The scene: I was leading a multi-day river rafting trip with 20 young offenders from a juvenile detention centre in Oregon along with seasoned river guides and four prison officers.
By about day eight of the trip, things had changed. It was subtle, not dramatic, but nobody had become a saint. Fred (the little toughie) was still capable of stirring up trouble if he got bored, and some of the boys could still produce a put-down faster than a paddle stroke. But the river had been working on them.
I must have been about ten or eleven the first time I witnessed a man cry and then look ashamed of himself.
It was a smoko break on a job site just outside town. Dust in the air, steel frames going up, utes parked in a rough line like they had been dropped there by habit more than design.
A few of the boys were sitting on upturned buckets, boots off, socks half rolled, mugs of tea going lukewarm. Good men, solid workers, the kind who turn up early and stay late without making a fuss.
Many years ago a troubling thought began rattling around in my head. What happens when an outdated patriarchal mindset meets nuclear weapons?
That question would not leave me alone. So in 2007 I wrote a small booklet called Sustainable Masculinity. It was nothing grand, just a thin 30-page booklet exploring a simple but uncomfortable idea.
I’d realised that the old patriarchal rule book that has guided male behaviour for centuries was written long before humanity invented weapons capable of wiping out civilisation. And the two may not coexist for very long.
Over years of guiding white-water rafting trips through the wild mountain rivers of southern Oregon, I have witnessed moments that still surge through my memory like the currents themselves. Recollections of black bears, curious otters, and mountain lions mingle with the thunder of helicopters scooping water from the river to battle nearby bushfires.
There is consistent evidence that stereotypical masculine attitudes and norms shape men’s and boys’ behaviour in harmful ways.
The following notes summarise the evidence of associations between men’s conformity to stereotypical masculine norms and a range of outcomes, including:
Long before Covid-19 forced an artificial isolation on me, loneliness has been my companion. I became aware of this loneliness when surrounded by the men I had spent time with during the last thirty years. The irony of this did not go unnoticed – being lonely in a crowd is part self-choice, part self-defence. I kept telling myself that I chose this path of solitude but if truth be told, it chose me. And until I surrendered to it, the fear of being isolated was worse than the actual reality.
What are the links between guns, violence, and masculinity? This XY collection brings together items highlighting how gun violence is structured in powerful ways by traditional, patriarchal masculinities. Also see XY's complementary collections on "Guns and violence" and on "Mass shootings and masculinity".
(a) Shorter pieces on guns, men, and masculinities
I was asked, as a man, to explain “mansplaining”. That is an assignment fraught with pitfalls.
Cette collection de XY propose des articles qui se concentrent sur les thèmes d’antisexisme et de proféminisme, en français. Vous y retrouverez également un répertoire de groupes et organisations francophones qui ont ces sujets au cœur de leur mandat.
Merci à Caroline Lemay pour la traduction des articles de cette page.
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