Mending Masculinity: The Mythic Journey Toward Respect and Honor

Way back in the fall of 2014, I penned An Open Letter to my Fellow Men, and set off a minor brush-fire of criticism, mostly from the male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley. Through writing this piece, I began to unravel much.The point of this series of essays is not to tell my sob-story, or preach to other men, nor am I interested in political correctness, or feminization, or emasculation. Far from it. My intention is to empower people- men especially but women to; to be better partners, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and most of all, friends.

The women in my family are avid readers. My grandmother, aunts and my mother all read voraciously. I had the tremendous fortune of a life-long acquaintance with literature and myth because of them. As a child, I read anything I could get my hands on. At a very young age, I read all of Tolkien’s work, and traced the lineage of his prose to Icelandic and Nordic myth. Later, I studied Greek and Roman literature and philosophy in boarding school and at University, and as an adult I became again interested with the ancient myths of the indigenous people of the Southwest, and of the gnostic schools of Europe.

I invoke for the reader particular archetypes throughout but for the specific topic of this essay — I invoke the figure of the Greek God, Hephaistos, pictured above.

Hephaistos is the Greek God of the forge and fire. He protects inventors, sculptors, metal smiths and workers. He is undoubtedly a very masculine archetype, yet like his fellow brother of the abyss Hades, he is depicted as introverted, and in the case of Hephaitos-lame. He is the Goddess Hera’s parthenogenous child, rejected by his mother because of his deformity and thrown off of Mount Olympus and down to earth. Hephaistos is made lame and immobile by the wound with his Mother. There is no more fitting analogy for controlling men, crippled by their lack of depth, and in unconscious pain than Hephaistos.

He is the epitome of a bitter, resentful and thwarted man-child, demonstrated by how he takes revenge against his mother Hera for rejecting him, Hephaistos fashioned her a magical golden throne, which, when she sat on it, did not allow her to stand up. The metaphor should be obvious, when the other gods beg Hephaestus to return to Olympus to let her go, but he refused, saying “I have no mother”. His wound, that of “the motherless child, is to be acted out again and again in his chronologies in the lives of men in whom their relationship to their mothers is flawed. Men who spend extravagantly on their women, only to eventually try and control them and incapacitate them. Hephaistos is not oddly aslo a fitting archetype for many technologists-he was in fact the first robotist. Hephaestus built automatons of metal to work for him. This included tripods that walked to and from Mount Olympus.

Like Hephaistos, I am wounded and yet I fully aware of my strength as a man. I struggled with my wound, and with self-control. I struggled with accepting the many powerful women in my life. I don’t anymore because I have a relationship to the wounded Hephaistos in me, and I fashion myself anew from that inner-most material. My intention (with the not so subtle help of my partner) was to clean the ash from the ancient baffles, so that I could first, rid myself of resentment and take control of me (not her) and we could together fire up and forge a new relationship to ourselves, to one another and to women in general.

I hope the reader will grasp my use of archetypes and myths to empower them. I am not trying to do the former — to take men down and notch — and I will tell you unequivocally — I want to lift us up, I want us to be better men. Most of all, I want to talk to about how to do that, how to become that and how honor what is sacred within us.

Towards Unbiased Polarity

Before we take on the issue of forging new masculinity in this essay, of evolving, it is helpful to reframe a few fundamental issues in language and lexicon, namely that of understanding what male and female represent archetypally — the Dynamic and Magnetic.

First, repeat after me: “The Battle is Over”. Go ahead say it again. The war is done. The suffering can end. Now, let’s take a step towards evolving, towards hammering out the kinks, and banging out the imperfections in our being like Hephaistos.

The first step on path to unbiased polarity is recognizing difference as a plus.

We must realistically access if we as humans are prepared to accept that the “battle of the sexes is over, and how willing we are to discard outdated modes of labeling, categorizing one another. For the purposes of these essays, I adopt the terms “dynamic” or “magnetic” to refer to the male and female essences. This nomenclature is taken from the philosophy of Actualism, as developed by Russell Schofield and described by Ralph Metzner in his book Know Your Type — Maps of Identity (1979) and used by James Dekorne in his infinitely useful translation of the Thing that you can find online.

Schofield and Metzner define Actualism as what which distinguishes the fundamental polarities of energy relationships-namely the male and female or dynamic and magnetic.

