diet, giving up meat and fats. They may meticulously research different diets too. And they may count calories.

**********

DIRECTORS (testosterone)

Traits: Direct, decisive, focused, analytical, logical, tough-minded, exacting, emotionally-contained and good at strategic thinking. They get to the point. Many are bold and competitive. They excel at figuring out machines, mathematical formulae or other rule-based systems. Many are good at understanding the structure of music.

Words: Intelligent and intelligence together top the list of words used by Directors. Also intellectual, debate, geek, nerd/nerdy, ambition/ ambitious, driven, politics, challenge/challenging and real.

Friends: Intellectuals

Doodles: Geometric: squares, triangles, arrows.

Foods: Usually raise testosterone: beef, pork, beef liver, lamb, turkey, chicken, garlic and olive oil. Nuts also raise testosterone levels, particularly peanuts and peanut butter. They probably also gravitate to Oysters because these are a source of zinc (which is used to make testosterone), as well as beans which also give a powerful shot of zinc, including green beans, lima beans and baked beans. Directors probably also particularly like eggs, as the proteins in eggs allow the adrenal glands to keep levels of bodily testosterone steady too. Broccoli, cabbage and sprouts also seem to enhance levels of testosterone. Orange juice can trigger testosterone. Directors should probably eat less meat, or supplement their diet with non-animal proteins, such as beans, brown rice, seeds, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables. If I were cooking a meal for Directors, I might do a mixed grill of three kinds of meats, baked beans, oysters Rockefeller and garlic bread. For desert I might serve ice cream sundaes.

Exercise: Competitive and aggressive sports, such as tennis; body building (which drives up testosterone)

Dieting: Directors may go 'cold turkey', and simply stop eating certain foods. They are highly disciplined.

**********

NEGOTIATORS (estrogen)

Traits: See the big picture, they connect disparate facts to think contextually and holistically, 'web thinking', imaginative, superior verbal skills and people skills, excel at reading postures, gestures, facial expressions and tones of voice, 'executive social skills', intuitive, sympathetic, nurturing, mentally flexible, agreeable, idealistic, altruistic and emotionally expressive.

Words: 'Passion' and 'passionate', also real, heart, kind/kindness, sensitive, read/reader, sweet, learning.

Friends: Activists

Doodles: Hearts, flowers, faces, animals.

Foods: Salads, fruits, vegetables, tofu. Less meat. I suspect negotiators are the most likely to be vegetarians and vegans. Estrogenic foods include: Soy beans, apples, alfalfa, cherries, potatoes, rice, wheat and yams, flax, fish oil, tofu, bean sprouts, meat, apples, barley, beets, carrots, cherries, chickpeas, black-eyed peas, cucumbers, dairy foods, dates, eggs, eggplant, liquorice, oats, olive oil, olives, papaya, peas, peppers, plums, pomegranates, pumpkins, red beans, rhubarb, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and tomatoes. Negotiators should probably eat more meat. If I were cooking a meal for Negotiators, I might make a big salad with lettuce, tomatoes, chickpeas, cucumbers, apples, onions and peppers, along with some chicken salad and some eggplant. Dessert might be fresh fruit and an array of very sweet cookies.

Exercise: Yoga, stretching, palates, walking, jogging

Dieting: Salads, fruits, vegetables, grains, heavy on 'health foods'.

Back in 2010, Man of the House posted a video of her talking about the four types in relation to men. If you go the site, you can also read the transcript of her talk.

NOTE: Try to to ignore her hetero-normative perspectives, if you can. She says a man's natural place is beside a woman, but that's nonsense - men can love men, women can love women, and in general we all can love whoever it is that makes our hearts and groins vibrate in attraction.

Dr. Helen Fisher: 4 Personality Types in Men
November 05, 2010, By Dr. Helen Fisher

Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropologist, has conducted extensive research and written five books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, marriage, gender differences in the brain and how your personality type shapes who you are and who you love.

Transcript: Helen: Hi, I’m Helen Fisher, and just to answer one question today, what is the natural place for a man? In three words, beside a women. People have long asked me, “Is monogamy natural?” In fact, I’ve studied it for 30 years, and monogamy? Yes, it is natural. We are a monogamous species. We are creatures that pair up to rear our young. Monogamy. And as a matter of fact, this makes us rather unusual in the animal kingdom. Ninety-seven percent of mammals do no pair up to rear their young, only a few do. Beavers do, wolves do, the tiny little African antelope called the dik-dik does and indeed, human beings do, men and women do.

Read more.

She has other videos from this site, all of them less than 5 minutes it seems:

Curricula on men and masculinities: An XY collection

2011-12-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

XY: Men, Masculinities and Gender Politics has posted a collection of course outlines and assorted materials from university classes in men and masculinities studies. There are some useful resources and ideas for further reading. Be sure to also check out the link to other resources (unfortunately, the articles are not linked to and many will require a university library for access).

Curricula on men and masculinities: An XY collection
Thu, 22 Dec 2011

Courses focused on men, masculinities, and gender are an increasingly common element of university curricula in such areas as Sociology, History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Literature. Here, we have begun to collect examples of the guides to or outlines of particular courses. You are most welcome to add your courses.
Courses and subjects whose contents are available below are as follows:
Men and Masculinities (SOC350) (Michael Flood, University of Wollongong, 2011)
Special Topics: Masculinities (Mike Murphy, University of Illinois, 2011)
Global Masculinities (Mike Murphy, Washington University in St. Louis—University College, 2006)
Cultures of Masculinity (Anna Hickey-Moody, University of Sydney, 2010)
Sociology of Masculinities and Manhood (Sharon Bird, Iowa State University, 2005)
Sociology of Men and Masculinity (Stephen Kulis, Arizona State University, 2001)
Contested Masculinities (Amanda Udis-Kessler, Grinnell College, 2002)
Critical Approaches to Masculinities (Scott Kiesling, University of Pittsburgh, 2004)
Men and Gender Politics (Tristan Bridges)
See below for the collection. For academic discussions of scholarship on men, masculinities, and gender, see the references listed here.

