Menletter

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May 2005 Number 38

In this issue:

· Reversals of Fortune

· Prostate Cancer Walk in Boston

· Drums, Sweat and Tears: What Do Men Really Want?

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Reversals of Fortune

It seems that much of our lives are spent reacting to things - often things that are in the popular culture. And those things tend to reverse themselves periodically.

Hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women? Good. No, bad. No, maybe good for some.

Universal prostate cancer screening for men over 50? Good. No, bad. No, probably good for most.

Vitamin E for heart disease prevention? Good. No, bad.

Cox-2 inhibitors like Vioxx and Celebrex? Good. No, bad.

Massive hydration for athletes? Good. No, bad.

Margarine as a butter substitute? Good. No, bad.

High-fat diets? Bad. No, good. No, bad.

Low-fat diets? Good. No, bad. No, good, sorta.

Body mass index (BMI)? 25 or under, or you're fat. No, a few extra pounds and you live longer. Yeah, but you could be sick during those extra years.

Preemptive war-making? Bad. Still bad, no matter what popular culture says. Just making sure you're paying attention.

Feminism? Bad. No, good. Well, sometimes toxic.

Women's place in business? Bad. No, good.

Men's place in the universe? Good. No, bad. Well, maybe a mixed review.

And these are just a few examples. What's a poor person to do? Scientific and social certainties seem to go in and out of fashion like bell-bottom pants and wide ties. And we run the danger of living lives in fearful reaction to the latest reversal in trends. It seems as though we're caught in an ever-changing tapestry of life, woven one day and ripped out the next by a sadistic weaver.

Let's try to tease apart just a few of the threads in the tapestry.

Research showed that Vitamin E, a powerful anti-oxidant, should be helpful in preventing heart disease. Than another study showed that people taking over 400 IU of E every day had a statistically higher chance of dying from - you guessed it - heart disease. But consider this: the death rate did not plummet or rise in dramatic numbers when people started scarfing down Vitamin E. If that had been the case, public reaction would have been equally dramatic. No, it took relatively sophisticated research to figure out. In other words, the numerical trends were pretty subtle. Yes, we should probably stop taking extra Vitamin E. But we're not all doomed if we were taking it.

Margarine was assumed for many years to be safer than butter in not promoting rises in cholesterol. Funny thing, though: To make margarine hard enough to act like butter, manufacturers had to pump hydrogen through it. That created trans-fats, and the trans-fats in margarine are worse than the saturated fats in butter. Once we were afraid of butter. Now we can be afraid of margarine, too. Or maybe we just eat butter (it does taste better), but in moderation. And use more olive oil or canola oil (mono-unsaturated and not bad in the cholesterol department), but also in moderation.

Dieting of all kinds: probably bad. For years, diets have made many of us miserably unhappy and afraid of what we put into our mouths. We might be prolonging our lives a bit, but at what cost? And serial dieting and weight gain (often called yo-yo dieting) can be quite bad for our health. Frankly, I'd rather not be afraid of my food (I'm a Weight Watchers alum, by the way) or guilty about every other spoonful. I'm still working on trying to figure out a plan of moderation in what I eat, but I'm done counting things and turning my food into a chemistry experiment.

The reversals about what is good about men and women seem to have a longer cycle. What I find interesting about the latest installment is that both sides seem to think that the advantage is on the other side, and each side has its own cadre of experts and statistics to back it up. Wage discrepancy? As bad as ever. No, a fiction created with cooked data. Domestic violence? Yes, still bad, and women are the only victims. No, wait - violence of women against men is way under-reported. Etcetera, ad nauseam.

All these things - food, drugs, health, social issues - are researched and commented on, often by "experts" with impressive degrees and piles of data. And then reversed. And then often reversed again.

How do we respond to all this?

I think in many cases we know what's good for us, but we have handed over the power to the "experts." Maybe all we need is to make some simple observations, apply a little common sense, and relegate many of the expert opinions to the background.

Here's my (definitely non-expert) take on some of the issues.

Don't overdo. Use moderation. The 400 IU of Vitamin E I took for several years did not do me any harm. More, like 1200 IU, might have. Also, I didn't have a heart condition to begin with (the problem with overdosing was with people who had heart trouble already). Red meat or butter is bad if you eat lots of it every day. Same with sweets and oils and salt.

