CONCLUSION
It’s Time to Reinvent Masculinity

Reinventing masculinity is a humbling and audacious task.

We know that as well as anyone. While it’s been an honor to write a book about a better, updated way to be a man, both of us Eds have struggled along the way with masculinity issues ourselves. We shared stories with each other about growing up under the standard man-rules. Sometimes we laughed at ourselves. But sometimes we felt sadness, embarrassment, and shame as we recounted mishandled relationships and opportunities bungled because of self-doubts and fear.

We also had to admit that troubling aspects of traditional manhood still show up in our everyday life. Ed Frauenheim talked about losing his temper repeatedly with his wife and kids—classic cases of confined masculinity covering up fear or failure with anger and aggression. In a similar vein, Ed Adams spoke of overreacting to criticism by reproducing the anger he experienced from an alcoholic father.

After all, we’re like millions of men: imperfect, but trying to improve. Trying to break out of a limiting, outdated, and dangerous confined masculinity so as to dive deeper into liberating masculinity.

When we began to outline this book, we discussed what its central message should be. Given the troubled state of the world today, the idea that masculinity needed to be reinvented seemed apparent. But what would be included in the reinvented model? What guidelines would be used for such a bold project? The answers were hidden in plain sight. We needed to integrate compassion and connection into the soul of masculinity. We didn’t need to invent new masculine characteristics, exactly. We simply needed to validate elements within our humanity that have long inspired men and women.

Compassion is a gender-free trait. The fourteenth Dalai Lama said, “if you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”¹ Compassion and its cousin, connection, are values that promote love, healing, and cooperation. According to scholar Matthew Lieberman, social connection “is probably the single easiest way to enhance our well-being.”²

We also realized men needed encouragement to shed a cramped conception of manhood. We needed to recover a wider range of roles, elevate more ways of moving through the world, and extend our sense of community to encompass all of humanity and life itself.

As we take stock of the collective effect to reshape masculinity, we are both more concerned and more hopeful than ever.

We are concerned that the tyranny of confined masculinity could continue to dominate our culture. Confined masculinity is out of step with our times. It is incapable of comprehending or embracing our increasingly diverse, complex, and interdependent world. It prevents men from living full lives, damages and diminishes their relationships, thwarts their success at work, and impedes them from being responsible citizens. This version of manhood often lionizes anger, violence, prejudice, misogyny, fear, oppression, and misunderstanding. And yet the risks of this masculinity are greater still. Its combativeness, selfishness, intolerance, and myopic vision are taking us to the brink of extinction.

But this isn’t the only option available—and herein lies our hope. We have the power to redefine masculinity by living the best of our humanity. We have been hardwired to form attachments to one another, to create bonds, and to maintain deep connections with others beyond our immediate tribe as well as with the earth. Every day, every one of us—men and women—participates in creating, maintaining, and changing our cultural beliefs about manhood. The way we talk to each other, our intimate and extended relationships, our practices at work, our political leadership, our religious principles, and the way we parent our children—all are interwoven in our view of manhood.

While this book is written primarily for men, the changes needed to integrate liberating masculinity into our culture will happen much more rapidly and profoundly with the support of women. Men operating from a confined masculinity have constrained and harmed women over a long period of time and in many horrific ways. Among those ways is how women have been co-opted into the confined fold. Sometimes, to succeed in a “man’s world,” women themselves have adopted the beliefs and behaviors of confined masculinity. And some women have encouraged the most aggressive and “me” focused traits in men—while dismissing the men striving to expand their conception of masculinity. In these senses, the reinvention of masculinity is everyone’s business.

To be clear, we men are responsible for our own liberation. We can no longer avoid the necessary inner work, or expect women to do that work for us. And we have much to do to right the wrongs our gender has done under the influence of confined masculinity. Still, everybody advances when women join hands with men on the journey toward liberating masculinity.