Attachment Size
SOC350 Subject Outline 2011.pdf 375.89 KB
Bird, Sociology of Masculinities 05.pdf 271.29 KB
Cultures of Masculinity - USyd 2010.pdf 764.11 KB
Global Masculinities - Murphy, Fall 06.pdf 245.42 KB
Kiesling, Mascul syllabus 2004.pdf 146.7 KB
Kulis, Sociology of Men and Masculinity 01.pdf 132.31 KB
Murphy, Syll-Masc (Spg 11).pdf 141.14 KB
Udis-Kessler, Soc 295-01 Contested Masculinities.pdf 135.83 KB

Attachment	Size
SOC350 Subject Outline 2011.pdf	375.89 KB
Bird, Sociology of Masculinities 05.pdf	271.29 KB
Cultures of Masculinity - USyd 2010.pdf	764.11 KB
Global Masculinities - Murphy, Fall 06.pdf	245.42 KB
Kiesling, Mascul syllabus 2004.pdf	146.7 KB
Kulis, Sociology of Men and Masculinity 01.pdf	132.31 KB
Murphy, Syll-Masc (Spg 11).pdf	141.14 KB
Udis-Kessler, Soc 295-01 Contested Masculinities.pdf	135.83 KB

The Good Men Project - New CDC Study on Sexual Assault: Preteen Boys and Adolescent Girls are Most at Risk

2011-12-21T10:35:00.000-07:00

Over at the Good men Project, Hugo Schwyzer offers a brief review of the new CDC report on sexual assault - the numbers are not good, especially for adolescent boys and girls.

New CDC Study on Sexual Assault: Preteen Boys and Adolescent Girls are Most at Risk
December 14, 2011 By Hugo Schwyzer
Striking results as to the prevalence of sexual violence for both males and females
The CDC released its latest survey on rape and intimate partner violence today, and the news is troubling. According to the latest government data, nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped or experienced attempted rape by men, while 1 in 4 reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. Linda Degutis, the director of the study told the New York Times that the results were “striking” and “surprising.” “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population”, she said.

The study also makes it clear that men can be victims too. 1 in 71 men reported having been raped – many when they were small boys. 1 in 7 had been physically battered by a lover or spouse. Interestingly, for the first time a national survey of male victims of rape distinguished being “forced to penetrate” a male or female abuser from other forms of sexual assault.

And among males it is little boys, not adults or teens, who are at the greatest risk. 28% of male victims reported that they were raped when they were 10 or younger, while only 12% of female victims were sexually assaulted by that age. For boys, the most vulnerable years seem to be between 6-10, while for girls, the most statistically dangerous period of their lives coincides with puberty. This doesn’t mean that preteen girls aren’t victimized; it does mean that the onset of adolescence offers much statisical greater protection for boys than it does for their sisters.

Though men remain the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of rape, the new research makes it more evident than ever that men are also its victims. Despite recent claims about a proliferation of female rapists, the CDC found that “male rape victims and male victims of non-contact unwanted sexual experiences reported predominantly male perpetrators.” Close to 50% of all stalking victimizations that men experienced were also perpetrated by men.

It can’t be said often enough: men are victims too. Male suffering in the aftermath of sexual assault is as real and profound as what women endure. But at the same time, there’s no point in denying the realities that this study drives home: men are the primary perpetrators of sexual violence, particularly against preteen boys and adolescent girls. For the sake of the sons and daughters who are equally deserving of our protection, let’s design prevention programs accordingly.

On Being A Man (1989) Robert Bly & Michael Meade

2011-12-20T12:31:00.001-07:00

I was never a fan of the mythopoetic men's movement - but many men have found meaning in the use of Jungian archetypes and retro-romantic notions of masculinity embraced and espoused by folks like Robert Bly and Michael Meade, among others (like Moore and Gillette).

There's even drumming in this hour-long series of videos (6 in total). It's the stereotype that has been so often ridiculed.

On Being A Man (1989) Robert Bly and Michael Meade

USED WITH PERMISSION FOR EDUCATION AND NON-PROFIT

A very rare Video, very hard to find so we decided to upload for your entertainment.

What does it mean to be a man today? How have men's roles changed in the wake of the woman's movement? What has been gained? What has been lost?

Join poet Robert Bly, storyteller Michael Meade and an audience of 30 Twin Cities men in an hour of interaction, imagery and introspection.

Can Emotional Competence be Learned?

2011-12-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

The folks at GoodTherapy.org posted this research review that suggests emotional competence (EC), the ability to understand, manage, express and use emotions, is a skill that can be learned.This is relevant to men because we are often accused - wrongly, in some instances - of lacking emotional competence. However, it is also true that men were not taught as we grew up how to be emotionally aware and competent, so we may have skill building to do. The good news is that we can learn those skills.

The better news is that we are born with everything we need to develop as emotionally competent people - we simply need to raise our boys to be comfortable with their feelings and help them to develop the empathy skills that seem to be hard-wired into our nature.

Can Emotional Competence be Learned?
November 25th, 2011

According to a new study, emotional competence (EC), the ability to understand, manage, express and use emotions, is a skill that can be learned. There are three levels of EC that affect every area of one’s life, knowledge, focus and ability. Knowledge is how much an individual understands about their own emotions. Focus is how well someone is able to manage their emotions and emotional responses. And Ability refers to how a person uses their emotional knowledge to cope with a specific situation in order to achieve a desired outcome. “At a psychological level, higher trait EC is associated with greater well-being and higher self-esteem as well as a lower risk to develop psychological disorders,” said Delphine Nelis of the Department of Psychology at the University of Liege in Belgium, and lead author of the study. “Socially, higher ability–trait EC is related to better social and marital relationships and, all things being equal, to a greater likelihood of being chosen as a romantic partner. Workwise, higher trait EC is associated with greater academic achievement and higher ability–trait EC is associated with higher job performance,” said Nelis. “Ability–Trait EC is also linked to the likelihood of adopting unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, excessive drinking, and reckless driving.”

