BT2HB: My Proem
Pull up the anchor.
Children may not obey, but children will listen,
Children will look to you for which way to turn,
To learn what to be,
Careful before you say “Listen to me”,
Children will listen— “Children Will Listen”, Into the Woods
What is wrong with men? How will we help the men? The male loneliness epidemic. This is the pervasive news story of the last 3 years. The “solutions” have included the Manosphere, Substack think-pieces (like this one), and, of course, Professor Scott Galloway of the Stern School of Business.
We’ve touched on my skepandry previously, but now we have arrived at the deep dive. Boys Trip to Hell and Back emerged pretty organically — from a mythology study to Nolan’s upcoming release to an ever-increasing disillusionment. And when I feel myself becoming disillusioned, I catch myself and lean forward instead of away. As you can see from the syllabus, we’ll be reading the core text and several other companions to gauge the full picture.
If the above idiots can’t solve manhood, I will. How hard can it be?
Provocation
Much like my previous dive into the Sad Girl literary trope, this course required a kickoff PowerPoint. And…I might have pulled it out of my ass right before the meeting. I had been working hard at the core syllabus, but I didn’t have my plucky “questions to be answered” slide. So I pulled out:
“Are men truly as simple as they claim to be? And if so, why are they in charge of the complex web that is human society?”
The simplicity of man has come up with some regularity in my conversations with them over the years. And every time, I can’t help but hear it in Steve Harvey’s voice from the Think Like A Man audiobook that I first engaged with during my early 20s.
The immediate response from me to the above prompt is an obvious NO. Men are humans. Humans are complex — systemically, emotionally, mentally, socially. The acknowledgment of this complexity is what can sometimes diverge across the gender divide. But I’ve heard this phrasing enough, especially in the realm of dating advice, that I flippantly chose it as the lens through which we should investigate masculinity.
In my presentation of the prompt to men in the subsequent week after its half-ass creation, it revealed the following reactions:
⅓ said an emphatic yes to simplicity, but also said the world was simple
⅓ said “well, some of my friends are, but that’s not me, bro.”
⅓ had a similar read to me
The simplicity claim stems from a refusal to engage with identity. To analyze the various experiences that made you who you are requires a ton of vulnerability. It is easier to lean on a one-size-fits-all societal definition of manhood, especially if there is not a safe community to actually express your individuality.
What might be even more troubling is the basis of the “one-size” model.
Welcome to the Gallosphere
If you have searched “male loneliness epidemic” on any social media site in the last year, the name Scott Galloway is bound to appear. After all, he is a Professor of Brand Strategy (note: not psychology, gender studies, etc.). He has found the right combination of brashness and heart to put him at the center of the issue. You can hear him speak in depth here on the subject of masculinity and on several other business and political podcasts that he hosts.
This is not going to be a hate train — for that you can listen to Diabolical Lies. But what I will call out is the essentialism and flaws in his core framework.
According to Galloway, men are meant to:
Protect
Provide
Procreate
See how it’s 3 Ps. Isn’t that cute branding? See how simple it is? Now, these are powerful verbs that can be used to cover a lot of situations. “Protect” can cover protecting the rights of those with less societal power. “Provide” can be giving back to your community. But what happens when you go on a podcast tour that gets clip-farmed?
Protect becomes “Go to the gym”
Provide becomes “Make as much money as you can”
Procreate becomes “Shoot your shot whenever possible”
The necessary nuance is shaved off in most of his recitations. Sometimes he’ll make a half-assed recovery side comment (“Sometimes Provide means stepping aside and helping at home”), but he rarely goes deeper and often undercuts his own point (see: his rant about how no one wants to fuck a middle school principal — which by the way, coughIWould). The shorter definitions are a lot more palatable and confirm what social media is already pushing on men, but whitewashed under mental health. I guess it’s hard to wrap up and make sexy “Don’t harm. Help.” Oh wait — I just did.
Two takeaways that I actually enjoyed from his podcast appearance flew by so fast you might have missed them. First, the encouragement of men’s groups. (We will get to the importance of male conversation and friendship next week.) The second point originates from the co-guest Logan Ury but is signed off by Galloway, which is the use of fiction as a vehicle to self-reflection and empathy — which surfaces my suggested fourth P: Process.
The first three lovely action words mean shit if one isn’t thinking through the second, third, fourth order consequences of them. Learning from the failures versus repressing the bad feelings they surface. From what I know about Odysseus, he’s a thinker, he’s clever, he’s flawed. And guess what, he’s still celebrated as one of the West’s first heroes.
