MAN-MAKING BLOG: March 2014

March 29, 2014

(Updated) Urban Climbers and that Dangerous Teen Brain

I'm often asked by frustrated, sometimes overwhelmed parents, "Why is my teenage guy so (foolish, angry, impulsive, restless, etc.)? If you have a teen male in your life, or work with them in any way, I'm sure you've had the same thoughts and felt the frustration. When it comes to civilized behavior, responsiveness, great decisions, mature conversation, and a stable emotional life from a teenage male, be prepared to wait patiently, for years!

The very short story about the teen brain is if you remove environmental factors, such as parenting deficits, education, community effects, and economics, you're left with the problem of an under-developed pre-frontal cortex. The parts of a young guy's brain that evolve initially are the parts that deal with physical coordination, motivation, and even emotions. It's part of the reason our guys love physical challenges, excitement, competition, and why they get so fired up about winning and crushed when they lose.

Sadly, we really are dealing with
a developmentally disabled person!

Unfortunately for everyone involved, contemporary research tells us the pre-frontal cortex, where good decisions are made, is not fully developed in young males until the mid-twenties. Our young guys are wonderful, funny, and energetic, but the hard truth is their teen brains are just not fully wired when it comes to clear thinking and judgment. Sadly, we really are dealing with a developmentally disabled person! One really good book for parents on the topic is, Why Do They Act That Way?: A Survival Guide to the Adolescent Brain for You and Your Teen, by Dr. David Walsh Ph.D.

Below is a video, sent to me by more than one blog reader, each in their own way expressing awe and horror at the degree of foolishness being demonstrated by so many young men. In it you'll hear both young male bravado and their "I can do it" rationalizations. You'll also experience the peer pressure to go extreme which really compounds the danger. In the beginning you'll hear the fears and frustrations of a single mom (with a more fully developed brain) and she tries to understand and cope with her son's behavior. This is a hard video to watch on a whole bunch of levels.

If this clip doesn't show up above use this link.

What's really scary is that this one clip has had over 2.5 million views. The copycat videos by young men seeking to build their urban climbing credentials, and even urban climbing business opportunities, are now proliferating. In the video, what was made clear is the places so many of these young men live, there isn't else much to do. Another way to think about it is there are few other reasonable outlets for this powerful young male energy. The young guys, in a way, have no choice. Their powerful bodily chemistry and rapidly developing physical strength and capabilities are driving them to take challenges and validate the warrior energy they feel. Sadly, they don't yet have a brain capable of thinking through the consequences. As inexplicable as it is to adults, doing these crazy stunts makes perfect sense to them.

This is another example of what's been true about adolescent males for ages. If we don't very intentionally support, guide, and initiate our young men, you can be sure they will find ways to initiate themselves in to their own and often tragic version of manhood. Michael Mead in his book, Men and the Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of Men (1993-Harper San Francisco), paraphrased an old tribal proverb, "If the fires that innately burn inside youths are not intentionally and lovingly added to the hearth of community, they will burn down the structures of culture, just to feel the warmth." It means if we don't channel this powerful young male energy, there will increasingly be adolescent-driven chaos in our communities, and too many of them will be jailed or lost just like the urban climbers who have been killed.

On my Man-Making Blog I've written a number of posts on the topic of the adolescent brain. If you go to the blog and enter "brain" in the search box on the right, you find 3 or 4 articles which will point you to other resources. A Google search on teen brain also brings up a lot of great content. One website on the topic I really like is from the National Institute of Mental Health.

As to the more general topic of teen development, the book list on the Man-Making website suggests many books that explore the different forces, physical and environmental, working to shape the lives of our young men for better and worse.

CONTACT: Send Earl a message. I'm very interested in your thoughts on any man-making post or topic. I'm available to help bring man-making initiatives to your community or organization.

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March 17, 2014

Teaching Young Men To Prevent Sexual Violence

Tim Wernette is a Gender Equity Educational Specialist with the University of Arizona/AZ Department of Education, and a regular contributor to the Man-Making Blog. He has been involved with the pro-feminist men's movement since the late 1970s and has volunteered at the Tucson rape crisis center doing educational outreach. He sent along this personal story about how sexual assault touched his life when he was a young man.

What today I know was a sexual assault happened at the house I was renting with some other guys near Michigan State University. It happened in the late 1960s when I was a young man in my early 20’s. I was a naive, sexually inexperienced, and ignorant college kid. It was also in the days before the women’s movement and feminism. The short story of what happened is one of my roommates picked up a high school girl he knew to party for the weekend. She was a virgin, he got her really drunk Saturday night, and he took her upstairs to his bedroom and had sex with her. After more than forty years, my memory of the details is a little hazy, but the feelings of sadness, regret, and guilt for not saying or doing anything to prevent that act are as vivid as ever.

. . . the feelings of sadness, regret, and guilt
for not saying or doing anything
to prevent that act are as vivid as ever.

