The archetypal old white dude once screaming “get off my lawn” at the neighborhood kids is now opening fire on innocent people. How did we get here? We got here because of a toxic mix of fear-inducing right wing media, gun culture, and our dominance-based culture of masculinity, which isolates older white men following a lifetime of training us to bully and dominate others.
Yes, far too many older white men are afraid, not only of the unarmed people in our driveways, but of something that frightens us much more. Loss of our status in Man Box culture. In our dominance-based culture of masculinity, boys and men are trained to validate their masculinity by dominating those around them. Failing to do so comes at a high price. Among those prices are ever increasing levels of insignificance, invisibility, failure. But here is the real fear, lose enough status as a boy or man in Man Box culture and you become a target.
This culture of dominance includes the mutual enforcement of the rules of Man Box culture. These rules include things like don’t show our emotions, always be tough, never ask for help, have lots of sex, have control over women and girls, make tons of money, talk about sports or cars, never anything deep.
These rules of Man Box culture set men up to compete for power with each other to prove a version of masculinity, which can’t actually be successfully proven. So every day, we have to prove it all over again, our toughness, our dominance over those around us. But Man Box culture is and always has been a young man’s game.
Older men like me age out of being able to successfully compete with other men in dominance-based masculinity. We get too old to pick up women in the bars, to win at sports. Maybe we don’t get that raise, maybe we get sick, lose our jobs. And this is all happening within a culture in which we we blocked from learning how to form community or care for friendships.
As Niobe Way’s decades long body of research shows, by late adolescence, boys and men are trained in our masculine culture into giving up our close childhood friendships, thereby condemning ourselves to lifetimes of loneliness.
At some point as we age, men are no longer acknowledged by a culture of masculinity that kicks us to the curb as the younger men roar on by. This should actually come as no surprise, considering we no doubt did this to the men who came before us, but it comes as a shock every damn time, giving rise to significant anger and rage. “I played by the rules and this is how I end up?” After lifetimes spent in the competition and bullying of the Man Box, we find our services are no longer required, our man card revoked.
Which brings us to older white men and guns. While we may fear being robbed, those fears are interwoven with a long standing fear of what happens when we fail to signal dominance over others to validate our masculinity.
The result of becoming an older man in Man Box culture is a toxic mix of loneliness, anxiety, and anger, often at the loss of a young man’s Man Box privileges. No more picking up women, dominating in the workplace. The loss of vitality. But a gun? “That can return me to dominance.” Is it any wonder so many aging white men feel the need to display their guns in public? This is why. It’s part of the failing effort to maintain their status in Man Box culture.
Which is why so many men fantasize about being that “good guy with a gun.” It’s a fantasy rooted in a deep need for self validation, even as true validation is lost to us because Man Box culture long ago stripped us of connection and community. Our validation as men is horribly and sadly reduced to killing a bad guy.
Our dominance-based culture of masculinity, abandons older men to lifetimes of loneliness and disconnection. (A study on loneliness by Cigna in 2019 shows that three in five Americans [61%] report feeling lonely, compared to more than half [54%] in 2018. Our collective loneliness is growing.) Older white men are lonely. While some of us hit our Man Box crisis of disconnection and decide to do our men’s work, to change, millions of others just double down on the anger and rage of dominance culture leading to some deeply tragic choices.
By the far the largest demographic taken by suicide is older white men. Far too many of us are turning turn our anger, loneliness and sense of abandonment inward. We are taken by suicide. Some among us direct our anger against others, innocent bystanders who mean us no harm.
Terrible choices made in a heartbeat.
Young men or old, without an authentic meaningful community of friends can’t weather the storms of life. Men, break out of the bullying isolation of Man Box culture and join the men creating a healthy masculine culture of expression and connection. As we age we will have a circle of friendships to support our physical and emotional well being.
Organizations like ManKind Project, therapists, other men’s circles, books, podcasts are all here to help us begin our work, to create true connection and community. Our books, podcasts and other healthy masculinity resources are located here: linktr.ee/RemakingManhood
Peace, brothers, both young and old.
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Previously Published on Medium
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