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Warren Farrell and Ken Wilber take an in-depth look at the many social, cultural, and psychological challenges that young boys are facing today, while noting how many of these challenges are the products of well-intentioned — but often misguided — feminist praxis.
Not that feminism is inherently hostile to men. Far from it. As Warren notes in his book, many prominent feminist leaders over the decades have understood the critical role that fathers play in their children’s development and psychological well-being. He quotes Gloria Steinem, who famously said, “what the world needs now is more women at work and more dads at home”. He also recalls Betty Friedan’s popular book, The Second Stage, which was a call for men to consciously begin the same process of self-liberation and redefinition of their identities and roles that women have struggled with over the last century — going so far to say that the major goals of feminism can never be fully attained if men are not also engaged in an equivalent praxis on their side. As the saying goes, if you only row the boat with one oar, you’re just going in circles.
As the era of #MeToo continues to put a spotlight upon the many inertias, indignities, and injustices that women face in the public sphere, Farrell and Gray are bringing some much-needed attention to the inertias, indignities, and injustices that men are experiencing in the public and private spheres, and in their private lives.
“We have seven federal offices of women’s health, and zero federal offices of men’s health. Can you imagine the sexism that we would accurately be accused of if women died five years earlier than men, and died earlier of 14 out of 15 of the leading causes of death, and we had seven offices of men’s health, and zero offices of women’s health? It’s not conceivable that that would be the case. Yet that is the case. And more potently, no one is protesting it, and very few people even know about it.”Warren Farrell
This critical discussion helps us better understand the enormous anxieties and rates of depression that many men are facing today, resulting in men committing suicides 350% more often than women. Men have traditionally been regarded as “disposable heroes” by society — as Warren often says, a man has classically demonstrated his value to the family by being away from the family, i.e. earning money. And when the “hero” side of that equation gets deconstructed by extreme feminism, men are left only with their disposability. When men are surrounded on all sides by messages they are inherently biased, privileged, toxic, and unconscious participants in all kinds of social evils, they are left with no solid ground to stand upon in terms of their identity — the lack of a strong “men’s movement” results in a lack of resilience when their traditional identities are dismantled, which leads to increased fragility, increased desperation, and yes, increased toxicity. Which means that the praxis that is most critical of “toxic masculinity” — extreme feminism — is itself partly responsible for creating that toxicity in the first place.
Power and powerlessness both lay at the heart of our ongoing cultural discussion of equality among the sexes. Too often we perceive this as a somewhat binary distinction — one group as the oppressor, the other as the oppressed — and thus one gender’s power tends to be defined by another group’s powerlessness. But there is much more to this story: both men and women experience power and powerlessness, and no single gender has a monopoly on oppression. Or, as Warren Farrell often points out, “the weakness of men is the facade of strength, while the strength of women is the facade of weakness.”
Just as the industrial age helped create the conditions allowing for women to move en masse into the public sphere, challenging and overcoming and transforming the cultural inertia of previous generations, perhaps the information age will afford men a similar opportunity, as new technologies like automation will force men to redefine their identity in relation to things like work, career, and money, and to hopefully confront and liberate themselves from the deeply harmful legacy of disposability and detachment that has come to define men’s roles in culture and society.
Written by Corey deVos
Image by Jeff Lieberman
Reflections
- As a man, describe a time you have felt powerless based solely upon your gender. How did you confront and/or overcome this feeling of powerlessness?
- As a woman, describe a time you have felt powerless based solely upon your gender. How did you confront and/or overcome this feeling of powerlessness?
What is the Boy Crisis?
It’s a crisis of education. Worldwide, boys are 50 percent less likely than girls to meet basic proficiency in reading, math, and science.
It’s a crisis of mental health. ADHD is on the rise. And as boys become young men, their suicide rates go from equal to girls to six times that of young women.
It’s a crisis of fathering. Boys are growing up with less-involved fathers and are more likely to drop out of school, drink, do drugs, become delinquent, and end up in prison.
