is it acceptable and preferable to be vulnerable with our authentic emotions? Some men have learned the hard way that when they do not follow the Rules they are made fun of or rejected for not being manly enough, not only by men in their lives, but by women as well. Understandably, women can buy into the Man Rules as much as men do. They don’t see the Water either.
The Rules provide one very important experience for all men: safety. When I ask audiences what following the Man Rules offers men, they often say “acceptance” or “sense of belonging.” I will push them to look further underneath that. What does acceptance, a sense of belonging, or being liked give us? Safety. At the heart of the Rules is an attempt to be safe in the world, to not only be validated as men but to truly feel safe and fit in. Every young boy learns that when he follows the Man Rules he is safer in that he is less likely to be made fun of, criticized, beaten up, and so on. The majority of us did not learn the Rules in peaceful conditions. Maybe your home had a more enlightened approach to gender, but no boy escapes the brutality of the schoolyard. In fact, I would say that given how much the process of socialization cuts us off from core parts of our humanity, there is a degree of trauma experienced by every man. For some of us the trauma is severe. To make matters worse, at the heart of any attempts we make to be intimate and truly known to others is a level of vulnerability that we may not be prepared for or have the ability to navigate. This experience can touch our trauma, triggering it constantly in our most intimate relationships, and when it happens we have no idea what to do and end up sabotaging our relationships as a result.
Finally, there is another nuance of the Rules that affects some men differently than others that must not be ignored. The people I have had the honor to train and share this conversation with have helped me to see more of the Water. When we think of criminals or drug dealers, whose face do we tend to see? When we think of illegal immigrants or people doing menial work, if they are even men, whose faces do we see? The point is that the Man Rules are not color-blind or classless. I will never know what it is like to walk down the street and have people fearing me simply because of the color of my skin. Or make judgments about me and my intelligence, moral character, or basic humanity simply because of the color of my skin or who I am drawn to love. The intensity and expression of the Man Rules also seem to be different in the suburbs where I grew up than they are in the inner city, the child protection system, or the juvenile and criminal justice systems. All men are not socialized equally.
Through the process of recovery, something happens to us that changes how we express ourselves at the foundation of our identity: our gender. Many people can get confused about the difference between sex and gender, not to mention sexuality (covered later in this book). Our sex is a biological and physiological attribute based upon having specific genitalia and other key distinguishing factors (breasts, etc.), even though there is much variation among human beings, even physiologically. Gender, however, is a social construct. It varies according to so many things and is a fluid concept. What masculinity means in one country versus another can be very different. How we express our gender is malleable and often changes over time and even through the course of relationships.
Many of us are unaware of what happens to our gender in recovery and personal growth because it occurs in the context of our recovery, as part of a bigger process of learning and growth. That was certainly what I found when I interviewed men over fifteen years ago for my master’s research, as well as among the men I interviewed for A Man’s Way through the Twelve Steps. When I asked, “How have your ideas of being a man changed since getting into recovery?” the number-one answer was “They haven’t.” I followed up with “You mean before recovery you walked around hugging other men? Asking for help? Talking about your feelings?” It was only when these changes were pointed out and they began to reflect on the question that they saw they were very different from the men they were before recovery. The same thing happened with a number of the men I interviewed for this book.
Men and women are essentially raised to be half human beings: Women are given one part and men the other. The breakdown could look like this:
We hear from an early age that “boys don’t do that” and “girls don’t do that.” Case in point: I was visiting my sister a few years ago. I was wearing a necklace made of different-colored, small, rounded stones. When my two-year-old nephew saw it he said, as intelligibly as he could, “Why are you wearing that?” “What?” I said. “That necklace. Boys don’t wear necklaces,” he said with great seriousness. I laughed, and yet I thought to myself, holy sh%$! Seriously? That young? My daughter also does this all the time. She doesn’t hear it from me, but she still “knows” that boys don’t paint their fingernails or wear long hair. It is not at all uncommon for her to make comments like “Boys don’t do . . .” and “Girls don’t do . . . .” These are observations she is making about the world in which she lives, and if I do not challenge those comments they become fact for her, stored in the processor of her brain. It becomes part of her Water, with no awareness on her part that it is happening. It happened to me, and it happened to you.
There Is No Gender Neutral
Without breaking into a treatise on oppression and marginalization, we cannot ignore the reality that some people receive benefits and advantages in this society simply because they belong to a certain category. And others get just the opposite—deficits and disadvantages—because they belong to another category or, said another way, do not belong to the dominant group. In terms of gender, men are the dominant group in our society (as in many others). Our society is patriarchal and “maleness” is the norm, the expectation, and even the subconscious default for many men and women. Unless both men and women are aware of this, it infiltrates all of our relationships in insidious ways. Once we are aware of it, we can choose to transcend it.
The issue of gender becomes even more complicated when you consider gay men or men of color who are part of a dominant group (men) and also members of a minority or marginalized group. As Gary put it in A Man’s Way through the Twelve Steps, “Even though I am a man, I am a gay man, and being a gay man is the worst of both worlds. I am seen as a predator, weak, dangerous, sick, and as the ‘other’ all at once by the same people.” Psychologically, this can have seriously damaging effects on how these men express their masculinity and how they are able to engage in their relationships.
As we adhere to the old adage “To thine own self be true,” we begin to move toward wholeness as individuals. We round out the rough edges of our character and discover our true selves. The more we engage in our recovery and the process of personal growth, the more likely we are to move toward authentically expressing who we are. One aspect of this process is learning to love parts of ourselves that we were taught or told were not okay. Another aspect is coming to embrace parts of ourselves that we rejected. A third aspect is expanding what we see as possible, including ways of being that we never considered or had rejected without ever exploring, often because “boys (or girls) don’t act that way.” As I stated earlier, as a young boy I was always sensitive. I learned very early growing up in a violent alcoholic home that being sensitive was not okay (or emotionally safe). I learned to fear and hate that part of myself because I thought it was not manly. I have come to realize that it is a central part of who I am and I do not care if others think it is manly or not. In fact, it is a wonderful quality when I choose to express it in a healthy way.
Chances are you have your own examples of similar experiences. What is important is to be able to verbalize those experiences in a safe environment. This requires doing the work of self-examination and self-discovery. Equally important, however, is that you look at your experiences through the lens of gender to help the unseen become seen.
On a spiritual and moral plane, we don’t ever prosper by treating others as inferior or second class, or by engaging in any of the other ways human beings disparage one another. Nor do we ever prosper by accepting such statements. Such actions affect our spirit deeply. This is particularly
