(TXT) View source
# 2023-06-07 - Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity by Justin Baldoni
I checked out this book from the local library after listening to a
podcast about maculinity. I was basically seeking another viewpoint,
and the book delivered one. It was an interesting mix: part
self-congratulatory and part self-effacing. Out of the whole book,
what stood out as the most useful to me were the life-hacks,
particularly the one about how to listen better. In order to
emphasize it, i will quote that first, followed by my notes from the
book.
> And if you want the easiest life hack/shortcut to becoming a better
> listener, here it is: When someone is speaking, look at them, try
> to make eye contact, and do your best to let them know with your
> whole body language that you are listening. Then, when the person
> is DONE speaking, take a breath and speak. Oh, and if you ever
> find yourself in an intense conversation about you, and your
> behavior, please, please resist the urge to defend yourself, and
> once you have listened, acknowledge that you heard them. Sometimes
> all that someone you love needs to hear is "I hear you." And there
> you have it.
# Preface
This is not a memoire, but it is a personal exploration that attempts
to frame my perspective using oftentimes uncomfortable (at least for
me) personal stories on what it's meant to be a man and also what it
has the potential to mean if we approach manhood a little differently.
I've learned through therapy that I question my worth because
underneath the question is a statement, a belief that for some reason
has been held, formed, brainwashed, projected onto me and socially
reinforced in me every day of my life as long as I can remember.
That belief is that somewhere, deep down, who I am, as a man, a
friend, a son, a father, a brother, a husband, an entrepreneur, an
athlete, an X, is simply... not enough.
Sometimes I wish we could--just for one day--be real with each other.
Just one day. To say what we mean and mean what we say. Where for
once we realize that not only do we have no idea what... we're doing
here, but that more than anything, if we are ever going to figure it
out, we need to lean on each other to do so.
# Introduction
If you are here to learn about the history of masculinity and how we
got here, how to fix your life, or how to be a certain way to impress
someone, then you picked the wrong book. This isn't an academic
treatise or a motivational self-help book. ... instead of writing a
motivational book, i am writing an invitational one. I am sharing my
story in hopes that it invites you into yours. I am asking questions
of myself in hopes that together the collective "we" can ask those
same questions. To this day, asking questions is the tool I use the
most to dig deeper, to learn, to discover, and to navigate roadblocks
on the path from my head to my heart.
I found that men, when confronted and lovingly challenged in private,
were not only more than willing to listen but, even more inspiring,
were open to doing the necessary self-work to become the most honest,
virtuous version of themselves.
... every single man I know has had countless experiences of feeling
like we don't fit in. ... you are not alone in your struggles,
emotions, or fears.
# Chapter 1, Brave Enough
Nope, i jumped because more than being scared for my physical safety,
I was scared of being seen as a "pussy." Let me translate that into
the not-so secret language of masculinity, the rules that govern our
very existence. To a young boy, being called a "pussy" means being
seen as weak. And I was more scared of being seen as... inferior,
than I was of missing the three-foot opening of rock-less water and
paralyzing myself. Yep, it's that intense, simply because in the
language we young boys and men speak to each other, being a "pussy"
means being a girl, which means not being a man, or, at best, it
means you're a very weak man, which is absolutely rooted in sexism.
We don't even take the time to pause and think about how the
normalization of using these words as teasing or harmless fun
unconsciously affects the way we see and treat the girls and women in
our lives.
Little did I know at the time, this would be just one moment in a
string of thousands that reinforced a dangerous and confusing message
about bravery and masculinity: acts of bravery aren't judged by
ourselves internally, but are completely dependent on external
factors...
So what was the main lesson I learned on that fateful day on the
bridge? That my sense of myself as a man didn't come from within,
didn't bubble up from some inner core of manliness or innate
worthiness. Nope, manhood was something that was going to be
conferred--or withheld--by other guys. This meant that my "man card"
relied on my ability to perform, and they were the audience and also
the critics. It meant pretending that I didn't have the feelings I
had, and also pretending that the feelings I didn't have were
actually the ones I did. It's called acting.
But, the truth was, that I didn't even know what I felt... I wasn't
even sure if I knew how to feel, much less honor the feelings that
bubbled up.
It is this not knowing, this emotional paralysis, that author and
scholar Bell Hooks considers a real blight on men's sense of self,
and I couldn't agree more.
To be accepted as a man, I first had to learn to suppress parts of
myself that other men would think were "unmanly." And if I didn't do
it on my own, you better believe there would be another man--who was
also wanting to be accepted--to do it for me.