It’s a crisis of purpose. Boys’ old sense of purpose—being a warrior, a leader, or a sole breadwinner—are fading. Many bright boys are experiencing a “purpose void,” feeling alienated, withdrawn, and addicted to immediate gratification.
So, what is The Boy Crisis? A comprehensive blueprint for what parents, teachers, and policymakers can do to help our sons become happier, healthier men, and fathers and leaders worthy of our respect.
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About Warren Farrell
Dr. Warren Farrell is the author of many books, including two award-winning international best-sellers, Why Men Are The Way They Are and The Myth of Male Power. His most recent books are Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, which is a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and Why Men Earn More, which is about how the gap in pay between men and women really isn't discrimination and how women can earn more.
About Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is an internationally acknowledged leader, founder of Integral Institute, and co-founder of Integral Life. Ken is the originator of arguably the first truly comprehensive or integrative world philosophy, aptly named “Integral Theory”.
This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I wonder, what would be the social reaction to a men’s movement as described above? Will men be vilified if they try to assert that they, too, are treated unfairly in certain circumstances? The answer, I think, isn’t so clear cut. It feels to me like any attempt by a men’s movement to assert our needs would be interpreted as a binary attempt to take back power or to oppress, which obviously ignores the complexity inherent in these problems.
Moreover, I also wonder how we can create tools to better disentangle people from manufactured identities around gender. I suspect this is where spiritual practice comes in, especially “witness” style practices that try to pull back the core monad of our consciousness from the constructs we put up to define ourselves.
Anyway, I think I’ll add this book to my (really really long) reading list.
-Russ
I agree with this, though I think the problem lies as much with these “men’s groups” as it does with the surrounding cultural atmosphere. I’ve seen multiple groups form on the web around work like Farrell’s, and, using David Deida’s stages, the ones that tend to get the most traction appear to be either expressions of stage 1 masculinity (e.g. incel culture, PUA culture, and many aspects of “red pill” culture) or, less commonly, stage 2 masculinity (e.g. groups that focus on their own victimization — however, I think many men’s groups are reacting to the “feminization” of men that we commonly see at stage 2, which has been held as ideal masculinity by the green altitude for decades now.) Either way, most of these groups I’ve seen have largely been reactive, and almost totally anti-feminist in orientation.
I think that in order to succeed and actually rise to the challenges of our time, we need to see groups that are organized around more integrated stage-3 masculine principles — which can better integrate masculine and feminine polarities, transclude the fruits of the feminism project, and blaze a new path that speaks more directly to men’s dignity and helps them better align their strength, their vulnerability, and their capacity to execute their vision.
Very well said, and totally congruent with how I see things, which is that “patriarchy” has come to be commonly defined as the “hitherto male-dominated public sphere” (as opposed to the traditionally female-dominated private sphere) — the result of a once-consensual and necessary division of labor, but one that has since become largely outmoded and made obsolete by the continued unfolding of culture and technology. I think that “patriarchy” in modern terms has come to describe the inertial resistance and residue as our modern self-organizing systems were disrupted and forcefully re-organized by women moving en masse into the public sphere for the first time. Social autopoiesis is a bitch, especially in rapidly changing times.
Thus “patriarchy” is not a historic oppression of victimized women by sociopathic men, it’s the Zone-7 inertia of our public-sphere systems being forced to transform at a rapidly accelerating force. Which means that “patriarchy” as we know it today is actually a very recent phenomenon, and emerged right alongside women’s suffrage. And there have been very real and often injurious patterns of resistance that have taken generations to identify and overcome as women began to occupy the public sphere, and I imagine will continue for generations to come.
And here’s the thing — men are encountering very similar resistances and inertias when it comes to their relationship with the “private sphere”. The major differences being, men have no organizing force telling them they should value the private sphere as much as the public, as compared to women who have spent the past century trying to master both. However, much of this comes down to transformations in the LR quadrant — in America, the combination of industrial mass production technologies, and the need for women to labor in factories during WWII, created a cultural tipping point and irrevocably altered the social fabric, bringing women into an entirely new relationship with the public sphere.
