In Part 1, I discussed the origin of my own search for masculinity growing up with an absent father. I also introduced you to Michael Gurian and Sean Kullman and their book, Boys, A Rescue Plan: Moving Beyond the Politics of Masculinity to Health Male Development.

                Another colleague I had the pleasure of interviewing is Gary Barker, founder and CEO of Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. In a recent article, What is a ‘masculine’ workplace, anyway? Barker says,

“In his recent appearance on Joe Rogan, Mark Zuckerberg said that workplaces need more ‘masculine energy’ and that the workplace had been ‘neutered.’ I began to ask myself, what about workplaces exactly have been neutered? And what masculine energy is Zuckerberg trying to bring back?”

                We are living at a time where a regressive kind of masculinity is coming to power throughout the world. We see it with the election of Donald Trump, who once again has ascended to the U.S. Presidency. We are also hearing more about a certain kind of masculinity represented by media personalities Joe Rogan and tech billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk.

                Gary Barker says,

“The bottom line: a restrictive old-school version of masculinity is generally not good for men ourselves, for the people in our lives, nor for businesses. Nor for the world.”

                Richard V. Reeves, Founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men and author of Of Boys and Men: Why The Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It, offers timely wisdom about the importance of paying attention to the problems of boys and men and the dangers of our failure to do so. Reeves was recently interviewed on John Stewart’s The Daily Show by comedian and actress Desi Lydic.

                “Politicians on both left and right have failed to engage constructively with the problems of boys and men,” says Reeves. “Views on what it means to be a man in the twenty-first century have hardened along partisan lines, but people can hold two thoughts in our head at once. We can be passionate about women’s rights and compassionate toward vulnerable boys and men.”

                In these polarized times with conflict between the left and the right, too often one side blames the other. Some believe that If women are not doing well, it must be men’s fault or if boys and men are not doing well, women must be to blame. But Reeves recognizes that men’s and women’s issues are opposite sides of the same coin and must be solved together or not at all. Says Reeves,

“Too often, there is the belief that men don’t have problems. Men are the problem. And if we continue to just see men as problems rather than having problems, then it’s going to be a very, very, difficult time for us over the next few years.”

                Ruth Whippman is a feminist mother with three boys who was confronted with these conflicting views of masculinity. I interviewed her and wrote an article, BoyMoms and BoyDads: What We Can Learn From Ruth Whippman & Richard Reeves About Sex, Power, and Parenting. In her book, BoyMom: Reimaging Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, Whippman says,

“While the left branded masculinity as toxic, the right sold it as the answer to all our problems, with both politicians and online influencers peddling a new brand of wounded, furious manhood, drawn from a combination of superhero fantasies and defensive rage.”

                Whippman goes on to say,

“Everywhere I turned inside my own brain I found contradiction and hypocrisy. In the fevered, absolutist climate of #MeToo, it is hard not to start to see men as the enemy… Disoriented, I veered wildly between disgust and defensiveness. While the feminist part of me yelled ‘Smash the patriarchy!’ the mother part of me wanted to wrap the patriarchy up in its blankie and read it a story.”

                Failure to recognize and take seriously the problems of boys and men lays the foundation for the rise of authoritarian leaders that we are seeing in the U.S. and around the world. Internationally acclaimed historian, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has been studying and writing about men like these for many years. In her book, StrongMen: Mussolini to the Present she describes leaders from the past like Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler along with contemporary leaders like Vladamir Putin and Donald Trump. She says,

“For ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth treasure, and the protections of democracy.” She goes on to say, “They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority.”

                Like all authoritarian rulers, they are really not “strong.” I believe they are actually very wounded men who feel frightened and and are forever looking for “more”—more validation, more love, more recognition—to fill an inner void that they are reluctant to address. Rather than being healthy, mature men, they are “boymen” who have never truly grown up.

                Prior to Donald Trump’s November 2016 election, I wrote an article, “The Real Reason Donald Trump Will Be Our Next President,” that was posted on my website on May 7, 2016. This was written at a time when few people, including Donald Trump himself, believed that he would be the next President of the United States. In the article I said,

“Our presidential candidates reflect the view we hold of ourselves. Donald Trump is a wounded man and has suffered abuse, neglect, and abandonment as a child. Many of us resonate with his rage.”