Because of the deleterious consequences poor EC can have, Nelis wanted to know if adults could improve their EC, and if so, what implications that would have on their lives. “To this end, we designed an 18-hour intervention that focused on teaching theoretical knowledge about emotions and on training participants to apply specific emotional skills in their everyday lives,” said Nelis. “Sessions were centered on the four core emotional competencies: identification, understanding, regulation, and utilization.” Nelis found that the participants saw significant long-term improvement in EC as a result of the sessions. “Six months after the intervention, participants in the training group were more extroverted, more agreeable, and less neurotic. We also showed that the development of EC paired with positive changes in psychological well-being, subjective health, quality of social relationship, and work success.” Nelis added, “These findings bring hope to people who have not had the opportunity to develop their EC as children. With motivation, effort, and guidance, such individuals can still improve their EC later in life, and thereby enhance their adjustment in many domains of life.”

Reference:
Nelis, Delphine, Ilios Kotsou, Jordi Quoidbach, Michel Hansenne, Fanny Weytens, Pauline Dupuis, and Moira Mikolajczak. “Increasing Emotional Competence Improves Psychological and Physical Well-being, Social Relationships, and Employability.” Emotion 11.2 (2011): 354-66. Print.

Violent video games alter brain function in young men

2011-12-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

In June of 2011 the Supreme Court ruled that violent video games are protected by free speech - prohibiting California from enacting laws that would limit or prohibit sales of those games to people under the age of 18. In that same session, the Justices ruled that obscenity (whatever that means) is not protected by the First Amendment. So violence is good, nudity is bad. Whatever, dudes.

Part of the issue in protecting the videos games was a lack of evidence that they are harmful. But things have changed since then. Now there is evidence that these games change the brains of the (mostly) young men who play them.

Violent video games alter brain function in young men
Posted On: November 30, 2011

CHICAGO – A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analysis of long-term effects of violent video game play on the brain has found changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men after one week of game play. The results of the study were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
The controversy over whether or not violent video games are potentially harmful to users has raged for many years, making it as far as the Supreme Court in 2010. But there has been little scientific evidence demonstrating that the games have a prolonged negative neurological effect.

"For the first time, we have found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed less activation in certain frontal brain regions following a week of playing violent video games at home," said Yang Wang, M.D., assistant research professor in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "These brain regions are important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior."

For the study, 22 healthy adult males, age 18 to 29, with low past exposure to violent video games were randomly assigned to two groups of 11. Members of the first group were instructed to play a shooting video game for 10 hours at home for one week and refrain from playing the following week. The second group did not play a violent video game at all during the two-week period.

Each of the 22 men underwent fMRI at the beginning of the study, with follow-up exams at one and two weeks. During fMRI, the participants completed an emotional interference task, pressing buttons according to the color of visually presented words. Words indicating violent actions were interspersed among nonviolent action words. In addition, the participants completed a cognitive inhibition counting task.

The results showed that after one week of violent game play, the video game group members showed less activation in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting task, compared to their baseline results and the results of the control group after one week. After the second week without game play, the changes to the executive regions of the brain were diminished.

"These findings indicate that violent video game play has a long-term effect on brain functioning," Dr. Wang said.
Source: Radiological Society of North America

AAUW Dialog - Sexual Harassment Is an Issue for Boys, Too

2011-12-17T18:34:00.002-07:00

Nice to see this article from the AAUW blog. It often goes unrecognized that boys also suffer from sexual harassment, so it's nice to see a women's organization talking about that reality.

The sobering fact is that only 5% of boys who are harassed or abused will report it (only 12% of girls who are harassed report it). This needs to change - boys need to know that it is safe to report harassment and abuse.

Sexual Harassment Is an Issue for Boys, Too
December 12, 2011, by erinprangley

Sexual harassment disproportionately affects girls. The AAUW report Crossing the Line: Sexual Harassment at School empowers girls to understand that there are institutional biases against them because they are girls and that these biases make them more susceptible to harassment and the detrimental effects that flow from those experiences. But one area where girls fare slightly better than boys is in their willingness to report harassment. Of those surveyed for Crossing the Line, only 12 percent of girls who experienced sexual harassment reported it. But boys who experienced sexual harassment at school were even less likely to report it — just 5 percent did so.

That finding weighs heavily on me as I continue to hear horrific stories coming from Penn State, where prosecutors say an 11-year-old boy was molested (a form of sexual harassment and violence that is covered under Title IX) and several others were also sexually assaulted. He and the other alleged victims were then shamed by Penn State students, alumni, celebrities, and even their own peers, all because they had the courage to speak up. Unfortunately, that boy — whom the grand jury calls Victim One and is now a teenager — felt he had no choice but to leave school because of the continued victimization — and yes, continued sexual harassment — by his peers in the aftermath of reporting sexual abuse by a popular football coach.

In an open letter to this boy, Tyler Perry, a renowned celebrity and role model for thousands of young people, wrote eloquently about the courage of this young victim, who was the first to come forward. Perry also shared his own tragic story of abuse, which was made even more tragic by his inability to find help from anyone.

“You may have to go through with that trial, and you may feel all alone when you’re on that witness stand, but just know that there are millions of young boys and grown men who are standing with you — including me,” Perry wrote. “If every man who has ever been molested would speak up, you would see that we’re all around you. You may not know all of our faces and names, but my prayer is that you feel our strength holding you up. You will get through this; you’ve already endured the worst part at age 11. Now fight on, my young friend, fight on! We are all with you.”

AAUW works hard to translate these stories into data that can be used to help protect children in the future. Earlier this month, I met with Senate staff members who are pushing forward with two pieces of legislation: the Safe Schools Improvement Act (S. 506/H.R. 1648) and the Student Nondiscrimination Act (S. 555/H.R. 998). I hope you will put your rage into action and make sure your senators are supporting these bills that might make it just a little bit easier for victims of sexual harassment at schools to get the help they need.

