Jayson Gaddis: The Initiation into Manhood (Interviewed at Inner Gladiator)

The Inner Gladiator's Max Nachamkin recently interviewed Jayson Gaddis, "a relationship healer, psychotherapist, and guide devoted to helping people awaken through relationship, intimacy, and parenting."

The Initiation into Manhood Ft. Jayson Gaddis

This week I interviewed Jayson Gaddis, a relationship healer, psychotherapist, and guide devoted to helping people awaken through relationships. He’s passionate about the role of masculinity in today’s society, and has a strikingly awesome view on what it means to become a man.

If you’re going through a tough time right now, this podcast will benefit you the most. Specifically, you’ll learn:

• The two important tools a man should utilize while figuring out who he is
• Why we are taught to close ourselves off to the world and why this is hurting our growth
• How to deal with people who judge you for wanting to grow
• How to go through an initiation process that will help you become a stronger man
• The importance of joining a men’s group to discover the truth of who you are quickly
• And more as always

You can also download the podcast through iTunes and listen to it later if you’re on the go. Enjoy! 

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend because it can help them today. 

To learn more about Jayson and what he does, visit his website by clicking here.

Eivind Skjellum - Amazing Lecture by Jacqueline Novogratz

Eivind Skjellum is the man behind Masculinity Movies, which is only occasionally active at the moment, but since completing the New Warrior Training Adventure in June 2011, he has been blogging from time to time at The Mankind Project Journal.

As long-time readers know, I have had issues with the MKP organization but have found many of their members to be good men of heart and strength. Eivind is one of those men - this post originally appeared at his blog.

I am pretty sure I posted this at IOC back when it first was posted by the TED folks - but it's worth seeing more than once. She gets to the important insights about men at the 7:15 point in the talk - she really gets it (text at the bottom, but please listen to the whole talk).

Amazing lecture by Jacqueline Novogratz

March 5, 2012 

I was very inspired by this incredible TED talk by Jacqueline Novogratz. Not only is she a wonderful, heart-open and humble woman deeply in tune with humanity’s challenges, but she has the visionary insight that male depression is related to female suffering. For some women, it’s very common today to think and say that men make women suffer because we are evil and uncontrollably violent, little else but walking testosterone bombs who need to be feminized to heal us from our inherent evils.*

Jacqueline understands that a young man who has not been loved, blessed or nourished by an elder man will turn into bitter, disempowered, depressed men who lash out from a place of pain and who are easy prey for tyrant demagogues. She also seems to understand how masculinity is a wonderful thing that the world needs more of, empowering men to serve as stewards of our future.

One story she told impacted me a great deal. Ingrid Washinawatok, a Native American woman, told Jacqueline how elders of her Native American tribe would visualize children from seven generations into the future watching them from above, seeing them as stewards for the time that was once going to be theirs. This concept is so powerful it strikes me right in the heart. All we think of in the midst of consumerist hysteria is “I need more”. Selfish, ignorant and altogether miserable are so many modern lives.

Have a look. Trust me, it’s worth your time.

* “All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.” – Catherine MacKinnon
* “The media treat male assaults on women like rape, beating, and murder of wives and female lovers, or male incest with children, as individual aberrations…obscuring the fact that all male violence toward women is part of a concerted campaign.” – Marilyn French

 Here is the piece of the transcript that I find most moving for men, although the whole thing is excellent.

I also have been touched by the dark side of power and leadership. And I have learned that power, particularly in its absolute form, is an equal opportunity provider. In 1986, I moved to Rwanda, and I worked with a very small group of Rwandan women to start that country's first microfinance bank. And one of the women was Agnes -- there on your extreme left -- she was one of the first three women parliamentarians in Rwanda, and her legacy should have been to be one of the mothers of Rwanda. We built this institution based on social justice, gender equity, this idea of empowering women.

But Agnes cared more about the trappings of power than she did principle at the end. And though she had been part of building a liberal party, a political party that was focused on diversity and tolerance, about three months before the genocide, she switched parties and joined the extremist party, Hutu Power, and she became the Minister of Justice under the genocide regime and was known for inciting men to kill faster and stop behaving like women. She was convicted of category one crimes of genocide. And I would visit her in the prisons, sitting side-by-side, knees touching, and I would have to admit to myself that monsters exist in all of us, but that maybe it's not monsters so much, but the broken parts of ourselves, sadnesses, secret shame, and that ultimately it's easy for demagogues to prey on those parts, those fragments, if you will, and to make us look at other beings, human beings, as lesser than ourselves -- and in the extreme, to do terrible things.

And there is no group more vulnerable to those kinds of manipulations than young men. I've heard it said that the most dangerous animal on the planet is the adolescent male. And so in a gathering where we're focused on women, while it is so critical that we invest in our girls and we even the playing field and we find ways to honor them, we have to remember that the girls and the women are most isolated and violated and victimized and made invisible in those very societies where our men and our boys feel disempowered, unable to provide. And that, when they sit on those street corners and all they can think of in the future is no job, no education, no possibility, well then it's easy to understand how the greatest source of status can come from a uniform and a gun.

Sometimes very small investments can release enormous, infinite potential that exists in all of us. One of the Acumen Fund fellows at my organization, Suraj Sudhakar, has what we call moral imagination -- the ability to put yourself in another person's shoes and lead from that perspective. And he's been working with this young group of men who come from the largest slum in the world, Kibera. And they're incredible guys. And together they started a book club for a hundred people in the slums, and they're reading many TED authors and liking it. And then they created a business plan competition. Then they decided that they would do TEDx's.

And I have learned so much from Chris and Kevin and Alex and Herbert and all of these young men. Alex, in some ways, said it best. He said, "We used to feel like nobodies, but now we feel like somebodies." And I think we have it all wrong when we think that income is the link. What we really yearn for as human beings is to be visible to each other. And the reason these young guys told me that they're doing these TEDx's is because they were sick and tired of the only workshops coming to the slums being those workshops focused on HIV, or at best, microfinance. And they wanted to celebrate what's beautiful about Kibera and Mathare -- the photojournalists and the creatives, the graffiti artists, the teachers and the entrepreneurs. And they're doing it. And my hat's off to you in Kibera.

Documentary - School Boys to Soldiers

From Documentary Heaven, this is a short Documentary, following an 18 year old Soldier: Charlie Morris – Cook. As he is home for Christmas with his family before he gets deployed to Afghanistan for the first time.

I wonder what connection there is between the tattoos and his choice to join the military - are both some form of "mark" of his masculinity, a visible symbol of his transition into manhood? Perhaps for this young man, and many others like him, these act as initiation rites, transitional rituals as he enters the world of men?

School Boys to Soldiers

A warrior code gone wrong - Hazing is not initiation

This article from the Times Live (South Africa) does a good job of distinguishing between hazing and meaningful initiation.

Hazing is mean-spirited, cruel, and serves no purpose other than humiliation. Often, it is little more than ritualized abuse. Initiation, however, is not mean-spirited or focused on humiliation - it seeks to test the initiate to prove his merit. Initiation is a "rite of passage."

