An expert on men and masculinity, Randy Flood, co-founder and director of the Men’s Resource Center of West Michigan, values thought-provoking conversations that instruct, inspire, and affirm. He recently welcomed back his colleague, Dr. Simon Fokt, to the Revealing Men podcast for one such dialogue. Fokt is a philosopher and lecturer at HTW Berlin, University of Applied Sciences, and an important international voice in the evolving conversation about men, masculinity, and gender justice. He is the CEO and Founder of PathForge and lead author of Positive Narratives for Men and Boys, a project developed through Men Engage. On his last visit to the podcast, Fokt and Flood shared a fascinating conversation about artificial intelligence and intimacy and what it means to be connected as humans in the 21st century. This time, they tackle the question of who or what is responsible for where men find themselves struggling today: Are men primarily struggling because of enormous social, economic, technological, and cultural changes? Or are many men struggling because they have not yet developed the emotional and relational capacities needed to adapt to those very changes?
Flood makes it clear that the goal isn’t to assign blame but to “build a bridge between perspectives that too often talk past one another.” He hopes the conversation resonates with “the women who believe men simply need to evolve, the men who feel left behind, misunderstood, or even disposable, and everyone trying to make sense of what healthy masculinity looks like in the 21st century.”
You can listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Excerpts follow below, edited for length and clarity.
“The most important question is: what kind of man will flourish in the world we’re creating together.”- Randy Flood
Masculinity Historically in Crisis
Flood: At the end of our previous conversation, Simon, you suggested that today’s masculinity crisis is in many ways self-inflicted. … that’s a powerful statement. …What exactly do you mean by self-inflicted?
Fokt: It seems like when you look at the history of masculinity, it’s always been in crisis. There’s been always something. The ancient Romans were talking about the crisis of masculinity, and the 16th century had a crisis of masculinity, and the 19th century had a crisis of masculinity. It always seems like there is something built into masculinity that invites this sort of thing. When you dive deeper into those studies, there are some elements of the very concept of this kind of traditional masculinity …that almost guarantee that something like that will happen.
What Qualifies as Masculinity?
Fokt: It has to do with the idea that true masculinity is earned rather than something that you’re born with, for example, or something you can just get once. You need to re-earn it all the time. And not only that, but there are only very specific and very few ways in which you can do that and still be the real man, whatever that means at a given time. It’s something evaluative, something honorific, something special. It—almost by definition—requires that not many people can actually achieve it. And naturally that leaves a lot of people in a place in which they feel like they’re not there. They can’t get there. And even the people who you would think are examples of what you would call this “traditional masculinity” are still quite insecure about it because they can lose it any minute. Because it’s built into the concept that it’s something that needs to be constantly earned.
When you look at the voices of the manosphere today, they promote this traditional, very hegemonic model of masculinity in which you need to dominate others and you need to somehow prove yourself to be a real man. They keep talking about—even creating—this division between men and women, saying, ‘Oh, if you’re a woman, you’re born with value.’ Right? ‘But if you’re a man, you need to earn it. You need to prove yourself. You don’t have any value unless you prove yourself.’ They promote this vision, which, by definition, is going to leave most people in crisis. They’re not asking the question, ‘Why is it like that? Is that a right thing that a man needs to always earn his value? Why aren’t men born with value?’
And you can say, ‘Well, this is just the society we live in, and we need to adjust to it and things like this.’ But I think that realistically, if everybody thinks like that, A, nothing ever changes, and B, you’re always in crisis.
Challenging the Narrative
Flood: I hear voices that would say, ‘Darwin said the survival of the fittest, not survival of the weakest or the mediocrity.’ It’s like we want men to aspire to this higher level of functioning. Does masculinity need to be inherently hierarchical? Do we need to have the alpha male—continue to find men that can achieve at that high level—because society needs that level in order for men to perform certain roles? Or is there something about today’s world that says the diversity of masculinity is actually beneficial and we need a wide variety of men and individual differences within the man pack?
