Mending Masculinity: The Mythic Journey Toward Respect and Honor
Back in the fall of 2014, I penned "An Open Letter to My Fellow Men" and set off a minor brushfire of criticism, mostly from the male-dominated culture of Silicon Valley. Writing it, I began to unravel something larger.
This series is not my sob story, and it is not a sermon. I am not interested in political correctness, feminization, or emasculation — far from it. My intention is to empower people, men especially but women too, to be better partners, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and above all friends.
The women in my family are avid readers — my grandmother, aunts, and mother all read voraciously. Because of them I had a lifelong acquaintance with literature and myth: Tolkien as a child, Greek and Roman literature in school and university, and as an adult the myths of the indigenous Southwest and the gnostic schools of Europe.
For this essay I invoke Hephaistos, the Greek god of the forge — protector of inventors, sculptors, and smiths. A deeply masculine archetype, yet introverted, and lame: Hera's child, rejected by his mother for his deformity and thrown off Mount Olympus. There is no fitter analogy for controlling men — crippled by their lack of depth, in unconscious pain — than Hephaistos: the bitter, thwarted man-child. His revenge was a golden throne for Hera that would not let her stand; when the gods begged him to release her, he refused: "I have no mother." That wound gets acted out by men who spend extravagantly on their women only to control them. Fittingly, Hephaistos is also the archetype of the technologist: the first roboticist, builder of metal automatons.
Like Hephaistos, I am wounded, and fully aware of my strength as a man. I struggled with my wound, with self-control, and with accepting the powerful women in my life. I don't anymore — I have a relationship with the wounded Hephaistos in me, and fashion myself anew from that innermost material.
I use archetypes to empower. I am not here to take men down a notch — I want to lift us up. I want us to be better men, and to honor what is sacred within us.
Toward Unbiased Polarity
First, repeat after me: "The battle is over." The war is done. The suffering can end. I borrow "dynamic" and "magnetic" for the male and female essences from the philosophy of Actualism (Russell Schofield, via Ralph Metzner's Know Your Type, 1979). The dynamic is strong yet communicative, grounded, generous but not needy — fundamentally masculine. (I resist terms like "divine masculine"; that language turns me off, and I suspect it turns many men off too.) The magnetic is receptive but bounded, expressive without ostentation. The dynamic is functional, about doing; the magnetic is structural — all function moves through structure. To be specific: I am not advocating a genderless society — not even close.
Every man should ask himself: Am I forcing women to react to me? Do I need to control them? Do I feel they owe me the response I want? Am I creating a safe space for the women in my life? Am I silent when male colleagues harass women because I'm scared?
The 2014 letter said the rest. Four years in and out of the Valley had shown me the best — brilliant, visionary scientists — and the worst: drunk programmers catcalling women, men hooting from Ferraris. For a man with integrity, watching masculinity reduced to money and machines is ridiculous.
So I wrote to my fellow men: I do not fear walking to my car in a garage. I do not clench my keys walking home after dark. We live in a different world than women do. What we can do: make our streets, spaces, and offices safer for women, and stop letting the least civil among us poison them. We created the problem long ago. Enough is enough. Be men. Be responsible.
When men harass, they undermine the right to exist in public without fear — that's liberty, and we've fought wars for it. Stand with women, not in for them. Choose civility over chivalry, and over chauvinism. Next time your boss sneers about a woman at a bar, say something. Speak up — or the unacceptable becomes the norm.
And to preempt the "man-bashing" mail: no, I'm not gay, and I wasn't raised by militant lesbian candle-makers in Oregon. I'm the son of a Marine Corps officer and a ballet dancer, raised rough outside Boston — schoolboy hockey, finance, corporate strategy, close protection, bodyguard work. I'm a guy's guy if ever there was one.
We are not "built" to be morons. Testosterone implies no special rules — gorillas are stronger than us and never built a civilization. I believe the two greatest threats to humanity are violence and the treatment of women and children. Most of us do our part. I'm asking you to do more: change those around you who undermine our strength as men.