I don't believe women need another man jumping on the "woke"
bandwagon, wearing a feminist T-shirt, and tweeting and speaking out
about social issues, who isn't willing to start by doing the hard
work of introspection and self-reflection. I believe the world needs
men to show up, not in big ways, but in hundreds and thousands of
little ways... That work doesn't begin with an audience; it starts in
the mirror, with an audience of one.
... the schoolyard ... quickly became a classroom, albeit an
anxiety-inducing one, where I would learn what it took for me to be
accepted by the other boys--what it took for me to be deemed good
enough, tough enough, strong enough, brave enough, man enough. And
it all starts with one simple rule: don't show your emotions.
Now from the outside, it may not have seemed like I, as a city kid,
had a lot in common with the country boys in [southern] Oregon, but
there was one undeniable thing everyone of us could relate to: no one
wanted to be labeled a "pussy," and the way to avoid that was to
follow rule number one.
One of the ways that I have begun reconstructing the path from my
head to my heart is by creating experiences that force me to be
vulnerable. If there's something I am experiencing shame around in
my life, I practice diving straight into it, no matter how scary it
is. If shame thrives in silence and isolation, then the opposite
must be true: shame dies in speaking up and in community.
# Chapter 2, Big Enough
In the West, there has been a growing movement among men focused on
stopping what they call the "feminization" of men. The basic belief
is that every strong civilization that has ever existed has needed
strong masculine men to survive and flourish and that the patriarchy
isn't a socially constructed thing--it's just the way God made us.
The belief is that our system is part of the natural hierarchical
organizational process of humans and animals and that men have been
benevolently extending and granting rights to women and protecting
them for thousands of years. There are countless offshoots,
subgroups, and beliefs held by many of these men, but essentially one
of the core beliefs is that men are divided into two categories:
alphas and betas.
The problem that [L. David] Mech discovered was that wolves behave
differently in captivity than they do in the wild, and the "alpha
wolf" actually doesn't exist. This bothered Mech so much that he has
spent the better part of the last forty years publishing articles and
debunking the confusion around the myth of the alpha wolf...
This whole notion of our muscularity being the barometer for our
masculinity is often referred to as the "Adonis complex."
We men do this thing where we assess our perceived place on the
man-enough ladder, ... and then we attempt to climb up the ladder by
stepping on the man we perceive to be on the run below us.
What if our physical strength is simply a band-aid on the bigger
problem? A problem that exists within our culture, and with
masculinity as a whole. If we are trying to get bigger and stronger,
if we are trying to learn self-defense and survival skills, if we are
buying guns to protect our families from intruders, or buying pepper
spray for the women and girls in our lives, or offering to walk them
to their cars at night then there's a... good chance that we are
really late. The work to protect the women we love must begin with
ourselves first, and then with the men in our lives.
One of the tools I utilize the most to help check myself is the
concept of the why ladder. It's about taking a brief pause and
asking myself why, and then why again, and then maybe why again.
It's about climbing the why ladder as a way to check, and challenge,
my intention.
# Chapter 3, Smart Enough
The boy who knows the answers to every question the teacher asks is
often teased for being a "know-it-all" or a "try-hard."
At the societal level, men are just "supposed" to be smart, simply by
virtue of being men. And if we're dumb, that's okay too because
we've created a culture where forward progress is still possible
simply by virtue of being a man, hence the term "failing up." Women
are the emotional ones, but men, due to our capacity to cut ourselves
off from emotion, are the "rational" ones, the smart ones, the
problem solvers. And believing is seeing: the world around me has
always reinforced [this idea]...
While the message about being smart is often conflicting, there is
one message that has remained consistent across personal experience
and societal pressure: we have the answers. ... if you want to be a
man of value, you have to be a man of resourcefulness. But not just
any resourcefulness, your OWN resourcefulness--your own smarts,
competence, and intelligence.
For me, part of accepting and embracing the fact that I don't have
all the answers also means having to look at my fear of being wrong
and my knee-jerk reaction of defensiveness when I am corrected.
But what I've learned is that being willing to be wrong, to ask for
help, for directions, to admit sincerely when you've made a mistake
and also admit that you don't know the answer, makes it that much
harder to "cancel" you because you are effectively canceling
yourself. By humbling yourself and sitting in the discomfort of your
humanity, I believe something almost spiritual happens, and
regardless of who you are, you become real and relatable.
