Reinventing Ourselves Yet Again!

Many years ago I was reading about initiation rites into manhood. How many cultures had them and ours did not. I asked a friend of mine “what initiation rites do women have?” Her answer: “First Menstruation”.

That was a real lightbulb moment for me. So simple, so obvious- and so profound. A lot has been written about how angry men, especially white men, have become- the answer to which can shed light on so many things, including how Trump got elected in 2016. The usual answer from progressives is that white men have felt threatened by the gains made by women and minorities. While there is some truth to that, and I have certainly heard a lot of anger directed towards feminists and blame towards minorities from my more conservative brethren, this habit of blaming white men for all the world’s problems is only going to make them angrier. Some have even told me that this is why they voted for Trump. Which is crazy, of course, but requests for them to go a little deeper than this have been in vain. Going deep is not one of their strong suits.

We must go deeper as well. My friend was onto something. Women have roles that are more biologically defined than men have. They have babies. An awesome superpower indeed! Throughout history, women have birthed children and raised them. As well as gathered and prepared the food. While not all women have been able or willing to do this, most do, and a woman is generally considered to be a success if she has had at least one baby and raised it well.

Men’s roles are less biologically defined. We do not form as close of an emotional and hormonal bond with our children, and we have not always known which children are ours. It is quite a bit more obvious for women. The main reason that marriage was invented was to make paternity more certain, and to strengthen the bond between mother and father, and between father and child. A man’s new role, socially defined, was to protect and provide for mother and child. There are of course many animals for which monogamy is not practiced, and, especially for mammals, it is often not a pretty sight.

Men have invented for themselves other roles as well. With less time devoted to raising children, we have more time to invent things, to build them, to be poets and musicians, philosophers, and explorers. How successful a society is depends in large part on how successful men have been in developing new and constructive roles for themselves. Women are the backbone of society, they have the most important role- men are the X factor. While this system of traditional gender roles is often called “patriarchy”, that title is reserved for those aspects that women do not like. Having more time to spend outside the home means that men also have most of the leadership roles in society. However, this does not negate the fact that the most important unit of society has always been mother and child, and men are expected to sacrifice themselves if necessary in order to protect and provide for that unit. I sometimes wonder if men feel entitled to extra power both inside and outside the home because of that sacrifice. Certainly, we have the greater physical strength needed to take that power- but that gets back to the success of a society being largely determined by the ability of men to develop constructive roles for ourselves. Minimal violence and oppression is a hallmark of a successful society.

It is the most successful societies that have spawned movements for greater equality and rights for women. If the most basic problems of production have been solved, and there is less violence and hence less need for the protector role, gender roles can be loosened, and both genders can explore options previously reserved for the other. As women have been doing more and more things outside the home that men have always done, more traditional men have seen this as an encroachment, and wondering if they are necessary anymore. Men like to feel useful. We would like to be special, the way women are special. Having babies is an awesome superpower, and what superpowers will we have left?

But some change is, as always, inevitable. We can see this as a threat, as an encroachment, or as an opportunity for us to yet again invent useful roles for ourselves. For emotional and hormonal reasons women will probably always spend more time and energy raising children, leaving men more time and energy outside the home. The old roles of protector and provider, poet and philosopher, inventor, and builder will always be there, although more and more shared with women. Some progressives have suggested that we help women fight for their rights, for their advancement, although this is essentially another version of the protector role, that emphasizes their interests more than our own. We have seen such “enlightened” men denigrate the less enlightened, often to impress women, basically going one upon them by calling them sexists, incels, reactionaries- but creating hierarchies is reactionary in itself. We can do better.

While I have talked about the protector, a sexier word that needs to be invigorated is Warrior. Usually, warriors fight other men, but we can fight for causes as well. We can fight for justice. We can fight for the health of our planet. We can fight against corruption and for greater equality of wealth and income. For Democracy. Certainly, that’s a big one right now! Women have fought for these things as well, but for men to take the lead in these fights would be especially cool because too often we have had the power, and used it in bad ways, and we need to stop identifying with the (mostly other) men who have oppressed the majority of us who do not share in that power. Stop identifying with men who would never invite us to their private clubs, and do not always pay us when we work for them. Who appeals to our prejudices while secretly having contempt for us.

To me, the essence of being a man is to be honorable. To have integrity, and to fight with resolve for what we believe in. Power and status is trivial in comparison. With that in mind, we can reinvent ourselves, and become more awesome than ever!

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