In this issue:
·
Letter
·
Don't Try This at Home
·
Initiation and Identity Change
·
Prostate Cancer Journal 4
LETTER
Dear Tim,
I appreciated your article on the "T' shirts and attitudes
toward boys. [In Menletter #23: http://menletter.org/23.htm.]
It's good to see this coming out somewhere. I've been feeling the walls closing in on
our gender in ways that I can't seem to put my finger on in a way that
heals. So as I read your article I
felt that it exposed something that we have agreed to keep covert, the reward
being to not feel the crappy feelings we hold about ourselves, look too
closely at all the men in prison, the boys shooting up public schools.
But if we don't look then there is no chance of changing. I can't name the source of my feelings
about this but they involve sour grapes, or bitter grapes. Right now I'm just feeling the feelings. I'll sleep on it and see how things change
as they always do.
Tim Dalton
Reply
Dear Tim,
You've named the major challenge, in my opinion: "in a way
that heals."
Women have successfully played the victim card for the past 40
years. We can't do that. We're victims of what? Of whom?
The crappy feelings are real, and maybe they'll be the spur we
need to seek out women who actually like men (and like themselves) and can
see that mutual respect and love is possible and powerful. Or at least women
who might be open to some kind of reconciliation.
But there are bigger issues. We live in a toxic society that
creates pockets of power and wealth by demeaning others -- not just men but
young people, older people, minorities, men, women, gays, disabled people,
smart people, and so on.
The toxicity isn't about to go away. We can neutralize it
somewhat through tolerance at least and embracing differences at best. And by
teaching the next generations to do so before the mass culture gets to them.
We also need, I think, to embrace the creators of the toxins
and try to understand what's motivating them. Power hunger and money hunger
are perhaps attempts at filling some gaping void of love and consciousness.
In the short run, it may be that the best strategy for most of
us is not a frontal assault (though the Glenn Sackses of the world are
awesome in their courage and tenacity) but a holding action, insulating and
fortifying ourselves and our children so that there will continue to be role
models from year to year and generation to generation.
Finally, and this is hard, we need to realize that we're not
"better" than the mass culture we're embedded in. That kind of
duality alienates everyone. I guess it's the Karmic paradox of strength in
humility.
Love and peace,
Tim
Don't Try This at Home
Ah, the perennial problem and battleground for countless
couples: You leave the toilet seat up after peeing. She, without looking,
sits down and (1) gets the cold, seatless, dirty rim on her behind and (2)
might even dip her behind in the water. Loud recriminations ensue. If the
seat-up condition is chronic, nagging gets underway, leading to hard feelings
and general unhappiness.
The sure cure, of course, is to always put the seat down and
apologize profusely for occasional lapses. But some of us resent this
concession. We may see it as just another part of the male/female power
struggle, a legitimate reason for a backlash against feminism, or just
another goddamn thing to remember.
Then there's the fairness issue. We arrive having to pee. We
have to put the seat up before we go. We have to put the seat down after we
go. She expects to arrive without having to mess with the seat at all. So
there's not only a power gap, there's a fairness gap.
How can we close the fairness gap? Here's one way.
Putting a toilet seat up or down involves actually handling it
-- an unpleasant prospect at best and an unsanitary one at worst.
I propose the following rule:
Each person using the toilet should
have to handle the seat only once, if at all. If it's already in the position
you need it to be in, you get a free pass. If it isn't, you move it once and
leave it there when you've finished your business. In any single visit to the
bathroom, you have to handle the seat only once, if at all.
Simple, huh? What could be more fair? The only fairer thing I
could think of would be to collect data by gender of the frequency and
purpose of visits, and then to determine some kind of complex formula for
when a person had to handle the toilet seat twice. Not very workable, that.
I've adopted this zero-to-once-per-visit practice in any public
bathroom I use, including a unisex one where I work. Of course, no one's
complained, at least to me: visits to public bathrooms are largely anonymous.
What about at home, where you're not anonymous? (If you are,
you have bigger problems than toilet seats.)
Here are a few scenarios.
1.
You have a calm, reasonable discussion with your female
partner about the fairness doctrine, and you both agree it's a good idea.
Problem solved.
2.
You have a calm, reasonable discussion with your female
partner about the fairness doctrine, and (a) she laughs you out of the room;
(b) she asks where you got this crazy idea -- from Maxxim, Playboy,
Penthouse, or Men's Health, or from that goddamn men's newsletter
you read -- and then launches a
multi-hour or multi-day diatribe about the selfish insensitivity of men in
general and you in particular; (c) she agrees to it but pouts and starts
burning your dinner -- but only yours; (d) you get the picture.
