Boys 2 Men?

What are we doing to the young men of tomorrow?

There is a quote in the movie Jack Reacher: Never Go Back where a street-smart teenage girl is being questioned by a female military police officer. The officer asks her what she does when things get bad for her in public situations and her response is “I just go pick out the alpha guy and give him flack. Strong guys don’t hurt you. The weak guys do that. Strong guys always have little sisters. Or want one? I don’t know why, that’s just how it is.”

In a society currently throwing around the term “toxic masculinity”, is this really what they are referring to, weak men? When I read the internet, most of what I read seems to extend to almost anything one might construe as masculine as bad. One article I read was for a recovery center where most of the things one might identify with being male were taken to their utmost extreme or shown to only lead to a negative outcome (like suicide). There was literally not a single counter-example showing when those traits might result in a positive. The obvious conclusion by the reader could only be that those traits are solely negative and should therefore be avoided. If men were really as bad as they implied, how did we ever get here? Surely there are good and bad things that come with being masculine. Yet their definition of “healthy masculinity” is the idea that men should be emotionally expressive, have female friends or mentors, and express their emotions without feeling emasculated. To undo “toxic masculinity”, they state accountability needs to be taken by those who perpetuate these negative ideas of “manpower” and that all these “toxic” men need therapy or professional help. That is a pretty wide-sweeping set of assumptions, I think.

So, we have two conflicting ideas here. One that says men need to be strong (alpha) and the other that men need to be less alpha and more emotional. Herein lies one of the most fundamental problems in today’s society. Mixed messages. Ambiguity. Both of these ideas are vague and difficult to pin down what exactly a man is supposed to do (or be). Am I to be a “traditional male” who built the current world, fought its many wars, and helped get us to where we are today, or am I to be a “modern male” who embraces his emotional side and looks to right the wrongs of the past? Both have documentable flaws. Both have documentable merits. Neither represents what we need the most: a role model for what a man is supposed to be so that a boy knows what to shoot for. When does a boy become a man? 

“Boys will be boys”. Heard this one before? I tend to think of doing risky things with something on wheels, blowing stuff up, roughhousing, taking things apart, breaking stuff, saying inappropriate things, teasing girls, and generally disorderly conduct. Sometimes these things are taken to the extreme and that is unfortunate. Obviously, this idiom is a stereotype for boys in general. Now, before you break out your judgment hat on gender-related anything, stop and ask yourself, where did this stereotype come from? Is there a general truth to the idiom? Are these boys taught all of this? Is it natural, some sort of evolutionary leftover from a more difficult time in human history? Kind of like rams practicing butting heads when young because they know it will be life or death when they get older. Are these boys just instinctively practicing for what comes later in life? And if you think that is a reasonable conclusion, why are we so hard on them when they behave based on their most basic instincts? What is a boy to do? Well…

Let me give you a very poor but simple example. I recently turned 50 years old this year. As a Gen X, I have watched men change over my lifetime. When I went to Disneyland as a kid, men dressed like men. When I take my daughter to Disneyland today, men dress like boys. They are wearing comic book stuff or Mickey stuff or some sort of matching outfit with their wife. I go online and see countless “geeks” with huge Lego collections or Star Wars action figures still in the package or doing cosplay. Their whole life revolves around fantasy worlds and avatars and they are spending thousands of dollars on it. It is their escape from reality and has become a huge part of who they are. That’s fine. I appreciate all that stuff too. I liked Star Wars. I liked Lord of the Rings. I played D+D with my friends. I am a quintessential nerd. But somewhere, I left it behind and moved to more reality-based things. Now this isn’t a judgment, merely an observation that many men today never stop being boys because they have no idea what it means to be a man. Society has obscured the concept and simple tenets of being a man so much that rather than go out there and get ridiculed or shamed, they retreat into the safe-boy world of fantasy. There they can be whatever they want to be (with fellow friends like them) without the unknown expectations of being a man today. And can you blame them?

Now I have never had to go to war or face getting killed every day as a job. Never had to balance myself hundreds of feet up building a skyscraper. Never had to fight off wolves in the night. Never had to do one of a thousand things men did in the past. Technology does so much nowadays that much of that need is reduced. However, I can appreciate what it takes to do such a hard thing. Imagine the fear, the uncertainty, the impact it would have on you emotionally. It would be overwhelming. Thus, to do these ridiculously hard things (and consistently), you would have to harden yourself. Push down the emotion and just get the thing done. If you are afraid of heights and you need to scale a cliff, do you lean into the emotion and genuinely think you are going to get to the top? No, of course not. We then need to stop expecting men to suddenly embrace their emotional side if their life requires them to push it down. We need to stop thinking they would teach their boys something different if we knew how hard their life is. Imagine the technology bubble you live in bursting and things go back to a more primal time. Is being more emotionally in touch with your feelings going to help you get through? Guess that is up to you to decide but you cannot fault these individuals for passing down what they learned to help their boys survive a world as they see it.  

I have always appreciated Miyamoto Musashi’s adage “It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.” Now this can be taken multiple ways, but simplified, it essentially means it is best to be prepared and never use it then be unprepared and lost. In the case of boys, many, many of them are going to act out in some manner. Rather than shaming all these boys for what they are doing or feeling with terms like “toxic masculinity”, we need to teach them how to control it. Develop them to be powerful, to harness the good that can come from such power, and then teach them to control it. Make them warriors who show restraint. Teach them honor. A code. This is literally the coda of most martial arts. And has been around since the dawn of human existence. I don’t know about you but seems the precedent is pretty clear.  

You see, I believe men are physically stronger because our primary role is protector. We protect those in our charge, often to our own detriment. Just comes with the job. The roof takes the beating to protect everything underneath it. That’s its role. Its purpose. And it has been made that way. For its task. And this isn’t a human thing. It is the role of other species of males as well. This is what the teenage girl in the movie was referring to. A basic biological tenet. A proper alpha has the capacity to do these things (often terrible things) but the strength to control themselves. To use it appropriately. To protect, not to harm. Weak men lack the mental strength to control themselves. We have always used the alphas to keep the weak men in check. However, if we keep tearing down alphas and making them feel worthless, should we be really surprised when more and more weak men are able to thrive? What do boys see more of? 

Therefore, if we really want to combat weak men (so-called “toxic masculinity”), we need to empower our boys to become alphas. We need more alphas, not less. We need to invest in our boys, not shame their natural instincts. We need to show them all the good they can do, to harness the power that comes with it, and to praise them when they show proper restraint. Positive or healthy masculinity should mean embracing what it means to be a male and teaching boys what they are supposed to be. Nothing good is accomplished by making men feel worthless. Nobody wants to protect others who don’t respect or appreciate them. We need to strengthen our roofs, not tear them down.

One final point, for any boys reading this, vet who you see as your mentor. Pay attention to what they do right AND what they do wrong. Understand that some boys are called to be men sooner than others. Look for examples in your life of men being men, not boys. Be cautious of how easy it is to emulate weak men. Being an alpha is hard. Real hard. Being the roof means you take the beatdown. Know this. Prepare for this. Aspire for this. Become the warrior. What society doesn’t tell you is there is genuine satisfaction in being a protector. A real sense of purpose and honor being the one who stood against the storm and emerged to tell the tale. It often goes without acknowledgment or appreciation by those whom you protected. But you know. Deep down, you did what we were designed to do. What nature wants us to do. What you were built to do. What weak men don’t do. You have become a man.