Men have not yet encountered an equivalent LR-quadrant push out of the public sphere and into the private sphere, and therefore the “men’s movement” is still a full century behind the feminist project. However, my sense is that the “automation age” that will emerge over the next two decades will begin this process, as men are suddenly forced to cultivate an identity that is not so dependent upon work, money, and social status.
I often use myself as an example — because of the new freedoms our technology allows us, I am able to do the vast majority of my work from home with my laptop, and thus have the opportunity to be far more directly involved with raising my daughter and being present for her — an opportunity I know the vast majority of men throughout history have not had. I have the freedom to find my own balance between the private and public spheres, and to craft an identity and a sense of personal meaning that includes both. (Not that I hold myself as a paragon of fully integrated stage-3 masculinity, but at least I have the time, space, and energy to do the work.)
So the opportunities for men to take this next step and to form a worthwhile men’s movement that is aligned and integrated with healthy feminism are increasing. My only question is, will it be able to successfully coalesce and gain traction in this culture of social-media-induced aperspectival madness? I am somewhat less confident of that — and in fact, I would say that many/most of the regressive stage-1 masculine cultures I described above are themselves the inevitable expressions of this madness. We shall see…
Totally agree with both of your takes that it needs to be an and/ or both and conversation. That is my main beef and ultimately where I removed myself a little from my involvement of the men’s world. I used to go on a men’s call with the owner of the biggest website ‘A Voice For Men.’ While alot was said was great about it, a rare place for men to talk about the suffering, it did to me have this entirely partial view that frankly got nihilistic with the underlying subtext being ‘the world doesn’t give a shit about men’. Some of which is true frankly, while some of the demonizing of the men’s movement may have some merit in some of it’s less than healthy parts my stance is that it’s much more the world’s lack of embracing and treating men as disposable more than the faults of the movement itself. Alot of the very angry/ nihilistic part of the men’s movement is repeated exposure by the media displaying men’s rights as laughable or some rape enabling abomination that wants women back in the kitchen, so I have disagree slightly with you there Corey that it is as much to blame, not blameless but some of the reaction from feminism and the media is I feel at least, more guilty of the hate dishing out than what comes out of the men’s rights world which mostly just battles to be taken seriously.
I agree to an extent with this, though to me it’s running before you can walk a little. While women are in a fair place to do that, as you said they are a century in front of men in the gender debate. Men’s story of victimisation and suffering hasn’t even been heard yet. And perhaps you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I always had an aversion to some extent to Deida’s work, although there are other reasons also, based on the fact there was no mention of male disposibility as far as I know in his work, or that while men generally receive more respect and power, women get more empathy and support.
In fairness though I suppose it can be argued neither gender can fully appreciate the limits, flaws, strengths and relational side of their gender without the other. Men can’t sit with their victimhood and the typical feminist view represses female agency or their own female historical kind of power.
Great point, that doesn’t get the limelight it needs to the in the traditional feminist narrative, and also unfortunately doesn’t get appreciated in the men’s rights world either. I’ve heard Farrell talk about a great point that what may well help men appreciate the private sphere more is online entrepreneurial work from home jobs, that’s clearly on the rise and quite obvious how that would enable more equality around child rearing. I’ve heard Paul Elam the owner of A Voice For Men as though that’s a pipe dream or inconsequential, ans I say unfortunately Farrell just doesn’t get the popularity he should, even though ironically his books are the first and most potent to kick it off.
His 50 or so evidence laid out points about the importance of fathers and what they do in his new book is one of the most important and potential for healing around. If there was hope for it I’d put Warren Farrell top as the spearhead if he can get more appreciation.
I share this concern, and my experience validates this. Alot of the cultures I see war on the other side. Tribes built on echo-chambers, ridiculous extreme feminism leads to extreme masculinism (that word needs inventing by someone lol), where there is a deeply nihilistic eye for an eye, red meme battle over power. I put my faith in men and women’s natural attraction and love for eachother and some more integral views gaining traction. Even in the pro MGTOW view I see this unconscious attraction to the feminine play out, but there is this sense that dating is not safe, or women are inherently selfish, or you will be shamed by the culture for appreciating women.
