Modern Masculinity: Breaking Through the Isolation of Being a Man

In Canada in 2008, 2,777 Canadian men committed suicide; 928 women committed suicide.

Males under the age of 18 were physically assaulted 1.5 more times than women.

39,099 people were in Canadian prisons in 2009. Only 5.9 percent were women. *

Boys will be boys

What are we teaching our boys? And why do men struggle to articulate their appreciation of other men in their lives? Maybe it’s because society doesn’t often give men permission to share their feelings.

“Pretty much every boy gets shut down at about age five,” says Mathew Davydiuk, facilitator for Boys to Men Canada. “You don’t cry. Whether you pick up on it because someone told you, or because you watch other people being told, eventually somebody shuts you down. That’s a reality for men, for boys. Most boys didn’t grow up in a home where they were told it was okay to be emotional.”

Davydiuk believes that the masculine baseline of our current North American culture is a product of the industrial revolution. Men, families, and communities exist today entirely differently from the way things were 150 years ago.

According to Davydiuk, the first-affected generation of men left the homestead to apply muscle to machines in factories. This was the beginning of the shift from integrated to isolated men. Our society is so far gone from the model of family and community life that existed before technology.

Removing the man from the home was a blow that our culture feels, but may not recognize. Many men moved away from being integrated with the upbringing of offspring, as well as from contributing to the land and the home.

“In our society in general we completely distrust men, I think for good reasons,” says Davydiuk. “I look around and I think, ‘Well, you know, it’s not like we have the best track record.’ I think that’s largely part of male culture, patriarchy. I’ve often said that patriarchy is the darker side of masculinity.”

Men are now responsible to create means of financial support by entering a workforce where competition is a prominent aspect: jobs, women, cars, physical strength. Our society turns a blind eye to these destructive constructs, normalizing and adapting to them. Not to neglect that women are key breadwinners, too, but the roots of this competition in men’s culture are striking.

Despite 150 years having passed since the first shift, men and family dynamics have still not fully recovered. Men have become marginalized as role models and as parents, to a critical point, says Davydiuk.

Davydiuk stumbled into one clear indicator of this: expectant fathers don’t conventionally participate in the celebration and preparation for the welcoming of their children into the world.

“I never even imagined that men could even go to baby showers,” he says.

The baby shower is predominantly female-focused today, so men miss out on the opportunity to connect to the men in their life and have the opportunity to talk about the fears of fatherhood and what to expect.

“That’s an indication to me,” says Davydiuk. “That’s a celebration of someone being a parent. I judge that as a culture, we don’t imagine fathers as being in that child’s life in that way. It’s really important for men to know that they’re supported by their community.”

The man-box

“Hyper-masculinity is still fairly pervasive: men and boys have to assert masculinity,” says Annalee Lepp, department chair of women’s studies at the University of Victoria.

Most boys don’t want to be seen as weak or feminine in any way. Being associated as homosexual is the quickest threat to cut men down.

Lepp looks at navigating masculinity in that context. “Is there permission to be the nerd, gay, or trans?” she asks. “Are there spaces where it isn’t a hostile and dangerous environment? Is there a way that jock culture needs to transform itself?”

Davydiuk acknowledges the challenge of uprooting gender roles. “Men and women are both pigeonholed by this gender that we are given. Did you grow up being called a ‘faggot’ because you were emotional? Did you grow up scared that you were going to get an erection in public?”

All the typical insults hurled at men by men are only reinforcing the fear-based approach that young men learn from constantly being under threat.

“Something that really scares me says is the language that men and women use, especially in relationship to women; it’s just degrading,” says Davydiuk. “But it’s largely accepted. Trash-talking women is okay in our culture, I hear it all the time, particularly from this younger generation.”

He hears boys and girls driving the rigid stake of gender roles deeper into the heart of youth culture.

“It’s being called a ‘pussy,’ ‘faggot,’ ‘girly-boy,’ or the idea that you have to be tough, you have to be right, all the time,” says Davydiuk

He says the idea that men constantly get approached to do things physically for others reinforces the man-box, too. “Men are supposed to be powerful, have nice cars and nice things, be really successful.”

Davydiuk drives home that the use of language is instrumental in leading boys and men by example.

“The way we talk to kids is really important,” he says. “They are watching us. Their brains are developing so fast at that age.”

Everything said and done is a choice. “We’re shaping the culture that is around us,” says Davydiuk. “It’s not about gender at the end of the day. I believe that we heal through relationships, we heal through witnessing and learning how to speak the truth.”

These male-related problems get handed down from generation to generation now. Davydiuk explains that his own father never had someone step in and show him how to be a man in a good way. He says that his father only knew what kind of man he wasn’t allowed to be.

“I refer to it as the quietening,” says Davydiuk. “A lot of men in that generation got quiet. They bottled things up.”

The missing link 

David Hatfield is a Vancouver-based leadership consultant specializing in masculinity and rites of passage youth leadership. According to the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, violent men are three times as likely as non-violent men to have witnessed violence against their mothers in childhood, and women who were raised in similar circumstances are twice as likely to be victims of spousal violence.

Hatfield says that research is exposing more and more that the absence of adequate father figures causes many negative social outcomes for both boys and girls. He identifies rites of passage work as an invaluable solution. It supports the intentional mentorship necessary for a young person’s transition into adulthood.

“There is an intrinsic, built-in hunger to be given a recognition pathway and the information and the support and the guidance and the mentorship to start taking their place as adults,” says Hatfield.

Typically rites of passage have three phases: separation, transition, and reincorporation. Men can be empowered by going somewhere remote with a group of men, connecting to their ranges of masculinity and femininity, and doing their work together.

There are still a few coming-of-age rituals that are socially accepted and more widely encouraged. The Jewish tradition of Bar and Bat Mitzvah is one. At the age of 13, boys and girls take part in a ceremony which initiates them from a place of dependent childhood into a place of their own adult responsibility.

“In the absence of rites of passage it shouldn’t be surprising to anybody that the leading causes of death are accidents and suicide for young men in our culture,” says Hatfield. “We pay a huge price as a nation, as communities, as families, when we’re not doing that work.”

In Canada, suicide is the second highest cause of death for youth aged 10–24. The Canadian Mental Health Association reported in 2003 that each year, on average, 294 youths die from suicide. Many more attempt suicide.

“I’d say that the group that knows the least about itself as a social group is men,” says Hatfield. “Women are quite attuned to a lot of the challenges that men are under. A lot of women would like to see the men in their lives having more male friendships. A lot of sensitive men who are awake and aware feel more security and safety creating friendships with women. That’s great, but it’s not balanced.”

It’s clear that boys and men need healthy role models and mentors in their lives to lead by example and normalize healthy emotional behaviours.

“The gender difference is that women have menstruation as a clear biological marker,” says Hatfield. “If nothing else, they have that. And that’s not even well tended to in our culture. Men don’t have anything like that. We don’t have a strong biological marker.”

Davydiuk lists off what he calls quasi-initiations, the tangible and sometimes misguided shifts that men have as reference points for achieving adult masculinity.

“Shift from boy to man can be getting drunk for the first time, getting laid, getting your first car,” he says. “These lack a spiritual depth. Except marriage and having children, we don’t have anything to acknowledge psychological change. That’s a big part of it. We’re initiating change in boys, and men. Men and women need that.”

Hatfield refers to African author and educator Malidoma Some, who says, “The face of modern masculinity is isolation.”

And that isolation comes with a cost. Without a society that accepts a broader range of masculinity and allows for men to display emotions freely, Hatfield and other experts on modern masculinity fear that men will continue to fall deeper into their own individual worlds.

 

* According to Statistics Canada