Some people might question whether we’re softening men, or not getting them to aspire to higher levels because we’re saying, ‘Oh, it’s just okay the way you are.’
Fokt: Darwin himself never talked about the survival of the fittest. This is an interpretation of his work that is very much simplifying it beyond recognition, almost. Darwin specifically talked about the species thriving for very different reasons. And what makes humans thrive is collaboration. We don’t have the bigger claws or the bigger teeth. We don’t run the fastest. We’re not the strongest. We’re not all that, right? There are animals that do that much better than humans. If that’s all we relied on, we’d be dead millions of years ago. What we rely on is our social capacities, our capacity to think, but also our capacity to collaborate with others.
Collaboration very often is so useful specifically because people have different skills. Because nobody is the one person who can do it all. Instead, we can collaborate and do things together. And it only makes sense.
What Is True to Our Nature?
Fokt: I think that when it comes to this idea that we need to somehow stay true to our nature or something like that, I find this idea really weird in a way. The history of civilization, the history of humanity, is humans in many ways transcending our nature. Being able to do things that we have not evolved to do. I mean, ranging from things like not spending most of our lives foraging for food, right? I mean, who wants to do that right now? Who aspires to this, right? ‘Oh, we need to live more natural lives.’
Flood: Yeah. We don’t even want to go to the grocery store anymore. We want them to be dropped off at our door!
Fokt: Exactly! There’s an infinite list of things we do because they are awesome and they make our lives better. And it’s actually going far beyond what evolution equipped us with. That also has to do with our moral capacities, our cultural capacities, or other things like that.
Humans probably did not evolve to care about what people in the other tribe are like, or what they do, or if they live or die or whatever else. We evolved to care for our own. But I think very few people right now would say that it is good, or that we should go back to only caring about our family and not actually caring about what is happening in the other parts of the world. And there are so many other things like this. I think when anyone says something is natural, or something is the way that we are meant to be, it’s always very useful to question and say, ‘does it actually serve us?’
What you said earlier is really operative here because as history progresses, our living environment changes massively. We used to live in an environment in which we needed to fear that wild animals will attack our tribe. None of us has to fear that, right? If you’re spending a lot of your time training to be a fighter because you’re worried that Vikings will invade your village, then, you know, sorry, you’re wasting your time. There are so many other things that you could be doing in that time. We need to take that into account.
The Desire to Protect and Provide
Fokt: Even if it is the case that certain traits or characteristics in men used to be really important, other things are more important now. Things we are really struggling with right now, and that could really use more men to be able to deal with. We’re struggling with a mental health epidemic. So many people are struggling with mental health issues. What we really need men to do is to be really good at helping people with mental health issues, for example. This is the protecting we can do. We can protect people from this kind of horrible epidemic. We can provide emotional support for people who need it. And, you know, your immediate friends’ group is much more likely right now to suffer from economic difficulties related to AI taking their jobs than from a Viking raid, right? So be prepared to provide and protect them from this, rather than from that.
Flood: We’ve seen a remarkable change with the use of technology and society evolving. And I think that’s playing a role. Of course, multiple factors play a role in this kind of ostensible masculinity crisis. We’ve seen women enter higher education and the workforce in unprecedented numbers. Family roles are evolving, technology is transforming economies, there are different expectations for marriage, fatherhood, and relationships fundamentally change.
Some men have embraced these changes, become more involved fathers, you know, shared parenting, sharing breadwinning, and even investing in their emotional growth and redefining what it means to be a man. And others, I think, feel like they’ve been left behind in these sudden changes, cultural changes, and they feel a sense of uncertainty or even feel displaced.
Who is Most Affected by Change?
Fokt: I think there are two main things. One is economic and technological changes. Our economy has changed in such a way that many of the traditionally male jobs are just not here anymore. It’s more service jobs, and more caring jobs that are available. And for many men who used to rely on their feeling of self-worth from the job they do, this means that, well, many of them have significantly lost out on this sort of transition. And that is something that is beyond the control of any single one of us.