                My clinical experience working with men in the U.S. and around the world, convinced me that though males occupied positions of power, too many felt wounded and disempowered and would vote for “strongmen” rather than “healthymen” if given a choice. Clearly in the recent Presidential election the majority voted for the Donald Trump and Republicans rather than Kamala Harris and the Democrats, including many men and women who had previously voted Democratic.

From Artificial Intelligence to Evolutionary Intelligence—From Boy Psychology to Man Psychology

                In my book, 12 Rules For Good Men, Rule #4 is “Embrace Your Billion Year History of Maleness.” With all the talk these days about “artificial intelligence,” it is good to remember that human intelligence has been evolving on planet Earth for three to four-million years. In researching the book I wondered when did “males” and “females” first evolve in evolutionary history.

                At the beginning of the chapter describing Rule #4, I quoted the cultural historian Thomas Berry who said,

“The natural world is the largest sacred community to which belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.”

I believe that it is clear to anyone who is willing to see the truth than our disconnection from the natural world has produced a kind of destructive and artificial intelligence that is undermining our life-support system that is necessary for our survival.

                Our modern confusions and conflicts about “masculinity” and “femininity” keeps us from recognizing and appreciating the evolutionary history of “male” and “female.” In his book, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, Matthew Fox says,

“The universe invented sex and sexuality one billion years ago.”

                According to mathematical cosmologist, Dr. Brian Swimme and historian Dr. Thomas Berry, in their book, The Universe Story, they say,

“Life first evolved on Earth about four billion years ago. Prior to the evolution of sexual reproduction, cells divided into individual sister cells.”

Swimme and Berry call this living organism Sappho.

“But one billion years ago, a momentous change occurred. The first male organism, Tristan, and the first female organism, Iseult, were cast into the ancient oceans.”

                This was the first love affair and, as the story goes, the rest is evolutionary history.

                In their book, Boys, A Rescue Plan, Michael Gurian and Sean Kullman go into great depth in helping explain the confusion about sex and gender and conclude,

“Human beings are sexually dimorphic. Our chromosomes set us up that way in utero. We develop during our lifespan as male and female in body and brain, even as particular brain characteristics in a male or female lean toward extremes or middles.”

                They go on to say,

“Dimorphic doesn’t mean stereotyping. It doesn’t mean one boy-type, one girl-type, with no variety. Sexual dimorphism creates averages and means for male and female on the brain sex spectrum.”  

They backup their findings with data from a host of scientists.

According to David C. Page, M.D. professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of the Whitehead Institute, where he has a laboratory devoted to the study of the Y-chromosome,

“There are 10 trillion cells in the human body and every one of them is sex specific. We’ve had a unisex vision of the human genome. Men and women are not equal in our genome and men and women are not equal in the face of disease.”

Marianne J. Legato M.D, is founder of the Foundation for Gender-Specific Medicine and author of numerous books on sex, gender, and science, including, Eve’s Rib:  The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine. She says,

“Everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different not only in their internal function but in the way they experience illness.”

Just as there are biological and evolutionary differences between male and females there are differences between man psychology and boy psychology. In their book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, say,

“In their radical critique of patriarchy, some feminists conclude that masculinity in its roots is essentially abuse, and that connection with ‘eros’—with love, relatedness, and gentleness—comes only from the feminine side of the human equation.”

They go on to say,

“Patriarchy is the expression of immature masculinity. It is the expression of Boy psychology, and, in part, the shadow—or crazy—side of masculinity. It expresses the stunted masculine, fixated at immature levels. Patriarchy, in our view, is an attack on masculinity in its fullness as well as femininity in its fullness.”

For most of human history, there were Rites of Passage where boys were initiated and supported in moving from boyhood to manhood. But now, as Moore and Gillette point out, men are fragmented—various parts of their personality are split off from each other leading to often independent and chaotic lives.

“A man who cannot get it together is a man who has probably not had the opportunity to undergo ritual initiation into the deep structures of manhood. He remains a boy—not because he wants to, but because no one has shown him the way to transform his boy energies into man energies. No one has led him into direct healing experiences of the inner world of masculine potential.”

I was fortunate to have experienced several initiations throughout my life and now help guide others. You can learn more about what we do by visiting us at MenAlive.com and MoonshotforMankind.org.