This article originally ran in The Guardian (UK) and was picked up by Raw Story. In part this is a response to Camille Paglia's recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, wherein she decries the decline in traditional notions of masculinity (military service, physical labor) and the feminization of education. Here is a passage that begins with her experience with her own son (11-year-old Lucien):

She sees the tacit elevation of "female values"—such as sensitivity, socialization and cooperation—as the main aim of teachers, rather than fostering creative energy and teaching hard geographical and historical facts.

By her lights, things only get worse in higher education. "This PC gender politics thing—the way gender is being taught in the universities—in a very anti-male way, it's all about neutralization of maleness." The result: Upper-middle-class men who are "intimidated" and "can't say anything. . . . They understand the agenda." In other words: They avoid goring certain sacred cows by "never telling the truth to women" about sex, and by keeping "raunchy" thoughts and sexual fantasies to themselves and their laptops.

Politically correct, inadequate education, along with the decline of America's brawny industrial base, leaves many men with "no models of manhood," she says. "Masculinity is just becoming something that is imitated from the movies. There's nothing left. There's no room for anything manly right now." The only place you can hear what men really feel these days, she claims, is on sports radio. No surprise, she is an avid listener. The energy and enthusiasm "inspires me as a writer," she says, adding: "If we had to go to war," the callers "are the men that would save the nation."

On the topic of boys and education, she (and Christina Hoff-Sommers) are dead on - we have created schools and education models that are hostile to boys in particular, and we are seeing the results of the last three decades of that movement in the high percentage of boys diagnosed with ADHD, their lower academic performance, and their lower application, admission, and graduation rates at college.

However, what she sees as "how a civilization commits suicide," some of us see as how a civilization evolves into a healthier and more inclusive version of masculinity. Too much is the traditional model has excluded normal and necessary human expression - the "stiff upper lip," "boys don't cry," and "man up" approach no longer serves men or the women who love them (as friends, sisters, mothers, or partners).

Anyone who is familiar with men's work and masculinity studies knows that we are not seeing "the end of men," rather we are seeing the rough, clumsy, and often challenging transformation of men - and much like feminism it is happening at the local level in men's processing groups, in the Mankind Project's I-groups, and even in some men's spirituality groups. There is also the wider discussion happening on sites such as The Good Men Project, or this blog and many others like it.

And there are more articles being published such as the one below, articles that recognize we are in transition, not decline.

‘Traditional masculine values’ are evolving, not dying

By Ally Fogg, The Guardian
Tuesday, December 31, 2013

I thought I had heard enough febrile, hyperbolic pronouncements on modern masculinity to get me through any year, but I had not counted on Camille Paglia. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the maverick libertarian feminist pondered the implications of the feminisation of society and the devaluing of traditional masculine values. “What you’re seeing is how a civilisation commits suicide,” she declared.

Paglia is not a lone Cassandra. Hanna Rosin and Christina Hoff-Sommers have written on The End of Men and The War on Men and Boys respectively. This year, Diane Abbott warned of a crisis of masculinity that is seeing her young male constituents in Hackney corrupted by hardcore pornography and “a Viagra and Jack Daniels culture”. From North America to Europe to Oceania, masculinity is being prodded, pathologised, diagnosed and bemoaned by voices from across the political, cultural and social spectrum. The great irony is that the overwhelming majority of these voices are female.

Most men instinctively know why this would be. It is the first rule of fight club, after all. Men’s concerns, interests, anxieties or even pride in our own gender roles are typically sheltered by the conceits of fiction – as seen in the exquisite 62-hour thesis on modern masculinity that was Breaking Bad – or filtered through protective layers of irony and humour. Social media users recently parodied the internal travails of feminism with the hashtag #MeninistTwitter, but behind the walls of laddish banter and sexism, there were some very real anxieties and resentments on display.

The sledgehammers and stilettos of a gendered society impact upon, and are wielded by, every man, woman and child. Women – and feminists in particular – have spent centuries developing the vocabulary to discuss the myriad ways in which their lives are affected by gender constraints, and, crucially, they have carved the space in which to host those discussions. Men, too often, mutter into our pints and change the subject. This goes a long way to explaining why men vastly outnumber women in the figures for hazardous alcohol and drug abuse. It is why so many men in psychological crisis end up in a police cell rather than a GP’s surgery. At the sharpest end, it may be why men are around three times more likely to take their own lives than women.

One organisation dealing with the fallout of this is the mental health charity CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably. In an attempt to turn around self-destructive male habits, they have announced that 2014 will be the Year of the Male – 12 months of campaigning, debate and discussion aimed at changing both public opinion and public policy towards male gender-specific issues. There will be a state-of-nation audit of modern masculinity, and a public campaign inviting men to share their stories and experiences. CALM’s director, Jane Powell, says: “We think it’s time to ask some big questions about men and work, health, the media, education, relationships and family and ask what it really means to be ‘man enough’?”

Separately, the Southbank Centre recently announced a major festival at the end of January entitled Being a Man in which voices as diverse as Jon Snow, Baaba Maal and Grayson Perry will contribute to a weekend of performance and conversations on how men’s roles are evolving.

All this leaves hanging a central question of whether examining, debating and discussing masculinity will actually do anything to change the habits and behaviours of men themselves or society’s expectations and obligations. The supposed crisis of masculinity is largely a crisis in economics and employment, education and social policy, health and social service delivery. Those are not issues that can be solved with an introspective healing circle. Identifying and addressing those problems means changing how we behave as men, and towards men. If that means the end of civilisation as we know it, then perhaps it is a model of civilisation that needs to go.

["Close-Up Of A Man Smiling" on Shutterstock]

Nearly a Quarter of Single Parents in the United States Are Men

I am glad to see more fathers being given custody of their children following divorce or other forms of separation (The Atlantic). This is new phenomena in the family court system, where the "wisdom" was that children need their mother but the father was just a sperm donor (unfortunately, this is still true of some men).

To be clear, men raising kids by themselves struggle in many of the same ways as do moms raising kids alone. I have seen this in friends and in clients - balancing a job, parenting, a social life (mostly non-existent), and other responsibilities can be a real challenge.

While I am glad to see more fathers given custody of their children, it would be better for the child if both parents are involved, and preferably still married. This is why: 

Single father-headed households have a median income of $40,000, well-above the $26,000 for single mother headed households, but far below the $70,000 for married father-headed households.

It's better for everyone involved to avoid divorce if possible, and better yet not have kids if the marriage is not stable - and, by the way, having a child will not save your troubled marriage. On the other hand, if the marriage is beyond repair, the children are better off if the parents split than to be subjected to parental fighting and bickering.

What the Rising Number of Single Dads Says About Fatherhood in General

Nearly a quarter of single parents in the United States are men—a sign of how all fathers are taking a more active role with their kids.

NOAH BERLATSKY

JUL 3 2013

OakleyOriginals/flickr

If my wife and I divorced, who would get the kid?

Obviously, if only for mental health reasons, this isn't the sort of hypothetical I want to spend any significant proportion of my time worrying about. But I'll admit it did flit across my mind while reading the recent Pew paper The Rise of Single Fathers. The report shows a massive, ninefold increase in single dads raising their kids, from around 297,000 in 1960 to 2.6 million today.