Hugo Schwyzer - Guys Aren’t Always Thinking With Their Dicks

2011-12-16T05:34:00.003-07:00

Hugo Schwyzer seems to be writing articles for every interesting gender-related site on the web these days - that's a good thing. He offers a view similar to my own on a lot of masculinity issues, and he remains supportive of the need for men and women to share equal rights. The mere fact that the MRA guys dislike him so intensely is also pretty interesting to me, considering Schwyzer's balanced position on most topics.

One of the places he writes for is Jezebel, and they recently posted this article from him on the blasphemous idea that men might not always be thinking with their penises.

Key observation:

Given a chance to articulate their wants, young men are making it clear that as much as they love sex, they are even hungrier for emotional intimacy.

Has that hunger always been there, suppressed by the mandatory machismo of the Guy Code? Or are we raising a new generation of guys whose desires are genuinely different from those of their fathers? It seems likely that it's a little of both. Men in their teens and twenties do have more latitude for emotional expression than did their elders, and can articulate feelings that an earlier generation couldn't.

Here is the beginning of the article.

Guys Aren’t Always Thinking With Their Dicks
By Hugo Schwyzer
Dec 14, 2011

It's not just Ryan Gosling. Guys really are more open about their romantic feelings than ever before. Young men think about sex less — and about love more — than either traditional psychology or pop culture acknowledge. Is it the sudden emergence of a new "mushy male" ethos? Or is it simply the long overdue recognition of something that's been there all along?

A quick review of the recent literature reveals the extent of the change.

In 2008, a study by researchers at SUNY Oswego found that a highly diverse group of 10th grade boys ranked being in love as one of their top three reasons for wanting sex. As the study's author told the New York Times: "Although some of them are just looking for sex, most boys are looking for a relationship. The kids we know mostly aren't like this horrible stereotype. They are generally interested in dating and getting to know their partners."

Many of the commenters on the Times article weren't buying it; they enthusiastically clung to the idea that the "horrible stereotype" was cold, hard — or perhaps hot and hard — fact. As one put it, "teenage boys would not be the first humans to ascribe nobler reasons for their desires." Many others expressed certainty that the boys were telling the researchers what they wanted to hear; "I still wouldn't ever trust a teenage boy around my daughter" said another.

To quiet the doubters, the SUNY Oswego findings were confirmed by a much larger 2010 study by Seventeen and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. After interviewing more than 1200 young men (aged 15-22), the investigators discovered that the overwhelming majority of their respondents were more interested in relationships than sex: "Two-thirds (66%) said they would rather have a girlfriend but no sex compared to only one-third (34%) who say they would prefer to have sex but no girlfriend. Similarly, two out of three (66%) agree that they could be happy in a relationship that doesn't include sex."

2011 has brought still more research about the emotional complexity of young men. Last month, the CDC reported that fewer American teenagers have had heterosexual intercourse than at any time in the last 30 years. One surprising explanation, according to the Times: "…the second-most-common reason among boys [for remaining virgins] in the current survey was that they had not yet found the right person, a distinct change from 2002, when the No. 2 reason was that they did not want to get a girl pregnant."

Read the rest of the article.

Toy Soldiers - The lost boys of child prostitution

2011-12-15T21:34:00.000-07:00

Toy Soldiers posted this disturbing article on the thousands of boys and men who are trafficked every year, some of whom are trafficked specifically for sex.

The lost boys of child prostitution
Posted on December 13, 2011

Male victims of sex trafficking are treated like unicorns. Every now and again someone claims to have see one, but no one believes they are real. Unfortunately, they are. Thousands of boys and men are trafficked every year, and some of them are trafficked specifically for sex. We know it must happen, yet one would be hard-pressed to find any mention of male victims of sex trafficking in any of the literature or news coverage.

However, the majority of people involved in the sex trade are not involved by force. Many of them get into the trade as a means of survival as they often have no other way to support themselves. Recently, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan conducted a study on youths working as prostitutes. The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in New York City study came up with some surprising results:
From that data, they were able to put a number on the total population of New York’s teen sex workers: 3,946.

Most astonishing to the researchers was the demographic profile teased out by the study. Published by the U.S. Department of Justice in September 2008, [Ric Curtis and Meredith Dank’s] findings thoroughly obliterated the long-held core assumptions about underage prostitution:

• Nearly half of the kids—about 45 percent—were boys.
• Only 10 percent were involved with a “market facilitator” (e.g., a pimp).
• About 45 percent got into the “business” through friends.
• More than 90 percent were U.S.-born (56 percent were New York City natives).
• On average, they started hooking at age 15.
• Most serviced men—preferably white and wealthy.
• Most deals were struck on the street.
• Almost 70 percent of the kids said they’d sought assistance at a youth-service agency at least once.
• Nearly all of the youths—95 percent—said they exchanged sex for money because it was the surest way to support themselves.
These results are surprising because they fly in the face of what the researchers expected to find.

Read the rest of this disturbing article.

Anas Coburn: The End of Men - Dude, where’s my masculinity?

2011-12-14T06:43:00.002-07:00

I write a lot on this blog about the need to shift our expectations of what it means to be a man, as well as what gender means and does not mean within a postmodern context. This is a relevant conversation for white, middle class, educated, progressive American males (and females). But how relevant is such a discussion to people who are not in that very limited class? Periodically, I see something that points out to me my educated white male bias.

Anas Coburn wrote an article for AltMuslimah (a blog for Muslim men) in 2010 that was recently shared with me by Facebook friends. It offers a glimpse into a much different world of men than the one in which I live.

While many of my fellow masculinity bloggers took serious issue with Hanna Rosin's "The End of Men" article from The Atlantic, Rosin's article resonated strongly for this author and apparently in the lives of Muslim men. Within this community that we so often stereotype as repressive and patriarchal, there is effort being made toward revisioning masculinity.