The body thing is definitely true. That is essentially the essence of the incel (involuntary celibate) culture. Basically if you took women’s need to be beautiful, flipped that on it’s head, made it about needing to be hyper masculine, with a bunch of semi body dysmorphic disorder types armed with rigorous studies and facts about measurements of skulls, shoulder to hip ratio and everything else you’d name then you land at the incel subworld.
Personally my stance is that there needs to be a rigorous look in to the good and bad parts of masculinity and femininity. Both held equally, and seen in relationship as there is no bad or good without the other side. Perhaps combined with spiral dynamics, the evolution of the genders in partnership, all relevant territory for integral making a difference to the debate. The history of the genders is a story of love more than war, and some when that needs to be remembered.
My life experience is similar, but with some differences. I had certain problems beginning in early childhood.
According to social norms, I had a learning disability which meant I didn’t learn like other people, although I always had a curious mind and measured high on fluid intelligence. Specifically, my learning dsability is a “word finding” issue. It has to do with word and fact recall, even when I knew the info. For example, as a child, I might not have been able to give the name of a close friend when asked.
This involved to learning things in webs of relationships, rather than as isolated factoids. Or rather this chunking of info was a compensatry skill that I learned from a learning disability therapist, an ability often picked up by high-functioning autistics. That period in the '80s was the beginning of the research on word finding and I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time to benefit from it.
Nonetheless, it didn’t make my childhood all that easier. I still hated school and struggled. A contributing factor is I’ve also had social and personality issues, but this aspect was never fully diagnosed. There was depression early on, although even the diagnosis for that only came after a suicide attempt during college.
I’m of an old enough age to have grown up before they handed out lots of diagnoses. This was a point of frustration. Even my depression had no real explanation, as my childhood was relatively comfortable and non-traumatic. It felt like I had no good reason and, according to hyper-indivdualism, the fault must be some kind of character flaw and failing of moral essence.
A factor might’ve been lead toxicity, as I spent my earliest years in a factory town that did pump out air pollution with lead in it. My generation, GenX, did have the highest lead toxicity rates in recent history. But no one was talking about that much in the past and it still barely gets passing mention in the corporate media.
Along with depression, I vaguely recall the psychiatrist speaking of something along the lines of a “thought disorder”. I was put on Risperdal which is an anti-psychotic but also used for depression. But having self-diagnosed myself as an adult, it seems I’m either what used to be called Aspsergers’ or the more common but less well known specific language impairment, both of which can impair social behavior.
Here is the thing. I’m certain my issues were largely social and environmental, not merely personal as would be explained by genetic determinists (and social Darwinists), but that isn’t to say genetics along with epigenetics wouldn’t have been part of it. That sense of an unfair and unjust society that blames the individual has caused me a lot of anger and despair over the decades and part of me is surprised I’ve lived this long.
I somehow made it to middle age, just having turned 45. Recent changes in diet, variations of low-carb, finally made the worst aspects of chronic depression to disappear. Yet a lifetime of depressive habits of mind and relating remain in place. I’m trying to relearn how to not be depressed at a late stage in life.
For all that I’ve been through, it’s never occurred to me to frame my own issues as part of a “boy crisis”. I’m not sure why that it is. I guess I don’t feel convinced that our society is easier on girls than boys. Sure, girls do relatively better in education, but then they do relatively worse outside of education. Plenty of prejudice remains against women.
Life can be shitty for both sexes, if in different ways. I tend to see race and class being far more significant. And on that level, I’ve always acknowledged that I have relative privilege. If I was an inner city black boy or poor white girl, life would be a thousand times harder than what I’ve had to deal with. I’ve always had a strong sense of how much worse things are for most people in the world. Simply to be born in a Western country puts even poor minorities at an advantage as compared to most other countries.
Struggle and suffering is always relative. Anyway, it’s pointless to participate in the oppression Olympics in aguing that one’s suffering is greater and more important than everyone else’s. My sense is that there is a real crisis going on and it’s negatively affecting most people across demographic divides.