And I think that is objectively a big worry. It points to what we can understand with the crisis of masculinity, because then, like you say, ‘who is the subject of this crisis?’
It’s much more likely to affect men who stay attached to this idea that they need to have the traditionally manly job. It’s unmanly to work in care work, or it’s unmanly to work in education, or something like this. And then, they are going to be much more likely to feel this sort of crisis than the men who just go like, well, there’s so many other things that we can do, and we don’t really care so much what the previous generations would say is manly or not. We’ll just do the thing that pays and makes us happy. That’s one thing.
Another thing is that, as our society has changed, and as women’s liberation movements and feminism have made big strides, women have done a lot of work on rethinking what it means to be a woman. And what it is to be a woman in a society. And there’s been a lot of recognition about this whole distinction between sex and gender, for example. Sex being the thing that you’re assigned at birth, and gender being this cultural expression of maleness or femaleness, which many feminists have pointed out is very performative. We can perform femininity or masculinity to a larger or lesser degree, and society will enforce it, or society will expect it, or different people will do it differently. But the point is it’s performed.
Performative Living
Fokt: Women have spent a lot of time saying, ‘Oh, so why do we need to perform it the way they tell us to perform it? Is it actually good for us? Is it good for society? And why should we not have a choice on whether we get to perform it or not?’ In this respect, it is a real shame that there was very little similar thought going on amongst men. Because in the same way as the feminine gender is performative, the same way the masculine gender is performative, right? And men have not spent equally much time thinking, ‘hey, do we need to be the way they tell us? Why do I need to do all of this? Or maybe there are other things that I could do. Is it actually serving me? Is the belief that women are born with value, but men need to earn their value, actually good for me? Like, is that the right belief to have?’
Women have been having those conversations for decades, if not centuries, by now. And men are kind of just starting. So again, who are the subjects of this crisis of masculinity? It’s much more likely to be guys who are not thinking so much about this because they’re playing from the script.
Obviously, I’m simplifying it here. It’s not so easy sometimes. I really, really, really, really want to say very loud and clear that I don’t want to blame those people for that. I think we, as men, are born into a society which heavily discourages us from doing that sort of thinking in which it is very unmanly to question manliness.
I also think there is a very strong socioeconomic /class issue at play here. I think very often the people who are doing more of this sort of thinking are the people who have had the privilege of having been born to a family where their parents could afford a good school so that they could learn to do that. They might have jobs that give them enough time to do this. There are a lot of guys out there who are working two jobs to make ends meet, and they just don’t have the time to think about it. Or maybe their friends’ group is not the kind of people who would support it. Or maybe their families did not support this, or a million other things. There are a lot of people who, for very legitimate reasons, have had little chance to look into it.
What Happens When the Rules Change?
Flood: The psychological contract between men and women, I think, has changed or is trying to change. You look at the old model of complementarianism as a psychological system and what I call “the grand bargain.” I’ve been thinking about that complementarianism, not primarily as a theological concept, but as a psychological arrangement or an implicit grand bargain.
For generations, I think men carried much of the responsibility for provision, protection, and status. Women often carried much of the emotional labor, domestic life, child-rearing, and the relational glue that held families together and held the marriages together. Neither role was equally free. Women often sacrificed their autonomy and independence, and men often sacrificed emotional and relational development to perform their role.
Do you think that many men lost more than a social role when that arrangement changed? Did they lose an emotional support system they didn’t even realize they depended on? I mean, historically, if you look at the divorce statistics, men tend to decompensate more after divorce and after relationship breakups, with suicide and psychiatric hospitalizations. I wonder if part of the discussion about male performance of being tough and independent and stoic does it make room for the emotional dependency that those old traditional gender binary roles created in heterosexual relationships?
Fokt: That’s such a rich topic. This is one of the biggest costs, I think, of staying so attached to the traditional male gender norms. There’s the cost of not allowing yourself to be weak, not allowing yourself to ask for help, and then, well, that’s what it ends in, right? It ends in men, on average, living six years shorter than women. It ends in four times more suicides, right? It ends with so many more deaths of despair; things like overdoses, or alcoholism, or pointless risk-taking that leads to death and injury. The major reason why they do that is because they don’t allow themselves to ask for help when they need it. And that comes from these sorts of gender roles that you have described.
