(The Capuchin, No. 41)
On returning to Ireland from Zambia in 1997, I was struck by how alive women were, full of energy, with a spring in their step and light in their eyes. They were taking Ireland by storm, found in all sorts of previously male occupations; we had our first woman president, to be followed by another. By contrast, men seemed dazed, almost shell-shocked.
Men are living in a world that has changed hugely. Since the Industrial Revolution, there has been a weakening, even a rupture, of the link between men and nature, family, cultural tradition, the work of their hands, and even their souls. They have become units of production; efficiency, output, and productivity are the measures of that ever-elusive will o’ the wisp called “Success.”
Recently, the English novelist, Doris Lessing, wrote, ‘It has now become acceptable to consider men domestically incompetent, hopeless fathers, unreliable breadwinners, and generally a dispensable sector of the human race.’ TV adverts routinely depict the male as a helpless idiot outsmarted by the clever female, even by a child.
This undermining of men’s identity has accelerated since Women’s Lib. The latter is fine, and overdue by millennia, but it has resulted in a rapid moving of familiar markers, a shifting of the ground beneath men’s feet. That creates insecurity. Roles have changed: the husband/breadwinner, wife/homemaker demarcation is mostly gone. A couple may not be husband and wife but partners, and perhaps not in their first partnership. They may both work outside the home, and need to in order to pay the mortgage; and she may earn more than he.
Unlike women, who, from earliest times, have shared their thoughts and feelings with each other, men mostly suppress their emotions, even to themselves. As a rule, we don’t discuss anything more personal than sport or politics. It’s taboo for a man to show emotion – except anger; that’s the permissible man’s emotion. Mostly, men don’t know how to express other emotions – shyness, embarrassment, being mistreated, powerless, etc.
Men are afraid to talk to each other from the heart. It’s not macho; it doesn’t fit the image; it’s “feminine.” And men see it as disloyal to talk about their wives to another man; women don’t have those inhibitions re their husbands. Boys don’t learn to be men unless they’re with men. There is a loss of men from teaching; the clergy are no longer role models. Fathers are unable to talk with their sons, so the sons grow up drifting and directionless. The pain, the howling, lonely emptiness that is not transformed is transmitted.
Go to almost any activity, except for football matches and the pub, and you’ll find men in a minority, sometimes a small one. We seem to have withdrawn into ourselves. Even the pub has changed, what with the ban on smoking, stricter enforcement of drink driving laws, and the high cost of drink in them. Now more men drink at home. It’s as if we have given up on meeting and even living – suicide is four times higher among men than women in Ireland.
Competitiveness dominates inter-male relationships: ‘What are they thinking about me?’ ‘What will the others say if I….?’ ‘What kind of impression am I making?’ Much of the loud laughter and apparently hearty back-slapping in groups of men is a cover for fear of each other. Men find safety and assurance in group identity – “the boys”, “the lads” – even though it may devour the individual. So we admire the Lone Ranger, though he is a pathological figure. Some men remain in permanent adolescence. Sadly, we are not a band of brothers. The American writer, Henry Thoreau said, ‘Most men live lives of quiet desperation.’
Men today don’t know what it means to be a man. Ask men, and their reply is about being a husband or a father, which is a different question. Ask a man how he feels about something, and he’ll tell you what he thinks about it – also a different question.
How does a man ask for help? Does he turn in on himself? Does he take it out on those around him? – and then feel ashamed. Or take to drink, depression, or suicide?
One group of men has broken through these barriers – those who acknowledge they are broken, members of the ‘Anonymouses’ – Alcoholics, Gamblers, Narcotics, Sex. Wounded healers, they know that a young man who cannot cry is a savage, and an old man who cannot laugh is a fool.