If being a good man isn’t being a good person, why should men do it?
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I’ve been editing the Marriage section of The Good Men Project for about a month now and, I’ve got to say, I’ve thought more about what it means to be a good man in that time than in all of my decades preceding it.
Honestly, I’ve had a good reason for not thinking about being a good man. I’ve spent way more time thinking about being a good person.
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My family moved to a new city last summer. The kids are nine and seven. Moving is a big change for anyone, but for young kids it can feel less like they’ve moved from one place to another and more like the Earth has shifted suddenly and irrevocably under their feet. It can leave them feeling lost.
To help ease the transition, my wife and I decided we needed to help them keep a firm, constant sense of self. So, we all worked together to put our family identity into words. Then we used a woodburner pen to etch it into an enormous mahogany board I had leftover from my woodworking days.
If it’s not good, we don’t want to be it.
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We all sat around the table and each of us wrote down words that we thought were the most important parts of being who we are. The first line is, “We are Good.” That’s because it was the word that we all contributed and that we wanted to be the bedrock of who we are. Everything else was a descriptor, an elaboration on that theme. If it’s not good, we don’t want to be it.
We wrote other things, of course, but they were attributes we believe are parts of being good people like “Brave”, “Loving”, and “Hard-working”. We also included actions we want to take like, “forgive one another” and “approach the world with an adventurous spirit”, but, again, all of those things were really just teasing out different facets of “goodness” rather than adding to it. We didn’t say anything about being good men, women, or children even though everyone in our family is one of those things.
I have brown eyes, too, but I don’t go out of my way to talk about myself as a good brown-eye.
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I didn’t think about adding anything about being a “good man” because, if I’m a good person, what’s the point? If being a good man is different from being a good person why would I want to be it? If it isn’t different, then why bother with the redundancy of saying it? I have brown eyes, too, but I don’t go out of my way to talk about myself as a good brown-eye. If my goal is to be a good person, why would I spend any time at all thinking about being a good man?
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I live in New England. One of the things that being a good person means here is taking the extra time to knock the snow off the roof of your car before you go barreling down the street. That’s because if you don’t you’re likely to cause a car accident when enormous chunks of snow catch the wind and smack the windshield of the driver behind you. In Memphis, Tennessee, where I grew up, brushing the snow off the roof of your car was a much smaller part of being a good person. That’s not because it doesn’t matter as much if a huge sheet of icy snow blows off and causes an accident in Memphis. It’s because it hardly ever snows there.
Just like being a New Englander means I have to consider the effects of the snow on the roof of my car in order to be a good person, being a man means I need to think about the effects of my gender to be a good person.
Being a good man is a necessary part of how a man can be a good person.
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In the world we live in, being a man means something more than biology. It means people will often react differently to us and treat us differently. It means having advantages and disadvantages that can’t be ignored. Being a good man is a necessary part of how a man can be a good person because it’s tailored to those things. It’s different from having brown eyes because of all the meaning society adds to it.
Here’s a few examples of what this means for me:
- Being a good person means working for equality. Being a good man means recognizing male privilege and taking the opportunities it provides to advance equality.
- Being a good person means helping others achieve their potential. Being a good man means recognizing the gender gap in education and working to overcome the stereotypes that prevent boys from reaching their potential.
- Being a good person means working for peace. Being a good man means living my life in a way that helps overturn stereotypes of men as aggressive and violent.
We men are a widely varied lot. We won’t all have the same advantages and disadvantages, but being a good man means considering them, whatever they might be, while pursuing the goal of being a good person.
Different people will have different ideas about what it means to be a good person, but being a good person requires that we are thoughtful and goal-oriented about our goodness.
In the end, being a good man isn’t the same as being a good person, but if you’re a man it sure does help.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Usefully or not, I tend to approach the dilemma from a negative POV. Thus being a good man is not a subset of being a good person with special male responsibilities. It is, instead, a choice between being a traditional man – simply put, a man – or being good, with costs attached to either option. For instance, traditional men live by hierarchy. Tops, bottoms, and ranks affect our morality, our relations, our ambitions, our understanding of the world we live in. To act morally and yet violate this hierarchy makes one a better person but a lesser man. The… Read more »
Thank you Ben for your touching and inclusive words. Yes, we are gendered but we are also human. As you point out being a good person is universal and how we express it is individual. Our society tends to push us into gender roles and to demonize the “other”. Neither gender has a monopoly on either power or suffering and our roles have wounded both sexes. As you state, we can mitigate future damage by basing our lives on human kindness rather than unconscious allegiance to societal gender roles.
I think it was marvelous, Ben. The part about writing down the important parts about who your family is was great! It aligns closely with my belief that “good men” and “good women” will seriously do the same for themselves and their personal values. Confidence and clarity come only when you can establish those values. Only then can you fearlessly give your gifts to others. I’d like to add that a good person is aware of how their unique thoughts, words, and actions can positively or negatively affect those they love and encounter in life. They make compassionate choices. A… Read more »
Mr. Martin.
Great article, I applaud your view and comments and I agree with you. Do get ready for the comments that will arise from men who do not recognize the reality of privilege of being a man and the gender inequality between men and women.
Do you mean privileges like being drafted every time there’s a war? or dying five to ten years earlier than women from entirely preventable causes? Or having the opportunity to do all the really dangerous and dirty jobs because women don’t want them? Or being hundreds of times more likely to have a life long work related injury? Or ……….. fill in any one of a hundred disadvantages that men experience just because they are men.
Privilege is a much more complicated and diverse thing than you seem to conceive it to be.
Beautiful piece, Ben. Heartfelt, personal, and honest. I really enjoyed it.
Ben, you said …. Being a good person means working for equality. Being a good man means recognizing male privilege and taking the opportunities it provides to advance equality. ….. It also means realistically looking at what is perceived as male privilege and dispelling its myths. Being a good person means helping others achieve their potential. Being a good man means recognizing the gender gap in education and working to overcome the stereotypes that prevent boys from reaching their potential. ….. Which contradicts what you said earlier. “Gender gap” indicates that men/boys are behind and have been left… Read more »