Initiation has essentially disappeared in any meaningful sense. (The Mankind Project has their own version, but many men have found it humiliating and degrading.) In the absence of any real structure, hazing has become widely practiced and accepted, especially in sports teams and fraternities.

A warrior code gone wrong


Judith Ancer | 28 August, 2011

Initiation practices are all too often brutal, bizarre and wholly irrelevant.

The 13-year-old boy was home for a holiday, having just finished his first term at a prestigious boys' boarding school. His parents had brought him to therapy because he was "just not himself" - he was withdrawn, moody and had lost weight. While the boy at first insisted everything was okay, it soon emerged that senior boys had made him crawl naked over concrete, had rubbed Deep Heat over his genitals and forced him to drink what he thought was urine.


The boy had been "initiated", playing his small part in an often agonising ritualised drama that has been going on for centuries.


Sambia people in New Guinea did it by thrusting wooden sticks up the nostrils of five-year-old boys. In prisons, some gang initiates still do it by stabbing prison warder s. In the Russian army, some non-commissioned officers do it by branding recruits. At universities, undergraduates occasionally die while doing it. Some school sports teams do it by stripping, shaving and beating each other.


The question is, why?


Why do these kinds of practices survive in the 21st century? When we test someone's right to join our fraternity by cursing, assaulting or humiliating them, we are doing it to the previous version of ourselves. We were once that high school kid, that freshman. Yet we stand in line to pass it on to the next generation.


Communities have always conducted rites of passage both religious, such as bar mitzvahs, circumcisions and christenings, and secular, like 21st birthday parties and matric dances, which take young people through a journey from childhood to adulthood. Today these acts of initiation range from character-building and profound, through the playful or silly, to the abusive and frankly illegal.


The original purpose of initiation often gets lost. The word "initiation" derives from Latin for "entrance" or "beginning", literally "a going in". Historically, these rituals helped prepare individuals psychologically, physically and symbolically for the world they had to live in. But out of context, and taken too far, they constitute ritualised group abuse and institutionalised bullying.


Once they take hold in a group, harsh initiation practices become part of that culture and can be difficult to uproot. More than one school head has discovered that their attempt to moderate initiation practices is actively resisted by pupils, who wish to pass on the same trial by fire they underwent.


Often initiations are defended as arduous tests of strength and character, teaching humility and toughening up or weeding out the weak, the argument goes. However, most of us school our children to prepare them for the 21st century workplace, not for the rigours of the battlefield or a survivalist lifestyle.


Even in the military, brutal initiations are controversial. Sean Renaud, a New Zealand academic who researched the Chechen wars, comments on the impact of initiation practices on the Russian army when they fought in Chechnya. Those units that had the harshest versions of initiation were the first to fall apart under enemy fire and desert. And how well did our Kamp Staaldraad warriors do in the 2003 Rugby World Cup?


As parents, we might feel anxious about our children's initiations. There are a couple of questions you might want to ask:

• Is your child being initiated or hazed? Initiation is intended to be a meaningful, controlled and ritualised ceremony. Hazing is just abusing and humiliating someone who is new;
• What is the purpose of the initiation? How will running through a line of stick-wielding verbal abusers prepare your child for a future job as a doctor, IT specialist or plumber?;
• For boys, is initiation merely a way of forcing them into a stereotypical mould of masculinity? Being tough and controlling one's emotions is just one version of masculinity. A 21st century man has just as great a need to solve problems and contribute to nation building; and
• Do we tolerate the practice because we believe in it, or are we denying the pain, vulnerability and humiliation of our own initiation experiences?

Parents must make up their own minds about initiations, but should do so from a position of knowledge. Your child is ultimately your responsibility, so insist that a school is transparent about initiation practices and that you will not tolerate mindless hazing.


Lastly, speak out about the need for initiation practices to move with the times. Isn't it time initiations focused more on collaboration and community building through problem solving, creativity and strategic thinking?


Ancer is a Johannesburg-based psychologist

Digging into the ManKind Project's Initiation Program - The Cult Beneath the Concept

I recently posted an interview with the Chairman of the ManKind Project, George Daranyi, from the Blog Talk Radio program "The Secret Lives of Men," with Chris Blazina, Ph.D.

Before getting into the interesting stuff, here is a lengthy summary of their initiation program:

A premise of the New Warrior Training Adventure was an introductory, experiential, weekend-long men’s gathering and initiation focusing on deep self-examination. This initiatory training was modeled - unconsciously, at first, and later intentionally - largely on Joseph Campbell’s cross-cultural research, and uses his stages of initiation: separation, descent, ordeal and welcoming back into the community of initiated men. Integral to the New Warrior Training Adventure was that part of initiation referred to by Campbell as the Hero’s Journey[12] and referred to by the New Warrior Training Adventure as both the Hero’s Journey and "GUTS." The Hero’s Journey, as used in this context, was an internal quest to fight one’s own internal dragons. The premise was that a man could not fight the demons of the world until he had fought and conquered his own. At the New Warrior Training Adventure, those demons were represented as "shadow." In Jungian psychology, "shadow" is that part of a person that is hidden, repressed and denied.[13] The myths of Gilgamesh, Odysseus and Perceval are often seen as symbolic of the journey of everyman. The New Warrior Training Adventure took place in a safe container in ritual space. Container is meant as a metaphor for the alchemist’s crucible, a vessel capable of containing the energetic processes of transformation. These processes had to be emotionally safe, psychologically evocative of ritual space. Ritual space is an area, removed from the mundane or ordinary reality, which has been given symbolic or sacred intent by the container. In men’s healing work, it is an area, often in a natural setting outdoors, where men can meet free from the influences of civilization within a container that feels safe and blessed, often through ritual.

The work of initiation and other men’s healing is physically, emotionally and spiritually energetic, which requires a substantial container. Initiation of men, as used here, means a process used to transmit and model a healthy understanding of what it means to be a man. It includes rituals, activities and ceremonies designed to create a meaningful sense of inclusion and identity as a man. This is distinct from the term "rites of passage," which connotes a focus on the societal and cultural functions of rituals and ceremonies, as written about by Van Gennep in his 1909 seminal work Rites of Passage. Initiation, as used to describe the New Warrior Training Adventure, focuses on the personal and psychological impact of the process on the individual.[14]

When Kauth, Tosi and Hering first explored creating a workshop, there was no consideration that it would have been an initiatory process. Whatever else any of them thought it might be or might become, none thought in terms of "initiation." As Tosi said regarding the development of the New Warrior Training Adventure in 1984, "We never heard the word ‘initiation."[15] When asked about initiation and if he was aware the New Warrior Training Adventure was an initiatory process, Kauth offered, "That’s really a key question … because I don’t remember any of us thinking in those terms. All we knew was that, intuitively, this was something important to do."[16]

The founders did not understand they were reinventing initiation for their time. Joseph Henderson wrote in 1967, "Initiation, more than any other body of knowledge, has suffered throughout history from the fate of continually being forgotten and having to be rediscovered."[17]

That those involved in the New Warrior Training Adventure later came to understand the concept of initiation, and how they came to understand it, is beyond the scope of this paper. However, an understanding of the nature of initiation and the New Warrior Training Adventure as an initiatory experience is critical to placing the New Warrior Training Adventure in an historical context. As the New Warrior Training Adventure was an initiatory experience, it should be recognized that the men who offered the experience were initiators, in this case, initiators of men.