And this is one of the biggest reasons, I think, why we should question this and change this. Because, once again, why are certain people in crisis? And why is the crisis self-inflicted? Because they keep subscribing to these sorts of roles that create more mental health issues, more suicide, shorter lifespans. And the way out of it is not through doubling down on the same thing that has supposedly worked before, but resulted in all of those horrible deaths.
Are Women Taking Something From Men?
Fokt: You mentioned this contract, this complementarian contract. Have you signed this contract?
Flood: (Laughs) That’s why I said it was implicit. Because it’s just baked in. And it’s transformed into misogyny. It’s like if we don’t have women in their complementarian role supporting us behind the scenes and providing that emotional support and warmth, then we see the crisis occur. And then, rather than develop ourselves and work on becoming more interdependent with women and sharing space, sharing power, knowing how to self-soothe and self-validate rather than depending on women that do it for us because we can’t do it.
Where’s the roots of all this misogyny? Is it partly because we used to see women in a complementarian role, and now that they’re more wanting to partner and maybe even lead at times, and put in positions of leadership rather than, again, transcend and evolve consciously into being able to do that, we crystallize it into hatred and saying they’re just bad, and they’re taking away, and it’s just all this hatred that’s moving about in our world.
Fokt: Absolutely! It’s a valid question to ask, ‘what is it that they are taking away?’ And is it something that you really want? Are they really taking it away? And what do you get in return? Because I think so often those discussions don’t really dig deep enough.
Social Progress is Good
Fokt: One of the missions I want to focus on is to lead with this positive message: ‘Hey, have you considered all of the great things you are getting from the social progress that involves women’s equality, but also things like better mental health for men?’ Men’s capacity to actually choose who they want to be, what they want to wear, and what hobbies they like to have, and whatever else. And not at the same time be subject to being ridiculed for not being manly enough for their choices, for example. It’s the capacity for men to not be in crisis. That is what it’s proposing as well.
And at the end of the day, this contract that you’re talking about, implicit contract, yes, absolutely, it’s like a socially enforced social contract. But as with so many of those things, it doesn’t really work for everyone. It maybe even doesn’t work for most people. Yeah, it does work for some people, right? But it doesn’t work for many people.
And this is largely what feminism has been about. It has been about women coming out and going like, ‘Hey, this thing, it doesn’t work for us.’ And maybe it works for some of them, right? There are plenty of women out there who love being homemakers, being the caring ones. And that’s fantastic! Awesome! But they get to choose it. It’s not that they are born with an implicit signature on a contract that they’ve never chosen themselves. If they choose to sign that contract, great! But many women don’t choose to sign that contract. And that’s also great.
Shouldn’t Men Get a Choice?
Fokt: And now the question is, what about men? Do men also get to choose? Right now, we are in a situation in which if you, as a man, choose to do something else … maybe you’re really passionate about working in care, or ballet dancing, some other things that are traditionally seen as not super manly. Well, you will be subject to ridicule from your friends at school. You might be bullied. You might be called all sorts of things. And you might not have certain opportunities in life.
So many men don’t give themselves the opportunity to be who they want to be because they feel like they need to play from this script. They need to fulfill this contract that they have never signed, but that was signed for them. And they have to fulfill it even at the price of never achieving the things or never being really themselves; always having to wear a mask so that they fit into this contract that has been set.
And it is so sad to me that people on the Internet, in the manosphere, or in other ways venerate this or praise it like some sort of virtue, that you stick with it even if it’s so hard and makes you unhappy. But you stick with it because that’s what real men do.
It’s Okay to be Happy
Fokt: Jordan Peterson famously said that you are not meant to be happy as a man. Why?! Imagine going to a whole generation of men and saying, ‘You shouldn’t aim to be happy.’ Of course you should aim to be happy. It’s crazy.