This notion is expressed eloquently by Dr. Holly Barlow Sweet, the first woman president of Division 51, the division of the American Psychological Association committed to the study of men and masculinities. Sweet writes:

The once-common belief held by many women that men have all the power and privilege and do not suffer . . . shortchanges both men and women. Empathy for men’s struggles to be free of restrictive sex role norms helps us all. In a zero-sum game approach to gender, the more attention we pay to men, the less attention we have available to pay to women. In a gender empathy approach, the more attention we pay to men, the more women also benefit.³

Will you adopt a “gender empathy approach”? Will you show greater compassion toward people, regardless if they are a man, a woman, or someone who declines to define themselves in either category? Will you seek to connect more deeply with those around you, to recognize your shared humanity?

At its core, this is what it means to move toward a liberating masculinity. It’s a journey toward greater kindness and love. All human beings have this path available to them, and we invite you to get moving.

To men in particular, we encourage you to walk down the wide and expanding path of liberating masculinity. It doesn’t matter where you start. You may be at the far end of the spectrum, believing that men must be hard-bodied, hard-working, and hard-hearted. You may be in the middle, torn between beliefs you grew up with and the sense that there is more to life as a man. Or you may be far along the road—unshackled by outdated rules and helping others to live more freely as well.

There isn’t a finish line, or there isn’t a single finish line. Enjoy milestones like deep satisfaction at a daughter’s high school graduation, a raise at work resulting from improved cooperation, or the collective thrill of helping to build a new community garden or elect a wise leader. Yes, savor those moments.⁴ And keep moving. You can always go deeper and further toward a liberating, expansive masculinity.

And you won’t be alone. Already, many men are on the move. Men of all ages, races, creeds, nationalities, and sexual orientations are breaking out of a confined masculinity that limits the full expression of their humanity. They are courageously embarking on an intrepid adventure into their hearts and into the shadowy, uncharted corners of their souls. They are facing down fears and finding they can both enlarge their lives and lift up those around them.

Men are fathering their children as never before, connecting and staying involved in their lives. Men are tearing down the forbidding wall of homophobia to connect with other men with love, honesty, integrity, and vulnerability. Diverse sexual orientations and gender expressions are becoming less feared and more integrated into everyday life. Men are becoming more aware of racial bias, and people of color are seen in more and more positions of influence. Social justice matters to many men who see the need for a more loving, compassionate, and connected world.

Many of our organizations now have leaders who are relinquishing top-down, stoic, selfish playbooks in favor of collaboration, caring, and social responsibility. Important questions are being asked about the holistic needs of people at work and about the impact of corporate decisions on the environment. Men, in partnership with women, are reinventing organizations to become more satisfying, sustainable, and soulful.

Still, there is so much more to do. We live in dangerous times. Times that include suspicion, shaming, hatred, and the willingness to harm others for some perceived slight. Microbes and viruses morphing into pandemics can bring out the darkness in our humanity. We see a rise in hate crimes, antisemitism, racial prejudice, unwarranted incarcerations, inequality, and crimes of selfish greed. Both sides of this human coin, the shadow and the light, exist—but only one of them is capable of moving us out of a self-centered “me” perspective and into a “me and we” perspective. The task is to become conscious of the shadow and bring it to light. This enables us to confront ourselves, in the fullness of our nature. Confined masculinity is not up to that task—but liberating masculinity is. If we wish to live in greater harmony and spiritual growth with each other, then liberating masculinity is essential.

The soul of masculinity refuses to be ignored or replaced by commercialism and shallow relationships. The soul of masculinity may go into hiding, but it will keep knocking at the door of humankind. It knows how important it is to be inside life rather than just being a spectator. Soul wants us to live within today’s realities and contradictions while also moving us toward more evolved ways of living together with all sentient beings. Most importantly, the soul of masculinity wants us to be in awe of the wonder and mystery and possibilities of life. By honoring the soul of masculinity, we can forge a compassionate, connected manhood. One that frees us from obsolete, harmful man-rules and enables us to thrive in our relationships, in our work, and in our communities.

The alarm clock is ringing and it won’t stop. It’s time for each one of us to wake up and move from a confined manhood to a liberating masculinity filled with the power of compassion and connection.

It’s time to reinvent masculinity.

With gratitude,

Edward M. Adams and Ed Frauenheim