3.
There are more males than females in your house. You could
claim majority rule, but the fairness doctrine isn't very fair. The seat will
be up so often that the females will never agree to the plan.
4.
You have a wife and one or more daughters and no sons. Although
the fairness doctrine works in favor of the females (the seat will be down
most of the time), you're clearly outnumbered, and you might as well just put
the damn seat down.
5.
You share a house or apartment with more women than men. See
(4) above.
Sigh.
If you achieve scenario (1), by the way, you do have one
further obligation: Wipe up any splatter on the rim before you flush. C'mon
-- you don't want to look at dried-on pee any more than anyone else does. And
why invite further recriminations, nagging, etc.?
OK, now it's fair of you to ask which scenario I managed to
achieve.
Well, my situation's a bit different. We have this cat that
thinks he's a dog. Louie plays fetch, catches things in mid-air (we haven't
gotten to Frisbees yet, but...), and drinks out of the loo. So in our house
we put the seat AND the lid down. Most of the time. When we remember.
Initiation and Identity Change
Disclaimer: This essay expresses my opinions and personal
experiences with initiation and identity change. Your opinions and
experiences may be quite different.
Traditional Initiation
One of the hallmarks of male initiation in traditional cultures
is a change in identity that follows some kind of test or ordeal. This
sometimes involves a ritual wounding along with the assigning of a new and
perhaps secret name.
In Western culture, naming rituals mostly have to do with
religious rites surrounding birth. Name or identity changes for events later
in life are rare. In traditional Western marriages, the wife adopts her new
husband's family name, either abandoning her own or relegating it to a middle
name. Adolescents in the Catholic Church adopt a "confirmation
name," typically the name of a favorite saint. Other changes take place
in gang initiations or in the criminal underworld, where an alias, moniker,
or nickname may be ascribed to someone. Although these rites no longer have
many aspects of ritual initiation (if they ever did), they do involve a
community's witnessing of a change in life status.
Ritual wounding is rarer, except in the Jewish bris rite of
circumcision. In certain Christian churches, it may consist merely of the
light slap the bishop gives at confirmation. Wounding may also take place in
the hazing of fraternity pledges or the initiation rites of street gangs.
Why Initiation?
Why should men care about initiation and the identity changes
that take place with it? The vast majority of us in the West never even think
about it. One reason we should care lies in the traditional role of
initiation in admitting us to a community of men, a community that bears
witness to our common struggles (and wounds) and provides elders to mentor us
and help us along. By contrast, in modern society we're often in competition
with our age peers, and the elders are simply our bosses. Most bosses,
uninitiated themselves, have no sense of their duty to mentor us to the
benefit of the community; they merely manage us as "human
resources" on behalf of some anonymous corporate entity.
Although we may have loving families and an intimate partner
who helps define who we are, many of us men live in dreary isolation from
each other, suspicious of other men, never quite sure of ourselves. We may be
more comfortable around women than around men. When we do find ourselves in
the company of men, we often discover that our interactions are superficial
and directionless, as if we were a bunch of over-age lost boys -- which, as
uninitiated men, we still are. We're in many ways still adolescents, but
we're now jaded by life.
Initiation in Western Culture
Modern Western culture has lost most of the trappings of
initiation that mark changes in life status, especially the transition from
boy to man. It's almost too easy to see the cause of this loss in the spread
of Christian churches and their view of traditional cultures as pagan, and
later in the Industrial Revolution's pulling of men out of their homes, off
their farms, and into the factories. I suspect the reasons are deeper and
more complex, but they're beyond the scope of this essay.
Whatever the cause, we're left without a tradition of
initiation and with some dilemmas if we want to bring initiation into our
work as men. What kind of initiation rituals can we devise? Can we adopt
rituals from other cultures? Do we make up our own?
It seems to me that the traditional ritual initiation by elders
would be very contrived and artificial in our culture. We're not Native
Americans or Africans or indigenous peoples of South America or Australia. In
my opinion, adopting a traditional initiation ritual wholesale, outside of
its host culture, could easily devolve into mere play-acting and would
dishonor the host culture.
Men who have become part of the so-called men's movement over
the past couple of decades are in a community of men that could provide a
cultural context for initiation. However, many men begin "men's
work" in their thirties or forties, and a ritual ordeal would, I think,
seem not only very contrived and artificial, but too far removed from the
adolescent wonder and cockiness that can make traditional initiation work.