There are a number of factors that have contributed to this change. Some are the same factors that have contributed to the rise of single mothers. Divorce rates have stabilized, but they're still way higher than they were in the 1960s. Out-of-wedlock births are more common and less stigmatized than they used to be, too. Marriage has, since 1960, gotten less stable, and single parenting has gotten more accepted. As a result, you've got more single parents, of whatever gender, raising kids.

But single dads haven't just increased in absolute numbers. They've also increased as a percentage of all single parents. Back in 1960, single dads made up only 14 percent of single-parent headed households. Today that number has climbed to 24 percent--almost a quarter. Men's rights advocates would have you believe that feminism has systematically prevented men from gaining custody of children. Yet, according to this data at least, it seems like the (limited, but real) feminist gains of the last 50 years have actually coincided with greater parity. It's hard to say whether this is correlation or causation, but either way, it looks like folks who want more men getting custody should be rooting for more feminism, not less.

Related Story 

 

What If Maintaining Desire Isn't a Major Goal of Your Marriage?

Again, the impetus behind the rising rates of single dads seems fairly straightforward. Another recent Pew study shows that the roles of moms and dads are converging: Women in marriage spend more than twice as much time on paid work as they did in 1965, while men spend more than twice as much time on childcare and housework. The continued gender disparities are a little startling -- women still spend on average twice as many hours on childcare as men do. But there's no doubt that men are looking after the kids in marriage far more than they did in the past. It's not a surprise that they are caring for kids when marriage ends, too.

The general trends certainly apply to my marriage -- and possibly would also apply if the marriage ended. I'm the primary caregiver in our family, mostly because I work from home and can ferry the boy hither and yon whenever the schedule calls for it, but also because the whole idea of ferrying hither and yon at the dictates of someone else's schedule (however charming that nine-year-old someone else may be) makes my wife exceedingly cranky. To be fair, she did warn me about this going in.

In any case, the point is that the considerations that make me the primary caregiver -- whether logistical or temperamental -- would, presumably, still be in play if my wife and I separated. Changing gender roles have let us organize our marriage in a way that would have looked quite odd to most people circa 1960. Those same changes make it more natural, or thinkable, for men to get the child or children in the event of a break up.

On the one hand, it's difficult to argue that more single dads is exactly a good thing. Single dads don't tend to provoke the same kind of moral panic and concern-trolling from cultural commentators that single moms do, but it's clear from the report that men raising kids alone struggle in many of the same ways, if not to the same extent, as do moms raising kids alone. Single father-headed households have a median income of $40,000 --well-above the $26,000 for single mother headed households, but far below the $70,000 for married father-headed households.

On the other hand, though, the fact that there are more single dads seems like an outgrowth of a series of developments that are positive in a lot of ways. I'm happy that I get to have a marriage where I do a lot of parenting. I like parenting. Similarly, my wife likes not having to do all the childcare the way her mom did. More single dads is a sign that guys have more roles open to them...and also, relatedly, a sign that women have more roles open to them. That the percentage of single dads is slowly approach the percentage of single moms is an indication that marriage, and society, are becoming a little more equal. Which seems like a good thing for moms, for dads, and for everybody else as well.

Marc Tracy - Here Come the Daddy Wars

This article originally appeared at The New Republic just before Father's Day (obviously I am a little bit behind in my posting), but the main points are still highly relevant. Men are going to face some tough decisions (some already are) and there are going to be some intense societal struggles in determining how men should be fathers and how much they will be allowed to be fathers.

I don't see there being any time soon where men are given equal post-natal time off from work (paid or unpaid, but with job and position security) to that of women - hell we don't even offer women much on average. It's not likely we will be anywhere near France's (22 paid days off, 318 total days off), Spain's (18 paid, 312 total), Germany's (47 paid, 170 total), Sweden's (47 paid, 163 total), or Norway's (44 paid, 150 total) position on parenting in my lifetime . . . or yours.

For the record, the U.S. offers 0 paid days and 24 total days off for maternity/family leave (these are days given by law, and all stats are from 2008).

Here Come the Daddy Wars

June 14, 2013
BY MARC TRACY

The average American spends $144 celebrating Mother’s Day, while for Father’s Day, the figure is $82. And that Father’s Day was inspired by Mother’s Day rather than vice versa is probably the least surprising fact you will read today. Mainly, Mother’s Day’s relative prominence is a vestige—and, to a lesser extent, a reflection—of society’s view that women are primarily mothers whereas men are fathers but also other things. This view not only gives women whose ambitions extend beyond the household a bum deal—for reasons I hope I don’t have to elucidate!—but it also fails men who might like to be more prominent as fathers and caregivers than societal norms currently encourage.

Women have fabricated a way of talking about the conflict between women who hope to find most of their self-fulfillment in the home and those for whom being a homemaker and child-rearer is not enough—and not only that, but believe it should not be enough for most women. This is the enlightened, productive side of what are commonly called the Mommy Wars. My question, as Father’s Day approaches, is: Where are the Daddy Wars?

Every day I see smart, career-ambitious women having an intelligent, heated conversation, informed by personal experience and strewn with first principles, about what a woman’s proper roles are, and what society, men, and other women could do to realize a better world. I don’t feel as though I’ve been kept out. But I do think men have been altogether too shy about joining this conversation or, perhaps, starting their own.

However, in the past few weeks, there have been a bevy of articles and studies that all point to this news: At long last, the Daddy Wars are coming.

The trends are both economic and sociological. Economically, as writers like Hanna Rosin have amply documented, women are finally gaining some level of equality with men—not at the very top, but at least in the middle. A new Pew report found that four in ten households with children have a woman as the prime or sole breadwinner, up from one in ten 50 years ago. Partly this is a function of single mothers, but in more than five million of such households, the mother is married yet simply makes more than the husband—and in such marriages, median income is higher. A Third Way study noted that employment trends are better for women than for men.

Esquire recently published an essay by Richard Dorment on the work-life balance that men face. It was fashioned as a response to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” Atlantic feature (which made mention of how men face similar quandaries) and unfortunately was riddled with condescension for the same people—chiefly, feminists—who should be his allies. (Salon’s Irin Carmon did a good job pointing out this curious dynamic.) Still it captured, I think, the feelings of many men, fathers and not, who were brought up to think in terms of career and providing for their families financially, with actual work at home getting short shrift.

Most men stress over the next step in their professions, with the attitude that if they happen to fall in love and settle down, well, that’s great, too. But recently, in many cases inspired by the women in our lives and the conversation they are having among themselves, we have begun to question whether our most basic priorities aren’t out of whack, and to wonder whether, for reasons both social and surprisingly biological, we shouldn’t be as “ambitious” to have children as we are to land the next great job. Plus, having had children, many of us hope to play a more active role in their upbringing than has typically been expected of fathers. Many of us were lucky to have mothers who, whatever other ambitions and accomplishments they had, clearly took great joy in raising us; some of us were even lucky enough to have similar fathers. Do we want it “all”? Who knows (or cares). But we want that.

