artmodernman

Hite Research International

Who is the ‘Modern Man’?

Dr. Shere. Hite.

What about men? The last twenty-five years are thought of as an era of change for women, but men have been changing too. How much have men ‘undefined’ their ideas of masculinity, who a real man is – and how much are men carrying on with an old point of view dressed up in a new style?

Current popular clichés with a ‘biological determinist’ slant imply that a man’s nature can’t really change: that men are destined by biology to be competitive and aggressive, to bond together with other groups of men (not including women, who are also ‘destined by biology’ to be ‘different’, i.e., less adventurous, preferring home…) -- and that this ‘unchangeable human nature in their genes’ makes them lust to be warriors and hunters, fight battles. But is this true? These images of Mythic Masculinity are not the great gift to men they may at first appear to be – as many men realize around age fifty in my research, and as an increasing number of younger men today are noting. Most don’t really identify with such warrior images, and worry that they won’t live up to them. But new ideas are developing…

Many men now, according to my research, are quietly staging a revolution inside themselves, questioning the beliefs they were brought up with, redesigning their inner value system – re-thinking the importance of work, private life, asking how time should be spent, how work should be structured, what love is about. This is the first generation of men ever to have to be preoccupied sexually with pleasing their mates, women – not only physically but also emotionally. This adjustment can require a great sea-change in a man’s conception of his own sexual identity. Is a ‘real man’ monogamous or not? A ‘good husband and father’ or not? Married or single, lover or husband?

While most somehow believe in marriage, ironically most also believe they should be free, less ‘tied down’…and many fault themselves for not being sure what they really want. Many have a perpetual sense that ‘the party is going on somewhere else’, that they are missing out …that they might die without ever having really lived. Though most believe in equality for women, they simultaneously worry that the Brave New World ‘run by women’ won’t have a place for them. They feel subliminally anxious and guilty because perhaps they benefit from a system of male-privilege -- though this guilt may be hidden. Amidst such pressures, many are inclined to revolt and cry out, ‘Hell with it, I can’t do anything right, I’m going to act like the mean maverick macho I really am deep down!’ The underlying cause of much of men’s anger and sadness (and often passivity in the face of these feelings) has not been heretofore noted.

I would like to propose, based on my research, a new theory of ‘male nature’, one based more on social pressures than biology or hormones, one which shows how boys during their formative years are asked to completely change their identity. Specifically, my research has turned up a new theory of how boys develop at puberty, learning a lesson that affects them psychologically throughout the rest of their lives – a lesson that, since it is created by society, can be changed. This research, conducted over many years with thousands of men, brought out the fact that most boys are subjected to taunts or bullying (even being beaten up) by bigger boys or older male members of the family (‘Don’t be a sissy, grow up and be a man!’) – and that this causes boys to undergo a powerful process of self-questioning ending in basic identity change [bic]. Though most boys are close to their mothers when young, at a certain stage, the pressures placed on them to ‘act like a man’: ‘don’t hang around the house with your mother and your sister’, ‘go out and play sports with the other boys’! become overwhelming. Many boys in this situation turn to their mothers for protection, or resort to staying at home; they are surprised when she too says, 'You can’t come home to mother anymore, now you have to go out and tell off the boys who are bothering you, or beat them up!’ Boys then, according to my data, are filled with doubt and spend on average a year or more questioning themselves about how they should adapt to the new situation. The problem is not only that they are supposed to ‘act tough’, but also cut off their relationship with their mother or ‘women, girls’ -- a boy is seen as a ‘sissy’ if his best friend is a girl, or if he ‘hangs around with girls all the time.’

The ‘proof’ that one is now ‘a man’ often involves showing, in front of other boys, that ‘I won’t take orders from my mother! She can’t tell me what to do!’ For example, if a boy brings other boys home from school and they are in his room listening to loud music and the mother shouts from another room, ‘Turn down that noise!’ then the boy must shout back, ‘No! You can’t tell me what to do!’ and turn the volume up even louder. Though many boys like being with girls who are their friends, they soon learn that they have to make peace with the men around them, find a way to get along, and learn to exclude women, ‘leave the women at home’.

Joining the ‘world of the fathers’ is a frightening experience for many boys: most describe feeling alone and insecure, suddenly in a new, colder and more competitive world, a world they say over and over that their fathers did not explain to them – but later come to feel that conquering it can be the biggest adventure they undertake in life. What happens in private life? If a man falls in love with a woman, this usually forces him to re-examine his relationship with men – and his own idea of himself. This is more difficult if a man feels ‘real men don’t fall deeply in love!’ Thus most men in my research do not marry the women they most passionately love, often saying they are proud of this. Why? They feel they can better follow ‘the rules’ if they stay in control of their feelings. Other boys do not fall in love at all; their reaction to ‘male’ puberty pressures is to decide they are not ‘joiners’ (they feel they do not legitimately belong to the group of men, and are ‘faking’ fitting in), and decide to be ‘loners’, ‘independent’, close to neither men nor women. Men’s relationships with other men are generally deeply unsatisfying: like the Michelangelo fresco of Adam reaching for God’s hand in The Creation, in which their fingers never quite touch, men often feel a tantalizing sense of ‘almost…almost’. Most boys grow up with only a distant relationship with their fathers, that carries over into relationships with other men. They are left with a feeling that ‘he’ is unattainable, other and that this is how it must be.

In the 90’s and still today, many men cope by living with split personalities: one for work and another for ‘private life’ and ‘love’. During the last two decades, many books on ‘personal growth’ (‘self-help’ for women and ‘business secrets’ for men) helped individuals think through issues of identity-change. Most men no longer want the ‘traditional manhood’ of the l980’s but a new way of life which they are inventing now, engaged in a momentous interior transformation that has as yet to go public.

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