Do men have "fragile egos" or are those just their feelings?
Ending the Battle of the Sexes
We've told men they don't get to have feelings their whole lives. If they accidentally have and show that feeling, the internet full of rageful harpies seize upon it immediately as a sign of weakness. (Not all) women shame men with a special viciousness. It’s not physically violent – it bruises where you can’t see. The invisible wound is much more difficult to heal because you may not even understand what happened to you or why that was indeed a violation.
This is just another internalized patriarchal move to diminish the importance of compassion for another. Yes, men are people too.
Yes, I get it... men (especially white ones) are higher on the ladder, but that ladder goes nowhere. Getting to the top of the status game doesn’t mean you’re happy. How many celebrities killed themselves inside multi-million dollar homes surrounded by all the staff you can stand to have around, fresh-cut flowers, and diamond engagement rings.
You can only sleep in one bedroom a night, and the nightmares don’t care about your zipcode.
Women’s jealousy that men are ahead of us eats us from the middle. What exactly is it we think they have that we don’t? Would you actually want to trade places with any of them? I doubt it.
I come from a lineage of strong women who did it alone. There’s no sustenance here. I need men in my life. I want men in my life. I don’t want to do this alone. I don’t want to be reminded of how strong I am every time I have to carry a bag of groceries into the house by myself. This is a dry, dry land to inhabit. If you stay there for long you will no doubt become bitter.
I know I’m strong. I don’t need to prove it to myself any longer by being such a goddammed independent woman I can’t ask for or receive help.
What are we doing to our men by holding them to impossible standards? Are those even what create good relationships?
I’m not giving anyone a pass. I’m not blaming anyone either. I’m opening a can of worms so we can start to do something different.
Ta from Eugene,
Cris and Team Dragon
As a 58 yr old man I very much resonate with this whole essay. Thx Cris.
To use my wife's acronym from her book "The Art of Alignment: a Practical Guide to Inclusive Leadership".... I SHUVA this!!!
To be "SHUVA'ed is to be "Seen Heard Understood Valued and Appreciated".
Are there privileges to being an adult white male in our society?
Of course.
But are there also dark sides to those "male privileges and the associated expectations"; like those Cris points out? Yes! Absolutely!
Women have to battle being perceived one-dimensionally as having only value as "Sex Objects" or "Caregivers"; and not being seen seriously through other lens' or perception.
Men have to battle being viewed as valuable only if we are showing up as "Capital Success Objects" or musclebound, "beasts of burden; and not being able to feel safe showing up with emotions, feelings, etc that might make us appear weak or vulnerable.
The solution is a model my wife Patty and I have designed we call the Versatility Factor Model which has at its core the tenet that "All humans and all human systems have equal access to the full spectrum of both masculine and feminine archetypal energies", as they are described in the work of Carl Jung and before that Lao Tzu.
A bit about our Versatility Model is explained here in these blog posts on the "Good Men Project" website.
https://goodmenproject.com/author/patty-and-roger/
This one summarizes why we think its useful to continue using and talking about masculine and feminine energies form an archetypal perspective.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/does-it-really-help-to-label-things-as-masculine-or-feminine-dsh/
Would love your thoughts on these, Cris.
Roger