Is There A Male
Identity Crisis?
Scott Peck's idea of building community that
so took my fancy in the early 90's, is now lost on political groups who reject others
for a single disagreement on any aspect of, say, fixing the economy. Another far cry from the gender inequality my father
forced on mom back in the 50's, is the transition of women
since the 60s into all levels of the workplace, colleges and graduate schools.
They now outnumber men in the workforce, with more single women than single men
buying homes. (Ray Williams, "Our male identity crisis: What will happen to
men?", (PsychologyToday.com), Wired for Success, July 19, 2010).
Women's progress seems to be under attack, and
some men see it as a gender war. Guy Garcia, author in 2008 of "The Decline of
Men: How The American Male is Tuning Out, Giving Up and Flipping Off His Future,"
argues that many men bemoan a "fragmentation of male identity,"
in which husbands are asked to take on unaccustomed familial roles such as
child care and housework, while wives bring in the bigger paychecks. "Women
really have become the dominant gender," says Garcia, "what
concerns me is that guys are rapidly falling behind. Women are becoming better
educated than men, earning more than men, and, generally speaking, not needing
men at all. Meanwhile, as a group, men are losing their way."
But the way America does business is in transition, too. During my
twenty-plus years of corporate life in the 70s and 80s that I called "ladder
climbing," competition for the next level of management, among only males,
was as fierce as what we aimed at business competitors. The dream was to get to
the top of the heap, so I could tell everyone what to do. Compare that to today, with companies driven
by expanding technology, competing with India and China, using buzz words like interpersonal
relationships and teamwork. It seems to me less a gender war than growing
circumstances that favor what my teenage friends and I used to call
"girly" stuff.
Raised in a male dominant world, I viewed women's temperaments as
equivalent to being a woman. In the past decades of women's rise, various media
articles in taking on the situation discuss separating men and women or feminine
traits and masculine traits in general, or use indefinite terms like normal
masculinity, genuine masculinity, our natural calling, healthy masculinity, womanly,
natural God-given proclivity, innate traits, feminization, and natural
instincts. Gender wars.
In Ray Williams' article, he
says "80% of the jobs lost during this current recession have been held by
men." I watched a similar thing happen in England in the early 80s, when
their mining industry collapsed. It was
the men who suffered and the men who survived by changing, or not.
In America today, some young men look at the behavior of men at the top
of political organizations and some religious organizations, plus salary
disparities between CEOs or sports heroes and the rank and file. They're asking
themselves what makes a real man today, and, where are the positive male role
models? Men approaching midlife are wondering how to find better balance than
just work in the second half of their lives. Some women are unaware of the rituals, initiations
and competitive environments among males that made their man the man he is
today.
My interest in writing my book is not only to answer my son's question by
telling him what made me who I am today, but also to stimulate conversations
about other men's life transitions , their experiences compared to mine, in a
positive environment. All men are not losing their way. I include women in the conversation, too. I think gender equality supports a more
positive conversation than competition.
Different, yes, and equal. Teammates.
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