This is all very basic information.

However, an anonymous reader/commenter on the original post suggested I might want to dig a little deeper into The ManKind Project before endorsing them or giving them exposure here.

I said I would, and that I would post about what I found. He sent me to the Rick Ross site's page on the ManKind Project - the Rick Ross site is devoted to exposing cults and pseudo-cults.

Before getting into that, here is a piece from the Daily Mail (UK) about one guy's experience in the initiation weekend - the New Warriors Training Adventure (NWTA).

My (very) weird weekend with the naked woodland warriors who travel to remote England to 'reclaim their masculinity'

By Tom Mitchelson
Last updated at 1:53 AM on 13th March 2010

How our man found himself with 65 naked men chanting, drumming - and screaming their rage against women to 'reclaim' their lost masculinity...

The temperature has plunged to freezing. I am deep in a remote English woodland outside Exeter.

I have been blindfolded and I am standing, holding hands, with a long line of men - who, until about 24 hours ago, I'd never met before.

Together, we are stumbling through the scrub as beating tribal drums guide our way. Oh yes, and we are naked. Totally naked.

Wild man: Tom Mitchelson embraces his inner warrior

Abruptly, my blindfold is ripped off and I see we have been led to a shadowy candle-lit room. There are about 65 of us in a double horseshoe formation.

This is a ceremony where we are to become 'new warriors'. And then the dancing begins.

I wish I were somewhere else. Anywhere else. So why on earth am I here?

I have signed up to the ManKind Project, an all-male group boasting 1,700 UK members that aims to release men's 'inner warrior' and reclaim their masculinity. I am about to graduate from their New Warrior training course.

It was launched in 1985 in the U.S. by a former marine, Rich Tosi, a therapist, Bill Kauth, and a university professor, Ron Hering, under the guise of providing 'educational services'.

They claim to be a not-for-profit company and nearly 40,000 men have attended their courses worldwide.

But things haven't been going well. Five years ago one of their recruits, Michael Scinto, made a complaint to the Madison County Sheriff in Texas that he'd been abused during a traumatic weekend with the project.

He subsequently committed suicide and his relatives filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the ManKind Project, which eventually settled out of court and claimed it would change certain of its practices.

I had also been tipped off by a number of concerned wives - who'd noticed disturbing changes in their husbands' behaviour since attending one of ManKind's UK weekends away.

Tom signed up to the ManKind Project, an all-male group boasting 1,700 UK members that aims to release men's 'inner warrior' and reclaim their masculinity

My aim is to go undercover to find out just how serious these allegations against them are - or whether they're just a bunch of misguided men who need a break from their women.

My first experience of the organisation is not pleasant. After signing up online to attend their initiation weekend, I am sent an intimidating amount of paperwork - including a confidentiality agreement. Of course, they have no idea I'm a journalist, and it's costing me £500 for the privilege.

Everything I read from them is baffling non-speak. They claim the weekend is a 'process of initiation and self-examination that is crucial to the development of a healthy and mature male self'.

They claim they help move men away from the 'comforting embrace' of their mother - something, on the face of it, some wives might even encourage. Then I am told I will 'confront' my 'dependence on women', to help me move into the 'masculine kingdom'.

To be honest, it all sounds absolutely ludicrous. But nothing as ludicrous as what I discover when I arrive at the training centre in the West Country.

As I enter, I am asked to line up with my fellow recruits and we are ordered to 'observe the sacred silence'.

This is all before we've been shown to where we're staying. It's all rather bizarre, as they begin a strange game where I am asked to walk up to a man who stares at me, with black camouflage paint on his face. The process is repeated again, and again.

Then I am ordered into a Dutch barn, where yet another confidentiality agreement is thrust in front of me, forbidding me to mention anything that happens over the weekend.

They seem to have a paranoid fear of anything getting out. This, I suppose, should have set even more alarm bells ringing.

Next, I am shouted at to hand over all the food I've been ordered to bring - any food, but enough for three men. I feel as if I'm on a military boot camp, although I suspect most of the participants are really just accountants from Slough.

We are all told that we are on a 'journey' and we 'will never be the same again'. Then we are led into a darkened room, where more people shout random words at us.

I seem to have wondered into a Marx Brothers film, but without the laughs.

The unnamed men, dressed in black with their black face paint, want me to hand over my mobile phone, watch, books and food. I do, but I am subjected to a complete search of my bag and my body.

They discover half a bottle of rum, notebook and pen. The faux commando is livid. He shrieks: 'Do you have problems following orders?' I nod guiltily, stunning him into silence.

We are directed to another dark room, where all the new recruits and I sit for more than an hour. In silence. At this point, I'm just wondering what on earth is going to happen next.

Suddenly, three men burst in, give me a bandana for a blindfold and take me to a place where drums are beating. I remove the blindfold to see I am surrounded by what I can only describe as the Men In Black.

Many of the men in the group talk about their relationships, work and feelings of anger and regret

A leader holding a wooden staff decorated with feathers rambles on about the mission of the weekend, using the pompous jargon that would later become very familiar: words like 'shadow', 'warriors', 'masculine', 'commitment' and 'responsibility'.

He tells us how to be a man. It's hard to take from a man wearing face paint, carrying a feathered stick.

Having finished his speech, he calls upon men at random to stand up and explain why they were there. Hard to say why, but people are starting to open their hearts.

One man cries as he answers questions about his unhappy marriage. The guards stand in a threatening circle around us, staring aggressively in silence.

I am starting to feel very uncomfortable. When I signed up for the course, they told me I couldn't drive there because there was a shortage of car-parking spaces.

Instead, I was told I should join the others on their minibus to travel several miles from the station, so it is with a sinking feeling that I realise I am stranded.

Many of the men talk about their relationships, work and feelings of anger and regret. 'Sharing', they call it. They all appeared sincere and open. Not buttoned up and repressed, but here-it-is, take-it-all, heart-on-my-sleeve types.

It is here that I learn a piece of warrior etiquette. When a brother 'shares', the correct response is to raise both hands as if surrendering and waggle your hands. At the same time, you say ' Ahho'. At first, I mishear and say 'Ahoy'.

Until the early hours of the morning, we engage in a series of exercises. I have to tell one man what makes me a man, and then wait while he tells me what makes him one, too. We are asked to describe how we fail to stand up to women.

When Tom signed up for the course, they told him he couldn't drive there because there was a shortage of car-parking spaces

'They're always getting at you to put the seat down on the loo,' one of the staff men explains by way of example. For a supposed female reign of terror, this seems a weirdly banal example.

We are told to explain to each other what type of man we are. One of my 'brothers' tells me he is a liar and cheat. I suspect he means he has had affairs.

Another tells how he feels worthless, a third man explains he doesn't know how to control his anger, and another tells me his wife won't let him ride his bike.