The End of Men: Dude, where’s my masculinity?

By Anas Coburn, December 12, 2011 (originally posted in 2010)

There is an unprecedented global shift in gender relations taking place. Until our communities recognize and respond to this shift, the critical task of deconstructing the accepted rules of masculinity will remain undone, and the difficulty of finding suitable marriage partners will continue to frustrate us all.

Many young Muslims are experiencing some difficulty in finding a suitable partner for marriage, amidst a global shift in gender relations. This shift has been outlined with depth and considerable style by Hanna Rosin in her article, “The End of Men,” appearing in the July/August 2010 issue of The Atlantic. I strongly recommend you read it in its entirety, as it places a wider social frame on the issue. When Zeba Iqbal writes here on Altmuslimah that normalizing basic gender relations between Muslim men and women is critical, we must keep in mind that the norms of gender relations that have existed for centuries are being turned upside down for everyone, not just Muslims. As Rosin points out, for years women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But it may very well be that equality is not the end point. Rosin suggests that modern, post-industrial society may be simply better suited to women. Given the weight of her argument, and she marshals evidence from many points of view that support her case, it becomes increasingly clear that somewhere near the heart of the phenomenon of the difficulty in finding a suitable marriage partner is profound confusion over what it means to be a man.

Current social conditions have undercut the relevancy of traditional notions of masculinity; meanwhile, modern media’s messages and expectations about masculinity are a decidedly mixed bag. As Dr. Steven Stosny remarks in “Lions Without a Cause,” an article appearing Psychotherapy Networker’s May/June 2010 edition:
Through much of history, the idea that men and women should consistently engage in intimate conversation and validate each other’s emotional worlds would have been laughable. As historian Stephanie Coontz puts it, previous generations widely assumed that men and women had different natures and couldn’t truly understand each other. The idea of intergender emotional talk independent of the need to protect didn’t emerge until the dissolution of the extended family, which began [in the West] in the middle of the 20th century.
This suggests to me that part of the problem with normalizing gender relations between Muslim women and men today may be that our current expectations are historically unprecedented. (For more from Coontz, check out this C-Span panel on “Men and Marriage” in which she participates.) The argument is not that Muslim women’s expectations for civil discourse with men are inappropriate; rather, it is that both genders are historically ill-prepared for the task. Dr. Stosny argues that the instinct to protect is a potent factor in men’s self-value. So what happens when women don’t need protection?

In Rosin’s “End of Men” article, she cites Mustafaa El-Scari, a teacher and social worker who runs discussion groups in Kansas City for men ordered there as an alternative to jail after failure to pay child support. When he meets with the group, they do an activity which challenges the men’s expectations and notions of masculinity. El-Scari asks, “Who’s doing what?” He writes on the blackboard: $85,000 “This is her salary.” Then: $12,000. “This is your salary. Who’s the damn man? Who’s the man now?” A murmur rises. “That’s right. She’s the man.” Even if this is an oversimplification and an overstatement of the situation many of our Muslim sisters find themselves in, the example highlights a key issue in our gender relations. The sheer competence, accomplishment, self-possession, and vitality of so many of our sisters seems to be intimidating to many Muslim men, as they see their most deeply held notions of their role invalidated by the forces of social change. Further complicating this issue is the fact that many women continue to buy into a narrative that conflates,(among other things) earnings with masculinity .

The difficulty faced by Zeba Iqbal and so many others is that she represents the vast gender role-reversal going on, which is threatening to men’s idea of what it means to be a man. The ill will and conflict Zeba notes between the genders is a reflection of the stress of this unprecedented change. Both Muslim women and men have to reconsider the many ways in which our expectations for gender role performance are unrealistic. I think women in these times have something of a head start on this because they tend to have examined their own roles more thoroughly than men. But unless our sisters can make some progress in deconstructing their notions of masculinity as well, they will continue to be frustrated. The cougar trope that started out as a joke about desperate older women, which has now gone mainstream, will inevitably surface among Muslims, in a kind of mockery of the relationship between our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his beloved first wife Khadija, may Allah be pleased with her.

Meanwhile, the level of self-awareness and ability required for men to articulate the emotions stirred by conflicting cultural messages, many of which devalue them, continues to be rare indeed. It seems to me that development of this ability, and the discourse required for men to reframe their notion of masculinity, has yet to appear at any kind of significant social level. Yet absent this discourse, men are likely to continue to play out their unrecognized internal conflicts about their role in dysfunctional ways, in their relations with women, in the workplace, at the masjid, by themselves at home as they sit in front of the tube watching the NFL or UFC (that’s “Ultimate Fighting Championship,” ladies) – or even worse, at a training camp in a ‘stan somewhere.

Anas Coburn is a mental health clinician who serves as the managing director of Project Sakinah, an initiative of Dar al Islam to address domestic violence in the Muslim community. This article was originally published on AltMuslimah on June 26, 2010.

Life-Affirming Talks by Cultural Mavericks Presented at The School of Life

2011-12-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

Open Culture presented this collection of cool videos from the School of Life, a project initiated by Alain de Botton, a London-based institution that offers courses “in the important questions of everyday life,” especially in their Sunday Sermons series.

Open Culture offered their own selections in this post, but be sure to explore the offerings available - there's some good stuff. All of these videos offer us a step out of our normal perspectives to see the world through fresh eyes, someone else's eyes.

Personal choices: Karen Armstrong on Compassion, Raymond Tallis - On Wonder, and Mark Williams on Mindfulness.

Life-Affirming Talks by Cultural Mavericks Presented at The School of Life
December 8th, 2011

Miranda July on Strangers from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Since the late 1990′s, Alain de Botton has been breaking down difficult philosophical and literary ideas and seeing how they apply to people’s everyday lives. He did this with his 1997 bestseller, How Proust Can Change Your Life. And he took things a step further with his television series called Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness.