In a smart response on New York’s The Cut blog, Kurt Soller noted that men will probably have to take their cues from ladyblogs and the like as they navigate this issue, and offered several smart thoughts, including the observation that when men mentor other men, the subject matter is almost exclusively confined to the professional and romantic, not the domestic. (He also noted that as a late-twenty-something he should be as fretful as many of his same-aged female friends are about the looming having-kids prospect, which is true, if also—gulp—terrifying.) Yet even Soller seemed somewhat uncomfortable raising this topic: “As ridiculous as this seems,” he wrote, “the Esquire article had me realizing that a lot of the anxiety surrounding ‘leaning in’ or ‘having it all’ does feel relevant to me as a man.”

The next step, therefore, is to make this not feel at all ridiculous. Because it isn’t. The next step is to make a magazine devoted to artisinal Brooklyn fatherdom more than a quaint Talk of the Town subject. It is to encourage, socially and even legally, paternity leave, which a large share of men don’t take, as well as respect at the office for caregiving fathers, which according to two new studies such fathers currently do not generally enjoy. In the future, when a man voluntarily gives up great responsibility to “spend more time with my family,” I do not want the notion that this could be a euphemism to even occur to me.

In short, it’s going to be the Daddy Wars. (Want that url? Don’t bother; my friend and I have been cybersquatting at daddywars.tumblr.com for weeks.) The Mommy Wars consist of people—primarily other women—convincing women that it is in society’s interest, their children’s interests, other women’s interests, and their own interests for them to be more than stay-at-home moms. The Daddy Wars cannot be the exact obverse, since the playing field is already asymmetrical (for generations, the default for men was to find some balance between work and home, whereas the default for women was home). But they will be something like that.

Like the Mommy Wars, the Daddy Wars are going to require, as Carmon put it, “a negotiation between what’s possible, what they’ve been taught to expect is normal, and what they might really want.” Like the Mommy Wars, they are going to require walking a fine line between the ideology they forthrightly advocate—men should be home more—and respect for individual choice, of the “I choose my choice!” variety, accounting for not only the choices of the men themselves but also of their childrearing partners. (Yes, eventually, the Mommy Wars and the Daddy Wars will likely have to become one big Parents Wars, but first the right side will have to win the Daddy Wars.) Let’s see if we can’t get a generation of American men to think more of themselves as “Dad” or “Dad-to-Be.” That would be a good start.

Lest we forget, in our desire to be better men, better human beings, real change takes real time. We do not ever arrive at healed (it's a journey not a destination), and progress visible to our own eyes takes considerable time.

Real Change Takes Time

By Deborah Fike

The Change Blog

As a young adult, I had a nasty habit that I detested with all my being. I had a quick temper. I could easily lose my cool at the slightest insult and would snap at the people I loved. It didn’t matter if my behavior was justified or not, hurtful words just flew out of my mouth. Perhaps worse, over time I became cold and distant to many people without explaining why. This baffled many family and friends, and I lost genuine relationships over my behavior.

When I finally owned up to my anger problem during my senior year of college, I found it hard to change. I saw counselors that gave me relaxation techniques, but I did not use them consistently. I read books and articles about ways to cool my temper, but only followed that advice sporadically. I would be okay for a week or two, and then something would set me off, and I’d feel guilty for not being able to control my feelings. I felt trapped by my own personality, and I began to hate who I had become.

We all have things about ourselves that we wish we could change. It’s easy to read stories about people who make radical changes in their lives – losing 100 pounds, overcoming alcoholism, starting a new business. These media snippets make it sound so easy: a person just woke up one day and decided to take charge and boom! They led newer, happier lives.

If you read between the lines of all these stories, though, you’ll find that the “easy change” actually wasn’t so easy, nor did it happen in an instant. It took someone 2 years to shed 100 pounds. The person overcoming alcoholism tried 5 different programs before finding one that worked. The guy starting the new business lost money on 6 different products before getting it right. These changes took real time and effort.

Yet, why do we continue to think we can change overnight?

What I didn’t realize back in college was despite appearances, I actually was improving. Sure, I would feel my ugly anger rear its head now and again, but I would use those techniques that the counselors taught me and succeed in squashing my anger 80% of the time. Even after a bad blowout, I would sit down and analyze what went wrong. I visually pictured myself being provoked and not losing my cool. I also started avoiding situations that would make me angry, and thus, found myself happier overall.

Today, I’m proud to say I’m a much less angry person. Taming my temper didn’t happen overnight. It took several years of trial and error with many setbacks to learn how to calm myself. There wasn’t just one “a-ha” moment when I realized that I had “conquered” my temper. In fact, I still lose it now and again, but now it happens so infrequently that it’s become the exception and not the rule. I can now even walk away in the middle of a flare-up, something I never dreamed possible before.

So if you can learn anything from me, realize that real change doesn’t happen overnight. It will take time for you to make progress, especially if you have a big problem or are working toward a big goal. If you understand this, hopefully you’ll feel less guilty than I did trying to make great personal change.

And if you think you’ll never get to where you want to be, give yourself a break. Don’t give up. Just count all the small victories you’ve made instead of always blaming yourself for the small losses. You might be amazed at what you can accomplish if you give yourself some time.



About: Deborah Fike is a full-time mom and founder of Avalon Labs, which provides consultations and writing services for start-ups and online businesses. She believes in the power of self-reflection and positive change.

The Psych Files Podcast - Ep 196: What Men Need to Do to End Violence Against Others

From The Psyche Files Podcast, Michael A. Britt, Ph.D., former Assistant Professor of Psychology at Marist College, a new podcast on what men need to do to end violence against others.

The Psyche Files: Ep 196: What Men Need to Do to End Violence Against Others

Podcast: Download

Are jail time and new laws the only answers to men’s violence against women, children, and other men? Or is there something every man can do to end these tragedies? In an earlier episode of The Psych Files in which I discussed Blaming the Victim, I talked about why there’s a tendency to blame victims and to overlook the Optimism Bias that we all share (particularly younger folks). But podcast listener and psychotherapist Jackie Henry felt that I didn’t go far enough in that episode, and she was right. We – especially men – need to think carefully about the way we talk about women in our everyday lives. Was that joke really funny? Or was it one of the small ingredients that eventually adds up to – or contributes to – the ongoing violence and lack of empathy that those with power express toward those without it. We take up this important issue in this episode of The Psych files.

We say to ourselves, ‘What can I do? I’m only one person. How can we change the system?’ I think you move through that and you realize that there are small things you can do. Once we work on the individual level eventually that’s how bigger things change – Jackie Henry

Jaclyn Friedman - Toxic Masculinity

This article from The American Prospect appeared last month shortly before the conclusion of the Steubenville rape trial, in which the two teen males were essentially found guilty of rape. Although the article is a month old now, the points Friedman makes are relevant today, and next month, and next year - until we do something to change the culture of masculinity within which young men are raised

Toxic Masculinity

JACLYN FRIEDMAN
MARCH 13, 2013

If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men willing to do the hard work of interrogating the ideas they were raised with.

Judge Thomas Lipps listens to arguments in Jefferson County Juvenile Court in a case involving two Ohio high school football players charged with raping a 16-year-old girl.