It's not long before the blindfold is back on and we are asked to imagine we're in an African village. To assist this illusion, the Men In Black rattle pots, flick water at us and make vocal noises to represent a bustling settlement.

It's not entirely convincing. We are asked to imagine capturing a wild man who terrorises villagers and cage him. We then have to set him free.

We have been asked to visualise meeting an animal along the way. This becomes our 'warrior' name. And I spend the rest of the time with Mighty Condor, Courageous Wolf and Intrepid Panther.

It is odd that no one opts for a sheep, wombat or guinea pig. I, however, become Relaxed Penguin. Oh Lord. Now I've written that, they can identify their Judas.

It's very late. I am tired and hungry and even my sleeping bag in a freezing yurt with strangers seems attractive. It's not. I don't sleep because, a couple of hours later, the rhythmic banging of drums begins.

A man appears at the door: 'Men, we have work to do.' We are ordered to strip and line up for a cold shower. While each man steps under the water, the others watch and count to 60.

I manage to get a few words with some of the participants and they are mostly between the ages of 35 and 45.

They are not all - as I'd supposed - saddos. They work in careers such as banking, IT, education and business and all strike me as intelligent, articulate and enthusiastic about their participation in the project. The majority seem to feel that their lives are not going as they wish.

After breakfast (a handful of nuts and a spoonful of porridge) we spend the morning sharing how we feel. We roar like lions. We talk to our childhood selves and watch the staff men act out scenes such as where one man says yes and the other says no.

Over and over. It was like watching a section of a Pinter play performed by nine-year-olds.

Then it is time for what I found one of the most disturbing parts of the weekend - where we are effectively 'broken free' of our emotional past.

We are divided into three groups, each of which has a so-called 'sacred carpet', and for about an hour each man is subjected to emotionally manipulative questioning, on the carpet, that probes into his past.

Some of the staff are very skilled at reading visual signs of hidden emotion. At times, three inquisitors demand the answers to questions that eventually leave a man weeping and apparently broken.

This is happening simultaneously on all three mats. At times, it is impossible to hear what was happening on my own mat because of the wails and screams from the other groups.

The majority of the men who participate in this spectacle positively welcome this treatment. Others appear less keen. The objective seems to be to provoke a violent reaction from the person in the circle.

One man of about 40 has an issue with his mother. He felt she had treated him badly when he was younger.

A staff man is chosen to represent the mother and, while other men stand in front of him, he is goaded to confront her by pushing through a human barrier.

Instead, he flies into an uncontrolled rage. Staff become panicked and shout 'safety' as they try to immobilise him. If these staff men have any professional training, I am unaware of it.

The qualification they seem to share is that they are graduates of the course I am now on. ManKind deny that any therapy takes place. They call it training.

Another man sobs as he is told to act out beating his stepfather and mother to death. Again, he feels that they ignored him as a child and treated him with disdain.

A third man is pinned to the floor by six men and has to wrestle his way out from under a blanket, cheered on by the watching men. It is extremely disturbing to watch.

Many of the men seem to feel they suffered mental or physical abuse from their parents. They all appear to be functioning in day-to-day life, but these horrors appear easily released under the persistent and intimate questioning of their inquisitors.

I make up a story about feeling guilty for hurting a former girlfriend. I give no specific examples, but feign deep upset. They suggest my behaviour had started in childhood. I tell them it hadn't.

Deprived of food and sleep and subjected to the raging emotions of people around him, Tom is instructed to strip, put his blindfold back on and hold the hand of the man next to him

They talk of regressing me. I don't know if these amateur psychiatrists could achieve that or not, but they opt for getting me to wrench the guilt from my stomach by wrestling a rope up through my legs being held by four men.

Most of the men I speak to afterwards seem delighted by this experience. In fact, this is a point at which some men seem to embrace the Warrior Brotherhood.

To me it seems like a way of initiating people into a kind of cult. This session is clearly designed to be the pivotal moment in the weekend.

Now comes the time when we are awarded our warrior's insignia.

Deprived of food and sleep and subjected to the raging emotions of people around me, I am instructed to strip, put my blindfold back on and hold the hand of the man next to me.

It is now we begin the walk in the woods that leads to that candle-lit ceremony where we become New Warriors.

As I am led, blindfolded, naked and freezing, I am strangely resigned to this new, weird way of life. The other men in the group are all relaxed about such a journey.

In the candle-lit room, we are led by hand around the circle of men. Our animal names are called and all the men cheer.

With horribly vivid images playing in my mind of pot-bellies, male genitalia and saggy bums, I return to my yurt and sleep for a couple of hours.

Morning arrives and, after standing in a field 'reclaiming my paternal name', we begin 'sharing' again.

At this point, we're sprayed with burning sage and instructed - naked again - to get in the sweat lodge. This is a tent heated by burning coals.

It is pitch black inside and we are told to shout blessings, make noise, howl, quote poems and sing songs. We are finally given a meal consisting of the food we brought, and then we say our goodbyes by silently staring at each staff man.

The participants hug one another and proclaim their love to their fellow brothers. They give blessings and thank each other for the 'strength' and 'joy' they have received.

I get home and close the door behind me. I have never felt so relieved to be back in the real world. It takes me two full days to get the strange mantras and patterns of speech out of my head.

The overriding message of the course seemed confused: That we were suppressed warriors and had become emasculated; that we had to reconnect with the wild man; and to get in touch with our feelings. It was 21st-century New Age meets Neanderthal man.

The cult-like intensity with which some of my fellow warriors converted to the brotherhood astonished me.

I had been given a chilling lesson in how easily - and how fast - the kind of men I rub shoulders with every day can alter: can become aggressive and subservient by turns; and gripped by something strange.

And something else shocked me. This was an organisation that aimed to tell me how to be a man.

Yet not once during that weird and frightening weekend did I ever hear it acknowledged that we men share a world. With women.

OK, so this all sounds very silly, and very "New Age men beating drums in the woods" comical, but there is something disturbing here.

This description, and in one series of posts at the Rick Ross site, seems like some nasty combination of military basic training, older forms of baptismal (which required extended study and contemplation), and Robert Bly's psychological mythology and shadow work.

What all of this has in common to me is the breakdown of individuality so that it can be reshaped through peer pressure and repetitive behaviors. This is cult-like reprogramming to me. It's worth noting that the co-founders are an ex-marine and a masters level psychotherapist. Scary combination.

I also have issues with the homophobic "reparative therapists and their supporters (e.g., Joe Nicolosi, Richard Cohen, Arthur Goldberg, Paul Miller) [who] recommend NWTA as a way to reduce same-sex attractions" (via Warren Throckmorton). These people are evil - and if they are promoting this program (even though MKP claims to be gay/bi friendly), it makes me even more wary of what they are doing.

They say all the right things on the surface, which is how they attract what can only be called "victims." I know one man who has done this program and leads a MKP group - he is now divorced after repeated affairs (he is likely a sex addict), but until now I did not connect the MKP training to his behavior (he never gave details on the training, although he did invite me to attend a NWTA weekend). I do not think this is coincidence.