Eat the real thing, not Frankenfoods. The more processing, the more likely the food contains noxious stuff not meant for humans. For prepared foods (even bread), read the ingredients. Generally, the shorter the list, the better. Save the really evil stuff for occasional treats. But don't get obsessive - we can make ourselves sick with worry, too. (This just in: a study has shown [yeah, I know . . . ] that not all low-fat diets are equal. A low-fat diet with lots of fruit and veggies lowers LDL cholesterol more than a low-fat diet based on processed foods. In both cases, the test subjects ate the same number of calories and had the same amount of exercise. Yes, it may be yet another study, but it does pass the "real thing" test.)

Don't be seduced by the new. Wait. Unless you have a compelling reason to switch, don't try that new pill or potion; keep eating that food newly designated as "bad". If you're taking a medication that works, stick with it. Producers of foods and drugs (as with many other products) are under constant pressure to make more money. One way to do this is to introduce new products at higher prices and profits.

Forget the orthodox cants and rants. All women are this? All men are that? All anybodies are those? You are an unworthy person unless you believe in this or that? We don't need to adopt a moral or ethical relativism in which nothing is ever right or wrong. But I think we owe it to ourselves to make our own observations. Having convictions and acting on them is not a bad thing. But it's a good idea to ponder from time to time where those convictions have come from and test them for reasonableness.

When we get new information from the experts, it seems we have three possible reactions: nervously change our behavior based on the new information, nervously ignore the new information, or just get nervous and depressed that it's all so confusing. Here's a fourth option: instead of reacting, we can in many cases apply a reasonableness test, gather some corroborating or contradicting information, use some common sense, and then make up our minds.

But don't take my word for it - I'm no expert.

Prostate Cancer Walk in Boston, Mass.

The fourth annual Prostate Cancer Walk takes place on Boston Common this year on June 19 - Fathers' Day. It consists of a 5K (3.1 mile) walk followed by an afternoon of activities and festivities for men and their families. See www.bostonpcwalk.org for details.

Drums, Sweat and Tears: What Do Men Really Want?

Fourteen years ago, Newsweek paraphrased Winston Churchill and Sigmund Freud in the title to its cover story on the men's movement. The cover illustration showed a buff, bare-chested man of 35 or so, wearing a necktie and blue jeans. He was carrying a naked, grinning baby in one arm and an African drum in the other.

The article's catchy subtitle was "Now They Have a Movement of Their Own." I still have the issue (June 24, 1991). Unfortunately, it does not seem to be available on-line.

Jerry Adler (still at Newsweek as a senior editor covering science) and his co-authors capture some of the early excitement over a new men's movement. Robert Bly is there (His Iron John had been on the best-seller list for months), along with Sam Keen (Fire in the Belly) and Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette (King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine). In a second article in the same issue, Adler and his co-authors explore drumming ("Heeding the Call of the Drums") and feature Babatunde Olatunji, the great Nigerian drummer who was then teaching in Harlem, and Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead.

There's also a sidebar of "New Man Talk" with specialized vocabulary for the uninitiated: Wild Man; Soft Males; Warrior; Drumming; Sweat Lodge; Male Mystique; Talking Stick.

The articles are a combination of analysis, straight reportage, condescension, and Newsweek's sly tongue-in-cheek style that seems to say, "We - and you - don't have to take this too seriously." One of the pictures shows men sitting around a campfire, their drums sitting idly on the ground. The caption reads: "Wild things: Take up your drums, grab an ax and leave your inhibitions behind in the parking lot." Perhaps appropriately for the times, the articles are in the magazine's "Lifestyle" section.

More examples:

· "What teenagers were to the 1960s, what women were to the 1970s, middle-aged men may well be to the 1990s: American culture's sanctioned grievance carriers, diligently rolling their ball of pain from talk show to talk show."

· "These are exciting times: the men's movement is dawning, the first postmodern social movement, meaning one that stems from a deep national malaise that hardly anyone knew existed until they saw it on a PBS special."

· About talking sticks: ". . . it's not hard to imagine how women, to whom the easy exchange of intimacies comes naturally, must view this quaint masculine practice: Aha, men are finally learning to talk about their feelings. But they have to hold a stick to do it."

· About men's retreats: "No wonder one form the rebellion takes is the "Wild Man" retreat, in which men who ordinarily might not know which end of an ax to grasp live out a fantasy of aboriginal frolic, confined to a weekend and purged of any practices that might offend contemporary sensibilities, such as ritual mutilation or chemical intoxication."

· Sweat lodges combined with sage incense ". . . to create a hypernormal state, which is what men have always sought on Saturday nights anyway."

