Guest columnist Rob Okun: The 50-year-old ‘new’ masculinity

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz waits to speak during a campaign stop at Laborfest Monday, Sept. 2, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz waits to speak during a campaign stop at Laborfest Monday, Sept. 2, 2024, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash) AP PHOTO

Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, joins U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona for a roundtable discussion on challenges at community schools Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022, at the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley in Hanover Township, Lehigh County. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call/TNS)

Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, joins U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona for a roundtable discussion on challenges at community schools Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022, at the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley in Hanover Township, Lehigh County. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call/TNS) Rick Kintzel

STAFF PHOTO

STAFF PHOTO

By ROB OKUN

Published: 09-04-2024 4:04 PM

 

Since the presidential campaign shake-up in July, the national conversation about manhood is abuzz with talk of a “new” masculinity, embodied by good, decent men like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff. What’s actually new, though, is what’s now coming into focus: the consequences of years of men’s hard work to redefine manhood.

Masculinity has too often been narrowly characterized as poisonous and misogynist, and most men seen as patriarchal MAGA heads. The rest of us, apparently, just stood by mute, unwilling to challenge the bigots and bullies. That’s a lie. All men, including “white dudes,” have been taking back the narrative.

While it’s refreshing to hear the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Gov. Walz, and second gentlemen, Mr. Emhoff, cited as models of this “new” masculinity, it’s far from new. Men have been successfully crafting strategies to break out of the man box since the mid-1970s.

Nearly everyone is aware of the bad news about “toxic” masculinity — from men like Andrew Tate to groups like the Proud Boys. Few, though, know the good news about men’s efforts to redefine manhood.

Time for a little history.

For 50 years, a growing number of men of all races and ethnicities in North America and around the world have followed women in working to prevent domestic and sexual violence and protect reproductive rights, while also working to redefine and transform traditional ideas about manhood, fatherhood, and brotherhood.

The antisexist men’s movement incorporates a range of men and men’s experiences: from boys on the journey to manhood and fathering/mentoring to male survivors and men of color; from GBTQI+ men to men overcoming violence; from men’s health to men’s experience with feminism. Woven together, over the decades we’ve created a multilayered tapestry of one of the most important social change movements you may never have heard of.

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There are men — and women — around the world, working day in and day out for gender equality. Globally, the campaign is united under the banner of the MenEngage Alliance, a network of more than 1,000 members in 88 countries. In North America, organizations like Equimundo, Next Gen Men, Fathering Together, A Call to Men, and Men4Choice, have for years been transforming our idealistic aspirations into concrete action.

There certainly are men who feel marginalized, deeply resentful of women’s gains. Andrew Yarrow’s “Man Out: Men on the Sidelines of American Life” empathizes with them; men who are distressed about their place in contemporary society. They’re highly susceptible to being seduced by models of toxic manhood, characterized today by Trump and Vance’s unhinged bluster.

By contrast, Doug Emhoff and Tim Walz represent men able to integrate being both steady and strong and tender and vulnerable. As a high school teacher, Walz, for example, was able to simultaneously coach football and advise a gay-straight alliance.

Today, more men understand that we can’t ignore the power we hold in society. Not a power we earned, but one we received at birth simply by arriving on the planet in male-identified bodies.

Relinquishing our grip on the twin symbols of that power — privilege and entitlement — is not easy. Men fear both losing control and having less; fear the unknown wondering, “What will my life look like if I am not in charge?” It’s time for men to take a leap of faith and trust that our lives will be enriched in ways we can’t imagine if we loosen our grip and share the reins or, Goddess forbid, hand them over to women, perhaps beginning in November with Kamala Harris.

Men are now rejecting a fixed definition of masculinity, replacing it with an emotionally rich expression of masculinities. We are navigating our lives with both our eyes and our hearts open, beginning to see the contours of a manhood that celebrates rather than dreads men’s tears and uncertainties. Men are now able to negotiate the gender landscape on surer footing, better able to bear witness to women’s lives, and understand women’s realities — and our own.

Masculinity based on domination and emotional rigidity has failed men. Men have been working for five decades to replace those traits with compassion and vulnerability. That’s the masculinity inspiring men not just to move forward, but to unambiguously declare, “We’re not going back.”

Rob Okun (rob@voicemalemagazine.org), syndicated by Peace Voice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male, a magazine that for three decades has been chronicling the profeminist men’s movement. He writes about politics and culture.