These two articles from Warren Throckmorton look at some of the initiation procedures they use (I encourage readers to check them out - these techniques should not be used in this format - it's no wonder Michael Scinto killed himself after a training in 1997):

Mankind Project technique – “Bucketing,” Part One
Mankind Project technique – “Bucketing,” Part One

Both of these techniques are therapy - and the people doing this are NOT trained therapists.

There is nothing here that I can endorse. For men who are fragile or stuck in transitional space already, these weekends could result in brain-washing or emotional breakdown - this type of group shadow work is not to be messed with by amateurs in this way. I'm guessing they are doing a lot of damage without being aware of it.

Avoid the ManKind Project - or participate with full awareness of what you are getting into.

Tags: The ManKing Project, Initiation Program, Cults, Rick Ross, New Warrior Training Adventure, initiation, Tom Mitchelson, New Age, men's groups, initiation, psychology, Warren Throckmorton, NWTA, shadow work, Robert Bly, therapy, reparation therapy, My (very) weird weekend with the naked woodland warriors who travel to remote England to 'reclaim their masculinity', masculinity, manhood, women

Coming of Age: The Importance of Male Rites of Passage

Another cool post from The Art of Manliness, this time on rites of passage.

Coming of Age: The Importance of Male Rites of Passage

November 9, 2008

The elders of the tribe stood in front of the hut and beckoned for the young man to come out and begin the festivities of the special day. The young man had barely slept the night before, anxiously anticipating the tests he would soon be called to endure. As he rose to meet the elder, he was aware of a great gnawing in his stomach; he had had nothing to eat for the last three days as he purged his body of impurities.

The ceremony soon began. The elders of tribe pierced his chest, shoulder, and back muscles with large wooden splints. Ropes, which extended from the roof of the hut, were then attached to the splints, and the young man was winched up into the air, his whole body weight suspended from the ropes. Agonizing pain coursed through the young man’s body, but he gritted his teeth and tried not to cry out. While hanging in the air, more splints were hammered through his arms and legs. Skulls of his dead grandfather and other ancestors were placed on the ends of the splints. All the while, the young man cried aloud to the Great Spirit for courage to endure. Eventually, the young man fainted from the loss of blood and the sheer pain of the torture. When the elders were sure he was unconscious, he was lowered down and the ropes were removed. Yet the splints were left in place. When the young man recovered consciousness, he offered his left pinky to the tribal elders to be sacrificed. He placed his finger on a block and had it swiftly chopped off. This was a gift to the gods and would enable the young man to become a powerful hunter. Finally, the young man ran inside a ring where his fellow villagers had gathered. As he ran, the villagers reached out and grabbed the still embedded splints, ripping them free. The splints weren’t allowed to be pulled out way they had been hammered in, but had to be torn out in the opposite direction, causing the young man even greater pain and worse wounds. This concluded the day’s ceremony.

The young man was exhausted and bloodied, but euphoric. He had been beyond glad to participate in the ritual. This was the greatest day of his life; today he was a man.

While the coming of age ceremony of the Mandan tribe is a particularly gruesome example, peoples and cultures from prehistoric times onward created rites of passage to initiate boys into manhood. Today, such rites of passage are almost extinct. Boys lack clear markers on their journey to becoming a man. If you ask them when the transition occurs, you will get a variety of answers: “”When you get a car,” “When you graduate from college,” “When you get a real job,” “When you lose your virginity,” “When you get married, “When you have a kid,” and so on. The problem with many of these traditional rites of passage is that they have been put off further and further in a young man’s life. 50 years ago the average age an American man started a family was 22. Today, men (for ill or good) are getting married and having kids later in life. With these traditional rites of passage increasingly being delayed, many men are left feeling stuck between boyhood and manhood. College? Fewer men are graduating. And many that do “boomerang” back home again, spending another few years figuring out what the next step in their life should be. As traditional rites of passage have become fuzzier, young men are plagued with a sense of being adrift.

Of course the process of becoming a man, ceremony or not, does not happen in a single moment. But rites of passage are important in delineating when a boy should start thinking of himself as a man, when he should start carrying himself as a man, when the community should start respecting him as a man, and when he should start shouldering the responsibilities of a man. Lacking these important markers, many young men today belabor their childhood, never sure of when they’ve really “manned up.”

What Is a Rite of Passage

Sociologists have identified three phases that constitute a proper rite of passage: separation, transition, and re-incorporation.

Separation: During this phase an initiate is separated in some way from his former life. In the case of the Mandan tribe, the young man was isolated from the village in a hut for three days. In other tribes, boys’ heads were shaved and they were ritually bathed and/or tattooed. In a more modern example, when a man has just enlisted in the military, he is sent away to boot camp. His former possessions are put aside, his head is shaved, and he is given a uniform to wear. During the separation phase, part of the old self is extinguished as the initiate prepares to create a new identity.

Transition: During this phase, the initiate is between worlds-no longer part of his old life but not yet fully inducted into his new one. He is taught the knowledge needed to become a full-fledged member of that group. And he is called upon to pass tests that show he is ready for the leap. In tribal societies, the elders would impart to the initiate what it meant to be a man and how the boy was to conduct himself once he had become one. The initiate would then participate in ritual ceremonies which often involved pain and endurance. In the case of the new soldier, he is yelled at, prodded, exercised, and disciplined to prepare him to receive a rank and title.

Re-incorporation. In this phase, the initiate, having passed the tests necessary and proving himself worthy, is re-introduced into his community, which recognizes and honors his new status within the group. For tribal societies, this meant a village-wide feast and celebration. The boy would now be recognized by all tribe members as a man and allowed to participate in the activities and responsibilities that status conferred. For the soldier, his boot camp experience would come to an end and both his superiors and his family would join in a ceremony to recognize his new status as a full-fledged member of the military.

During the all phases of the process, the men who have gone through the ritual themselves guide the young initiate on his journey. By controlling the rite of passage, the men decide when a boy becomes a man.

Go read the whole post to discover how to do your own rite of passage for a young person, for a family, or for yourself.

The three stages mentioned above are an abbreviated version of Joseph Campbell's monomyth and of the general initiation sequence first proposed by Arnold Van Gennep and Victor Turner: separation, initiation, and return.

Tags: Coming of Age, The Importance of Male Rites of Passage, masculinity, boys, rituals, initiation, Art of Manliness, Joseph Campbell, Victor Turner, Arnold Van Gennep, monomyth

New Man Episode 35: Ed Fell: The Mankind Project

Very cool.

Episode 35: Ed Fell: The Mankind Project

How much bullshit are you tolerating?

Are there things you wish you could do before you die, but are not getting around to them? Are you tolerating a life that you never thought you would have, feeling that there is no way to change things?

Ed Fell wants to help us out. As a longtime member of The Mankind Project, Ed points to the fact that men have no initiation ceremonies in American culture and often drift through life, unsure of themselves as a result.

We have heard several times on the New Man about the importance of initiation ceremony. The Mankind Project is dedicated to giving men a healthy initiation to manhood and giving us an experience of who we truly are and what it feels like to be our authentic selves. From that experience of initiation, The Mankind Project offers a close network of support and challenge, to help men live their lives to the fullest.