# Chapter 4, Confident Enough
If you had met me in high school, chances are you might have described
me using adjectives like "cocky," "arrogant," or "overconfident."
I was well-aware of my deep-seated insecurities and lack of
confidence. So much of my personality was put on and performative.
I can look back now and almost see this play out and feel so much
compassion for my [younger] self.
My facade of overconfidence was me overcompensating for my
insecurities, for parts of me I felt ashamed of.
For example, as naive and ignorant as it may sound, I had no idea
that it was a well-known thing among women that men often sit in a
way that has us taking up more than our share of a seat or space,
also known as "manspreading."
[I have been criticized more than once by both men and women for
having too much tension in my posture, folding my body in on itself,
as though i were trying to hide myself or be invisible. Seems like a
double-bind to me. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.]
In the summer of 2017, when I sat down with my friend Dr. Michael
Kimmel, a sociologist who specializes in gender studies, for one of
our Man Enough episodes, he stated the importance of creating the
kinds of spaces where men feel safe enough and confident enough to
speak up and share. A space they can trust that what they share
won't be used against them.
I've found that the most difficult part of connecting is sending that
initial text or making that first phone call to try to set up a time
to connect.
But I've paid enough attention to know that if I can just make that
effort to reach out, it almost always pays off.
Men are taught to be, or to appear to be, self-confident, but we are
not taught ow to develop or know our own self. Hot take: you can't
be self-confident if you don't have a sense of self. Self-confidence
without self-awareness is false and performative.
So I began the work of cultivating a sense of self, of asking myself
what I was really like, what I really liked... [This was] a
continuous practice that invites awareness into my thoughts and
actions, what makes me tick, what fuels me. It's deep, internal, and
extremely personal, and the growth is slow to see.
Researchers have studied facial muscles on men and women to measure
emotional reactivity because facial muscles are controlled by the
brain's emotion circuits. In one study, they placed electrodes on
the smiling muscle, the zygomaticus, and on the anger/scowling
muscle, the corrugator, and measured the muscles electrical activity
when the participants were shown emotionally provocative pictures.
This study found that men were more emotionally reactive than women in
the first fifth of a second; in other words, when it was still
unconscious. [Well, men are reputed to be more visual than women.]
But then as time went on into the range of conscious processing, the
men became less emotionally responsive as the women became more so.
This blew my mind! Their findings may suggest that men may be
equally as sensitive, if not even more so than women, but that we
have trained ourselves to disguise, disengage, or deflate those
muscles. And if these muscles are controlled by our brain's
emotional system, then it further demonstrates that we have been
trained to numb or disengage from our emotions.
# Chapter 5, Privileged Enough
Like male privilege, white privilege is uncomfortable for me to talk
about. In addition, if you are feeling triggered by me saying "male
privilege" and "white privilege," then that means one thing: we need
to talk about it.
[So much for consent.]
Oversimplified, white privilege means that the color of my skin will
never be a hurdle for me, just like male privilege means that my
gender will never be a barrier for me.
# Chapter 6, Successful Enough
In my mind, the messages of success and the pressures of providing
are tied so intricately with the messages of masculinity that when I
start to bump against them, it feels impossible to try to dissect and
separate them. The more successful a man becomes, the more of a man
he becomes.
It turns out that what makes us happiest is not having what we want,
but wanting what we have.
When I made decisions from a place of wanting to impress or to fill a
void, I always lost. Being reactive for me always comes from a place
of fear, and fear is often an indicator of scarcity.
So now, instead of appearing like I know it all, I surround myself
with people who know far more than I do, and I humbly ask their
opinions an advice.
At the time [that the author hit rock bottom], I had what I perceived
to be nothing to offer. I was jobless, heartbroken, crashing on
their couch, not able to contribute financially to anything, and was
experiencing a season of depression as a result. I mean, I didn't
want to be around me, so why would anyone else want to--especially
other men? And yet those guys, who are two of my best friends to
this day, genuinely, sincerely valued me. They saw value in me.
They encouraged me to stay active, to get off my ass. They loved me
and were there for me in such a profound way that it brought me back
to life. They affirmed my desire to create and pushed mt to take
practical steps to hone my skills and bring my ideas to life. They
prayed for me and with me, reminding me of a purpose for my life that
goes far beyond people's perceptions of my life--far beyond my own
perception of my life. The things I had been seeking in the
perception of success, I began finding in the reality of
relationships, connection, and community--something that I believe is
far more important for men to realize.