Then, in the summer of 2008, de Botton and some colleagues set up The School of Life, a London-based institution that offers courses “in the important questions of everyday life,” in areas we all tend to care about: careers, relationships, politics, travels, families, etc. The school also hosts a series of “Sunday Sermons” that feature “maverick cultural figures” talking about the virtues they cling to, and the vices to be wary of.

Today, we’re featuring several of these sermons. Above, the actress, writer, and director Miranda July takes an offbeat and endearing look at strangers, and the role they play in our lives. Then come some notable mentions:

Lawrence Krauss on Cosmic Connections from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Physicist Lawrence Krauss on Cosmic Connections. (Also don’t miss this other unrelated but splendid talk by Krauss.)

Rebecca Solnit on Hope from The School of Life on Vimeo.

Author Rebecca Solnit on Hope.

Alain de Botton - On Pessimism from The School of Life on Vimeo.

And Alain de Botton himself on the importance of defying pessimism.

Again, you can find the full list of sermons organized chronologically here.

Kindergarten friends matter for boys

2011-12-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Niobe Way has done a lot to increase our understanding of friendships among boys (Deep Secrets: Boys' Friendships and the Crisis of Connection), and how they get derailed as boys enter adolescence. This press release posted at Futurity looks at research along this same line- that young boys need close friends.

Kindergarten friends matter for boys
Kindergarten kids with high-quality friendships tend to have fewer behavior problems and better social skills than those whose friendships are of low or moderate quality. (Credit: Dmitriy Shironosov / Shutterstock)

U. ILLINOIS (US) — High-quality friendships in kindergarten may mean that boys will have fewer behavior problems and better social skills in first and third grades, new research suggests.“The findings for girls were different,” says Jennifer Engle, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Illinois.

“Overall, teachers reported that girls in the first and third grade had good social skills, regardless of the quality of their kindergarten friendships. Boys, on the other hand, clearly benefited from the good start that early high-quality friendships provide.”
Straight from the Source
Read the original study
DOI: 10.1002/icd.706
Engle says the study, published in the journal Infant and Child Development, was unique in comparing how the presence and quality of children’s kindergarten friendships are related to their behavior problems and social skills in kindergarten, first, and third grades.

She notes that friendship quality was important for both boys and girls in kindergarten. Kindergarten kids with high-quality friendships tended to have fewer behavior problems and better social skills than those whose friendships were of low or moderate quality.

In contrast, kids who had low-quality kindergarten friendships had more behavior problems during kindergarten.

The differences in friendship quality for boys versus girls didn’t show up until the children were older, she says.

“Boys who had no friends in kindergarten had more behavior problems, but not until they had reached first and third grades,” she says.

The researchers examined data from 567 children who had participated in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development.

Mothers in the study reported on whether their kindergarten child had at least one friend and on the quality of their child’s friendships. Researchers then compared the progress of children with no friends, low-quality friendships, average-quality friendships, and high-quality friendships. Teachers provided feedback on children’s behavior problems in kindergarten and first and third grades.

“As we expected, high-quality kindergarten friendships that featured cooperation and sharing, taking turns, low levels of hostility, and little destructive conflict, gave children—especially boys—practice in positive interaction, which they demonstrated in grades 1 and 3,” Engle says.

Help your child learn to be a good friend
Nancy McElwain, a University of Illinois associate professor of human development and co-author of the study, stresses that peers become important as children enter kindergarten. Parents should make an effort to help children, especially boys, make friends at this age through play dates and other social activities, she says.

Children also will likely relate to friends in more positive ways if they have experiences in their family that model positive expectations, caring, and respect.

When children learn to expect that people will respond positively to them, they will be responsive and friendly to others, she notes.

“Those children will be able to handle their emotions better when the going gets rough, and they’ll learn how to work through conflicts. Conflict isn’t necessarily good or bad; it’s a matter of how kids approach disagreements with their friends or parents,” she says.

McElwain offers reassurance to parents of friendless kindergartners. “Almost all of those children had made a friend by the time they reached third grade,” she says.

Hugo Schwyzer - It’s Not the End of Men, and We Still Have Work to Do

2011-12-11T14:18:00.001-07:00

This is a cogent rebuttal from Hugo Schwyzer at the Good Men Project to all the nonsense that weare witnessing the end of men or that men have beciome obsolete.

It’s Not the End of Men, and We Still Have Work to Do
December 8, 2011
By Hugo Schwyzer
Men and women should celebrate where we are, Hugo Schwyzer writes, but we still need to keep moving forward.
Good Men Project founder Tom Matlack says he’s depressed after reading this Meghan Casserly column at Forbes.com Why We Need to Stop Bemoaning the End of Men. While Tom is pleased that Meghan pushes back against the popular media trope of a dire masculinity crisis, he’s upset that she talks about the enduring power of “paternalistic authority” of men over women. Tom calls it “piling on.”

I appreciated Meghan’s column enormously, particularly the way she takes apart the arguments of anti-feminists like Kay Hymowitz, who have famously suggested that men are alienated by women’s success (and that that alienation is largely women’s fault.) And unlike Tom, I think Meghan is right on the money when she suggests that paternalism continues.

It’s easy to confuse increased opportunity for women with the arrival of genuine parity. There are more women CEOs and more women doctors than there were 25 years ago, just as there are (probably) more men doing dishes and being affectionate fathers. There’s much to celebrate in that trend. But though more heterosexual men than ever before may want to be genuine partners to their girlfriends and wives, that desire to be more helpful and more emotionally present doesn’t mean that men can claim that patriarchy and sexism are dead.

As reported this week, men with children are doing more housework than ever before. We’re up to spending 80% as much time as women do on chores. That’s an undeniable improvement over where we were a few short decades ago. But again, a trend in the right direction doesn’t mean the problem of inequality has been licked. And as that same study found, women are doing much more than those statistics suggest, largely because women spend much more time than men multi-tasking. The fact that we’re doing more than ever before doesn’t change the reality that we’re still not pulling our weight.