Why are we surprised that so many men are in crisis when they have valid questions about who they should be, how they should live their lives, what would make them happy, as well as what would help them stay true to themselves? And instead of actually finding answers to those questions, they are fed this steady diet of this traditional model in which they have to perform a role in this contract that they have never signed themselves because that’s what real men do and if it makes you unhappy well …
Flood: Do you think Jordan Peterson and some of his followers are saying—back to that old paradigm—that being a real man is hard work and men got to do hard things? Being a real man and being productive in society is not just about this modern ‘everybody gets a snack, and everybody gets a trophy’ atmosphere of everybody being happy, and feeling good, and it being a party. You just got to get in there in the dog-eat-dog world. And we’re making people weak and not real fit.
Fokt: I mean, life is hard. And being a success in life, or in some way effective, requires taking on hardship, but it’s not what men do. That’s what humans do. I don’t think you’ll find many women out there who haven’t been through some hardship. And the fact that we have been devaluing the amount of work that needs to be done. I mean, try giving birth to a child, and you’ll see how much work it is!
That’s one thing. And the second thing is, yeah, of course, you should not aim to be purely living your life constantly in pleasure and with no effort. That is going to make your life devoid of the feeling of purpose and meaning. But at the same time, we should try to find this meaning in something constructive. Something that brings value to others, as well. And not in something that takes value away, and that is reliant on us building our value on the basis of putting others down.
How do you Build Value?
Fokt: What are the ways of earning your own self-worth? Well, you can do that through the hard work of doing something amazing, or that gives you value. Or you can do that through putting others down so that you are on top. We should definitely aim for the former.
I think that there are, unfortunately, so many voices that are reliant on this idea that the way men feel their own value is by feeling dominant over women, for example. If you need to put others down so that you feel valuable, you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere.
This is not what should be giving us value. We should build our own value through hard work. This is what gives us purpose and all of this, but it does not require that we tie it to a specific gender, and it definitely does not require that we forego being happy in the process. You can, and you should.
Quick Solutions aren’t the Best Solutions
Flood: People are experiencing existential loneliness in our modern world, and men are impacted— allegedly—worse than women. It’s a human problem. But if you can feel a sense of belonging with someone, that can fulfill a human need. I think, however, that the content and the solution you’re hearing in the manosphere is ultimately not going to help young men move out of their sense of having been, or being in crisis.
Fokt: This is how the crisis is, I think, self-inflicted. Because if you genuinely are in trouble, genuinely struggle, genuinely feel lost, and you genuinely feel like you are in need of some sort of solutions, but you look for those solutions in a place that just makes the problem worse, then you will be in this crisis. And unfortunately, it so happens that the manosphere has become really good at selling those kinds of fake solutions.
And again, I don’t want to blame people for this. Because it’s very human to look for solutions, and look for promises, and believe in people who promise you things. But effectively, it’s … I don’t know … it’s like trying to cure your depression with chocolate, or trying to gain more confidence in life by taking lots of cocaine, or something like that. I mean, at the end of the day, yes, it will give you the momentary feeling of being on top of the world and being happy in the moment. But in the long term, it’s really bad for you, right? And unfortunately, it’s once again very human to want this kind of quick solution.
I always use this example. We all know what it takes to live a long and healthy life, right? You need to eat healthy and exercise. Right? This is what keeps your body happy. And yet people prefer chocolate to broccoli. And people will drink Coca-Cola instead and do so many unhealthy things because they’re pleasant in the moment. They give you this moment of feeling whatever it is that you’re looking for, and you sacrifice the long-term benefit for the sake of this momentary pleasure.
So, yes, in this case, I’m absolutely with people— even like Jordan Peterson or others—who say that you should not go for this momentary pleasure and rather think long-term, but I think that so much of the manosphere is actually just selling us this momentary feeling of power that comes from dominance or something like that. [They’re] not showing you that the real connection with people that you’re really wanting doesn’t come from this. It comes from emotional intelligence: being vulnerable, being open, and allowing yourself to question this whole idea of a real man that is just putting you in crisis over and over again.