Last summer, two young football players in the Ohio town of Steubenville carried the unconscious body of a local girl from party to party, violating her in ways you’d probably prefer not to think about. (I’m not pretending this incident is merely “alleged,” because there’s video and this column isn’t a court of law.) Today, she’ll face her attackers in court for the first time. It’s a brave act, as she surely knows she’ll not only be facing down the boys who did this to her, but also the adults whose jobs it is to blame her and call her a liar. Only she can know what will make this sacrifice worthwhile: Is it enough for her to be heard in court? Will it only be healing if the boys are convicted? Whatever it is she needs, I hope she gets it.

But rape prosecutions are argued on behalf of the state, not just the victim, and there’s a good reason: Rape doesn’t just harm one person. It tears at the fabric of our communities. And if we treat this trial as simply the story of what a couple of kids did to another, we’re missing the point. This isn’t an isolated incident, and the incident itself didn’t happen in isolation.

This rape is like most in that it was enabled by a deeply entrenched, toxic masculinity. It’s a masculinity that defines itself not only in opposition to female-ness, but as inherently superior, drawing its strength from dominance over women’s “weakness,” and creating men who are happy to deliberately undermine women’s power; it is only in opposition to female vulnerability that it can be strong. Or, as former NFL quarterback and newly-minted feminist Don McPherson recently put it, "We don't raise boys to be men. We raise them not to be women, or gay men." This starts in childhood for many boys, who are taught young that they’ll be punished for doing anything “girly,” from playing with dolls to crying, or even preferring to read over “rough housing” outside.

Toxic masculinity has its fingerprints all over the Steubenville case. The violence done to the victim was born out of the boys’ belief that a) sexually dominating a helpless girl’s body made them powerful and cool, and b) there would be no consequences for them because of their status as star athletes (If you want to see stomach-churning first-hand evidence of this, check out this video of one of their friends gleefully talking about how “raped” and “dead” the victim was). The defense is basing their entire case on it, arguing that this near- (and sometimes totally) unconscious girl’s body was the boys’ to use because “she didn't affirmatively say no." The football community’s response—by which I mean not just the coaches, school, and players, but the entire community of fans—is steeped in the assumptions of toxic masculinity, treating the athletes and the game as more important than some silly girl’s right to both bodily autonomy and justice. Steubenville residents have been quick to rally around the team, suggesting that the victim “put herself in a position to be violated” and refusing to talk to police investigating the assault. The two players who cooperated with police were suspended from the football team, while the players accused of the rape have been allowed to play. The coach even went so far as to threaten a New York Timesreporter asking questions about the case. (No surprise there: When it comes to male-dominated sports, toxic masculinity is the rule, not the exception.)

But sports is hardly the only breeding ground for toxic masculinity. Witness the recent, vicious bullying of Zerlina Maxwell by fans of Fox News. Last week, Maxwell was on Hannity and dared to opine that the best rape prevention isn’t about what women can do to protect themselves, but instead focuses on raising men who don’t rape. She also personally identified herself as a survivor of rape. What followed was a nearly inconceivable onslaught of misogynist and racist attacks, including repeated threats of rape and death. All because a black woman insisted that the work of stopping rape—“women’s work” if there ever was such a thing—requires men’s labor. Under the influence of toxic masculinity, the logical response to a man being forced or even encouraged to do something coded “female” is always violence.

The U.N. is in the midst of its 57th Commission on the Status of Women, this year focusing on gendered violence, a global pandemic made all the more urgent by growing evidence that social change leads to increased violence against women. Why? Because destabilizing established social order—even in the interest of what we might agree is progress—can leave people feeling vulnerable. And when men feel vulnerable, toxic masculinity teaches them the way to reassert their power is by dominating women. There’s a pall hanging over the proceedings, a real risk that this year’s commission may wind up like last year’s, failing to come to any policy agreements thanks to the obstructionism of a handful of patriarchal countries who claim that their traditional and religious customs would be infringed upon if they had to take action to end gendered violence in their countries. You can bet that any customs that require impunity for violence against women are built on toxic masculinity.

It’s time for a serious intervention in masculinity. It’s not enough to not be a rapist. You don’t get a cookie or a Nobel Peace Prize for that. If we want to end the pandemic of rape, it’s going to require an entire global movement of men who are willing to do the hard work required to unpack and interrogate the ideas of masculinity they were raised with, and to create and model new masculinities that don’t enable misogyny. Masculinities built not on power over women, but on power with women.

This is going to take real work, which is why so many men resist it. It requires destabilizing your own identity, and giving up attitudes and behaviors from which you’re used to deriving power, likely before you learn how to derive power from other, more just and productive places. There are real risks for men who challenge toxic masculinity, from social shaming to actual “don’t be a fag” violence—punishments that won’t ease until many, many men take the plunge. But there are great rewards to be had, too, beyond stopping rape. Toxic masculinity is damaging to men, too, positing them as stoic sex-and-violence machines with allergies to tenderness, playfulness, and vulnerability. A reinvented masculinity will surely give men more room to express and explore themselves without shame or fear. (It will also, not incidentally, reduce rape against men as well, because many rapes of men are committed by other men with the intention of “feminizing”—that is, humiliating through dominance—their victim.)

These interventions start with a “feminine” activity: introspection. What did you learn about “being a man,” from whom? How are those lessons working out for you, and for the people you love and your communities? Taking action can be as simple as men publicly owning their preference for “female” coded things, whether that’s child-rearing, nonviolence, feminism, or anything else—and being willing to suffer the social consequences. It can be more formal, working with established organizations like Men Stopping Violence. As more men take responsibility for the work, it will surely also take on forms no one has yet envisioned.

Obviously, the mouth-breathing troglodytes who hailed hate down on Maxwell aren’t going to be interested in this project. And there’s strong evidence that most rapes are committed by repeat offenders who may not call what they’re doing by the r-word, but know full-well they don’t have their partner’s consent. Remaking masculinity isn’t about sweetly beseeching those guys until they don “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” t-shirts. It’s about two much more practical things: 1) raising new generations of boys much less likely to grow into rapists and/or Fox trolls, and, meanwhile, 2) undermining the social license to operate which allows the current generation of assholes to keep trolling and raping with impunity.

In other words: What if misogynist trolling got you shunned by their friends and family? What if raping someone was actually likely to result in your expulsion from your team, and your conviction in court? If the rest of us shift our relationship to masculinity, ideas like “she was asking for it” or “don’t be a pussy” won’t make sense anymore, and the guys who try to cling to them will find themselves isolated, facing serious social and legal consequences.

There’s already some sign that this can work, and that the work is underway. Vancouver’s new initiative placing the focus on preventing offenders, not victims, is showing early promise. The Feminist Wire just launched a “Masculinities Forum” to create a more explicit dialogue on just these issues. And the organization Breakthrough has launched a global "Ring The Bell" campaign that is poised to take the lead on this very issue, calling for one million men to take concrete action to end violence against women.

It’s not a moment too soon. Just as putting the onus on women to prevent their own rapes on an individual basis is both wrong and ineffective, so to is putting the onus on women to stop rape as a social phenomenon. It’s time to “sack up” and step up, men. I promise it will hurt you a lot less than it’s hurting me.

Editor's Note: On May 17, the two young football players were adjudicated delinquent of rape, comparable to a guilty verdict in adult criminal court.