The last item on that "bucket list" might just be the journey inward, to really get to know ourselves.
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• Subscribe to The New Man by Email
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Tags: New Man, Episode 35, Ed Fell, The Mankind Project, men's groups, masculinity, initiation

Humor - Top Ten Wrong Ways to Initiate Your Son Into Manhood

From Caffeinated Thoughts, a little initiation humor for men.

Top Ten Wrong Ways to Initiate Your Son Into Manhood

A friend e-mailed this to me last week, and it made me laugh out loud. So I thought I’d share it with you.

10. Teach him the secret male ritual of leaving the toilet seat up and the toilet paper roll empty.

9. Have a ceremony where you give him his own remote control.

8. Lead him through an afternoon of rigorous physical training in the back yard while you sit in a lawn chair with a half-gallon of ice cream.

7. Eat until you’re about to burst and then ride the Screamin’ Hurler roller coaster.

6. Put cream on his face and let the cat shave him with its tongue.

5. Walk behind him through his school halls yelling, "You da man!"

4. Send him to the local discount store to buy mom’s "personal things."

3. Give him Grandma’s lime green Gremlin with personalized license plates that say, "TUFFGUY."

2. Send the womenfolk shopping, then get out your secret Old Yeller video and have a good cry together.

1. Shot put catching.

Tags: Humor, Top Ten Wrong Ways to Initiate Your Son Into Manhood, Caffeinated Thoughts, initiation, fathers, sons, culture

Father’s Day 2008: Mowing the Meadow, Shaving The Chocolate

[Cross-posted at IOC.]

Via The Moderate Voice:

Father’s Day 2008: Mowing the Meadow, Shaving The Chocolate

June 13th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist

(I’d prepared this article earlier to run during the day today, but in no way wanted to put a clang in the middle of the news and memoriums about the passing of Tim Russert. I hope it is alright to post it now overnight as the shocks of the day begin to recede a little. This piece was meant to commemorate bright moments that most often occur in the most mundane ways between fathers and sons.)

When I was a little girl, my dad used a rough brush and a heavy porcelain mug to lather up, and then a straight razor to shave. Don’t touch, don’t touch, he’d say when he laid the razor down on the little sink. In fascination I watched him shave. Just like I learned to cook from my mother, by watching…if I’d been a son, I’d have learned to shave just by watching my father; how to make the facial grimaces, how to tilt your head, how to sweep the razor up on this part, and across on that part.

Every night, every day, my dad’s face grew a beard, over and over. That was amazing to me. Something taken away, kept coming back. His strength. As a man. It isn’t too much to say.

Your dad too, no doubt, would he nick himself and just go on shaving while the blood ran down his throat? Wasn’t that amazing to you when you were little? And the tiny yelps when he put the styptic on? And the tiny bits of tp? And how cool and smooth his cheek was after, no more chinny-chin-chins until nighttime? Now just sweet smelling and tender cheeked. For a while. Off to work he would go. The scent of his shaving strangely holding ‘the father place’ in the house, his fragrances of soap and hot water and cologne lingering in the air long after he was gone.

And I wonder how other fathers taught their sons to shave… did the sons when they were little, like we did, even us little girls, quietly reach into the tiny medicine cabinet hanging over the sink, and sneak the blade and give it a few whishes on the strop behind the door, then soap our faces, and as carefully as we could, draw the darker roads through the white lather? Wasn’t there something so seeming magical about that? And some secret giddiness in having touched the tools of the king?

Or maybe, like in the picture, some father, uncle, friend, even mother, taught the boys to shave? It must have been a moment for a man; the first real shave; mustache, beard, clean shaven, half and half, learning that careful throat art nonetheless.

Maybe that moment of ‘first ritual shave’ is only half recorded in a grown man’s memory. But, maybe too, it’s still one of the bright pride lines of that time when the world cracked open for a young male… and suddenly out stepped a knowing but inexperienced man … who only moments before had been just a very, very experienced boy…

_______________
CODA
‘Shaving the meadow,’ or ‘mowing the front forty (acres)’ or ‘raking the field,’ is how some men in the backwoods where I grew up spoke of the manly morning ritual. One of my black friends charmed me utterly by saying, ‘Ok, gots to go shave some chocolate now.’

Tags: Father’s Day 2008, Mowing the Meadow, Shaving The Chocolate, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, fathers, sons, rituals, initiation, The Moderate Voice

Male Initiation, Part Two - The 5 Most Terrifying Rites of Manhood from Around the World

OK, I was planning a more traditional introduction to the topic of rites of passage, but this post from Cracked has been making the rounds and I think it's pretty interesting, even though the author is fairly dismissive.

Here is a little background on rites of passage from Wikipedia:

A rite of passage is a ritual that marks a change in a person's social or sexual status. Rites of passage are often ceremonies surrounding events such as childbirth, menarche or other milestones within puberty, coming of age, marriage, weddings, and death. Initiation ceremonies such as baptism, confirmation and bar or bat mitzvahs are considered important rites of passages. In the last centuries Western society has seen a steady decline in the usage of and potential benefits rising from male rites of passage.
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According to Arnold Van Gennep, rites of passage have three phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. In the first phase, people withdraw from the group and begin moving from one place or status to another. In the third phase, they reenter society, having completed the rite. The liminal phase is the period between states, during which people have left one place or state but haven't yet entered or joined the next.

I will blog more about this in the future, but that is the basic outline of the rite of passage -- the important thing to know is that these rites are undertaken in most cultures to move the child into adulthood, which can often mean a new name as well as new status in the group.

One of the defining characteristics of many rites of passage is that they are important in warrior and hunting cultures as a way of making boys less emotionally attached to their families and their own lives. On any given day, the young warrior might meet his end, so he needs to be able to face it with bravery and no fear.

The more militaristic the culture, often, the more extreme the rites of passage.

The 5 Most Terrifying Rites of Manhood from Around the World

By Alexandra Gedrose

So what did you do to earn your manhood? At the very worst, some of you had to read a prayer or two from a select holy book, maybe a distant uncle sent you a few bucks. Your parents start bugging you about getting a job and force you to move out by the time you're 20, or maybe 35.

But in some parts of the world, manhood is still something you earn.

#5. Vanuatu Land Diving

When you're a member of the South Pacific Vanuatu, by the time you get to be eight-years-old or so it's high time to prove your masculinity. And what better way to prove you're ready to take on the challenges and responsibilities of adult life than stripping naked and bungee diving off a rickety 100-foot-tall platform?

Oh, and instead of stretchy bungee cables, they use vines. Those things that have been known to drop grapes and tomatoes every once in a while. They will show absolutely no give when you run out of slack and you're still hurtling toward the earth at hundreds of miles per hour. That will show no remorse when you plummet to your death. Vines.

The ritual is intended to impress both the gods and the ladies. Maybe you're thinking, "Hey, tourists do that sort of thing all the time! That's not so terrifying!" The Vanuatu people also realized that and decided that the gods would only be impressed if the boy's head touched the ground.