Men beyond their twenties have perhaps seen too much of life already.
And that -- having "seen too much" -- may just be the
key to adult male initiation in the West.
Life's Ordeals, Wounds, and Ritual
By the time most of us hit our late thirties, give or take ten
years, we've experienced a lot of change brought about by life's tests and
ordeals: illness, injury, violence, loss, divorce, unemployment, depression,
defeat, and so on. We all respond differently to these ordeals, often in ways
that present further ordeals: bitterness, anger, numbness, denial, addiction,
neuroses, insomnia, overwork, thrill-seeking, or a combination of these and
more. The wounds we get from these ordeals are physically and psychologically
real, and sometimes intense, but they are not administered in a ritual
setting.
Some men do manage to work things out, through therapy, the
help of a spouse or friend, religious counseling, and so on. But even in
these cases, the wounds may only be patched over so that the men can function
in what passes for the real world.
One very useful thing can happen when a man gets involved in
men's work: bringing past ordeals and wounds to the present and re-imagining
them in the ritual, sacred space of a community of men. Metaphorically, we
rip the scabs and patches off our wounds and expose them as witnesses to our
ordeals. With the help of ritual, we recognize and celebrate life's ordeals
in ourselves and others, and the role of these ordeals in forming our
identities. The ritual becomes woven into the past ordeals as a way of
honoring their wounds and bringing them into the adult male community. In the
ritual context, we use the wounds as elements of initiation, a birth into new
identities. The hurt, unformed boy ritually dies, and the man emerges.
This is not healing, in the sense that a wound is cured and
disappears. The wounds remain, but they are stripped of their shame and given
an honorable place in the community. The community of men is crucial to this
process. Sometimes witnessing and honoring of the wounds from another man's
ordeal is just as important as sharing our own.
Ritual involves change and transformation. The ritual itself
can take several forms. Sometimes it's done through drumming and poetry,
sometimes through myth and story-telling, sometimes through a council of
sharing after a vision quest, sometimes through active imaginative techniques
like breathwork, a sweat lodge, or deep rage work. Men who've never done
these things may find them strange and even threatening. A certain amount of
discomfort about the unknown is helpful; the discomfort is often a signal
that something important is about to happen.
Sacred Spaces, Safety, and Community
Ritual work has to be undertaken with great care. Physical and
psychological safety is extremely important. Knowledgeable leaders or
facilitators take pains to create a sacred space, a safe container, for the
ritual work, just as the elders in traditional societies have done for
millennia.
Sacred spaces, in my experience, are a combination of the
physical setting and the trusting community within that setting. Physical
setting is quite important; I doubt much useful work could be done in a hotel
ballroom or a school gymnasium or a church-basement recreation hall. These
are too close to our ordinary environment. An important factor is access to
nature -- woods, desert, seashore, lakes, and so on. This may be because we
have in our genetic makeup a deep memory for natural settings: Until fairly
recently in human existence, most people spent the majority of their time
outdoors.
As for community, I've seen skilled leaders use group
activities to build a community of trust among 25 men within a couple of
days. To an outsider, the activities could look like standard summer camp
stuff -- blindfold walks, mask-making and such. The main thing seems to be
that these activities involve men actively engaging with each other, not just
sitting around talking about feelings. The trusting community provides a
container for any ritual activities that are to take place. When this
container is carefully built, men can be confident that nothing will get out
of hand physically or emotionally, and that whatever happens will stay within
the community.
Getting Started
So -- how can a man get initiated through men's work? I think
two ingredients are necessary.
First, and perhaps a bit obviously, is finding a men's gathering
at which to do the work. I would prefer one that is out in nature somewhere
and led by wise and experienced facilitators. A minimum of a long weekend,
say, Friday night to late Sunday afternoon, gives the group a chance to
create sacred space and participate in ritual. A week is even better.
A good source of information about men's gatherings is The
Men's Center (on the Web at http://www.themenscenter.com/events.htm).
You can also search the Web for other ideas. My experience has been with the
annual Men's Wisdom Council, held in June each year at the Rowe Camp and Conference
Center in Rowe,
Massachusetts (http://www.rowecenter.org). A personal
account of what goes on at the Wisdom Council is at http://menletter.org/13.htm.
Second is working on intentions. This doesn't necessarily mean arriving
at a gathering with a specific agenda based on an assessment of our needs and
what we'd like to change, though I guess this is possible. The most useful
intention may simply be openness to listen, watch, think, and feel. It takes
some courage to travel into unknown territory, but it's also exciting to be
an explorer.
