Reaching Up for Manhood

GUEST BLOGGER: The following book review of Reaching Up for Manhood: Transforming the Lives of Boys in America by Geoffrey Canada, has been contributed by Tim Wernette. Tim is a Gender Equity Educational Specialist with the University of Arizona who speaks primarily to high school audiences in the hopes of changing the destructive aspects of gender stereotypes.

If you would like to be a guest blogger and review a book, a film, mentoring program or other resource with a man-making slant, please give me a shout.

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One of the more malicious aspects of racism and classism is that disenfranchised people (the poor, people of color) are often marginalized and silenced. That’s why Geoffrey Canada’s Reaching Up for Manhood is especially important. He speaks to us from his experience as an African-American male growing up in the impoverished South Bronx, and as an adult mentor of boys in that community. His insight into the struggles most boys and men face is combined with his understanding of the special challenges faced by young, poor, inner-city boys and men. In the book’s preface, Canada speaks to all of us when he states:

“More and more I have become concerned with what boys think they should be, with what they believe it means to be a man. Our beliefs about maleness, the mythology that surrounds being male, has led many boys to ruin. The image of male as strong is mixed with the image of male as violent. Male as virile gets confused with male as promiscuous. Male as adventurous equals male as reckless. Male as intelligent often gets mixed with male as arrogant, racist, and sexist.”

In addressing issues of risk-taking, self-worth, fatherhood, and sex, Canada covers important ground. He also adds needed perspective on becoming a man when he discusses drug use in the lives of young men and how, when combined with unemployment, they create a devastating mix for many males living in poverty.

While Canada speaks eloquently about the urgent need for adult men to reach out to young males, I would especially encourage those who have programs that include manhood-initiation rituals to read his chapter “Mentors.” It discusses the impact gang membership and imprisonment has on many inner-city young men, and how the lack of understanding of cultural differences can lead to disastrous consequences:

"If we are to save the next generation of young boys, they need to be connected to men so they see examples of the possible futures they might live out as adults. At the same time, we have to be careful that we do not go charging into children’s lives without being properly prepared for the different ways they see the world. It’s as much an issue of class and culture as of race…We must spend time understanding what the children with whom we want to work are going through and living with every day…The gap between the poor and the non-poor, regardless of race, is growing ever larger in this country. Things many of us take for granted – safety, enough food, decent housing, a trip to the movies – poor children may have to struggle to obtain. This often creates circumstances where conflicts and hurt feelings between children and well-intentioned outsiders occur unintentionally."

Canada has written an important book about the importance of mentoring boys and young men, especially those disenfranchised by race and poverty. He has offered all of us an imperative to reach out to these young males, not just so they can avoid imprisonment and/or death, but so they can achieve their full potential and become constructive contributors to our society.

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I’m Really Angry about Creepy Guys

I’m REALLY angry at how one really sick guy can change the world in so many horrible ways. Jerry Sandusky's perversion, in truth, has damaged the lives of millions of people. He’s has become the Bernie Madoff of pedophiles. If you can stand to even think about all this for just a little longer, try on the following:

The obvious is the depth of the damage to the souls of all the young boys he abused, including his own foster son (one of five). They are men today whose lives and the lives of their families, are now filled with dark corners, churning emotions, hidden pain, and destructive shame. The horror of living with an abuser in your life, even after the abuse has stopped, is really incomprehensible to me.

Then there are the many layers of competent, dedicated, and otherwise good people at Penn State who lost it and made horrible and morally inexplicable decisions to not intervene and protect young boys. People who should have immediately taken physical and legal action against this perverted man and done what we all know was the right thing to do. Instead, they hid in denial hoping to insulate their institution from the necessary and inevitable consequences. Now they, and all the people around them, must try to find a way to cope with the tragic consequences of what they did and didn’t do.

Imagine all the students at Penn State and young people all around the world, looking for guidance from adults. All of these young people who, yet again, have to see adults in large institutions behaving shamefully and letting them down by modeling unethical, selfish, and dishonest behavior.

To the list of those hurt, add all the parents of young males everywhere. They now must wonder if they can trust any youth-serving group, mentoring organization, coaches, male teachers, scoutmasters, the men in their religious institutions, and even the men in their neighborhood. It represents a huge tear in the fabric of community trust.

Of course we have to include Men, as a class,
getting kicked in the balls just because they have them.

