Reclaiming Sacred Manhood - October 21, 2018

I created Living ROI as a passion, to share my experiences and support others who want to live more authentic, joyful and fulfilling lives.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday I attended the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA, and was inspired by many presentations about taking care of our planet and the people who live on it. One session in particular, on the topic of manhood, captured my attention.

Three extraordinary men, Kevin Powell, Jerry Tello and Zachary Draves, shared their experiences as boys and young men in a world where they, and their fathers before them, were taught that to be a man meant they couldn’t be vulnerable. The messages they got from society normalized the objectification and suppression of women. In school they learned about the founding “fathers” and very little about the founding “mothers” or other women in history.

Kevin, Jerry and Zachary are dedicated to reclaiming and teaching a model of masculinity that reflects a strength rooted in loving compassion and wisdom rather than aggression or violence. All three of them are actively working with boys and young men to teach them what it really means to be a man.

I have been concerned that many men feel alienated from the #MeToo movement. What is their role? How can they help? I have gone back and forth between just believing we need greater female representation from the boardroom to the towers of power in Washington D.C. at almost any price, to knowing that men have got to be 50% of the solution.

When I was a senior in college, 32 years ago, I was engaged to a man I did not marry. Shortly after we got engaged he became verbally, emotionally and then physically abusive. It is an important part of my life story that I have buried in the archives of my mind, until yesterday.

My fiancé, I’ll call him “Dan” for this story, truly was a kind and gentle man most of the time. It was confusing when he would suddenly lose his temper and get out of control. Why was this happening? Was it my fault?

My father, who almost never raised his voice in anger, hadn’t behaved like this, so it only took a few of the physical incidences before I figured out I had to leave. It was excruciating because I loved the gentle man that Dan was for most of the day. We did get back together twice, much to the shock and concern of my family and friends, before we finally separated for good.

Dan had told me about how terrified he was as a boy when his father would yell at and attack his mother. One time, when he was a young boy, his father chased his mother with a knife and he thought his father would kill her. Dan could not connect his father’s behavior with his own. He, too, had been abused by his father.

I am grateful for my brush with domestic violence because it opened me up to a massive world I had no idea about. It had been easy to judge women who stayed with abusive men, but I experienced for myself the truth that these men are often victims of abuse themselves, and were taught by example, and reinforced by society at large, that this is how women are to be treated.

I mostly have not told people that I lived with, and was engaged to, an abusive man. I was afraid of being judged myself for making a bad choice and then going back to that bad choice twice. There is often as much, if not more, stigma for women in this situation than men.

I also want to mention all the wonderful men in my life who exemplify sacred manhood: my humble father, my two loving brothers, the many extraordinary men I have worked with and befriended over the years, and, most of all, my dear husband, Colin, who early in our partnership had to endure my own bouts of rage. Thank you, Colin, for being a wonderful example of a man, a husband and a father for our two girls, so that they will know a good partner when they see one.

I am grateful for all these men, and the vast majority of men in the world who are doing right and deserve our love and support. Thank you, to some in advance, for joining in the quest for true equality for women, for the great benefit of us all—humankind.

The message Kevin, Jerry and Zachary are carrying is that we need to change the dominant concepts of what it means to be a man; a definition that is oppressive to both men and women. This is a message we all need to hear and learn, because we are all complicit in sustaining damaging stereotypes of both men and women, and we’re all responsible to change them.

As mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends and lovers, we can call out inappropriate behavior when we see it, and model and teach behaviors that empower a society that is equal and safe for all its members, whatever their gender.

With appreciation and hope,