What is the very modelling of modern masculinity?

I've been think lots since Maggie Dent was here the other day...

https://podfollow.com/711028488 is the very modeling of modern masculinity?

I’ve been thinking lots since Maggie Dent was here the other day. 

Thinking about how as a community have somehow found ourselves in a place where naturally expressive forms of masculinity are rarely if ever seen as just that - a naturally, healthy expression of what it is to be a man. 

 I probably know less than I should to explore what I want to speak about today. 

Having never really been to Uni, verything I know about gender studies I know from reading books and from having these things explained to me by very patient women in my life. 

I really worry about our young men and our boys. 

When you saw Donald Trump duck, did you even have to see a picture to know exactly what kind of person was lying on a roof with a rifle?

Most of us immediately imagined a young, isolated, white man.

The tragedy is that we’ve grown so accustomed to this pattern that we can predict his social history and family’s statements with unsettling accuracy.

This stereotype isn’t just harmful—it’s a societal alarm bell. I’m anxious for our young men, who find themselves trapped in a narrative that doesn’t serve them. I’m aware discussing this can be controversial, and I am shit scared about doing it, but I can’t really be cancelled because all my TV shows have already been cancelled.

So, fuck it. 

My guest on Wednesday was Maggie Dent. 

We discussed some pretty stark differences between teenage boys’ brains and teenage girls’ brains - particularly when it comes to inhibition and empathy development. 

I asked the other day, how can we help young men learn to express their masculinity and their identity in a healthy way when they’re young, so that once they change size and shape in their teen years they’re less of a danger to themselves and others?

So I wonder - what would it take to shift how we think about masculinity so that when a young man is introduced into a situation he’s not seen as a threat or a hindrance, but instead as someone who can contribute? 

What kind of ways of raising our young boys into young men would we need to think about to make that happen?

What kind of things could we show these young boys to aspire to? 

Because right now -the bar isn’t set very high. 

To even talk about it is dangerous. 

The other night I was listening to Josh Szeps and Tim Minchin discuss my inability to discuss this. It was an Inception-loop that felt both hilarious and confronting as I have enormous admiration for both of these men, yet it was evident by Tim and Josh’s response that the struggle and concern I had about discussing this in public is real - largely because of the assumed intent about this conversation. 

We are fucked if we have to qualify everything every time we speak. 

If we are anticipating whataboutism - we’ll spend 90% of our time qualifying ourselves before we actually address the thing we feel is important. By then it’s a miracle if that thing is responded to in its own right - because so often our efforts to move a conversation forward are sidetracked by the whattaboutery that we’ve seemed to be shackled to. 

Can we imagine a world where someone like me, who I’d like to think has got his bona fides in the area of good intent - and is someone who’s shown time and again that if I make a misstep I’ll try to learn from it and not push back - can this world exist?

What if we try it right now?

 

May I ask, just notice how often in the next five minutes the “whatabout” comes up for you. 

Because this particular habit we’ve all got into seems to lead us down a thousand fractured tributaries and never to the actual head of the river.

We never get to the actual upstream problem because we’re fracturing the discussion at every single noun (*or pronoun). 

That’s not to say that nuance doesn’t have a place in our dialogue - it absolutely does. 

Yet I’d propose that we go about this as if we were surveying the Murray River. 

Let’s say the Murray River is Masculinity, and we’re looking for the source of that so we can talk about redefining what it looks like for young men. 

If, as we row our boat up the river a bend at a time, we respond to people screaming from the bank - ‘You can’t talk about the Murray River without talking about the Darling River!” so you turn up there at Wentworth and get stuck in the little creeks and things. So you go back down the Murray, turn back up and then there are people on the other bank screaming “You looked at the Darling River, how dare you exclude the Loddon River” and now you’re lost in Swan Hill - nobody wants to be there - back you go… 

Rowing and rowing, only to hear every channel on the boat radio is full of reactionary talkback is aware of your journey trying to find the source of the Murray river and there’s shock jock after shock jock and caller after caller outraged that you’ve given time to the Darling and the Loddon river - and if you dare go near the Goulburn River before you go up the Murrumbidgee river then you’re just a bunch of Wokies who are literally paddling up shit creek and breeding lies about what the river really is.. 

You will never ever end up at the thing you want to explore because nobody observing this can hold in their heads that you have a good heart, and are committed to equity and fairness of all rivers, yet to do so you must explore the start of this waterway first, and then assess how each input downstream changes the water that eventually flows into the sea. 

Forgive my nautical analogy but it’s the only one I could think of.

If you know your rivers, you’ll know I missed one.