Of course we have to include Men, as a class, getting kicked in the balls just because they have them. Because the pedophile creeps we hear about are men, now all men are suddenly suspect. Good men who want to show up for young males now have to hold back, or make sure they have a woman with them when they are around boys to avoid indictment. Now there is another reason for men to not trust other men in general, and certainly not trust them with their sons.

I’m glad this guy has been stopped and will certainly be punished. I'm glad a whole school community, and maybe the world, will get a chance to look in the ethical mirror. But I’m angry at the media, first, because of its relentless hunger for the next sordid detail. Secondly, I’m really angry the media never gives us a counter-point profile of all the men who have made life-giving and often life-saving differences in boys’ lives. Most men can remember guys who showed up for them, but we rarely hear a story about all the gifts they brought and those who today continue to bring into young male lives.

And then there are the hundreds of thousands of lost boys. Young males without fathers or involved male relatives, boys in foster care, in juvenile detention or jail, all the boys who are lost and severely under male-nourished who now will have an even smaller chance of finding a male ally, advocate, or mentor to help them on their journey to manhood. Because of the sick creeps, the really good men who might have shown up for these lost boys must now have even more courage to withstand the insinuation that if they want to help a young male, it might be because they are pedophiles.

Yes, I’m sad and angry at how one very sick man can do so much damage. I'm sad a public and functional definition of a solid, mature, responsible, and generative "good man" is now getting harder to see in the world around us. Yes, I’m Really Angry that calling men to be man-makers in the lives of all our boys just got a whole lot harder.

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Questions for Men about Man-Making

In a blog post this summer I listed some Questions for Young Guys. If you have young males in a group, these are questions that will invite everyone to participate, and increase both familiarity and acceptance of one another. Some of them were simply conversation starters and others invited some degree of personal disclosure. I thought it might be a good idea to give equal time to men!

One approach for ripening men to man-making with boys is to help them remember their adolescent years. To remind them of the joys, discomforts, and the men that played important developmental roles in their lives. What follows are a few of the questions I asked of the men who contributed their stories to the Man-Making book. You can find additional questions at this link on the Man-Making website or you can download the PDF here. If you can gather a group of men, I guarantee questions like this, discussed in small groups, will lead to some very powerful sharing, are guaranteed to touch a man’s soul, and will be moving for all men present.

1. Important Male Mentors: Who was an important male mentor for you (other than your father) as you were growing up? Tell us how this man helped you along on your journey to manhood.  

2. Being between Boyhood and Manhood: Do you remember shyness, confusion, and the discomforts of no longer being a boy, but not yet being a man? Will you share a story about the rapid growth in your body, your voice changing, your general restlessness, feeling clumsy, stealing for the excitement of it, your emerging sexuality, embarrassing moments (first hard-on), pimples, being with girls, or testing parents' limits?  

3. Important Lessons about Manhood: What were some of your earliest lessons you were taught about how to be a man? Who taught you? Did the lessons come from your father, a relative, a friend, another boy, a person in your neighborhood, or someone else? Tell us about one important lesson you learned as an adolescent about something a man does or doesn’t do?

4. Learning How to Be a Man: Tell us about one of those moments when, on your own, you discovered or figured out one of the pieces to the puzzle called "How to Be a Man." It could have been from experimentation, reading, TV, movies, or just watching older boys and men. What was your discovery, how did you figure it out, and what did you learn?

5. When Did You Become a "Man": What was THE moment in your life when you knew, for sure, that you had become a "man"? What event, action, or ceremony took place so that you knew a line had been crossed and you were no longer a boy and had entered manhood? If you can't remember any defining moment, how do you feel about that now? How do you know you are a "man" today? Simply helping remember they too were adolescent males once upon a time, along with some of the detail, is a great way to put men in touch with the need for good men in boy's lives. I also like to remind men that the good men who did show up for them didn't have any special training!

If you want to take a whack at answering any of these questions, you can go to the Man-Making Blog site, click on the word "comments" below this post and add your response there. You can also send it along to me and I'll add it for you.

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Grounders: Boys, Men, and a Baseball Adventure

With the 2011 World Series in the air, it's a great time to think about baseball. I remember the fall pick-up games in the evening at the local park when I was a kid. Cool nights under the lights, smell of leaves in the air, the hard feel of the ball, and all the fun of having every young male from my small tribe gathered in one place to play the game. Baseball was a big part of so many boys' lives as they were growing up. The connection to other young guys, the physical activity, a code of behavior, being on a team, competition, and often having good men on the sidelines creates a very compelling mix for a young male, and good for him too.