So — are we ready to start the journey with him?
Men of the House
Well actually, the Odyssey does not open with our hero. It opens with his household in his absence, led by the two sides of underperforming masculinity — the suitors and Telemachus.
Under the Galloway model, the suitors subvert every P. They don’t protect; they threaten to kill Telemachus. They don’t provide; they ravage the household and drain the food and wine stores. They don’t procreate; it’s implied they sometimes have sex with the maids (with unspecified consent), but Penelope is seen as a prize for her economic value not her fertility.
Telemachus never met his father, being an infant when Odysseus left for Troy. He’s never seen what true love or courting should look like; when these men “shoot their shot”, it feels like an invasion. Penelope demonstrates her loyalty to her husband through the strategic delay of remarrying, even setting up a weaving ruse. She cannot afford to completely shut down the courting process due to societal expectations of perceived widows. With her necessary shoring up of an alternative patriarch should her husband be officially dead, she is the true protector of the household. And she is hated for it.
Telemachus starts to find his voice when he makes his first admonishment against the suitors as a man. He blames Ithacan society:
I do not blame the suitors’ overconfidence, rough ways and violence, in eating up this household; they risk their lives, supposing that the master will never come back home. But I do blame you others, sitting passive, never speaking against them, though you far outnumber them.
— Book 2, The Odyssey (Wilson Translation)
He is not mature enough yet to lead the opposition, so the suitors and the town do not take him seriously. Women continue to be the backbone as Athena disguised as an old friend of Odysseus encourages Telemachus to set off for news of his father. She understands the importance of closure and clarity for Telemachus to claim his full self. She is the father figure he is seeking.
Life on Display
In Telemachus’ journey to Pylos and Sparta, homecoming is on display in three different iterations. Nestor and Eurydice have a loving household that remains intact after the war. Menelaus and Helen have visible tension due to Helen’s role in the war’s incitement and continuation. Both households recount the worst case scenario of Agamemnon, where the return home led to betrayal and death. Which of these scenarios will be the case when Odysseus returns home: restoration, reparation, or demise? What role must Telemachus step into?
Telemachus must navigate these potential outcomes on his own and that isolation for young men persists today. In his Atlantic essay “What Parents Of Boys Should Know”, Joshua Coleman presents the idea that fathers are having fewer conversations with emotion-focused language and lean more towards achievement and competition. When the tools to process aren’t taught, repression and often violence tends to be the default response. Provide and protect become the only legible roles, and both get expressed through competition rather than connection.
Coleman also shares that the male discouragement and, therefore, aversion of emotion is actually a quite “new” concept from the late 19th century, and not as primal as the claims often brag. Before early stage capitalism, before needing another word for bromance, men embraced affection and freely shared it; now, boys are scared of being a “sissy” — which used to be a term of love towards sisters. The change in cultural views must come from both genders. We all share the responsibility of teaching emotional identification and healthy regulation. I’ll give you a hint, the regulation is not just getting a dog…or God forbid, flippantly procreating.
Speak, Muse, So I Can Speak to My Dad
He just had it so easy.
So? I said, even though I knew what the answer would be. What’s so bad about that?
Because that’s not the way life really is.
— Telemachy, An Odyssey
The consistent companion text I’ve chosen for the remaining sections of this course is Daniel Mendelsohn’s An Odyssey. The memoir so far has served as a great example of processing relationships through an external source. Mendelsohn’s father chose a life of mathematics and straight-forwardness but held pride that he engaged with the Classics in his youth. Mendelsohn himself diverted the common path set out for men in his father’s time: from his sexuality to his field of study to the way he has started his family. The differences aren’t necessarily the tension between the father and son, but there is a feeling of disconnect.
When his father starts attending his lectures, the original Odyssey text serves as a conduit to discuss real value differences. His father holds pride in self-sufficiency and undercuts Odysseus’s heroism because there is manipulation by the gods. Mendelsohn as the leader of the classroom must guide the seminar honestly. We hear multiple value systems from his other students and he sometimes peppers in his own. But he is always aware that he is on stage in front of his father proving himself and the value of his vocation. To quote one of my “students”: “Okay before we discuss anything, we need to unpack everyone’s daddy issues.” I can’t wait for the complexity.
xx À la prochaine escale.
Process is a good fourth P