Can you hold in your heart that I had the best intent there? Or are you offended on behalf of the Campaspe River, which you probably didn’t know about unless you’re from Echuca but now you know I missed one are you writing off my entire metaphor as the rantings of a Campaspeist asshole?

At the start of the year, I was on stage at the All About Women festival at the Sydney Opera house, speaking about exactly this - speaking about how low we set the bar for behaviour of men in our country. 

I talked about how my absolute pet peeve - dumb fat dad needs to be eliminated from our TV commercials. 

Because that’s the model of modern masculinity right now. 

The bloke who doesn’t look after himself, eats terribly and forgot to buy the right insurance or download the movies on the ipad or whatever. 

If that’s what we’re putting up on a pedestal, that’s the best we can hope for. 

I also spoke about how we might need to make room for men to find a place in society as traditional roles and income streams rightly shift into more equitable places. 

I got some feedback from the audience, which I was of course ready for - about how confronting it was to be asked to make space for men. 

And I absolutely get that. 

If you’ve spent a life rightfully battling for the cause of feminism, to then be asked to turn around and help up the men left in the wake of that change - that’s a lot. Of course! 

Not everyone would be ok with that ask. 

Yet, when I listen and read and am confronted with the ongoing horrors of what is happening to women in our country at the hands of men, at the rates of university enrolment between men and women and how men are getting so left behind, something needs to happen. 

There’s absolutely no doubt that the academic and working world my stepdaughter is beginning her life in is a far better place for her than it was for my wife or even my wife’s mum. 

The cause of feminism has very rightly been an enormously positive influence on the world we live in, and in many aspects, it has made the world a more considered, more equitable place. 

That’s not to say that the work of feminism is done - far from it. 

Yet broadly speaking, the way we have reframed the role and place of women in our community gives us a far more wonderful world to be in than 30, 50 or 100 years ago. For all of us.

Feminism has given women the choice to be feminine, masculine, a CEO, a stay-at-home mum, girly, sexual, powerful, none of the above or all of the above, each of those choices to be seen as a choice to be respected - and yet I wonder -  while we have been rightly reframing the role and place of women in our community, and seeing the benefits that we all share from that, have we been paying attention to adding similar amounts of choice to the roles and place of men and boys in our community, or a similar amount of respect to those choices? 

Personally, I don’t believe we have. 

Talking to Audrey about this just now, she rightly pointed out that the equality feminism fights so hard for has been largely defined by women. 

Are we ready to make space for men to redefine what it looks like to be a man in a way that still gives a sense of purpose and meaning in the world yet doesn’t undo the hard-fought benefits of feminism?

Right now what does healthy masculinity look like? 

What does it look like to both men and women? 

We’d better figure it out, because there’s a lot of fellas who don’t really know where they fit in. 

There’s too many men who are single by choice, too many men disengaging with a society that sometimes tells them that the naturally expressive version of who they are isn’t ok.

As humans, we just want to belong. 

We just want to feel seen.

Men in particular want to feel useful. 

Yet if as a community we’re labelling normal healthy aspects of masculinity as unhealthy - then those men will go somewhere that they aren’t ostracised: and there are plenty of putrid hyper-masculine, super misogynist online spaces that foster the worst kind of anti-social attitudes and behaviour just waiting to tell these guys they’re ok and it’s the world that’s wrong.  

Because there’s so much about what it is to be a man that you have zero choice over. It just happens. 

It’s difficult to explain how all-encompassing the drives and urges are that overcome you on the other side of puberty.

The urge to run, jump, push, shout, hug, hit, and be silly - it’s impossible to ignore. 

Let alone the urge to have sex. 

Because to be masculine is to be sexual.

I can’t quite put into words how completely overwhelming it is when testosterone focuses your every thought on sex. 

I’m 50 now so it happens less, but you can absolutely believe that for decades, I’d walk down the street - even when in a loving relationship with no want or will to stray from my monogamy, and my brain is going ‘yep, yep, nah, yep, mhmm, yes and her mum’. 

Every thought accompanied by a rush of sexual excitement - not one that necessarily conjures up a physical response in my body, but definitely a flush of feeling which is most distracting. 

It wasn’t until my 30s that I learned what to do with it. 

I was taught by another man to use that energetic release for my own purposes rather than allow it to distract me. 

To silently be grateful to the young lady for her hair doing wonderful things in the sun or her jeans doing wonderful things in defiance of gravity - and take that rush of energy, and redirect it towards my goals instead. Take it like a shot of coffee and instead do Something that would serve my greater purpose, and be of use to those around me. 

I wish I knew that when I was 16. 