It Takes Hard Work to Stay Fit
Flood: The irony is that those like Jordan Peterson, who say that being a real man is not necessarily about being happy; it takes hard work. And here we’re talking about something that, being emotionally fit and relationally fit, takes hard work.
Fokt: Absolutely. I’m 42, and I’ve been in therapy for the first time properly in my life this year. And it is hard work. I have been discovering just the amount of emotional intelligence that I have not developed. And, yes, it does take hard work to get a great job and build muscle or whatever else, but it really takes hard work to reckon with your own feelings and be able to cope with that.
Flood: You’ve been involved in Positive Narratives for Men and Boys, moving you beyond simply telling men what they shouldn’t be. Instead, it offers a positive vision of what they can become, a true solution. And I think that’s an important shift, as it provides males positive narratives and how to move beyond and out of that constriction of the old paradigm for a healthy masculinity. I think that gives us hope. It points to a new direction. But inspiration doesn’t necessarily produce the transformation, just a positive narrative. You’ve still got to do the work.
I’ve worked with men who generally embrace healthier ideas, more positive narratives about masculinity intellectually. We might embrace them and understand them. You want to become a better husband, father, partner, friend, but when conflict arises, or shame gets triggered, or fear takes over, we can find ourselves reacting in our same old patterns. I find myself asking: at what point does changing the narrative have to become changing the person? Or perhaps another way of asking it is: how do we help men move from believing a better story, a better narrative, to actually becoming the kind of man that that story describes?
Invitation to a New Kind of Masculinity
Fokt: There’s so much more to this job than just changing the narrative, but I think that the changing of narrative is a very important first step because so many people – rightly, I think – say that you can’t become what you don’t see, right? You need to have some idea of where you’re going, of how to get there, and maybe examples of people who have done this. And that is what we can give you: forge the path in front of you. This is why I called my NGO PathForge because that’s what we want to do. To show people the possible paths.
Flood: I read your report. And I think the narratives are like an invitation to a new masculinity. But development ultimately is a journey. The story may point us toward a destination. The new narratives can point us where we’re going, but someone still has to learn how to make that trip and learn the skills of intimacy.
Trades of Intimacy
Flood: For generations, we taught boys and men the trades of the outer world: how to build houses, repair engines, design bridges, run businesses, solve problems, … And those remain incredibly valuable. But I wonder if today’s frontier isn’t just the outer world. What about tradesmen for the inner world? Not replacing traditional masculine strengths, but expanding them, learning another set of trades: the trades of intimacy. Learning how to listen deeply, repair conflict, regulate emotion, receive influence without humiliation, build emotional safety in relationships, practice empathy, cultivate healthy relationships.
Fokt: I love this. It’s an interesting framing. All of those jobs, for example, got shipped somewhere else, right? And if you depend on your value sticking to the old idea that you need to be a protector and provider, and what it is that you’re providing is money, or physical safety, or something like this. Then, well, it doesn’t really apply so easily to this world. But if you think that what you are providing is this emotional support, what you’re providing is guidance through difficult times, or stuff like this, then you’re thriving. Then you’re not in crisis because you can actually be needed and have a real purpose in life.
And I think that so many men are struggling with those things. We’re feeling not needed and without purpose. I think that, for the guys who really want to develop in ways that will make them feel purposeful, take on the really hard challenge of developing the emotional skills or the social skills that are needed to actually be there for people who need you in your social group and in your relationships and your friendships.
Flood: It doesn’t come naturally. Just like being an electrician doesn’t come naturally because you’re curious about how it works. And you go in there, and you start burning up the house for someone if you don’t learn the trade of electricity.
Similar with emotional intelligence and literacy, it’s a worthwhile trade. It’s something we learn through guidance, counseling, practice, humility, and general experience. I talk to men about how you don’t just become fit, and then you can spend the rest of your life on the couch because now you’re fit. You got to keep practicing, you got to keep exercising, you got to keep mixing it up, and you got to keep learning. And so intimacy, emotional intelligence, the work of our inner lives is an ongoing journey.
