It is not controversial to say that there is a disturbing lack of male mentorship in the world as we know it. In my own life I have had to seek out male mentors and spend months earning their attention and respect in return for even a modicum of sage advice. The ones related to me by blood are now either dead or incapacitated, and when they were alive and well, they were still shameful at worst and inadequate at best.
I do not write this to disparage any individual man—certainly not those I still hold dear—my goal is to disparage a complex hierarchy of relations, where there a strong link between the personal and political. The lack of male mentorship exists not in a vacuum but within the larger system of patriarchy. Instead of developing younger men into better reflections of their individual selves and, by extension, the “best men can be”—to quote Gillette—male mentors would rather develop stalwarts of the status quo than free thinkers or trailblazers. It’s as if manhood has become a boys’ club.
Take Roy Cohn’s relationship with Donald Trump, for example. The American people and the wider world would be a lot better off if Cohn taught the impressionable Trump to be more honest and ethical rather than help his company mitigate the consequences of a federal lawsuit for discriminating against African American rental applicants. Cohn, also schooled in the arts of tax evasion, taught Trump that you can be a scoundrel and not only get away with it but become rich in the process. Indeed, you can be a scoundrel and become president.
Maybe Cohn saw Trump as a reflection of himself and nurtured only the (degenerate) qualities that they shared. Trump, in turn, abandoned his long-time mentor as his health declined likely because Cohn was of no longer any use to him.
I have felt abandoned in the opposite of circumstances: while thriving. It’s as if older men fear the power of younger men the way men (in general) fear the power of women. Men fear what they can’t control. This extends even to networks of men who identify with the goals of feminism. No one puts it better than the late Allan Johnson on page 43 of his 1997 book The Gender Knot:
Men … once they have achieved a socially acceptable level of interpersonal sensitivity, they may enjoy a sense of relief and relative safety from criticism, if not a certain smugness in relation to men who still don’t get it (even here, the patriarchal game continues). And, having found a safe haven, they are unlikely to risk making anyone, including themselves, uncomfortable by digging deeper into questions about what patriarchy is, how it works, and why and how it needs to be changed.
The “safe haven” often comes in the form of the false sense of security that comes with being older, (allegedly) wiser, and, thus, (allegedly) more deserving of a privileged status in society. Even if the privilege is deserved, it comes at the expense of younger generations and the larger society when it is used only to maintain itself. I always found it ironic to hear older generations complain about Millennials lacking stability (financial and otherwise) when the instability that defines most of their lives is rooted in the Great Recession, which was brought on by the policies and practices of the older generations.
Elders should reflect first on their own flaws and shortsightedness. They should then seek to nurture the very best in the younger generations because, whether they like it or not, those younger generations will soon supplant them. And it’s about time.
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Great piece and I’m linking it into one I’m writing on the general subject of mentoring and feeling old!