There’s a long tradition in men’s writing (see Freud, Sigmund) of complaining that women’s demands are excessive and irrational. The modern iteration of that tactic is to point out how hard men are trying. What more could women possibly want? Don’t women have more opportunities than ever before? Aren’t men doing more domestic chores and showing more affection than their fathers’ generation ever did? Why isn’t that enough? When are these shrews going to give us a break, give us a cookie, and let “good enough” be sufficient?

Individual men are not called to be martyrs. (I don’t know any women who expect them to be.) But we can do better than point endlessly to all the things we’ve done right, as if they constitute a credit balance sufficient to discharge the debts from all the places where we continue to fall short. And make no mistake, we are still falling short. That men are up to doing 80% of the work—and that women are up to earning 80 cents on our dollar—indicates progress. But to use a football analogy, it’s still the third quarter and though we’re catching up, we need another couple of touchdowns to win the game. And some men sound like they’re ready to hit the showers.

There is no “end of men”; there is no “gender war.” Things are getting better, and we should celebrate it. But the work isn’t done yet, either in the home or in the boardroom. Men still do less than their full fair share—and receive more than their share of the rewards of power. Making that point, as Meghan does, is not “piling on.” It’s a clarion call to keep pushing forward.

—Photo Toms Bauģis/Flickr

Why men and women can't be friends (Really?!)

2011-12-10T18:03:00.001-07:00

Strangely interesting little video - although this is Utah St., so I wonder what the responses would be at USC, or UC Boulder, or NYU.

Personally, I have a lot of female friends, and I know other guys who do as well, with no sexual or romantic interests. I suspect that if these guys interviewed an older cohort, they might find different answers. But that would defeat their purpose, it seems to me, of making a point.

Obviously, these guys only used the answers that fit their agenda, which is to promote the stereotype that all men want is sex and we cannot have a female friend that we don't want to sleep with. It's sad when men seek to support limiting stereotypes of themselves.

Why men and women can't be friends

By Bailey Johnson

December 8, 2011

(CBS) - It's an age old question, one many young men and women struggle with. As young adults make their way in the world, meeting new people, experiencing new things, they will eventually have to find an answer to a very simple question: can men and women be just friends? One intrepid college filmmaker went out into the field to find out what people think. The answer might shock you. (Or it might not.)

This may be the most important clip on gender relations since When Harry Met Sally. It's also very, very collegiate. But, hey, work with what you've got. It seems the Utah State University campus is pretty split on the issue- that is, split between men and women. It's also almost comically like what you might find in a sitcom. But that may be thanks to the fine editing of filmmakers Jesse Budd and Patrick Romero, the men (of course) responsible for this groundbreaking study.

Shrink Rap Radio #289 – Jung and Holding The Opposites with Jon Jackson MD

2011-12-09T20:53:00.001-07:00

This podcast is part of a series of episodes on Jungian psychology that also provides CEUs (at a price) for those who need them. It's an interesting series on Jung and his theories, hosted, as always, by David Van Nuys, Ph.D.

Shrink Rap Radio #289 – Jung and Holding The Opposites with Jon Jackson MD
It was only after his psychiatric residency that Dr. Jon Jackson discovered Carl Jung. More specifically, he first discovered Marie-Louise von Franz, who remains one of his major influences to this day. He sees himself as an intuitive introvert who has somehow learned to be extroverted in the “real” world. He worked for 15 years as a psychotherapist, seeing particularly difficult patients, and gaining extensive experience in dissociative and personality disorders. When he returned to California, he worked for several years for Sonoma County Mental Health, working with the indigent and chronically mentally ill. He was then Chief of Psychiatry at St. Helena Hospital for just over two years.

Following no major tradition, Dr. Jackson believes in the necessity of developing “spiritual depth” in oneself. He is a great lover of literature, film, radio dramas, comic books, and a very broad range of music. He currently is the Chair of the Numina Center for Spirituality & the Arts – a Santa Rosa group that promotes a broad-based spirituality as experienced through the Arts. He continues to work in radio on KOWS FM in Occidental, CA, producing a show titled “Sound Mind”, which often features interviews with musicians and other performers. He and his partner, Liza Brickey, hold a monthly study group in their Sebastopol home focusing on depth psychology.

John Jackson, MD was born in California, and then grew up barefoot in Kailua, Hawaii, before it was a State. He likes to say that where he is from is Olomana Mountain. He graduated from Kailua High School. His parents were both educators, and his father taught Educational Administration at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, prior to becoming the Superintendent of Education for the State of Hawaii during the 1960s. Much of Dr. Jackson’s early life was spent on the UH campus, which he later attended after graduating from Kailua High School. In 1969, he was one of the very first DJs on the new college radio station KTUH. He continued to work in non-commercial radio through much of his college years, and also for most of his life since then. In the early 1990s, Dr. Jackson returned again to the UH campus to be the psychiatrist for the students, and he also made his mark again on KTUH as a programmer for “The Alumni Show”.

As a freshman in college, Dr. Jackson initially majored in Psychology, switching later to Biology & Pre-Med, and he began his studies in Philosophy and Western Religion. He knew when he entered medical school that he wanted to be a Psychiatrist. His post-graduate training included a year of Internal Medicine, two years as a General Practitioner in Korea, Nuclear-Biological-Chemical training, Aviation Medicine, and a full Neurology residency. His Psychiatry training was in Hawaii, where he remained in private practice for many years. He currently is in private practice in Santa Rosa, CA.

A psychology podcast by David Van Nuys, Ph.D.

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Recession Dramatically Increases Number Of Fathers Caring For Children

2011-12-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

It's sad that it took a recession to do this, but it's good that more men are actively involved in raising their children.

Recession Dramatically Increases Number Of Fathers Caring For Children
(Bloomberg News) Jeff VanderHeijden didn’t expect to be a stay-at-home father for his 3-year-old daughter, especially after getting a raise and promotion as a counselor last year at a residential program for troubled teenagers. Two weeks later, he was fired.

