How does this conditioning, the idea that we must tough it out and put our minds over our bodies actually disconnect us from ourselves?

I’m not quite ready to say that all of it is bad. There is something to pushing through. But like all things masculine, it can be taken too far.

The norm has taken a pause. We have an opportunity to break out of the consensus trance. This is the time to tune in to the wisdom in our bodies and the deeper knowing of our hearts.

This the time to evolve.

Let us become better men together.

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Last week I sent a note on the sins of adolescence. I want to make room to talk about these tonight. I am wondering who among us feels like you had good models of masculinity growing up.

I keep thinking about the flood of testosterone coming into our bodies. About the intensity of sexual desire. About our bodies wanting movement and sometimes aggression. Most of us did not have good guides to help us work with all of that. We were left on our own when it came to working with all of the energy moving inside of us. And so we stumbled our way through.

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I’ve been working with Julian Mocine McQueen of the Million Person Project. He is helping me to find a way to tell my story of patriarchy, masculinity, harm caused, lessons learned and lifetime of atonement. The process has me reflecting on my adolescence. And on all the things I wish I knew then.

We don’t do enough to help boys become men. We don’t have initiation rituals. We allow this culture of patriarchy to shape our ideas of what it means to become a man. And the world is left with a bunch of children who are flooded with testosterone and have no idea what to do about it.

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I am aware that in my life, in my first effort to address patriarchy within myself, after failing as a man in the most terrible ways, that meant turning down my masculinity. 

So I made masculinity and patriarchy the same thing. To me those two things were one and the same. What I tried to do was be good, be conscious, be righteous by being less masculine. And I see it happen all the time. 

I see men just try to turn it off in order to be good guys. What I’ve learned over the years is that patriarchy and masculinity are not the same thing. 

There is toxic masculinity and conscious masculinity. There is something masculine that can be harnessed for the good. And that in fact, when it is not harnessed, it can be damaging and dangerous.

Check out the episode here: How to be an Alchemist. The Better Men conversation starts at 52:35.

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I’m looking forward to our call next Monday, February 3 at 8:30PM. Did you get my newsletter on Friday? We released the first of a set of interviews for the Better Men Project on my YouTube show. 

Check it out here, and get to know the spirit and the wisdom of Lawrence Barriner II. He has been doing a lot of men’s work. And we have been blessed to have him on our calls.

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I want to invite us to start this decade by bringing our attention to what we are doing right. There is so much shame. There is so much that we need to get better at. There are so many ways in which we are burdened by patriarchy and its conditioning.

But we would not be coming to these calls if we were not at least trying. It was Seth Kirshenbaum who invited us to consider an appreciative inquiry. What are you doing right in this quest to relinquish patriarchy? What are other men doing that is inspiring to you? What kind of man are you aspiring to become? Who do you look up to? How have you changed for the better?

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It seems impossible to grasp the true scale of femicide across the world. Women and girls are raped, trafficked and murdered with impunity. The impact of patriarchy is harrowing. And the response of women across Latin America has been truly inspiring.

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So much of what we have been taught about what it means to be a man is simply wrong. It has hurt us more than helped us. But I also like to wonder if there is wisdom to be rescued in these ancient codes of chivalry.

There is something there about not running away. Something about facing what is in front of us. Something about the courage, capacity and character to slay the dragons that stand before us.

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What does it mean to be available? To yourself. To your family. To your friends. To your community. To life’s purpose as it is moving through you.

One of the impacts of patriarchy is that most of us men don’t have access to the full range of our human emotions. We do not know how to feel. And so we are not available to ourselves. Numbing and addiction are how we runaway.

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So when I invite us to consider our relationship to pornography. I am not pushing the idea that it is all bad. I am a sex positive person. And I believe in the power of the erotic.

But the fact is that thanks to the internet, the culture is facing an absolutely unprecedented increase in addiction to pornography. It is changing our neurology. It is increasingly normal for young men to suffer from erectile dysfunction. Men in their sexual prime are losing the ability to reach sexual arousal with a real person.

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There is nothing puritanical about me. And I do my best to stay away from taking a moralistic stance on things. I grew up in a church community that held fundamentalist tendencies. And I’m still working to get over all that. 

So when I invite us to consider our relationship to substances, I am not pushing the idea that abstinence is the only option. Personally, I am part of a recovery program that supports my abstinence from alcohol and marijuana. It is what works for me. And it is one of the most exciting developments in my life. I feel healthier. And free. 

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I am appreciative of the way we are in community. You sent me links to inspiring articles about men stepping up:

• She’s Not Your Rehab: Barbershop Movement Urges Abusive Men to Tackle Traumatic Pasts

• Men in Iran are wearing hijabs in solidarity with their wives who are forced to cover their hair

We are part of something so much larger than ourselves. Men are stepping up. I am looking forward to our having more conversations about creative ways to do this. I want us to follow adrienne’s invitation:

practice taking action together. go to marches to protect women’s rights, volunteer to hold the line at abortion clinics, intervene on observed acts of misogyny and patriarchy in private and public!

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Any time I speak of the way patriarchy hurts men, I find it important to first stress that we are also its beneficiaries. And that it is up to us to find ways to relinquish it.

I recently watched Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us on Netflix. It’s a documentary about the Central Park Five. The five men who were exonerated in 2002 after their erroneous conviction for the brutal rape of a jogger in 1989.

It is a harrowing documentation of racism and the miscarriage of justice. And it directly implicates the current occupant of the Oval Office.

I bring it up today because it is important for us to consider the way men of color are perceived to be sexually dangerous. There is a terrible racist twist to the way patriarchy is experienced by men of color.

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I’ve been holding on this quote for a while. Lawrence Barriner, who is part of the Better Men Project (and will soon be co-hosting 2020 Vision), shared it in his newsletter.

Something odd happens when you Google “man comforting a woman.” Many of the top hits are about women comforting men. (Try it.) The suggested search terms, too: “How to comfort a guy, how to comfort a man when he’s stressed, how to comfort a guy when he’s upset.” Apparently, lots and lots of people on planet earth are Googling how to comfort men… and fewer are Googling how to comfort women. Strange, isn’t it, since this culture views women as “the emotional ones” and men as the strong ones. Perhaps something is a bit backwards here. — Nora Samaran

Patriarchy stunts our emotional development. And our solution is to offload our emotional labor to the women in our lives.

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I have heard adrienne make an important distinction between restorative justice and transformative justice. Restorative justice aims to restore the relationship and community to the way it was before the harm was caused. Transformative justice aims for the relationship and community to become better than it was before the harm was caused.

It is such a beautiful perspective. Such a powerful way to engage this churning process of growth and evolution.

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Let’s practice honesty tonight. We’ve been doing a good job of it so far. I want to share more of my story. I want to be more explicit about the worst ways in which I have fallen into patriarchy. And I want to tell you about what I have learned.

I want you to have an opportunity to do the same.

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I am a fan of the Circle of Trust work that Parker Palmer has held at the Center for Courage and Renewal. The work is held together by a set of touchstones that I have now posted on the website. It will be good for you to read these before our calls.

No fixing, saving, advising or correcting each other.

Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions.

When the going gets rough, turn to wonder.

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I like to say that one day I will start a church. And that I’m going to call it “The Church of Co-Evolution Through Friendship.” Friendship is sacred to me. It is a life defining practice. I am blessed to have deep, intimate relationships with other men.

When I was doing interviews for the Better Men Project, I was surprised to learn that many men have a hard time being friends with other men. They have a hard time going to deep and accountable places together.

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