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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