Even if there is no specific ritual labeled
"initiation," a men's gathering, led wisely and entered into with
intention, can be an initiatory experience. Some men find themselves profoundly
changed by their first gathering; others find the effect more cumulative
after several gatherings. But quickly or slowly, the change in identity
becomes very real.
A New Identity
It's reasonable to ask, "What about this change in
identity? Will people still know me, or want to know me? Will I be a stranger
to myself?"
Re-entry from any intense experience can be awkward. If you
went to college, you may remember what a know-it-all pain in the ass you were
after your first year, or even your first semester. Going away and getting
your brain fried -- uh, filled -- by new experiences had really changed you.
You may have even felt that your identity was changing, and you may have been
both excited and disturbed by the changes. But basically, you were the same
person, and things settled down after a while. Your identity was changing,
for sure, but the changes had somehow been integrated with your old self.
I have to admit I was a bit weird when I started doing men's
work many years ago, without even thinking about ritual and initiation.
Things settled down pretty quickly, however. I didn't lose my job or marriage
or anything like that. In fact, things settled down so thoroughly that I
stopped being active in men's work.
I began more intensive men's work about six years ago, with a
more conscious emphasis on initiation. And I found that the work was actually
strengthening my career, marriage, and relationships in general --
particularly my relationship with myself. I have a strong feeling of
community with other men and a sense that I'm part of an on-going initiation
and renewal of identity -- from boy to man and from man to elder as I get
beyond my sixtieth birthday.
My advice to any man seeking initiation through men's work is
to be gentle to himself and the people around him as he re-enters his
"ordinary" world. A first gathering or retreat can seem like a
cataclysmic, life-changing event, but it's usually only just a beginning. I'd
let the experience bubble under the surface for a while; the good stuff
should rise to the top eventually. And I'd count on there being further
gatherings or retreats, with deeper insights into the changes taking place.
(One way to dissipate the energy from a retreat, by the way, is
to talk about it. But clamming up can sometimes be off-putting or even
threatening to others, especially if we allow an aura of mystery and secrecy
to creep in. When friends or family ask what happened, I've found that there
are always interesting anecdotes about the activities or the people, which
can be kept fairly superficial and not violate any confidences but that will
satisfy people's curiosity: "I made this mask. It took a day for the
plaster to dry, and then I had a lot of fun mixing the paints for it."
"We had a blindfold trust walk. It was scary at first, but it turned out
to be fun, and I learned to trust my partner." "I met a guy named
Pete who had a wicked sense of humor. We really hit it off." An honest
answer to questions about personal growth could be something like "Oh, I
don't really know yet. These things take time." However much we may be
sizzling with new-found insights, this answer could be more accurate than we
imagine.)
Patience
If we don't feel we've experienced changes, much less an
initiation, from a men's gathering, we might wait a while before we discount
such gatherings entirely. As I implied above, things can sneak up on us over
time. Several months after a retreat or gathering, a man may surprise
himself, noticing that he's less anxious, less angry, more energetic, more
self-assured, with a better sense of who he is. There's no guarantee, of
course, and the changes may be subtle. Over time, a new identity may emerge.
At first, the biggest change we may experience is a desire to
continue the work. One aspect of initiation is that it's initiation into
something, into a community. Our society encourages men to work on things in
isolation, to deal with our own problems, challenges, ordeals, and defeats,
and to win at the expense of others. With a community of men, we realize that
we're not alone in our sorrows, grief, struggles, and defeats -- and also not
alone in our joys and victories.
We begin to look forward to the next opportunity to join or
re-create this community, and the community of all men everywhere.
Prostate cancer news 4
I had prostate cancer surgery on January 22: technically a
retropubic radical prostatectomy. The surgeon made a vertical incision
slightly over four inches long just below the navel and removed the prostate gland,
lymph nodes, and seminal vesicles. My follow-up PSA was effectively zero.
There will be more PSA tests throughout the year, and I expect good news from
all of them. Continence is coming along slowly; it's too early to tell about
impotence, but I have no reason to worry.
Unless something further develops, I'm done with the reporting.
The support from family and friends has been phenomenal. Thank you.
You can read the details of the surgery and aftermath at http://menletter.org/cancerjournal3.htm.
The first report (see http://menletter.org/cancerjournal1.htm)
was about the diagnosis. The second report (see http://menletter.org/cancerjournal2.htm)
is about waiting for the surgery, the pre-admission appointment,
doubts, concerns, and so on.
© Copyright 2004 by Tim Baehr. All Rights
Reserved.
|