Jump, plummet 100 feet, hit the ground, don't die. We're not sure why the Vanuatu need to appease gods, because if you can pull off that combo, you're damned immortal in our books.

#4. Australian Aborigines Take Circumcision to a Whole New Level

Waiting until you're a teenager to get circumcised should be terrifying enough, but a lot of indigenous tribes actually do that as a rite of passage. The Aborigines decided they had to find a way to multiply the terror that surrounds your typical teenage penis-cutting incident. Brace yourself:

The ceremony begins by taking a 15- to 16-year-old boy to a secluded place with a number of tribesman. Then begins a several-hour-long chant that's supposed to relax the boy, but we're assuming will do absolutely nothing if he knows what's coming.

Then, two men get on their hands and knees together, and the boy clambers on top of their backs. If ever in the future you find you're in need of a late-in-life circumcision, we challenge you to replace the operating table with two nearly-naked, chanting tribesman. While they do their cutting, the boy is expected to show no signs of pain. You know, because only children feel pain when their penises are cut.

Then, with that fresh in his mind, they make him wait about a week. That's when a second operation is performed. Jens Bjerre, one of the very few men to have witnessed this ceremony, documented it in his book, The Last Cannibals:

"A hole was pierced right through his sex organ near the root, and there was inserted into it, at either end, a splinter to keep the aperture from growing together again. The object was to ensure that henceforth the urine and the sperm would be ejected through this little hole high up on the sex organ, instead of by the normal channel."

Guess what they're all watching.

Just let that soak in for a minute.

The idea is these guys can now have sex without impregnating a woman unless they cover the newly made hole.

In case you've forgotten, or blocked it out, all of this is done with no anesthetic to ease the pain, other than a bunch of men repeating the same phrase over and over again.

#3. Hamar Cow Jumping

Around ages 12 through 15, when most boys are worried about being picked last for kickball, Ethiopian boys of the Hamar tribe are expected to make a leap of pure holy-mother-of-pearl faith over a row of cattle who serve a fate worse than those at a Burger King farm. When these cattle aren't being jumped, stepped, or fallen onto, they're probably more than happy to maul the poor sucker who trips and face-plants.

That guy made it look pretty easy, didn't he? For a real life equivalent, imagine trying to run and jump over your car four times. And that all your family and friends are gathered around to watch you. And the car is a living squirming thing. And that you have to jump over the squirming car about four consecutive times without falling. That you only get one shot. That if you fall, you can forget manhood, a potential wife, and respect from your relatives. That's right, in this reality there's actually a way for you to fail puberty. You couldn't even speak in class without your voice cracking under the pressure, and you think you're going to be running wind-sprints across a herd of cattle?

Stop: Hamar Time.

Once the Hamar boy passes the cow-jumping test, he earns the respect given to a man and also becomes a eligible to participate in the Hamar women-beating ceremony, where the girls of Hamar happily volunteer to prove their devotion to their husbands by being ceremonially hit and whipped. If some woman should ever object, we're assuming a simple, "Hey, I jumped over those cows earlier," trumps any argument she can muster.

#2. The Algonquin Drug Trip

The idea of getting force-fed hallucinogens in order to become an adult will appeal to a lot of you. But this isn't that Grateful Dead concert you remember so well. Boys of the Algonquin Indian tribe of Quebec were brought to a secluded area, often caged, and then given an intoxicating medicine known as wysoccan.

This stuff contained the deadly datura, an extremely dangerous hallucinogen that is said to be 100 times more powerful than LSD. Yes, to the Algonquin people, manhood took the form of spending 20 days in a completely deranged state that included a racing heartbeat, amnesia and hypothermia. If the Beatles had been ballsy enough to graduate from LSD to datura, their musical influence probably would have been deterred due to all of their subsequent songs sounding roughly like a donkey giving birth to a tractor.

The whole idea of this drug-induced party was to force any memories of being a child out of the boy's mind. Unfortunately, memory loss tends to affect, well, everything, including memory of their family, how to speak, or even who the hell they were.

If boys showed recognition towards their childhood after returning to the village, they were taken back and given a second dose and the pleasure of having to cheat death again.

#1. Matis Hunting Trials

As screwed up as the Algonquin ritual is, the Matis, a small Brazilian tribe, top them pretty handily.

The ritual for recruiting boys into the ranks of their hunters begins with dumping a bitter poison directly into their eyes, allegedly in order to improve their vision and enhance the senses. We're sort of interested in how many different combinations of toxic liquids the Matis shamans shoved into their eyeballs before finding a winning formula that didn't dissolve them into a white, gooey mess.

The next series of trials includes beatings and whippings, but those look like Matis massages compared to the final trial. The concluding test revolves around an inoculation of Phyllomedusa bicolor, which is basically Latin for "local frogs that just happen to secrete nature's death juice."

Don't you dare fuck with me.

After burning an area of the skin, the frog goop is injected with the use of a wooden needle. The poison is said to increase strength and endurance. However, those enhancements must come after the unbearable lightheadedness, vehement vomiting and violent relieving of the bowels. After all, REAL men don't need innards.

Once the boys prove themselves able to withstand these trials, they are treated to performing them before every future hunt they partake in. Actually, thanks anyways but we think we'll keep playing with our Tonka trucks over here guys.

Tags: Male Initiation, Part Two, The 5 Most Terrifying Rites of Manhood from Around the World, ritual, initiation, masculinity, Cracked, rites of passage, Arnold van Gennep

Male Initiation, Part One

This is the first of several posts I want to put up on male initiation. I had intended to begin with a look at the anthropology of initiation rites, but then I found this post from TC at T-Nation that sort of does the same thing, but suggests introducing boys to the gym as a modern initiation.

One of the downsides of modernity is the loss of masculine initiation rites. When formalized rites are absent, boys express the unconscious need for initiation in a variety of ways, many of them unhealthy -- hazing, gang initiation, drinking or drugs, and so on.

Maybe joining a gym is a good alternative. Certainly gathering with other men to hear and discuss their experiences as men, and what it means to be a man, along with the gift idea, are also valuable options. [More comments below.]

ATOMIC DOG
In Love With Machismo
by TC

I spent part of the morning with a miniature Barbie doll stuck up my ass.

Let me explain. Let me explain quickly.

My shower isn't working so I had to take a bath, minus the Calgon, thank you. As I sat down, I felt a sharp pain in my keester, literally in my keester, if you catch my drift. I jumped up and looked at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and saw the problem: sticking out of my ass was a ball-gown bedecked Barbie.

That's when I remembered that I'd bought my daughter, Gucci, a set of 4 "Barbie Soaps." Each bar of soap is made of mulberry scented glycerin and comes with a tiny Barbie embedded within. The glycerin had worn largely away, but there was just enough slippery soap on her head to make her a viable substitution for Richard Gere's gerbil.

As I looked at my reflection in the mirror across from the tub, I thought, "That really doesn't look very manly. Come to think of it, that doesn't make me feel very manly."

These thoughts set off an internal dialog on the nature of manhood in America.

Is appearance related to masculinity?

What is the nature of manhood?