I would have gotten so much more done. 

Maggie and I spoke about how within just a few short months, a young man can transform from a little boy who’s no real physical threat to a man-sized protein synthesis machine, a ball of blood and muscle, yet with the reasoning power of a ten-year-old. 

I remember, almost overnight feeling like I had superpowers. 

To be suddenly so much stronger physically than I had been before. 

When it comes to masculinity, perhaps the aspect we think of the most is that of strength. 

And strength is such an important part of it - not just physical strength, but also bravery, courage, leadership and resilience. 

 These aren’t inherently masculine qualities, however, there’s clearly a size and brute force advantage to someone who’s gone through puberty with that much testosterone in their system. 

To be physically powerful can be seen as intimidating - but any teenage boy who’s suddenly ducking under door frames didn’t ask to be that big. 

Nobody gets what they ask for in puberty do they? 

If we couple that size with the inbuilt nature of young men to just wrestle all the time - if you don’t know what you’re looking at it can be frightening. 

However, boys and young men rumble.

It’s what they do sometimes. 

If it gets into non-stop hyper loops and they’re unable to calm down or that play just gets unnecessarily rough or mean and nasty - that’s a moment to step in isn’t it?

But we have to make sure we allow boys to play in this way. 

It’s in moments like this - where there are vital lessons about how their bodies work, and knowing what to do when their anger takes over their arms. 

You can tell a kid it’s not ok to hit. 

In my experience, I was told over and over. 

But when I did finally hit someone, I ran away and cried because it not only felt so awful to hurt somebody, I was scared by how unthinkingly I’d hurt him and that I was unable to control myself when I got that mad. 

Luckily I figured this out when I was about 14. 

Some people don’t get that chance. 

I’ve been as tall as I am since I was about 16. 

I was way heavier then. 

 I had no idea. 

I’m the size shape and power of a man with the brain of a child. 

My body was already big enough and powerful enough to do all kinds of damage to myself and to others. 

It’s absolutely imperative that before young boys get that big, they have a sense of what healthy masculinity looks like. 

Before they get the keys to that man-sized super-suit, that they have a model of masculinity to aspire to, and a sense of purpose to fulfil as a man in this world. 

Yes, there are aspects of masculinity that are unhealthy. 

There are aspects that are straight-up dangerous. 

But we’re going to have to have a new conversation about what it means to be a man, we need to have the hammer conversation. 

 I’ll paraphrase Professor Roland Goecke, who I had on my podcast a while back. 

We were talking about AI and how regulation and control were important to avoid catastrophe and he explained why we need those things by talking about a hammer. 

A hammer is an incredibly useful tool. 

It can build a house. 

It can drive in a nail. 

It can remove the same nail and put the nail in a different place, because a hammer is just fine to correct it’s own mistakes if need be. 

It’s designed to do it.  

However a hammer is also a murder weapon. 

But you don’t need a license to own a hammer. 

There are restrictions on the sale of guns in Australia, even knives. 

However, anyone can walk into a hardware shop and buy a hammer for less than $10. 

You don’t even need to be 18. 

Now why is it ok for us to openly sell a thing which could break into a house, or even kill a person?

Because we as a community have come together and decided what we do and do not do with hammers. 

We can live without hammers if we have to - but it will be very difficult to get anything constructed. 

But you wouldn’t ask a hammer to never hit anything. 

Just sit there pal. 

You’ve done enough damage. 

Your kind break stuff. 

Your kind can kill. 

How come you haven’t built anything. 

You’re a hammer aren’t you?

I’m not saying in any way that unhealthy masculinity isn’t a huge problem. 

It really is. 

I’m terrified of it myself. Have been since I was a teenager. 

And now as a stepdad and a dad - I worry about my wife and stepdaughter and I also worry about my son. 

The last thing any parent of a boy wants is for their son to align with that kind of ideas or worse, perpetrate any kind of violence because he doesn’t know how to control those aspects of himself. 

Audrey pulled out a word I’ve not heard for 30 years. 

SNAG (sensitive, new-age guy)

She said “Back when men were first starting to be SNAGS, they pretty much had to give up any manly aspect of masculinity to do that. It was one or the other” 

She’s right. 

 Yet it doesn’t need to be one or the other. 

We often praise men for showing feminine aspects of themselves. 

Their empathy, their nurturing, their vulnerability. 

These are excellent qualities to have. 

Is it time to celebrate healthy masculinity?

To celebrate bravery, a sense of justice, courage, resilience, reason, strength, leadership and benevolence?  

If we work on doing that with the young men and boys in our community, who knows what we could build?