One of the most common men's issues
I see discussed on
NGs is men's anger. Everybody is obsessing
about men's anger, characterizing it as uniting force
among men - "male" anger, telling men how
to manage it, and express it and suppress it.
What no one is doing is acknowledging WHAT IT IS that
men are getting angry about. And every time some man
brings up all the man bashing in the culture, or how
shittily men are treated, everybody tries to
"hush him up," so he gets angrier and keeps
getting angrier until he feels like he has been HEARD
or SEEN JUST AS HE IS. Instead, he keeps getting told
how he "should" be and, even when the
prescription is impossible or completely nuts, having
people ANGRY AT him for living a life of reality
rather than their fantasies of what they want him to
be.
The anger you see in a man is directly proportional
to the anger which he has absorbed over the years.
Letting that anger out is essential to ever being
able to let go of it and leave it behind. But it
takes a very long time to learn how to be focused and
articulate with anger. It is a mature skill and takes
lots of practice. It is something older men could
teach younger men, except that younger men distrust
older men these days.
Men are expressing a lot of anger these days. It
comes from 25 years of having their collective
character assassinated in the public consciousness.
Men have been turned into criminals for trying to be
good fathers. Everything has been turned upside down
for them. Where they expected recognition and
appreciation, they received blame and hatred.
The extent of men's anger can easily be seen in their
withdrawal, not their violence. Boys are bailing out
of schools because the schools hate boys so much. Men
of all ages are quietly going against the impossible
demands and expectations placed on them. Silencing
them did not immobilize them and they have found ways
to express that anger even if they couldn't win a
semantic word game about how they expressed it
vocally. They are expressing it by their absence.
The men still arguing with women are the ones still
trying to reach understanding. They are the ones who
still believe in women. The rest have quit talking to
women completely. Or rather, they have quit listening
to women while they rag on incessantly.
Anger is a natural reaction to a feeling of being
attacked. Anyone who doesn't see how men are under
attack every day, just isn't looking. The cultural
role and contributions of men have been
"deconstructed" into rubble during the
course of the past 30 years. Men have been tarred
with the broad brush of "the enemy" and
women have refused to let men be their allies.
Everything men do has been under attack, and people
still wonder why men are so angry. No one ever
acknowledges that the culture decimates any man who
quits doing that which the culture also ridicules
them for doing.
The notion of benign intentions on the part of men
has been replaced by universal suspicion of malice.
The very valuable social asset of a reputation has
been destroyed culture wide. The social fracturing
which has resulted in migration of large percentages
of the population into urban areas makes it harder to
get to know people individually and leads directly to
the formation and use of stereotypes. Social
transgressions like lying, which would reflect so
badly on an entire family with long-standing social
ties that the individual lives with an awareness that
his/her actions can harm other people indirectly, go
undetected when the only thing that people know of
each other is what they see in front of them. The
entire notion of internal controls of behavior, what
one might call a sense of ethics, has been
discredited by radical feminist theory.
Thus we have moved into an era where there are no
ethics, no internalized cultural controls and
substituted a massive snarl of government regulations
and the much touted RULE of LAW. Except the laws are
so incredibly biased against men that men have lost
faith in both the justice system and the government.
And when a man expresses anger about any of this, he
is essentially told to shut up.
The more trapped a man is in situations which are
eating him alive, the angrier he will be. The more
verbal abuse and criticism he takes for his efforts,
the angrier he will be. The more he has had his own
needs used to manipulate and exploit him, the angrier
he will be. The more condescending bullshit he has
had to put up with from women, the angrier he will
be.
The key to resolving the anger which comes from being
under attack is to take oneself out of the line of
fire, if possible. If you are not called upon to do
battle several times per day, over time the battle
reflex will die away. All the arguing with women is
counter-productive in two ways. First, it just keeps
the frustration level high because the arguments fall
into such stereotyped patterns. Second, it reinforces
the stereotype of angry men which women already have.
A better solution is turning one's back on the source
of the anger. Anger is like an animal that needs to
be fed. It is far easier than most people realize to
starve it to death. At a certain point of not being
heard, it is best to unhook from the attempt and
accept the fact that this other person is simply
never going to accept the truth about you. Cut that
person loose immediately.
This is not to say don't speak out. When someone says
or does something incredibly offensive to you, point
it out and point out how obnoxious it was. DON'T get
into an argument over the other person's
"right" to have done it. They will always
feel righteously justified in their bigotry.
But, speak out and then turn your back. Don't waste
your time on these people.
Don't try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your
time. And it ANNOYS the pig.