The answers don't come easily to me. Part of the reason is because things seem to have changed in the last few years. I once wrote that I didn't think that the events of 9-11 had changed squat in America, least of all the attitudes of Americans towards each other.

Boy was I wrong.

Americans, particularly young male Americans, are permanently pissed. Oh, they've always been pissed about one thing or another — which isn't necessarily bad — but 9-11 made them feel more than a little frustrated, at least subconsciously, because they don't have a way to channel their aggression.

They want to show that they're courageous, but courage has become confused with violence or the promise of violence; manliness has become confused with aggressive posturing. They've fallen in love with machismo.

You know one of the reasons why the majority of men voted for George Bush? I think it's because he swaggers when he walks and he told the terrorists to "bring it on."

I'm sorry, but tough talk does not necessarily a man make. Personally, I don't think a guy — any guy — who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth can truly be a tough guy. Nope, I think you need to have been born with an old, rough-edged steel spoon in your mouth; I think you need to have tasted a little rust and a little blood to be a tough guy.

And looking or acting tough? Got nothing to do with anything.

The three toughest people I know or knew don't fit any stereotypical image. The first is my wife, who once, with her appendix about to burst, dutifully prepared for work (lying down on the floor while blow drying her hair because she could barely stand up), drove to her job at the hospital and attended to her first patient. When the second shift tech showed up to replace her, my wife staggered into the E.R. and collapsed. They wheeled her in and did an emergency appendectomy.

Why'd she do that? She didn't want to let the patients down, many of which had waited weeks for an appointment.

The second tough guy I knew was named Dr. Michael Dullnig. He was a gay psychiatrist with AIDS...before there were anti-virals and many of the other drugs that now make the disease somewhat manageable. While he had managed to fight off the wasting effects of the disease with anabolic steroids, he developed CMV retinitis, which would have ultimately led to blindness. Almost worse was the maddening, constant, insufferable itching caused by the cornucopia of drugs he was using.

So this brave man cheerfully decided he wanted to die.

He made the decision about as easily as you or I might decide to leave a party that had gotten a little boring, and he didn't make it because he was scared or depressed. He just wanted to go check out the next life, dimension, or whatever lies waiting for us beyond this plane of existence. He wanted to go to the next party and see if it was a little livelier. He was genuinely curious.

But before he checked out of this life, he threw his own little real-life party, a party with champagne, music and most of his friends in attendance. He danced, had some fun, posed for pictures, and then walked upstairs to his bedroom, stopping once on the staircase to smile broadly and raise a glass in a silent toast. He went to his bed, lied down, ate a yogurt laced with Nembutal, went to sleep, and never woke up.

No sadness, no tears, no regrets, no doubts. If that ain't tough, I don't know what is.

The third toughest person I knew was my father. He didn't do anything classically heroic, but he kept the same shit factory job for most of his life, working 6 or 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day (for the overtime), and never called in sick no matter how rotten he felt. Did he hate it? Maybe, probably, most certainly, but that didn't matter. He had work to do and a family to support. He didn't agonize about what he coulda-shoulda done with his life.

I probably would have done things differently than all three of my examples, but having convictions and will is something I admire, pretty much regardless of the reasons or the consequences. Clearly, toughness — real toughness — can come in any guise, as can bravery.

But Americans, particularly young Americans, think toughness begins and ends with calling someone a shithead and threatening to "bust them up." They're little boys who never metaphorically graduated from wearing short pants. It's not all their fault, though. Unfortunately, unlike some cultures, we have no rites of passage into manhood. As such, young men blithely go on skirting responsibility, avoiding hard work and throwing frequent violent temper tantrums because they're still little boys.

Pundits and preachers and politicians claim that the solution to all this is a nation-wide return to "family values." I don't even know what the term means. When I think of family, I think of husbands and wives fighting, brats screaming and picking boogers out of their nose, grandma gumming her food, and tame Saturday night, roll-on roll-off sex followed by a nice nap in church the next morning. Since when did having a family place the mantle of virtue on some Neanderthal's sloping forehead?

I know, I know, they're talking about traditional family values, which means supporting a family and busting junior on the head when mom finds stroke mags underneath his mattress. Sorry. Family values are a little too estrogenic for me. Give me male values, traditional male values.

Walter R. Newell, in his book, "The Code of Man" advocates just such a return to traditional ideas of manhood. He writes that through the ages, courage and pride were about "the struggle to defend and extend justice and to overcome our baser instincts," but he laments the fact that somewhere along the way, traditional manhood gave way to false machismo and violent behavior.

How exactly do we reestablish these traditional male values? I'm not sure. It's a tall order. I know some cultures send their boys out into the jungle or the wild by themselves. When they come back — if they survive — they're pronounced men and treated as such. Americans? We send our young boys to Daytona Beach, or maybe the Bahamas! Or even — Junior will like this — snowboard camp! It's a reward for having the incredible tenacity and ability to make it through... high school, or even junior high school.

When they come back, they're not men; they're still arrogant, disrespectful punks, albeit with nice tans.

I'm not just being an old coot. I thought this way when I was 20 and I think this way now, but current times have strengthened my convictions on this topic.

I've got an idea. Do you have a son? Do him and yourself a favor. When he reaches 16, get some adult male friends — role models — together and throw the boy a ritual, a manhood ritual. Tell the women to stay home.

Then, have each friend stand up, tell him what it means to be a man, and give your son some small token of manhood or masculinity, whether it be a jackknife, a set of dog tags, or a special book. They'll serve as talismans to both remind him of his new station in life and to ward off weakness. Tell your son that he's a man now and expected to act like one from now on. And if he screws up? Well, he's now got a whole tribe to answer to, any of which forever have the right to smack him in the back of the head when childish behavior creeps back in.

Seal the deal by eating some bloody steaks.

As part of the ritual, I'd take him to the gym the next day and introduce him to weightlifting. Weightlifting is where he channels his aggression. Weight lifting is how he builds self-confidence and pride and prepares himself for the physical challenges to come. After all, defending and extending justice is hard work. It takes a strong back.

Beyond all that, America has to stop loving merely the facade of toughness or masculinity. The virtues we hold dear — the virtues that truly reflect masculinity, traditional masculinity — come in different, often unexpected guises.

That being said, the embedded Barbie doll still isn't a very manly look.

© 1998 — 2008 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

I'm seeing more fathers with their teenage sons in the gym, especially in the summer. It warms the heart. Boys can learn to be men in the gym -- learning about the rewards of hard work, the discipline to reach a goal, the value of being with other men who also are working hard to reach their goals. The courtesy of sharing equipment is also a big thing that many could learn -- that a little kindness goes a long way.

Not only that, but building the body also builds self-esteem and self-worth. Achieving goals helps build the strength to chase bigger goals. Learning to be embodied (the mind-muscle connection lifters talk about) gets us out of our heads, helps us learn to listen to what the body is telling us. The more embodied we become, the more access we have to our emotions.

I think that introducing boys to the gym (at between 13 and 16) is great form of initiation and father-son bonding. TC got this one right.

Tags: Male Initiation, Part One, masculinity, initiation, TC, T-Nation, gym, weight training, boys, men, fathers, sons, rituals