Prime Time - Jane Fonda [21]
In today’s Western culture, most men are still very vulnerable to shaming, to being seen as not manly enough, and this affects every part of men’s lives—and women’s, as well.
Consider the economy. In her book Backlash, Susan Faludi writes about an opinion poll that asked men and women around the world how they defined “masculinity.” Overwhelmingly, the response was “Masculinity is the ability to bring home the bacon, to support their family.” So, if this is the main criterion for masculinity everywhere in the world, what happens when the economy goes south, jobs become scarce, and it is women who are bringing home the bacon (albeit for lower wages and benefits)? Violence against women goes up because men feel ashamed.
Or consider issues of war and peace. In his book War and Gender, Joshua Goldstein, a professor of international relations at American University, wrote, “As war is gendered masculine, so peace is gendered feminine. Thus the manhood of men who oppose war becomes vulnerable to shaming.”
The Pentagon Papers showed us that in the 1960s and ’70s, the advisers of four different administrations—Republican and Democrat—told their presidents that the Vietnam War could not be won short of annihilating the entire country, and yet our leaders kept sending more young men to fight. I wondered about this, and then I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biography of President Lyndon Johnson. He told her that he feared being called “an unmanly man” if he pulled out of Vietnam. This seems to be an ongoing pattern in the United States—a fear on the part of our male leaders of premature evacuation!
In the 2004 presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate John Kerry spoke in favor of upholding international law and supporting the United Nations, he was called “effete” by Vice President Dick Cheney. There’s that masculinity thing again, as though advocating for peace and diplomacy is effeminate.
I cite these examples because gender is such a core issue affecting every one of us—not because all boys and men are potentially violent and hawkish, but because the root of what surfaces in some of our boys and men as violence and hawkishness exists in too many of them as lack of empathy, emotional illiteracy, inability to be authentic, and vulnerability to shame. When adults help boys and girls shape their identities without resorting to gender stereotypes, they prepare them to have an optimal chance at future relatedness and intimacy in the stages of life to come.
A noteworthy shift has taken place over the past thirty years. Psychologists have come to believe that the highest form of human development lies not at the extremes of the gender-role spectrum—men as autonomous and dominant, women as dependent and malleable—but in the middle, where true, authentic relationships take place. From Jung forward, most psychologists have recognized that only when partners are able to let go of rigid, hierarchical sex roles can there be intimacy and authenticity.
In a later chapter, I explain the good news that as we enter our Third Acts, a great many of us, women and men, tend to move away from damaging sexual stereotypes and, as a result, find deeper intimacy and more gender parity in our relationships.
As I have learned from Carol Gilligan, gendered adolescent behaviors are not simply a matter of biology—“boys will be boys” and “girls are just experiencing hormonal surges.” Psychological and cultural factors also play a role. In addition, the success of programs that encourage girls’ interest and performance in math, science, and sports and the proven benefits of interventions that help young men get in touch with their emotional lives argue against a simple biological determinism.
That’s not to say that boys and girls are the same. Today’s brain science has revealed beyond a doubt that there are many