In a sense, there is a boy crisis, particularly for disadvantaged boys. But that might not be the best way to frame it, as it turns a shared crisis into a competition of identity politics. In becoming divided, we are incapable of facing our shared crisis and responding well. It becomes yet another point of demagogic manipulation and reactionary politics.
Part of my attitude is that I grew up in a Green environment. My parents, although conservative Republicans, were going through a socially liberal phase as a young married couple. They raised my brothers and I in hyper-liberal and New Agey churches (Science of Mind and Unity). I internalized feminism and the ideal of the sensitive male before I could understand such things.
Even so, I’ve never reacted to that early upbringing. My childhood remains a happy time of life in many ways. That idealistic upbringing of progressive faith has saved me from fully and permanently falling into cynicism. It has never occurred to me that any of my problems had anything to do with me being male, per se.
My sense of crisis, even from a young age, always focused on larger issues of the entire society. Having grown up in the late Cold War, I was bottlefed on visions of post-apocalyptic dystopias. Overpopulation, pollution, environmental destruction, etc also was heavy on my mind. It seemed to me that this society in general was harmful to pretty much everyone.
That has become ever more clear to me as I’ve aged. In studying history, I’ve come to realize that the sense of mass crisis and moral panic goes back centuries and, in some ways, millennia. All of the main fears that keep popping up first emerged during the Axial Age, the first period of civilization as we know it based on imperialism and individualism.
There are many possible reasons behind this ongoing crisis. There is the increasing hierarchy, authoritarianism, and inequality. Also, there is the individualism that has become hyper-individualism, as opposed to the bundled mind of Buddhism and many tribal societies, which relates to the WEIRD bias we modern Westerners are trapped in. Language plays a big role in this, specifically as shown in linguistic relativity. But I suspect that changes in diet might be among the most key factors.
Whatever it is, much has fundamentally changed about humanity and society. And it’s experienced as fearful and threatening. We focus on narrow issues like the “boy crisis” probably because the larger sense of anxiety and distress is too overwhelming.
This is heartbreaking to hear, and it’s so common. Schools right now require obedience through domination. Yet it’s hard to imagine a school system where the power is truly in the students hands, where students work because they want to rather than being driven by fear. Such a wicked problem.
I’d like to share a technique I’ve learned from spiritual teacher Tara Springett. It creates healthy boundaries keep out negative energy and unloving expectations from people and a crazy society.
I hope that you won’t dismiss it as childish or silly, some do. It’s practised by seriously spiritual practitioners. Tibetan monks etc.
Imagine that you are inside a bubble with the diameter of roughly your length. The ball is about 4 inches thick and made out of a transparant material that is glowing with beautiful light. The bubble should be felt as an intelligent energy, rather than dead materia.
Inside this bubble you feel completely safe, embraced, tranquil, joyful and loved. Both feel these qualities emanate from within you and feel like you are receiving this from the bubble.
The walls of the bubble are semi permeable, good energy such as love and joy flow freely through the walls. But negative energy such as domination, suppression, expectations or anything that is less than completely loving and accepting, is kept out by the walls. I’m talking about negative energy both from people and our thoughts, perhaps the idea of our father.
This bubble subconsciously symbolizes your boundaries.
If negative energy gets through the walls against our will, it might be a sign that you need to set and articulate boundaries in relation to the negative entity. This is a function of the throat chakra. Talk to the intruding entity, be intuitive.
Then just sit for a while and bask is self-love, self-acceptance and happiness, while protected by the bubble
The visualization itself is only a tool to get in touch with the subtle sense of how your boundaries should be. Keep the subtle sense and the attitude throughout the day.
If the bubble feels limiting in any way, you are doing it wrong on a subtle level.
The point of this is to cultivate healthy boundaries and the attitude that we won’t tolerate negative shit from the outside. There is absolutely no good reason to ever be affected by other people’s unloving, negative energy. There is no good reason to not be happy right now! It’s about allowing yourself a level of happiness that is unwisely seen as unacceptable by others and our culture.
The technique is elaborated on in more detail in the book: Higher consciousness healing.
I hope you found this useful.