The dynamic polarity is strong yet communicative, gregarious yet grounded and generous but not needy. Fundamentally, masculine. I resist using terms like “divine masculine” for a reason. For one, these kinds of profoundly spiritual terms turn me off, and I presume that would turn many other men off too. The dynamic is yang.

The magnetic pole is receptive but not without boundaries and limitations, expressive without ostentatious, and subtle without being vague. While the dynamic or masculine pole in consciousness is functional, pragmatic and about “doing” the magnetic is structural, all function or “doer ship” must move through a structure and is given body or form by a structure.

Dynamic (male) energy takes its shapes (is literally birthed through the magnetic feminine. Consider for a moment the flow of water (dynamic) through a conductor (magnetic), or the movement of life through the human body; or the structuring of sound energy into meaningful verbal patterns. An unstructured dynamic expression is random and incoherent; a magnetic without dynamic function is an empty and powerless structure.

A point of order must be made; I am not just sympathetic to those causes which aspire to liberate all human beings from the illusions of sexism. I am actively interested in ridding the planet of them. I can provide you with countless reasons why we need to do this as a species. We can evoke the tension between magnetic and dynamic as part of the most important keys to understanding the structure and dynamics of culture. Some will resist and decry this notion. I am not, to be specific advocating for genderless society, or that sort of thing — not even close.

Navigating Autonomy and Intimacy

There are a few questions we need to ask ourselves in our relationships with women. I challenge every man who reads this to ask himself these real questions.

• Am I forcing a woman to react to me when I address her?

• Do I have an unconscious need to control women?

• Am I harboring unconscious sentiments and attitudes about women?

• Do women need to suit my schedule, do what I say or behave a certain way

• What are my attitudes towards women with power or who assert themselves?

• Do I feel women are obliged to respond to me the way I want them to respond to me?

• Am I creating a safe space for the women in my life to express themselves adequately?

• Am I going along with my male colleagues when they harass or belittle women because I am a scared shitless?

Appendix

Here’s the original text of the letter in case you are interested.

Gentlemen:

I regret to inform you that the behavior of a few has given the rest of us a bad name. I am writing this to ask for your help in improving our lot. Hopefully, by working together, we can impact the working environs we share in general and with women. I am sure each one of us can do his part starting first thing tomorrow morning. I live and work amongst you, and some things I have seen inside and outside of the office have become a concern. Some of us, even at the top of the corporate world have not yet evolved ourselves enough to see that our women colleagues are just that, colleagues and fellow humans.

In the past two years, the debate over women in tech and the “brogrammer culture” has exploded. Fueled by sexual harassment lawsuits, punditry, and media attention, the case against prominent Silicon Valley bro-culture is growing. Recent data suggests that, despite the prevalence of coding programs aimed at girls and women, only 12.9% of Silicon Valley engineers are female. The number of female board members is dismally small. Often, women find themselves as a distinct minority in start-up and established workplaces alike. Lawsuits, defamation, and slander charges abound, making an already surreal place that much more so.

Having been in and out of the Valley for the last four years pitching my work and that of others, I have seen the best and the worst of this place. On a good day, there are colorful, enriching conversations with brilliant scientists whose outlook is nothing less than visionary. I’ve met some of the very brightest and best people right here. On a bad day, it feels like an endless reel of outtakes from the HBO show of the same name.

Drunk programmers are stumbling around the streets cat-calling women, men hooting and hollering from Ferraris and Lambos. It is a joke. For a man with a shred of integrity, it is ridiculous to watch masculinity reduced to “money and machine.” I am sure you agree that these exploits do not reflect the decency and honor to which most of us aspire. I could continue to pretend to be blind to what goes on around me, but I will not.

What can I do, or rather, what can we do?

I will no longer ignore that, at one time or another, part of the workforce feels unsafe, uncomfortable or outright harassed while they are at work or out in the world. I will speak up, and I am asking you to as well.

Let’s first be clear about the world we men live in so we are not confused, and no one can accuse me of being a “feminist”, yet another convenient label that separates action from the truth.

I do not fear sexual threats when I walk to my car in the garage. I do not clench my keys in my fingers when I walk home after dark. I do not carry riot-control grade mace in my briefcase. If a group of boisterous women are walking towards me on a busy night in Mountain view, I do not have to cross the street. I do not have to fend off unwanted attention when I wear my best-looking suit. (Ok, sometimes, I do, but mostly it is other men who want to know who the designer is). I do not have to worry about uncomfortably long stares at my legs during meetings, or ask a friend to watch my drink when I go to the bathroom. I do not have to read between the lines when a female colleague makes an innocuous comment during an interview. I can go and have a scotch at a bar and nary a person will bother me. Wake up, men. We do not have these concerns. We do live in a different world. If you are a white male, you live in an even different world. This is the way things are.