Brené Brown - Shame Corrodes Our Ability to Believe We Are Capable of Change

New York City, under Mayor Bloomberg's direction, recently unveiled its new anti-teen pregnancy campaign, with a series of posters similar to the one above (which is part of the series). A lot of people who are frequently liberal allies of Bloomberg have denounced the ad campaign, including Planned Parenthod:

Planned Parenthood issued a statement denouncing the poster campaign, saying that it ignored the racial, economic and social factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy and instead stigmatized teenage parents and their children.

Brené Brown - author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are, and I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't): Making the Journey from "What Will People Think?" to "I Am Enough", among other works - also weighs in on the issue, and she suggests (rightfully so) that shaming these young mothers is pouring salt in an open wound. Most of them probably did not plan to be mothers, but it happened, and shaming them for it will just create even more shame as they shame themselves.

She should know - Brown is one of the leading researchers and writers on shame in the U.S., and her TED Talks (The Power of Vulnerability, 2010, and Listening to Shame, 2012) have been HUGE successes.

This is from Brown's blog.

Public Shaming is a Better Example of "If it feels good - do it" than Teen Pregnancy

March 20, 2013

Richard Reeves’ New York Times Op/Ed arguing that shame is an essential ingredient of a healthy society is not only wrong, but also potentially more dangerous to parents, children, and society than teen pregnancy – the example he uses in his argument.

Last week New York City unveiled its public education campaign targeting teenage pregnancy. Taking a page from the Georgia obesity campaign and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the campaign features pictures of tear-stained toddlers admonishing their teen mothers for ruining their lives.

The ads are painful, and in a moment of sheer frustration and anger, I thought about ditching this article and just sending both Reeves and Mayor Bloomberg pictures of tear-stained pregnant teenagers staring out and declaring: “Please don’t attack my self-worth. I’m already struggling and desperate for love and belonging.”

Having spent the past decade studying shame, courage, and vulnerability, I know that ploy is cheap, easy, and ineffective. I’m going old school – with facts.

To be effective, all shame- and stigma-based campaigns rely on the intended audience’s feeling empathy and guilt when they see the images. In New York the goal is for teenagers to see the forlorn toddlers and think, “I don’t want to do that to a child.” In anti-obesity ads, the goal is for parents to see a desperate child saying, “Please help me. I don’t want to be fat,” and think, “I’ve got to start making better choices for my family.”

Here’s the rub:

Shame diminishes our capacity for empathy.

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.

You can’t depend on empathetic connection to make a campaign effective, then crush the needed empathy with shame.

Researchers June Tangney and Ronda Dearing, authors of Shame and Guilt, explain that feelings of shame are so painful that it pulls the focus to our own survival, not the experiences of others.

Example: A man shakes a bottle of pills in his wife’s face, “Look around you! Your pill-popping is destroying our family. Our son is failing out of school and our daughter is literally starving herself for attention. What's wrong with you?”

Does the shame of what she’s doing to her family lead her to get help, or does it lead her to slink away and get high? After-school specials tell us she gets help. Data say she gets high. In fact, new research shows that some addiction may be born of shame and that shame leads to relapse rather than relapse prevention.

A man is convicted of domestic abuse and the judge sentences him to stand downtown during rush hour holding a sign that says, “I am a wife beater.” Would you like to be the woman he comes home to that night? Are you safer when he’s in shame or repairing shame?

Reeves basically makes the good shame/bad shame argument, explaining that shame should be used in some ways but not others.

I don’t see any evidence of “good shame.” Not in my research and not in the research being done by other affect researchers.

I define shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” Along with many other shame researchers, I’ve come to the conclusion that shame is much more likely to be the source of dangerous, destructive, and hurtful behaviors than it is to be the solution.

It is human nature, not just the nature of liberals (as Reeves argues), to want to feel affirmed and valued. When we experience shame, we feel disconnected and desperate for belonging and recognition. It’s when we feel shame or the fear of shame that we are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors, to attack or humiliate others, or to stay quiet when we see someone who needs our help.

Making the distinction between good and bad shame, and promoting so-called good shame is like saying there’s “good starvation” and “bad starvation” and that we need to address the obesity epidemic with “good starvation.” Just like there’s no such thing as “good starvation,” there’s no such thing as “good shame.”

The “good shame” that Reeves describes is actually a combination of guilt and empathy. And, interestingly, there is actually significant research on the important roles both guilt and empathy play in pro-social, positive behavior.

Is this just a case of semantics? No. We don’t refer to balanced, healthy eating as “good starvation” because it’s confusing, inaccurate, and misleading. It also obscures and confuses what we really need to do to move toward positive social outcomes.

The majority of shame researchers agree that the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the difference between “I am bad” and “I did something bad.” Shame is about who we are, and guilt is about our behaviors.

When we apologize for something we’ve done, make amends to others, or change a behavior that we don’t feel good about, guilt is most often the motivator. Of course, you can shame someone into saying, “I’m sorry,” but it’s rarely authentic. Guilt is as powerful as shame; it just doesn’t have the paralyzing and debilitating impact that prevents shame from being an effective agent of meaningful change.

Empathy is the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s place in order to understand what they are feeling. When we are empathetic, we can listen and respond authentically to others, and we have the skills to consider how our actions will impact others.

Again, why don’t we just refer to guilt and empathy as “good shame”? Because it’s inaccurate. It clouds the fact that being empathetic and communicating with others (colleagues, children, partners, friends) without using shame requires most of us to develop new skills. Labeling these skills “good shame” moves us away from the hard work of understanding, identifying, and acquiring the knowledge we need to change.

Based on my own experiences with shame (we all have it) and what I’ve learned about it as a researcher, I know the intense pain, isolation, and fear it causes. I’m not proud to say this, but even with this knowledge, if I thought shaming people would, in the long run, keep them safer and make the world a better place, I might do it. As a parent and an observer of human behavior, I can get extremely fearful, and that fear might allow me to overlook the pain caused by shame if I thought it would ensure a better outcome.

Fortunately, I don’t have to wrestle with that moral dilemma because we know that shame never works as a catalyst for healthy, lasting change.

Shame is at the core of violence, addiction, disengagement, and fear. Shame is about anger and blame, not accountability and change. Meaningful change means understanding the realities of these girls’ lives (and the boys who get them pregnant) and working with them to cultivate educational opportunities, hope, and support.

Reeves writes, “We need a sense of shame to live well together. For those with liberal instincts, this is necessarily hard. But it is also necessary.” I’m not sure what he means by “liberal instincts,” but what I do know is that using shame as a tool when we are frustrated, angry, or desperate to see behavior change in people is a much better example of the “it feels good – do it” ethos than the teen pregnancy problem. We might feel justified in belittling and humiliating people, but it makes the world a more dangerous place.

I'd love to know what you think. Respectful debate and discussion is always welcome! ​

LEO BABAUTA - Advice to My Kids: You Are Good Enough

There has been a lot of criticism of parents who never allow thier kids to experience failure, a tendency we also see in the schools and in youth sports, where no one loses and everyone is a winner just for showing up. To be perfectly honest, this is a white affluent problem - it's not a problem you will see in Compton (CA) or in Tucson's Barrio.

I work with the fall-out of a different kind of parenting - those who denigrate, ridicule, shame, and otherwise crush the spirit and individuality of their kids. These are the boys and girls who are molested as children and/or raped as adults. They makle bad choices because they have no sense of self-worth, no sense that they deserve better.

