Read an Excerpt
The answer to all of these difficulties is to openly discuss nurturance: how it looks, how it feels, how men can learn to practice it from the men who already know how, in addition to communicating through women or fumbling around for years learning by trial and error. Simplistic answers gleaned through this fumbling do not help. For instance, some men may actually avoid nurturing or protecting women out of fear of “white knighting.” But white knighting isn’t synonymous with all forms of protection. White knighting means acting protective in ways that aren’t attuned. Paternalistically telling her what she needs instead of listening to what she says is white knighting. To stop white knighting, don’t stop protecting; just protect while you also listen and believe. Protect her, actively, in the ways she actually wants protecting and not in the ways she does not. Protecting people you care about—in ways that are attuned and responsive to their actual needs—is a normal, needed, and healthy part of nurturance. Why is there no high-profile institute for men teaching nurturance skills to men? Men need to do this work with other men—not alone, but in addition to working in accountable social relationships with women. In other words, men who are learning must continue to learn as they have been doing, but then share that learning with one another. Further, our research and education institutions need to recognize this work as valuable, rewardable labor. It may be a long time before a nurturing masculinity is recognized and rewarded socially the same way an abstract intellectual masculinity currently is. In the meantime, men need to do this healing work every day, behind the scenes, reaping the rewards of having women and people of all genders feel safe with them, and of growing their own self-love and love of one another. The reward of creating safe bonds is that in these places of trust, a warm glow of meaning and purpose emerges. An inner circle of trust and vulnerability allows movement and rest: it lets the bees come and go from the hive. It creates shelters of chosen family and beloved community from which action—challenges to racism, sexism, institutional violence—can arise, a safety net to catch each other’s bodies and souls, the foundation that allows risk. The opposite of masculine rape culture is masculine nurturance culture. This is men’s work to do, and yet it is needed by people of all genders who have men in their lives. The rewards are waiting. Are you a nurturing man? Do the women in your life—partner, daughter, sister, friend, coworker, parent—tell you or show you that you make them feel especially safe, close and cared for? If so, how did you learn? How do you open up spaces for men who want these conversations to begin to have them? Every single man I asked this of said, “Both men would need to want it.” Fear of closeness and certain masculine codes of interaction are real and are part of the picture. But many men are struggling with these questions, locked alone in their own little boxes. Men have to do this with other men, despite the difficulties in doing so, for three reasons. First, men understand what it is like to be a man much better than women do, and they can teach one another while understanding what it actually feels like and having compassion for one another. Second, frankly, women cannot be responsible for healing men while also protecting themselves from male violence and neglect, which is still endemic and thus a daily part of women’s lives. Finally, one of the great patriarchal distortions of the human spirit is that each man lives in solitary confinement, thinking he can and should solve problems alone, that he shouldn’t need others. Jumping the barriers that keep men from talking about emotions with other men is itself a fundamental change, one that reduces shame and confusion. So how do you know when men around you—the friend you just met for drinks, the colleague you have collaborated with on projects for years, the hockey buddy—may actually be quietly confused and thirsty for this kind of learning?