Fokt: Being a philosopher, I always refer back to Plato and Socrates, who said that humans never are. Humans are always becoming. And that’s the way to be. It’s always be on a journey to yourself.
What Kind of Men Does the World Need?
Flood: It strikes me in this conversation that perhaps we’ve been asking some of the wrong questions all along. Instead of asking who’s to blame for the masculinity crisis, maybe the better questions are: “What kind of man is today’s world inviting us to become?” and “What kind of man will truly flourish in the world we’re creating together?”
Fokt: Absolutely.
Flood: I find myself thinking about Joseph Pleck’s gender role strain paradigm and the remarkable journey women began decades ago, trying to help them get out of that constriction of their humanity. It feels to me like men are standing at a similar crossroads. And for generations, many boys were taught to endure, suppress, and man up. As bell hooks observed, boys were often taught to disconnect from parts of themselves long before they ever became men.
Fokt: Famous quote from her is that the first victims of the patriarchy are men and boys because patriarchy teaches boys to kill their own emotions.
Flood: Which then prepares them to pass their pain to others without empathy. And I think she was very insightful in understanding that connection. It’s not about reclaiming this nostalgic past like the manosphere is trying to tell us, searching for someone to blame for our loneliness, confusion, or pain, but doing this difficult work of becoming more mentally, emotionally, and relationally developed.
Embracing the Invitation to Change
Flood: When you picture the man who embraces that invitation, what qualities define him and what gives you hope for the next generation of boys and men?
Fokt: I think kindness is the most important thing. And, funnily enough, being kind is the top characteristic most sought in partnerships. I think that this is definitely the way to go. In the field, we’re talking a lot right now about the concept of caring masculinities and being caring of others, giving back to your community, to your family, to your elders, to your children, to everybody, and being less focused on yourself and more focused on how we can contribute to the lives of others.
So, I think that the approaches to masculinity that are expressing themselves with this kindness and care are really good ways to thrive. And I also understand that many guys, this is good and important and all of it, but we also want to feel cool and awesome and fun and all of that. And I think that it’s really important that we keep space for this. What I would really like to encourage people to do is explore ways of having fun that are not done at the cost of other people. Be fun and be cool, but do it through building yourself up rather than pushing others down. That’s the difference between a person who is someone to aspire to versus a bully.
There’s absolutely fantastic opportunities right now. And so many men are doing excellent work and questioning those gender norms that we’ve been subject to and those social contracts that we never signed, and all of this. And if you just go out there and look for them, you will find them. They’re all over the place, and it’s absolutely heartwarming how much great work is being done in that field.
Flood: I appreciate this conversation because I think neither of us is interested in assigning blame. We’re more interested in helping men and women make sense of one of the greatest social transitions in modern history. And I don’t think women’s evolution is a problem. Men’s struggle isn’t the problem. The real question is how do we respond to both?
And if there’s hope I have, it’s this: Development doesn’t ask us to abandon the strengths that have served us well. It asks us to integrate them into something larger. And the courage that it took to build bridges can build trust. The discipline that it takes to build careers can also help us build our character. The craftsmanship that it took to build houses is the same craftsmanship that can help us build our emotional intellect. Perhaps the next evolution of masculinity isn’t about becoming less masculine. Perhaps it’s becoming more completely human. I think we both can stand behind that.
Fokt: Absolutely.
You Don’t Need to Be in Crisis
There is no one way to be a “real” man. Men can edit the script they’ve been given about how to live their lives. The Men’s Resource Center can help them do that. Our counseling and consultative services help men take a closer look at who they are and who they could yet be. Our in-person and online men’s support groups offer camaraderie and the support of other well-intentioned men who aspire to change their lives. Real people. Shared experiences. Contact the Men’s Resource Center online for more information about our programs, or call us at 616-456-1178.
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