I like this article below because it offers a different take on parenting - it teaches self-worth and self-compassion. It is about teaching our children to have what psychologists call an internal locus of control (self-affirming and self-directed) rather than relying on others for a sense of worth or purpose (external locus of control). I also like that he talks about failure as a teacher, accpeting change as inevitable, and that becoming comfortable with discomfort is essential.

Leo Babauta is the creator and writer of Zen Habits (where this article originally appeared). He is married and has six kids. Zen Habits is one of the Top 25 blogs and Top 50 websites in the world.

Advice to My Kids: You Are Good Enough

FEBRUARY 9, 2013 BY LEO BABAUTA

Leo Babauta has some advice for his kids. And yes, it’s a little zen.

I have six lovely children — one of them now an adult, and a couple more almost there — and I give a lot of thought to what I think they should know as they grow up and go out into the world.

What could I best teach them to equip them for life?

This is what I’d like them to know:

You are good enough. Most people are afraid to do things because they are afraid they’re not good enough, afraid they’ll fail. But you are good enough — learn that and you won’t be afraid of new things, won’t be afraid to fail, won’t need the approval of others. You’ll be pre-approved — by yourself.

All you need to be happy is within you. Many people seek happiness in food, drugs, alcohol, shopping, partying, sex…because they’re seeking external happiness. They don’t realize the tools for happiness aren’t outside them. They’re right inside you: mindfulness, gratitude, compassion, thoughtfulness, the ability to create and do something meaningful, even in a small way.

You can start your own business. As a young man, I thought I needed to go to college and then be employed, and that owning a business is for rich people. That was all wrong. It’s possible for almost anyone to start their own business, and while you’ll probably do badly at first, you’ll learn quickly. It’s a much better education than college.

Everything useful I’ve learned I didn’t learn from college…I learned from doing.

That said, I’ve had some amazing teachers. They’re not always in school, though: they’re everywhere. A friend I met at work. My peers online. My mom, dad, siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts. My wife. My kids. Failure. Teachers are everywhere, if you’re willing to learn.

Spend less than you earn. Thirty percent less if you can manage. Most people get a job and immediately spend their income on a car loan, high rent or a large mortgage, buying possessions and eating out using credit cards. None of that is necessary. Don’t spend it if you don’t have it. Learn to go without, and be happy with less.

Put away some of your income to grow with the power of compound earnings. Your future self will thank you.

Learn to love healthy food. It’s all a matter of adjusting your tastebuds, slowly and gradually. Learn to cook for yourself. Try some healthy, delicious recipes.

Learn compassion. We start life with a very selfish outlook — we want what we want. But compassion is about realizing we are no more important than everyone else, and we aren’t at the center of the universe. Someone annoys you? Get outside of your little shell, and try to see how their day is going. How can you help them be less angry, less in pain?

Never stop learning. If you just learn something a little a day, it will add up over time immensely.

Have fun being active. Sure, there’s lots of fun to be had online, and in eating sweets and fried food, and in watching TV and movies and playing video games. But going outside and playing with friends, tossing a ball around, swimming, climbing something, challenging each other … that’s even more fun. And it leads to a healthy life, healthy heart, more focused and energetic mind.

Get good at discomfort. Avoiding discomfort is very common, but a big mistake. Learning to be OK with some discomfort will change your life.

The things that stress you out don’t matter. Take a larger perspective: will this matter in five years? Most likely the answer is no. If the answer is yes, attend to it.

Savor life. Not just the usual pleasures, but everything and everyone. The stranger you meet on the bus. The sunshine that hits your face as you walk. The quiet of the morning. Time with a loved one. Time alone. Your breath as you meditate.

Meditate.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. They are some of the best teachers. Instead, learn to be OK with mistakes, and learn to learn from them, and learn to shrug them off so they don’t affect your profound confidence in who you are.

You need no one else to make you happy or validate you. You don’t need a boss to tell you that you’re great at what you do. You don’t need a boyfriend/girlfriend to tell you that you’re lovable. You don’t need your friends’ approval. Having loved ones and friends in your life is amazing, but know who you are first.

Learn to be good at change. Change is the one constant in life. You will suffer by trying to hold onto things. Learn to let go (meditation helps with this skill), and learn to have a flexible mind. Don’t get stuck in what you’re comfortable with, don’t shut out what’s new and uncomfortable.

Open your heart. Life is amazing if you don’t shut it out. Other people are amazing. Open your heart, be willing to take the wounds that come with an open heart, and you will experience the best of life.

Let love be your rule. Success, selfishness, righteousness … these are not good rules to live by. Love family, friends, coworkers, strangers, your brothers and sisters in humanity. Love even those who think they’re your enemy. Love the animals we treat as food and objects. Most of all, love yourself.

And always know, no matter what: I love you with every particle of my being.



– Main photo: reallyterriblephotographer / flickr
Author image: zenhabits.net

Male eXperience - The 20 Steps To Authentic Manhood

Over at Male eXperience, Graham Phoenix recently posted an excellent article on how masculinity is changing as we move deeper into the 21st Century, offering "20 Steps to Authentic Manhood."

Below is the introduction to the article followed by the list of 20 Steps. To read more about each step you will need to follow the title link to Graham's blog - and while you're there, have a look around. Graham is the real deal offering real growth opportunities for men.

Personally, #s 7 and 19 are the most relevant for me going into the new year - those are the ones that need the most work right now. What are yours?

The Winds Of Change For Men – The 20 Steps To Authentic Manhood

by Graham Phoenix

What has happened to the concept of masculinity? What has happened to authentic manhood? Do men have a passion for life any more? What are the winds of change for men? It is up to each man, individually, to find his own answers. There are, however, some simple steps you can take to get there.

The truth is that you should live a full and thrilling life because you know what your passion for life is. You can be successful and powerful by owning your authentic manhood.

In 1960 in Cape Town, South Africa, the British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, gave his famous ‘Wind of Change’ speech. In it Macmillan acknowledged that black people in Africa were, quite rightly, claiming the right to rule themselves, and suggested that it was a responsibility of the British government to promote the creation of societies in which the rights of all individuals were upheld. He said,


“The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.”

I would suggest that in this decade the ‘Wind of Change’ is blowing through the men’s movement and through men, as a whole. Men are finding their strength and their voice not as a dominant force but as a compassionate, supportive force. Men can now stand up in their power in the knowledge that they can be open, honest and authentic in their actions.You only have to look at sites such ‘The Good Men Project’ and ‘The Art of Manliness’ to see the extent to which attitudes are turning.

♦◊♦

‘Male eXperience’ has developed as a site in this time; it is now time for it to develop as a movement. ‘Male eXperience’ has drawn together men from around the world, it is now time for those men to draw further together into a movement. Men work best by joining forces, it is time for men to join forces under the banner of ‘Male eXperience’.

It is appropriate for me to lay out what can bring men together and what could hold us together. I would like to propose the ‘Male eXperience Manifesto’, our shout out to the world. These are the winds of change blowing through men.