This is exactly the hallucination that forms the foundation for the
ideology of masculinity: it's never enough.
The only way for whatever we have to be enough is to change the
story, change the criteria, change the definitions. As I began to
look at my relationship with masculinity, I crashed headfirst into my
relationship with success. If I wanted to be a man who was strong,
confident, and secure, I needed to be successful by society's
definition.
For me, living a truly successful life will mean that I have acquired
far more moments and memories with those I love and have given far
more than I have taken.
Here's a little hack that helps me the most when I am stuck or
feeling lost. Imagine you are at the end of your life. You're
ninety-five years old, and the doctors have told you that you have
days left to live. Who do you want to be surrounded by? When you
think back in the season, or the moment of your life you are
currently in, will you regret the choice you made or be grateful you
made it? Did it serve you and the people you love? Did it lead to
true happiness, or was it a decision made out of fear or out of
pressure?
# Chapter 7, Sexy Enough
Sex is something men are told we must be the most confident about.
Yet for many men, this is not true.
For me--and a lot of guys--pornography was "sex education." There
was literally no where else to turn where it was safe to ask
questions, and often it wasn't even about fantasies; it was about
understanding what sex looked like and how to have it.
As a man, I have been socialized to not give myself permission to
feel any feelings or have emotions around sex.
[This chapter mostly focuses on the author's struggles with porn.]
# Chapter 8, Loved Enough
When you have a concept as massive and universal as love, it really
helps me to break it down and think of it in smaller ways.
While I believe there are infinite ways and kinds of love, this
chapter is about love as it relates to romantic relationships and,
even more specifically, in a marriage.
As it stands now, it's ever easier and more widely accepted to be
emotionally and physically intimate with multiple people at the same
time. But my personal belief is that we only have so much energy and
time in a given day... Ever hired a contractor who is building four
or five different houses? I have. It sucks because their attention
to yours slowly starts to diminish with every other house that they
are building.
[Now there's a Western analogy, with each atomic family having their
own separate house, and the resources to hire their own dedicated
contractor. In the old days people would gather together for barn
raising, and it took a village to raise the bairns (children).]
... there's one relationship that's impossible to escape, one
relationship every one of us has the opportunity to choose without
regret or remorse, one we don't swipe way out of: the one you have
with yourself. That's the starting point... that supports the
relationship you will have with your partner.
But now I realize that all a spiritual awakening or enlightening
moment does is give you a glimpse into the realization that you are
more than you thought you were. That you are a part of something
beautiful and bigger than yourself. That you are enough.
# Chapter 9, Dad Enough
Unfortunately, the method by which we measure fatherhood readiness is
the exact method by which we measure masculinity. As men we've been
socialized to believe that if we can't provide for our families, then
are we even men? Just the possibility of financial hardship and not
being able to provide for our partners and children is enough to put
most men into a state of paralysis and choose not to have kids.
[At least they are making a conscious choice.]
That moment we found out Emily was pregnant, what had previously been
an invitation for me to take the journey from my head to my heart
quickly became a demand to take the journey.
My aunt Susie told me that my grandpa wanted to be in the delivery
room when she was born in the 1940s, but the hospital refused to
allow him in--even though he was a senator. In the 1940s and '50s,
virtually no men were in the delivery room when their wives gave
birth--that was the law and what was considered to be the norm.
# Chapter 10, Enough
A foundational part of this book, and my journey, has been taking the
messages that society has given us and trying to reframe them in a
way that actually benefits me. Are you brave enough to be
vulnerable? Are you confident enough to listen? Are you strong
enough to be sensitive? Are you adventurous enough to dive into the
deep waters of your shame, into your behaviors, your thought
patterns, and the stories you carry that hurt like hell? Are you
hard working and courageous enough to take the journey from your head
to your heart?
[Great, yet another way to torture myself and fall short.]
I discovered that what I had mistaken for a desire to be man enough
was actually a fundamental need to belong.
One of my best friends, Ahmed, once told me that one of the original
meanings of the word "human" in Arabic is insan, which translates
into English to "insane." Now, while it has many meanings and
translations, one of the more accurate translations is "they who
forget." So to be human quite simply means to forget. For me that
means that the real journey is the remembering: remembering who we
are, who created us, our purpose, and our worth.
author: Baldoni, Justin, 1984-
(TXT) detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Justin_Baldoni
LOC: BF692.5 .B36
tags: book,gender,non-fiction
title: Man Enough
# Tags
(DIR) book
(DIR) gender
(DIR) non-fiction