Male Emancipation
So what might male emancipation look like? I don’t believe that all men have to become more sensitive or somehow soften their appearance or their nature, nor do I think that we should be aiming to return to a Georgian ideal of masculinity that values the particular traits of the highly sensitive man. What I do believe is that we need to expand our idea of what masculinity can be and feel able to define it more freely, so that it includes every man and boy as he is, encompassing all of his unique facets, complexities, and contradictions. We need to stop reducing ourselves and being reduced by others. We need to stop seeing everything as black and white and start seeing the great spectrum of shades that exists among men. We need to stop saying “either-or” and start saying “as well as.” Masculine and sensitive, masculine and emotional. And the more that the highly sensitive man is able to deal with and thrive with his high sensitivity, to live with it with more self-confidence, more self-awareness, and more authenticity in the eyes of others, the more he can drive this social change.
If we are going to talk about a crisis of masculinity, then we have to see this crisis as an opportunity. An opportunity for change. Through the process of coming to terms with ourselves, we begin to ask questions and to define things in new ways, which, in turn, changes people’s thinking, their attitudes, and their behavior. This process can be both frightening and unsettling, but it can also be liberating and exciting. Perhaps it is exactly this process that we can see happening all around us and that will eventually allow men to lead more authentic, intimate, emotional, and sensitive lives.
The clinical psychologist Martin Seager is one of the cofounders of the Male Psychology Network of British physicians and psychologists, which organizes an annual conference on the subject of men’s mental health. Seager is convinced that the traditional rules of masculinity put an enormous amount of pressure on men to think, to feel, and to behave in a certain way. When I talked to him, he summarized for me the rules of masculinity.
1 A real man is a fighter and a winner.
2 A real man is a provider and a protector (of women and children).
3 A real man is controlled and disciplined.
Seager doesn’t believe that these social expectations will completely disappear, but he does have the impression that society is currently in the process of changing and broadening the application and the content of these rules. What does this process look like? Well, providing for others could also mean providing for them at an emotional level, instead of just a financial and physical one. These are all important and legitimate ways of being a provider. A man could look after his partner by trying to be emotionally present and available. He could share childcare, which also represents a form of masculine provision and masculine protection. If society as a whole (and men themselves) expects men to fight and to win, then we could also broaden our definition of what that means. What might a contemporary form of masculine fighting look like in the twenty-first century? How about fighting for something that matters to you or fighting for a good cause? How about fighting for your family or your relationship? And could success also mean having close and emotionally satisfying relationships with other people, leading a long psychologically and physically healthy life, and having a career that gives your life meaning? If the only definition of success is status, if professional and sexual success only relates to material wealth, then that can only lead to a situation in which most of us don’t feel successful and our attempts to become real men in our society are going to falter and eventually fail.
To redefine these rules, however, men also need the support of women who allow them to be who they are. And they need the support of other men who treat them with warmth and acceptance and in doing so enable this emancipation from the narrow rules of masculinity.
SUMMARY
This is what the emancipation of men, which, to my mind, is long overdue, could look like. And what could it feel like? How about friendly, fatherly, brotherly, benevolent, accepting, equal, communal, generous, caring, and liberating? Both to ourselves and to others. Including instead of excluding. What would happen if men started to take more notice of their emotional needs and to verbalize them? If they showed the full spectrum of their feelings, not just anger and rage but also loneliness, sadness, helplessness, joy, and excitement? If our society was completely open to boys and men being emotional and sensitive and saw these qualities as something attractive and masculine? Just imagine if men were able to steadily free themselves from the strict categories of what is typically masculine and typically feminine and be less defined by them?
What would change in your friendships, in your relationships, in the way that you parent, in the career that you choose? The aim wouldn’t be to become more feminine or to sweep aside any differences between men and women; that would be neither possible nor desirable. The aim would be to feel freer and lighter, to throw off that heavy old armor.
In order to achieve this, we need highly sensitive men who can be an example to others, showing less sensitive men that they can be sensitive, emotional, tactful, and masculine and that it’s a great way to live your life. A few years ago, I had a long conversation with Christopher Germer, a clinical psychologist and the author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions.31 We covered many topics, including masculine identity, shame, introversion, and high sensitivity. We also spoke about how completely revolutionary it would be, and how much it would change the world, if every man started to try to deal with his feelings and could realize that everything that he felt, thought, and did was automatically manly because he was a man, whether or not society currently saw him as typically masculine. Germer hit the nail on the head when he summed up our conversation by saying, “A man is just a human being living in a male body. We sometimes forget that.”
How can we all make sure that we remind ourselves of this more often?
John: “Free yourself from society’s expectations.”
I think John is a particularly good role model for highly sensitive men because as well as being a highly sensitive man, he is also a highly successful attorney in a professional field that we usually associate with traditional masculine attributes and behaviors. He also talks about how he has tried to free himself from society’s expectation that a man should want to be sexually promiscuous. Interestingly, this is a subject that many highly sensitive men, whether gay or straight, have discussed with me.
When and how did you first notice you were highly sensitive?
That fact that I was more sensitive to stimuli than my peers began to crystalize when I was in my late teens. Looking back now, my first sense was that I couldn’t “endure” activities that were typical for people my age, like going to parties and clubs, because I was too sensitive to noise. It wasn’t until I was a student, around twenty-two, that I started to think that other people might feel the same way and I started to do some research and read around about it. That’s when I came across the concept of high sensitivity.
What are the advantages and the disadvantages of being highly sensitive?
One man’s meat is another man’s poison, and high sensitivity seems to trigger specific characteristics that—depending on the situation—can be helpful or unhelpful. It means that you have an intense sensory perception, an intense life and experiences. But I could do without the intensity of experiencing acute overstimulation.
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