♦◊♦

The Winds Of Change For Men – 20 Steps to Authentic Manhood

1. Live In Your Core
2. Understand Your Influences
3. Have Your Own Standards
4. Know Yourself As A Man
5. Know How You See The World
6. Be Present
7. Believe In Yourself
8. Be Grounded
9. Seek New Goals
10. Be Authentic
11. Pick Your Friends Wisely
12. Get A Mentor
13. The Process, Not The Outcome
14. Be Passionate
15. Accept Change
16. Accept Uncertainty
17. Be A Servant Leader.
18. Be Intimate
19. Know Your Own Power
20. Live Your Full Potential

Cindy Wigglesworth - Building Spiritual Intelligence in the New Year

Cindy Wiggleworth is the author of SQ 21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence and in this article from Huffington Post, she offers suggestions and support for setting and achieving a spiritual intelligence goal for 2013. For reference, I have included her chart of the 21 spiritual competencies.

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A Spiritual Intelligence Goal for the New Year
Posted: 01/04/2013

Cindy Wigglesworth - Author of SQ21, Leadership Coach and Corporate Consultant

"Spirit," by whatever name, is not measurable. But skills like spiritual intelligence (SQ) skills can be measured. And measurement is useful -- it points to where we can grow and improve.

My belief in the value of measuring SQ was confirmed when I recently heard from a woman named Jane who had scored a "0" on one of the skills in my SQ21 spiritual intelligence assessment.

"It really got my attention in a way I would not have expected," Jane said. "I was shocked. Good grades and test scores have always been important to me." Initially it was a bit hard to take. But as Jane began to read the report that came with her scores, she saw a list of some possible reasons for her score. A moment of recognition occurred. She had deep wounds she was still carrying from the church she attended as a child. She left this church with anger in her heart. The report and coaching suggested she might want to heal the wounds from her past by trying to forgive and seeing what was good in her earlier church experience.

She prayed about it and opened herself up to the guidance of spirit. Eventually she took the steps to reconnect with the choir director and then the minister and his wife. She was astonished by what she experienced. "I had forgotten the love because I had focused for so long on my anger and pain," she said. "It was that 'zero' that opened the door to my readiness to listen to spirit and to find the courage to commit to opening up to a part of my past I was afraid to be with. I did need to go back, in some way, and allow healing to begin. I didn't even know this love was still in me."

I have heard a great many such stories over the years. There is nothing quite like the stark reality of a number to propel us into reflection and possibly into action.

As we look to another new year, I am planning my own focus area for personal growth. Perhaps you are doing the same? Here are some ideas if you want to plan for some SQ growth:

1. List the areas where you would like to improve. Some common areas: letting go of the past, forgiveness; focusing on what is good, gratitude; having patience with others; developing humility. Make your own list. Then pick the one idea which is most important and focus on that.

2. Measure your current status. This is like knowing your current weight before you start a diet. Consider if there is an assessment you might want to use to see where you are today so you can plan next steps and chart improvements. If there isn't one you can write out a paragraph about why you want to improve in this area. What do you want to stop doing? Or what are you trying to change?

3. What are your desired outcomes? Be as clear and specific as possible. For example: "I will know I am successful when I can go to my parents' house for dinner and not feel triggered." How will you feel when you successfully develop this skill? Use emotions words like "I will feel calm," or "I will feel joyful."

4. Find good tools or practices to help you achieve your goal. Is there a meditation, forgiveness or other practice you would like to learn or recommit to practicing? A book to buy? A workshop or retreat to attend?

5. Think about tangible ways to track your progress. Could you journal at the end of each day? Consider who could give you feedback about your progress; for example, could a loved one give you positive feedback when you show more patience than usual? Be clear about what kind of feedback you want -- if you find corrective feedback helpful, ask for it. If not, ask for positive feedback only.

6. Buddy-up. Find a friend who wants to grow too and provide cheerleading support for each other! Agree to a regular check-in for mutual support. Perhaps you can take the same class together?

Let me know in the comments what areas you are focusing on, and what tools work for you. Who will be supporting you?

Measurement is our friend. Let's set clear goals, measure fearlessly and grow abundantly in 2013!

For more by Cindy Wigglesworth, click here.
For more the spirit, click here.

Margaret Wehrenberg - Overwork/Underwork—Two Sides of Male Depression

This brief article from Margaret Wehrenberg's Depression Management Techniques blog at Psychology Today looks at how building social connections can ameliorate the depression that comes from (or is hidden with) being overworked or suffering from underwork - both conditions can impair a man's self-esteem and self-compassion (which is the more important area for concern).

Overwork/Underwork—Two Sides of Male Depression

How insistence on social connections can break through low self worth. 

Published on October 14, 2012 by Margaret Wehrenberg, Psy.D. in Depression Management Techniques 

Overwork and Underwork; two sides of worthlessness in male depression. How insistence on social connections can break through.

Al commented: “I have never been a guy who can just take time off without feeling wrong and guilty. So I work 70 hours or more a week. It is killing me, I think, but what in the world would I do with the time if I was not working?” Al represents the kind of depression that hides in overwork and lack of social contact. He feels low self worth and does not believe he is loveable. He is home so rarely that his family takes vacations without him and he has been known to work on holidays. He is a man who cannot fill his life with meaningful connections, so work becomes the point of his existence. He is one short-term illness away from despair: Unable to work, he would succumb to feeling useless or worthless and his depression would well up and swamp him.

Marlin on the other hand was out of work but he was also unwilling to discuss how deeply he feared not getting a job he interviewed for. He had struggled against networking, embarrassed and unwilling to test the strength of friendship among acquaintances he contacted for his job search. Instead, he railed against the rules of unemployment that demanded he had to demonstrate applying for 4 jobs per week. “No one can tell me how to live!” he declared. “I will live on my nest egg until I am out of money rather than knuckle under to the way some agency wants me to conduct my job search.” Being out of work was grinding his self-esteem to a fine powder, and depression’s hopeless and helpless attitude blocked his job hunting. He became increasingly isolated, avoiding people to avoid discussing his unemployment, and thus he limited his options for receiving help and support. Being angry at least gave him a sense of power.

Both of these men with low self-esteem also reflect the problematic low levels of serotonin common to depressed brains. That neurochemistry shows in the persistent negativity and the inflexibility in problem solving that will keep both these men stuck in their unfortunate patterns of behavior. Because most men strongly connect their value and identity with their work, work carries exceptional power to define their worth.  Al’s overwork and Marlin’s embarrassment about unemployment reflected their sense of value. They found ineffective, albeit different, solutions: Al hiding in his work and Marlin using anger to cover his fear of unemployment and defend his inflexibility.

What both these men were missing may have been healthy levels of serotonin, but they were also missing social involvement that might have reversed the pattern. Depression can lead a man to feel worthless and block his understanding of why family and friends want to be with him. However, being with others in pleasant social contexts, whether family or friends, is an automatic lift to the mood and raises energy. Forcing oneself to participate, even though the desire to participate is minimal, can begin to shift intractable behavior. If Al or Marlin had spent time with people who cared about them, they might have been able to get perspective on their value as well as on their options.

