Getting Naked: A Field Guide for Men

In August 2018, I attended a men’s retreat in Ojai entitled “Women Teach Men” with a buddy who was turning 40. The #MeToo Movement had exploded on the scene during the previous fall, and 100 guys, mainly ages 30–45, came together to explore how we might respond to the complex challenges that engulfed us. The retreat was organized with the intention of reversing the traditional power paradigm—all the speakers were high-powered, accomplished women. Between sessions, we attendees gathered in squads of six to eight led by a male facilitator to talk about how men might take on the challenge of working with our brothers to effect a shift in men’s behavior.

In our breakout group was a brilliant twenty-five-year-old tech exec who had been excoriated for some statements he had posted online in college about the interactions of men and women prior to the #MeToo moment. He was reserved and gun-shy about speaking up, but clearly had a ton on his mind. Feeling his pain, my friend and I chatted with him about our own sense of frustration and alarm that the movement was tearing men and women apart, even as it uncovered serious issues that needed our attention and deep wounds that we needed somehow to heal. We discovered that we had a lot in common, even at ages 25, 40, and 60. Our new friend inquired whether I had done some thinking on this topic. I admitted that I had, in fact, done quite a lot of thinking and writing privately about all this. He asked to read some of my stuff. I sent a piece to him to read that night, which he did.

Later, we attended a men-only session with psychotherapist Esther Perel. From the outset, we agreed to create a safe space where we could share our dark secrets in confidence and speak of our swirling emotions and insecurities without shame or embarrassment. I heard things that I never thought a man would admit even to himself, much less to others. There was an overwhelming outpouring of pain and confusion. These revelations were not just related to the mixed set of feelings that men were experiencing about the #MeToo Movement—which ranged from extreme outrage at bad actors, feelings of complicity, and anger at being condemned for merely being male—but the challenges of being a man, in general. There was talk of the dark underside of men’s sexual drive—the thrill of aggression, our need to consume, possess, or conquer. The prevalence and persistence of premature ejaculation, well into our 30s for some, and the general embarrassment of not being able to maintain more control over our impulses. The agony of wanting to form deep connections with women without having the emotional capacities or communication skills to do so. The frustration of being punished for the sins of our brothers, along with the acknowledgment that on some level we were, all of us, guilty of exploiting women. It was 1:30 AM before Dr. Perel closed a session whose dialogue showed no sign of ever ending.

The next day, the retreat was buzzing with men connecting in ways that we typically do not. There wasn’t any posturing, just a fierce desire to continue the conversation of the night before.

At the end of the retreat, I found myself standing in a sacred circle with the legendary Rev. Jo from Agape Church in Los Angeles. Her towering presence could inspire fear in men, as you knew that without lifting a finger, she could invoke the wrath of God. One by one, we stood before her and made a solemn vow to act on some insight of the retreat. Shaking like a leaf, I heard myself swear from out of nowhere that I would begin to publish my writing.

That was a big, scary departure for me as I had long ago decided that I could not openly discuss my several-decade exploration of modern masculinity in public. It would have been too high risk for me professionally, as I was a non-profit exec and a producer of children’s programming. I could not expect to remain employed if I were to share my thoughts about unexpected hard-ons, the range of sexual impulses that men feel, relationship challenges, and feelings of inadequacy and failure.

However, as I stood before the group and reflected upon the collective pain that I had witnessed that weekend, I realized that men who have been trying to reframe and expand traditional notions of masculinity need to step up during these contentious times, overcome our reluctance, and put ourselves at risk of retaliation for speaking out. In that pivotal moment, I decided that the positive impacts that I might generate in joining the men who were committing to making a shift, no matter how small, far outweighed the personal consequences of doing so.

Nevertheless, it took me a couple of months to screw up the courage to begin posting my thoughts online. I, too, had some prior history here. The previous January, just a few months after the allegations against Harvey Weinstein were made, I had submitted an essay to the Los Angeles Review of Books proposing an action step that men could take to reframe their understanding of the issues. To say that my proposal was unconventional is an understatement. It was so out of bounds that you could think of it as a piece of Swiftian satire—“An Immodest Proposal”— as the essay suggested that men pose nude for a female photographer to better understand the impact of the male gaze. To my great surprise and amazement, the essay was accepted and published by BLARB, LA Review of Books’ online platform. This caused a mini firestorm in my family, as everyone thought I was a fool to pull this stunt and jeopardize my career. My piece wasn’t remotely G-rated.

So, I hesitated to cause them more pain and risk triggering negative professional ripple effects from which I might never recover. But, remembering my promise that I would share my thoughts with the men in our tribe that are in crisis . . . on a cold Sunday afternoon in October, I sat by the fire and reworked the BLARB piece, using my “chest” voice (as I would telling a story to guys at the bar) instead of the heady, intellectual voice of the original. Continuing to watch TV, I sent it off to Lisa Hickey, the publisher of The Good Men Project, thinking I might hear back in a few weeks. Two hours later, I received a positive response, with an inquiry as to whether there were other topics I might want to write about. I dashed off twelve ideas without giving it much thought and got a second quick response. Fifty essays and five years later, I am still writing.

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This guide is for men who are eager to reframe the behavioral patterns that are deeply engrained inside us about what it means to be a “real man,” despite these patterns being at odds with the new set of expectations that confront today’s men. These patterns have been categorized by social commentators as the “Man Box” because they are so deeply encoded into our society and our individual behaviors that many men find it difficult to challenge its “rules.” Men have created these definitions of masculinity over time as a way to distribute and control power. Although the “Man Box” is a prison for many (some would argue all) men, there is a payoff for men in maintaining the status quo as we benefit from this system of oppression. For a host of reasons that are discussed in Getting Naked: A Field Guide for Men, it’s long past time for us to take responsibility for making a cultural shift that better supports the needs of all individuals, including our own. Getting Naked attempts to answer the question of how we might evolve from being emotionally detached providers, warriors, and protectors into becoming compassionate nurturers, companions, and seekers as well. It suggests ways in which aspects of our personalities that are conditioned out of us can be reclaimed and turned into strengths. It reflects forty years of experience trying to expand the narrow, rigid definitions of manhood that our society forces upon men, along with the latest academic research and the stories of other men who have been fellow travelers on this journey.

I hope that the book provides insights that advance the current conversation about what it means to be a 21st-century man. My deepest wish is that Getting Naked inspires generations of men to develop their innate capacities to engage with their wives, partners, children, colleagues, and friends in an open-hearted way that will enable them to experience the grace, power, and joy of being alive, connected, and unabashedly male.  https://www.instagram.com/mark_grayson_/reel/DTi4I2xgdGq/

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This post is republished on Medium.com.

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