Becoming Lesser Men, When Informed Consent is a Poison Pill
Men have been undergoing revisions in rapid succession during the modern era. The version with the most staying power has been the ideal 1950s era man who got up early, worked hard, had a family and provided for them, loved America, was generally optimistic, appreciated women though usually from a dominant perspective, was on the look out for enemies, yet otherwise was domesticated compared to earlier versions. Even today, decades into men’s exploration of their feminine side, the 1950s male continues to exert itself as a kind of lost ideal.
In the decades since, men have become more gentle, thoughtful, more subservient to women, softer versions of men before them, and though they are likable and nice and are willing to cry, they are not overall the happier for it. Men have become more receptive to others, especially women, to their children if they have any, are more in tune with their pain and that of others, more willing to comfort and nurture, but in this evolution of manhood, which has many admirable traits, the king’s energy has been diminished. In the Reacher TV series, the main character is a kickass, muscular male who takes no prisoners—the personification of a fantasy male. Yet there has never been a single instance where Reacher initiated anything with a woman—the women do all the engaging. The evolution of the modern male is one where he’s unable or afraid to ask, what do I want? and then to act on that want. The roles between men and women have reversed where women are allowed to have their wants and to act on them but men are expected to remain passive and receptive when required. Men who initiate in pop culture are portrayed as abusive and misogynistic or some other version of a toxic male.
Some will say, about time! A rebalancing was in order, but the data doesn’t support where we are at—record lows of sex, the desire for sex, for partnerships, for children, with boys failing behind in education at alarming rates with men dominant among the homeless, drug users, and filling up jails. Pop culture portrays men has stupid, hapless, weak, effeminate, and unable to do accomplish anything without a woman’s help. The culture is saturated with misandrist messages. To attempt discussion is to risk being cancelled.
The Mankind Project has been a place for men to be challenged, to be put into discomfort, to claim their authentic selves whatever that looks like, and to discover, what do I want? It is a question often asked when men do their work. But the Project has been, alas, mirroring the broader cultural trends. Over time, the Project has adjusted its initiatory weekends (New Warrior Adventure Trainings—NWTA) toward avoiding discomfort, avoiding triggering, avoiding challenge. After all, men are fragile and weak, right? The latest change has gone too far. There are a couple of processes with nudity—the most important of these deals with sexual shadow. It is a rare space where men can come together and talk about their shame, hang ups, issues with performance, with their penis size, and the negative messages they carry around like balls and chains. For many men, this is the most powerful part of the weekend. But the leadership decided they wanted to get rid of it as part of the standard ritual.
The tragedy is the broader culture does not provide space for the idea of being or sitting with discomfort. It feels like an underlying desperation has infused into part of the human consciousness to avoid discomfort at any cost. The problem is that avoidance does not equate with success or resolution. Our trauma, pain, shame, our unprocessed emotions, churn in the sub-conscious and direct our lives, and we become the puppets of our own play.
A few men met behind closed doors and decided to eliminate nudity on the weekends. They rolled out the idea to select men circles to get buy in and to gauge the level of resistance and to develop counter measures. Resistance is high among the rank and file and so the solution is a pretense that nudity will be allowed while setting it up to be phased out. Central to this strategy is the idea of INFORMED CONSENT, a term that the leadership liberally tosses around as if it were a shield of armor to their tactics.
Men always had the right to undress to their level of comfort. The consent to the weekend includes references that nudity might occur. However, there will now be informed consent specific to nudity when it occurs on a NWTA—in other words, the leadership has painted nudity with a big fat bullseye. As a man considering a NWTA, and I see the standard weekends are non-nudity and that nudity requires a special informed consent, my reaction is that must be some risky, scary possibly perverted stuff going on and I’m going with the safer choice. In other words, INFOMRED CONSENT is designed to funnel men to the non-nudity weekends. If the standard was nudity weekends and the separate informed consent was added in that context, it would feel less menacing. There is a lot of shame around nudity and our protectors will go to great lengths to avoid feeling it. I hated the idea of it and yet when put into that situation it became a liberating experience. Shame withers in the light. But the Project has decided to let men suffer in their shame, be a slave or a zombie to its stories, rather than put men in situations that might be challenging and uncomfortable. There are options for men who want to do their work always clothed, and indeed, as noted, men always had the choice to undress to their level of comfort.
Treat men like children, and they will forever remain children.
My most profound healing has come through being challenged and being uncomfortable to such an extent that I felt myself unraveling. But through the breaking came a remaking—we tear down muscle to build it back stronger than before and it works in a similar way with our emotional and spiritual bodies. There is an old saying, weak as water, and the NWTA’s are embracing it with a self-righteous badge of honor. In Iron John, there is a story about connecting to the Hairy (or Wild) Man that lurks at the bottom of every male psyche. The connection feels risky and scary, and requires a man to accept what’s dark down there, including the nourishing dark. The NWTA is an adventure to offer an opportunity to make that journey, but there is no journey in the safety and comfort of our armor (clothing included). In the NWTA’s own lore, which leans heavily on Iron John, getting the golden ball (our lost radiance and wholeness) for men doesn’t come by having it given to us (by women/mothers) or by accessing our feminine side, or through drugs or other addictions, or abundant sex, or gurus, or through macho bravado, and it does not come to us by being nice and tame but through fierce resolve to uncover our deepest masculine in the low, wet, dark places of our consciousness. MKP is forgetting the lessons of Iron John with an ever-constant movement towards something resembling a weekend retreat in Esalen. What if anything is sacred about the NWTA?
In Iron John, there is a passage that says, “The ancient societies believed that a boy becomes a man only through ritual and effort—“. MKP understood this in its earlier years, the necessity of effort, of risk, of being challenged, but today’s leaders have lost their way. The Project has lost its identity. I am angered and saddened. MKP has a history of driving brothers away in the mistaken belief that the preservation of the bureaucracy trumps the sacredness of shared brotherhood. I hope there is enough resistance to rebalance the Project to be a beacon on the hill for those men who are hungry to figure out who they are even if means entering the deepest dark.