It is true that being depressed makes it very hard to reach out to others.  Any person who lives with the over-worker or stalled job hunter can see that their perspective is narrowed and their self-worth is damaged. Broadening perspective can be accomplished in making small connections, putting a wedge into the wall of their disbelief that others see them as more valuable than their work. What gets through? Working from ‘the outside in” can help. Urging, encouraging, even insisting on behavior change can change feelings and that can change the brain to a more balanced brain. If a man can insist with himself, fine, and if not, therapist or family member can push in these directions:

• Insist the man with no worth make a list of people in his life and identify whether they love him (according to what they say, not according to whether the depressed man feels loved.) Then review the list daily.
• Insist he participate in a social activity however much the depressed man resists. Follow up with identifying whether it was pleasurable or unpleasurable. (No middle ground).
• Insist that he identifies 3 blessings a day, every day, in writing. And yes, eating popcorn can be a blessing if you like it. No activity is too small to be a blessing. He should read it to himself every day and read the list to someone else once a week.
• Insist that he spends time with family, participating in an activity together. (And everyone sitting in a restaurant looking at their individual handheld devices does not count as together time.)
• Insist that he reconnects with others. For example, making a list of people he could socialize with, even if it has been a while, and then call or email or text one person per week to set up a contact, such as golf game, drinks after work, bike ride, meet at the gym, have a lunch, etc.

Always follow up with evaluating how the connection felt. When men are depressed, they are slow to acknowledge that something made them feel good. They do not easily credit the pleasurable aspects of the connection. And reviewing that it felt good makes it harder for him to ignore the good feeling and re-stimulates the pleasure of the experience strengthening its value as an antidepressant. 

Connection is the way out of depression, in part because it contradicts worthlessness. Once an Al or Marlin believes he is not worthless in the eyes of others, he might be more balanced about work and separate his identity from his job status.  As his sense of value increases, the hold of depression decreases.

Ending the Cycle - Perspective and Personal Story

These two posts feel connected in my mind - whether or not they are is up to you, I suppose. The first one is a Daily Om from a while ago, which I may have posted by itself. The second is a personal story by Dan Dianda at The Mindful Word.

Ending the Cycle: Start Today

by Madisyn Taylor

Each day offers us an opportunity to renew our resolve to the universe that we are ready for change.

One of the hardest things in life is feeling stuck in a situation that we don’t like and want to change. We may have exhausted ourselves trying to figure out how to make change, and we may even have given up. However, each day offers us an opportunity to renew our resolve and to declare to the universe that we are ready for change. We may even say out loud that we have tried and struggled and have not found a way, but that we are open to help, and that we intend to keep working to create change for ourselves. Making this declaration to the universe, and to ourselves, may be just the remedy for the stagnation we are experiencing. And, it can be done today, right now.

It is difficult to understand, even with hindsight, how the choices we have made have added up to our current situation, but it is a good idea to examine the story we tell ourselves. If we tend to regard ourselves as having failed, this will block our ability to allow ourselves to succeed. We have the power to change the story we tell ourselves by acknowledging that in the past, we did our best, and we exhibited many positive qualities, and had many fine moments on our path to the present moment. We can also recognize that we have learned from our experiences, and that this will help us with our current choices.

When we do this kind of work on how we view our past self, we make it possible for the future to be based on a positive self-assessment. This inner shift may allow us to get out of the cycle we’ve been in that’s been keeping us stuck. Now we can declare our intentions to the universe, knowing that we have done the inner work necessary to allow our lives to change. Allow today to be the day to end cycles and enter into a new way of being.

I'm not sure about declaring things to the universe, but there are often times in our lives where we wonder how we ended up in this moment and place and situation. All of our choices in the past have led us to this moment, and this moment, and this moment.

If we do like where we find ourselves, it's up to us to change things. Only I can create a new future from this moment forward by making new choices. Each morning that I wake up is a new day in which I can make new choices to create the future I desire - it's never easy, and in fact, change is one of the hardest things for most us to accomplish.

In a post related to this topic, Dan Dianda at The Mindful Word wrote about his own experience with how he "began to question what was going on around me and why I went along without checking in with myself—without questioning the narrative spinning in my head."

Don Dianda is the author of See for your Self: Zen Mindfulness for the Next Generation. Through meditation, daily mindfulness practice, and individual koan work, Dianda seeks to shed light on the inherently deep connection one can have with the experience of this life as well as the world one moves through. Stepping into the now and recognizing the movements within the mind is where the path begins.

Here is his article.

REAL MEANING: A personal essay on questioning the fabricated reality of one’s life 

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”—Matsuo Basho

Growing up in a well-to-do American family is materially comfortable. Family troubles aside—and they can be considerable—life is full of pleasure: desires are satisfied, drinks guzzled and fanciful whims gained. There are high school football games, school days, workdays, sex, travelling, television, Fourth of July celebrations, drama, weekend all-nighters, jokes, cliques, victories, and defeats. Like a giant cliché, life unfolds, and it unfolds around a focal point: me-I-a separate ego. From here good and bad, love and hate, sad, mad, happy, despair, upbeat, low, subject, object, outside, come together to form one’s life experience. To keep some form of sanity, we follow our mind and attempt to gratify its wants and needs as a way to find fulfillment and success. We create stories and follow them. We listen to our thoughts intently—to the point where we eventually become them. We go for more and more. But is that it? I found out. Coming home at three in the morning tired, intoxicated, full of shallow thoughts and loaded with cheap laughs, my life was passing before my eyes.

Throughout my first two years in college, I often had the urge to “black out,” literally. Though I wasn’t conscious enough to be aware of it at the time, I wanted to be able to float through life, running from painful experiences that had rooted themselves into my psyche. The path at the time was simply to ignore any stirrings within and to keep going, to press on, to focus on money and being accepted within the constructs of the society I found myself in. These were the values, but I wasn’t buying them anymore.

Something was shifting inside me. I wasn’t aware of what it was or how it was working. I just began to question what was going on around me and why I went along without checking in with myself—without questioning the narrative spinning in my head.

I changed my life and woke up during my junior year of college: I’d had enough. The drinking didn’t do it for me. The partying didn’t do it for me. Vegas, Miami, L.A., didn’t do it for me. I felt completely strange and insubstantial in my own body. Everything I had created, my ego, my friendships, my internal wiring, my identity—aspects of my external being I had spent years cultivating, shaping and reshaping—were just the bones of a paper tiger in the face of the stirrings of what lay buried beneath. I’d been living in a dream and I was finally beginning to realize it.

The slow change within my heart had been an ongoing process. There had been an upswelling of feeling and emotion when I had been alone hiking in the hills or swimming in the ocean. Also, brief moments of disconnect from my social life allowed questions, concerning what I was doing, to bubble up. But fear and doubt coincided with these thoughts. So, naturally I did what I was good at, I dove back into my life with added vigor. I denied. I suppressed all my inner yearnings with more alcohol, more drugs, and more meaningless relationships. I searched for more of the same to fill the growing inner void and outer disconnection—feeding my ego, only to have it come back to me over and over again. There was something deep inside that persisted in repelling my unconscious overtures. Though I did not realize it at the time, my Self was saving me from myself.

If time passes in the blink of an eye, how could insubstantial things be more valuable than the present moment?

One early morning after going out and drinking, I came home feeling slightly ill. I crawled into bed and passed out, something many of us can relate to. In the night, I dreamed that a powerful, jet-black snake had been sucking vital energy from the back of my neck. Its muscles pulsated with each drink. All I could do was grab it and pull, but to no avail.

Read the whole article.