What I have begun to do — what all of us need to start doing — is questioning how we can make ensure that our streets, spaces and offices safer and more comfortable for women.

More importantly, we can examine how we allow the least civil amongst us to contribute to making those areas less safe and poisonous for our colleagues. We should do this because we are the ones who created the problem a long time ago. Enough is enough. Certainly, women are complicit in many ways, most notably by buying into the stereotypes and clichés foisted on them by the media, and by giving men the explicitly wrong impression to get what they want — be it jobs, money or attention. Yes, some women buy into the system of sexism wholesale and use that power. That is not the point, is it? Let’s please not pass the buck to women. Let’s be men.

Let’s be responsible for once.

In the bigger picture, I sometimes wonder if we think so little of ourselves that we are incapable of thinking a woman deserves respect as opposed to unwanted sexual advances.

Deep down, what do we think women want in the workplace: attention or respect?

Make no mistake about this: when men harass, they undermine a very fundamental human right to autonomy that is essential in a free society. People, not just women, have a right to exist lawfully in public without fear of approbation or infringement at any time. Last time I checked, this is called liberty, and we’ve fought more than a few wars to protect that special right. Men can stand up and insist that other men treat women colleagues with respect. This does not mean we take away a woman’s right to defend herself; it means having the sand to say something to other men when we witness it.

It means standing with women, not standing in for women. Let’s get that straight right now. The default mode in society is civility, not harassment, my friends. You might even consider civility instead ofchivalry and in place of chauvinism. There are plenty of issues to be discussed here as well.

Next time your boss has a snide comment about a woman at a bar, says something. He might just respect you for it — but don’t expect it. Power does not like to be challenged. When a colleague drops a backwards comment about a female executive as she walks by, ask him what he’d do if someone said that to his wife or daughter or mother. You might surprise him.

If you think of yourself as more than a gorilla, you can stand up and be respectful. If you are such a man, then act like one. Speak up! Otherwise, we allow bad behavior to erode the environment to a point where the unacceptable is the norm. It is called a hostile work environment for a reason, and many start-ups and established businesses alike are rapidly approaching that level of toxicity — especially here in the Valley. So, put the game-boy down, tuck in your shirt, and wake up, son.

Let me preempt some of the opposition from some of you. I can hear the claims of “man-bashing-men” already and I got my share of whacko emails when this article was first published. No, I am not gay. I was not raised in an isolated estrogen tank by militant lesbian candle makers in Oregon. I am the son of a Marine Corps officer and a ballet dancer who, for all their glaring faults, taught me manners in a small town outside of Boston, Massachusetts. I was brought up rough with a forest as my backyard, played schoolboy hockey and worked in finance before taking up a career in corporate strategy. I also trained in close protection services and worked as a bodyguard for a brief spell. I am a guy’s guy if ever there was one. No one who knows me would call me “liberal” or “feminist”, and no one calls me “Sir” all the time either.

Contrary to the evolutionary theory of stupidity, we men are not “built” to be morons. The brute strength derived from testosterone that to some degree marks our gender does not imply a unique set of rules. Gorillas are incredible creatures whose strength far outmatches our own, but they have not built a complex civilization. They did not create data science and artificial intelligence. The lame appeal to “men as men” undermines our nature and reduces manhood to hormonal dominance. This is utterly stupid. This is insulting to men. We insult ourselves by acting like baboons.

We do not have an “idiot” setting that clicks on when a woman walks in or out of the room. Those of us who are sane adults choose to behave appropriately around the other sex. At our most basic, we are good; at our best we can protect, love and serve society.

Men may give lip service to this and have the best intentions, and at the same time continue to contribute to an environment that makes women feel unsafe by simply ignoring that harassment is a regular facet of women’s experience. To disregard that for the sake of instant gratification of a female’s attention seems, well…lame is the word that comes to mind. When men interact inappropriately with a woman and create an unsafe environment that causes women to question their place in it, we make the world dangerous for our wives, daughters, friends and colleagues.

I believe the two greatest threats to humanity are violence and the treatment of women and children. Most of us know this and do our part. I’m asking you to do more — change those around you who act in a way the undermines our strength as men.