As a man, I feel sorry for the male of our species, especially since, as I’m writing this, Father’s Day is only a day away. For untold generations, we men have been the victims of our own propaganda. We’ve considered the other half of our population to be many different things - our property, the ‘weaker sex’, the ‘gentler sex’, the functionaries who do ‘women’s work’ - everything, it seems, but what they really are: men’s superiors in almost every sense. Men have conspired to interpret the world according to their own male categories in such a way that weakness is considered to be a ’strength’ and true strength is considered to be a ‘weakness’. It’s no wonder that women can’t compete in men’s upside-down and backwards world. The question remains, why should they want to?
A generation ago, ‘women’s lib’ took a giant step toward righting this strange inversion; although the question has yet to be answered why exactly women ever needed liberation in the first place. Our whole cultural makeup is involved in an ongoing evolution (and correction) from male dominance to a more equal distribution of influence and authority between the sexes. Women are at long last beginning to emerge into their rightful condition of social influence.
I feel sorry because the male of our species has maintained his dominance (at least in Western society) by defenses arising out of fear. Constructed out of fear-based reactions, our defenses release those fears with interest when our defenses are ultimately breached.
Take a look at how we men have maintained our (supposed) superiority. In the first place, survival is dependent on (at least) two physical conditions: strength and endurance. We males are physiologically stronger (in the short run), but the females of our species have far greater endurance. When we characterize women as ‘the weaker sex’, what we’re really talking about is strength, not endurance.
Secondarily, progress is dependent on two different skills: competition (the ability to use short-term strength to overcome opposition) and cooperation (the capacity to use endurance to forge bonds of common interest between opponents). We males have forced competition to be the most valued skill in relationships (personal, social, corporate and international), while classifying cooperation as ‘weak’ or ’sissified’ (another term for ‘feminine’).
Machismo is the dodo bird of the 21st Century. So long as the archetypal feminine was locked out of global and societal influence, the male of the species never had to deal with that ‘other’ side of his personality. Now, it faces him across the boardroom table. Even the highly-competitive field of mass marketing and sales is facing a growing counter-culture of interpersonal relationship-based marketing based on traditionally feminine qualities of interpersonal connections, trusting relationships, and cooperative (win-win) approaches. The man who wants to broaden his marketing reach has not only to learn new skills, but he has to alter his fundamental approach to life. That’s not easily done.
The man of the future has an enormous challenge to face: nothing less than a cultural revolution. He’s going to have to reevaluate the meaning of his ‘maleness’ by going back and recovering much of that ‘other’ side of his personality that’s been beaten out of him ever since he was a boy. Although many men can recapture that ‘lost’ part of themselves with a little hard work (and a big change of mind and attitude), no man - not even the toughest among us - has really entirely ‘lost’ it. What it’s going to take to recover our encapsulated male innocence is nothing less than a redefinition of ‘machismo’ and ‘courage’. What makes our cooperative, relationship-based side seem so far out of reach is nothing but fear. It takes a big, courageous man to confront that fear, and allow himself to experience genuine vulnerability. Women do it all the time, and they don’t die from it. Why should it be any different for us men?
H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
ProActivation® Coaching
Website: http://www.ProActivation.com
E-Mail: info@ProActivation.com
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Copyright © 2008 H. Les Brown
Tags: conflict, male, vulnerability, weakness, understanding
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