That’s when VanderHeijden, 35, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, joined the growing ranks of U.S. men spending more time caring for a child. One-third of fathers with working wives are now a regular source of care for their children, the result of the depressed economy and large numbers of out-of-work men, the U.S. Census Bureau reported yesterday.

“Certain projects like refinishing the basement kind of had to go on hold, but it really pays off in the long run,” said VanderHeijden, whose wife works as a teacher. “You can’t put a price on a father-daughter relationship.”

The number of dads regularly caring for children under age 15 increased to 32 percent in 2010 from 26 percent in 2002. Among those fathers with preschool-age children, one in five served as the primary caregiver, meaning adults such as VanderHeijden who spend the most time with their child, the census found.

The recession has increased the number of fathers with an active role in child care, a trend that has been growing since at least 1988, said Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the Census Bureau.

“The economy hasn’t completely rebounded, particularly for men,” she said. “What did they label it, a ‘mancession?’”

The economic downturn initially had a greater effect on men than women, with males losing more net jobs between December 2007 and May 2011, according to a July report from the Pew Research Center. Men have regained jobs more quickly in the recovery, the Pew study found.

During recessions, fathers spend more time as partial and primary caregivers of children, Laughlin said, partly because unemployment or changes in work hours increase their availability to do so. “It also can reduce available income to pay for child care outside of the home,” she said.

The recession isn’t the only reason. Women are increasingly contributing more to family income than men, and there is a growing desire among men to take part in the lives of their children, according to Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the New York-based Families and Work Institute.

“The good news is that kids are with their fathers more,” Galinsky said. “The bad news is that families are so squeezed economically.”

The new statistics, from the Census Survey of Income and Program Participation, showed that 54 percent of unemployed fathers with a working wife and preschool-age children are primary caregivers, while 17 percent of employed fathers in the same situation fill that role.

Some couples decide that the cost of child care cancels out the income from a lower-wage job, regardless of the recession.

“If I’m making X and my wife is making X plus 10, who do you want making the money?” said Patrick Spillman, 42, of New York, who’s the primary caregiver for his 3-year-old daughter. “It’s a matter of dollars and cents.”

About three years ago, Lance Somerfeld, 38, found there were few resources for fathers like him after he decided to stay at home with his newborn son. He started the NYC Dads Group and watched it grow into 500 men who share ideas for museum trips, classes, play groups and other activities.

Most of the men in the group weren’t laid off. Instead, he said, they have wives who are making more money or are further along in their careers.

“I just see dads wanting to be a part of their kids’ lives,” Somerfeld said.

Men's Health - Four for Your Core

2011-12-08T21:05:00.001-07:00

The pressure on men to be ripped and have six-pack abs has never been greater. I'll bet that 10 of 12 Men's Health magazine covers list an article on getting ripped abs either through exercises or diet.

However, good fitness does require strong abs, or better yet, a strong core. Whether or not one can show a six-pack of abs has nothing to do with strength and everything to do with bodyfat percentage - and most of us will never need or want to be that lean.

This article from Men's Health is less about having ripped abs, although they mention that you can have that too, and more about building a strong core. In that realm, these are good exercises to add some variety to your core work.

[Personal preference: substitute a BOSU for the kettlebell in #1 - round side down. You get all of the instability with a lot less risk to wrists and shoulders. If you have access to heavy kettlebells, try a one-arm farmer's walk for core strength.]

Four for Your Core
Transform everyday gym equipment into ab-sculpting power tools
By Jill Yaworski, Photo Illustrations by Mitch Mandel
Posted Date: October 5, 2011
Infomercials are right about one thing: Exercise devices can put you on the fast track to a six-pack. But the best ones don't go by names like Ab Rocket or Torso Tiger, and you won't see them on late-night TV. They're already in your gym, says David Jack, general manager of Competitive Athlete Training Zone in Acton, Massachusetts. Add these four to your ab routine to accelerate your gains.

1. Kettlebell

EXERCISE
Kettlebell mountain climber

HOW TO DO IT
Lay a kettlebell flat side down with its handle facing away from you. Place both palms on the round part, and assume a pushup position. Slowly bring one knee as close to your chest as you can. Touch the floor with your toes, and quickly return to pushup position while maintaining good form. Repeat with the other knee. Alternate legs for 30 seconds.

BENEFIT
The instability of the kettlebell forces your abs, lower back, and hips to work harder than they do in a traditional mountain climber.

2. Resistance band

EXERCISE
Anti-rotation band speed fly

HOW TO DO IT
Anchor one end of a resistance band at hip level. Grip the handle with your right hand and cover that hand with your left. Kneel on your right knee (with the anchor point on your right) and press the handle in front of your chest. With your elbow slightly bent, let your right arm open toward the anchor point, and return explosively to the starting position. Do 10 to 12 reps on each side.

BENEFIT
You're not only strengthening your pecs but also carving your abs as they fight to prevent your torso from rotating.

3. Barbell

EXERCISE
Overhead barbell walk

HOW TO DO IT
Grab the bar using an overhand grip that's about twice shoulder width, and raise it directly overhead. (Add weight only when you can maintain proper form.) Keep your arms straight, your body tense, and your head back. Walk forward for 5 to 10 seconds, pause, and then walk backward for 5 to 10 seconds. That's 1 rep. Do 2 sets of 2 reps, resting 60 seconds between sets.

BENEFIT
Balancing the bar targets your shoulders as well as your torso's stabilizing muscles, including hips, obliques, and lower back.

4. Medicine ball

EXERCISE
Windmill slam

HOW TO DO IT
Hold a medicine ball at waist height and assume a staggered stance, your left foot 2 to 3 feet in front of your right, knees slightly bent. In one smooth "windmill" movement, swing the ball counterclockwise, arc it above your head, and slam it to the floor outside your left leg. Then catch the bounce. Do this 10 times, switch legs, and repeat.

BENEFIT
You'll send your calorie furnace into overdrive while chiseling your rectus abdominis—better known as your six-pack.

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