In among the snide asides, the article does cover a lot of ground in describing the state of the men's movement as of the early 1990s. Some themes will be familiar to men who've been involved in men's work for a while: father hunger, as laid out in Bly's classic Iron John; backgrounds among many men of abuse and alcoholism; men's death rates higher than women's; sweat lodges as places where rational thought gives way to emotions; the alienation of modern life; the need for men to learn from, initiate, and bless each other.

In one of the concluding paragraphs, Adler and his team say: "What now? What now is that we need another revolution. In the 18th century, men made the world over in their own image; now they look in the mirror and strain to catch a glimpse of the Wild Man beneath the tie, and they ask: is it too late to start over?"

Did we get our revolution? Hardly. The themes and challenges of men's work haven't changed much. We still die too soon. Many of us are still alienated by work in corporations that care less and less about their workers. Some of us still dull our pain with alcohol, drugs, serial sex, material goods. Some still often find it hard to communicate with our loved ones and especially with other men. Most of us are uninitiated, either in the traditional sense or in claiming initiation from our life's ordeals. We're still both idealized and ridiculed in popular media and advertising (a kind of male version of the madonna-whore complex).

Should we be discouraged? I think it's a mixed situation. Our mass society seems more toxic than ever for men (and everyone else). But the longevity gap has narrowed slightly. More men seem to be more involved in their families, and some studies indicate that young men would forgo extra income for more time at home with the kids. Men's rights in divorce and custody cases seem to be getting more attention. Bly and others are still leading men's retreats, though perhaps not in the quantities of the 1990s.

I'm leery of movements. They often mean gurus and leaders, and giving up our autonomy to a set of ideas or eloquent pronouncements. Leaders and members of movements can become targets. Much of men's work is in exploring our individual responses to the challenges of manhood, and joining a movement compromises that individuality and turns us into caricatures and stereotypes. (Remember that those who attacked the feminist movement often characterized its members as hairy-legged, unattractive, humorless, strident bra-burners.) It may be a good thing that we didn't get a movement of our own, and that a lot of our work goes on quietly and without a lot of media attention.

My experience is that the need for men's work is as strong as ever, and the need is probably not going away anytime soon. For men who recognize the need, the kinds of work that were started a couple decades ago are still effective: retreats, drumming, immersion in mythology, the use of ritual, and the simple fellowship of men's gatherings.

Why is this work effective? Here are a few guesses.

Retreats in general are a good thing. Getting away from work and home is an opportunity for getting perspective on our everyday lives. Vacations serve this function somewhat, but retreats encourage us to look harder, dig deeper.

Drumming is a community activity, usually with no special skills required. It can produce altered states of consciousness, or at least quell the incessant inner chatter of the brain. The underlying beat of most drumming sessions is at about the rate of the heartbeat; this may explain why sometimes a session brings the drummers into a sense of unity: the entire room becomes a single instrument.

The purpose of most myths and traditional stories is to help explain human nature and the stages we experience as we grow into and through adulthood. Listening to myths gives us a shared experience that can bring communities together. But a myth is also typically so rich that each man sees it differently, putting himself into a different aspect of the story. Discussing myths can bring deep insights into our psyches and into our places in society.

A friend of mine has defined ritual as a ceremony that involves change. The sweat lodge, for instance, contains some ritual in the prayers or meditations, and in the entering and exiting four times during the sweat. The sweat lodge cleanses its participants both physically and psychically. There are many other rituals, or activities with ritual elements. These include burning of incense, mask-making, blindfold trust walks, dancing, drumming, poetry, meditation, holotropic breathwork, and emotional release work involving rage or grief. Ritual is a shared, community event. It can follow traditions or be created spontaneously.

Men are afforded few opportunities for fellowship: to simply be with each other. Whatever else may go on at a large gathering or small men's group, the fellowship of just being in each other's presence is very powerful. There may be a lot of talk; there may be none. Emotions may flow, or be held in check. My experience in longer retreats and shorter but regular meetings is that a deep respect and compassion develops as men form a community of mutual trust. Fellowship is an important element in ritual. When men build a community during the course of a weekend or longer retreat, they provide a container in which ritual makes sense and is emotionally safe. We may not want to expose our emotions to a roomful of strange men; it's a different matter entirely if our activities are wrapped in ritual and take place in a group of brothers.

What do men really want? I don't think this is a useful question. It implies that the focus is on all men as a category, not on individual men. And the "really" implies that men don't know what they want, or that there's a huge mystery (a male mystique?) about men. Maybe the best thing we can do is for each of us to look at the external conditions of our lives - work, family, community - and then into ourselves (or even into a mirror) and ask, "What do I want?"