There is a huge challenge in how many of us men approach being an ally to women. We think we can become allies to women without it bringing up all of the deep emotional work we have yet to do in our own lives. There’s a reason why abuse against women is still freely going on everywhere. Because men, raised in our generations old dominance-based culture of #masculinity, also do violence to each other, convincing generations of us to shut up and accept masculine bullying as “just the way men are.”
Little boys are forced to conform to the rules of Man Box culture, a very narrow isolating version of #masculinity. The rules include never show our emotions, always be tough, never ask for help, be breadwinners not care-givers, be heterosexual not homosexual, never talk about anything deep, have control over women and girls. We are literally taught to validate our masculinity by displaying power over women. Failing to do so in an invitation to be bullied back into the Man Box.
Given all that, if challenging a man about his behavior towards women doesn’t raise hackles on the back of our necks, we’re not fully in touch with our own histories and emotional experiences in dominance-based masculine culture.
What millions of boys did in Man Box culture was to simply shut down our emotions entirely. In dominance-based culture, justice and fairness don’t exist. Only status and power does. We spend our lives making sure we don’t get targeted by other men. We align with the hierarchy. We abuse.
Accordingly, even as we seek to be allies, we consciously or unconsciously triangulate on men’s reactions MORE than we triangulate on women’s experiences of workplace inequity and abuse. It’s no wonder we still orient to, make excuses for, soften our response to men who bully women in the workplace. We track the threat they also pose to us, a process threaded deep into the construction of our masculine identities.
That ongoing violent threat to conform to dominance-based masculinity gets so integrated into our male identities, it often operates at unconscious levels. The self-protection we had to create remains automatic, emotionless, isolating, endemic. That’s where men’s work comes in. To rediscover those original wounds and move past the disconnection and silencing they enforce in us.
For men, allyship isn’t just offering support to others. It’s a journey into self. To finally let go of the trauma induced self-protection brought on by having Man Box culture rules enforced on us from infancy, means feeling the emotions those rules quashed in us early in our lives. Powerful emotions show up in painful ways in men’s work. Facing them takes courage and support.
This is the work I do both in my own life and in my coaching for men. Organizations like ManKind Project do this work, as do therapists. There are books, podcasts and more. It’s work that never will end for us, but the rewards are huge. Among them, joy, authentic expression and real community. We trade shame for agency. We support others because we come to understand it informs our deepest personal work.
Our resources for men’s work are here: https://linktr.ee/RemakingManhood
My website is here: http://RemakingManhood.com
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Previously Published on Medium
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