Tom Slone is a man who loves baseball, kids, and he also understands the critical differences good men can make in boys' lives. When he put those passions together, he wound up creating an amazing adventure in which three men accompanied a pack of boys, to see 10 Major League Baseball games, in 10 different cities, and they did it all in 21 days! You have to love boys and baseball to pull that off.

Because Tom is also a mentor, business man, and natural teacher, he consolidated the story about the boys and baseball centered adventure into a book titled Grounders: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Journey of Baseball, History, and Mentoring. The book is full of great baseball tidbits, fun boy-on-the-road stories, and 33 life lessons drawn from their trek. Lessons which can improve anyone’s batting average in life.

Some of the wisdom embedded in Grounders lessons include pearls such as, “It’s OK to Look Back at the Past, Just Don’t Stare; “Help People Be Successful; and one of my favorites, “The Power of Recognition.” As with most of the 33 lessons in the book, the boys on the trip got a chance to experience The Power of Recognition working in real life. During the trip, one of their challenges was to catch people being good at what they do and then actually write them a note of affirmation. Tom helped the boys to learn that by appreciating others, you earn their gratitude, and you get to feel good too. Nice.

The heart of the book for me is how much Tom and the other men care about their young male traveling companions, and how they keep the boys thinking about the men they will become. As they travel from city to city and visit different ballparks, we go along as Tom pulls life-lessons toward the boys. He’s not only offering these young guys the trip of a lifetime, but in so many ways, he makes sure they extract important notions about life that will help them on their journey toward manhood.

In my research with men for the Man-Making book, “the coach” is often described as someone who had an important and often life-shaping influence in their lives. In Grounders, Tom and the other two men not only show up as great coaches, but also as allies, mentors, friends, and co-journeymen on one amazing baseball expedition.

If you like baseball and the idea of helping boys become good men, you’ll love Grounders. You can learn more about Tom Slone at the book’s website and you can order the book from Amazon at this link.

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Your iStuff, Steve Jobs, and a Man-Maker

You may not realize it, but you wouldn't have all your Apple iStuff if a very good man hadn't stepped up for Steve Jobs and the boys in his neighborhood!

In the October 6th issue of Computerworld's on-line newsletter there is an interview with Steve Jobs from way back in April of 1995. In the exchange, Steve talks about how his dad, Paul, a machinist, was very gifted working with his hands. He had a workbench in his garage where, when Steve was five or six, he partitioned off a small section of it for Steve. They spent a lot of time together tinkering with things, including some very basic electronics. But it wasn't until his family moved to Silicon Valley that Steve really discovered his passion for electronics and building things, thanks in large part to a man named Larry Lang.

Larry Lang was an engineer at Hewlett-Packard, a ham radio operator, and really into electronics. Here is how Steve describes Larry's unusual introduction to the kids in the hood:

What he did to get to know the kids in the block was rather a strange thing. He put out a carbon microphone and a battery and a speaker on his driveway where you could talk into the microphone and your voice would be amplified by the speaker.

That introduction worked. One man, sharing something he was interested in with the kids in his community, as they say, launched a thousand ships . . . or in Steve's case, lots of iThings. As a result of that initial encounter, Larry and Steve struck up a friendship and this led to Steve being introduced to Heathkits. Steve said, "These Heathkits would come with these detailed manuals about how to put this thing together and all the parts would be laid out in a certain way and color coded. You'd actually build this thing yourself."

Steve's confidence grew as the Heathkit catalog became familiar territory. Out of the time spent building things with Larry, Steve said he learned, ". . . what was inside a finished product and how it worked because it would include a theory of operation." And maybe most importantly Steve got, ". . . a tremendous level of self-confidence, that through exploration and learning one could understand seemingly very complex things in one's environment."

If you ever wanted evidence of the power of a good man to have a positive influence in the life of a boy, and even the world, Steve Jobs' story about Larry Lang is a solid example. Please do realize that you, being just the man you are today, without any special training, could be the Larry in some boy's life. If, like Larry, you find the courage to share yourself and your interests with the boys in your world, who knows the difference you will make.

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"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

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