In those days people didn’t talk about “date rape.” If they talked at all about men and sex, it was all about a guy’s high sex drive and need to score, or women asking for it by dressing/acting seductively. Rape is what happened in some dark alley or park, and was done by a sleazy stranger. There wasn't any education about sexual assault or date rape. Any prevention messages you might hear were all directed to the women: Don’t go out alone at night; Don’t drink too much; Take a self-defense course and learn how to protect yourself. The unspoken message was “boys will be boys,” or maybe even, it's okay for boys to be boys and act out sexually. At the time of the incident, my feelings aside, I really didn’t realize my roommate was actually doing anything wrong.

Today, it’s called sexual assault and it’s understood that it’s not really about sex, but about violence, power, and feeling control over someone. We also know that most sexual assaults are committed by someone the target knows, an acquaintance, a friend, a partner or even a husband. In addition to educating girls/women about the dangers of sexual assault and how to protect yourself, today, boys/men are also being taught about sexual assault and the dangers for men as perpetrators and as potential targets.

In addition, there is a new front line in the sexual assault prevention arena. It’s a focus on the bystander(s). Bystanders can be anywhere along a continuum from actually doing nothing and supporting the assault (as I did), to stepping in with actions to prevent the assault. One solid article on that topic is from the New York Times titled, Stepping Up to Stop Sexual Assault. The article explores this new terrain where both women and men can intervene with both gender targets and perpetrators to stop sexual assault before it happens. Among the interesting facts, the article mentions somewhere around 3% of college men account for 90-95% of campus rapes. The goal is to get the other 97% of guys to “come into the room and help with the problem.”

Research shows that if one person stands up and intervenes, others will also; but if no one stands up, others won’t either. This challenges all of us to develop the courage and skills to step in and keep a possible sexual assault from occurring. I’m still haunted by the look on the girl’s face when she came down for breakfast Sunday morning, and her fear, shock, and bewilderment about what had happened to her the night before. I want to do what I can to insure our young men know how to stand up for potential victims and have the courage to do so. I don’t want anyone to have to live with sadness, regret, and guilt for not intervening.

For those working with young men, there are lots of resources on the web that can help with formal and informal bystander intervention training; just Google it. As the New York Times article, which Tim mentioned, points out, when one guy gets in the way of another guy in pursuit of getting laid, it’s not called “bystander intervention,” but “shot blocking” and there is some considerable skill involved. In the educational campaign from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, their website suggests a simple formula called The 3 Ds of Active Bystandership. The 3 D’s are Direct, Distract, and Delegate.

Here is a short video clip showing a skilled active bystander in action. He’s using a slightly different formula, Disrupt, Distract, Redirect, but it’s a great example of what might be possible.

If this clip doesn't show up use this link.

If you have a way to do it in a group or just in a conversation, take the risk to let young men know where you stand on sexual violence. Keep it simple, show a video, or have a conversation about this blog post. Offer your own version of bystander training and in doing so, let them know when it comes to sexual violence, you have to take a stand. It might just prevent very painful consequences in the lives of some of the young men and women you know.

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March 10, 2014

Masculine Gravity and the Guy's Hike

The last Man-Making Blog post described the work of two powerful man-makers, men who I claim have caught man-making fire. Another way I speak about that desire to be more and more involved with young men is "masculine gravity." It's a term that describes the mix of fun, pleasure, joy, laughter, and a powerful sense of rightness that works on men who spend some time in a pack of men and adolescent males.

HOW MASCULINE GRAVITY WORKS: After a very little time spent in a mixed-age guy-pack, a man quickly realizes the young dudes are not as scary as he thought they'd be, he learns the young guys like having them around, and that the time with these guys is really fun! In addition, a man will find all kinds of reminders of his adolescent years, for better and for worse. There is always the kid who reminds a man of the young lad he was as a teen, and the exchanges and behaviors of the young guys conjure up memories of his days in the boy pack. In that side-by-side way men make connections, a man may find a young guy hovering around him or asking him a question that starts a conversation. If a man responds to that invite, a connection is often made. If the hike or event is long enough a man is likely to hear young guy stories that will touch his heart with their unreserved and often familiar truths. All of these forces acting together create a feeling he's in the right place, he really is made for this work, and leaves him with a hunger for more. That's masculine gravity, and it always leaves a man feeling better about himself for the time spent.

. . . it always leaves a man feeling better
about himself for the time spent.

I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't feel that gravitational pull, and you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't feel some form of pull or call to this work. So just FYI, this "force" is already working on you.

On a recent outing, I was actually able to see masculine gravity working as I watched a group of men ripen to man-making over the course of a five hour event.

Wasson Peak is the highest peak in the Tucson Mountains. At the top, you get a 360 degree view of the whole Tucson basin. Hikers have to work to earn that view. On January 25th, the Desert Men's Council, a group I belong to, held their Annual Guy's Hike. On that day, a multi-generational tribe of almost 30 males, between the ages of 9 and 70 reached the summit.

It is always sweet for me to see how the guy-pack drama unfolds. In the pre-hike circle, it's usually the case that not everyone knows everyone else. So in the circle, we ask each male to say his name and what he's looking forward to in the experience. There's a little safety training, counting off by numbers, and then making a commitment to face the ordeal together. We agree to support each other and to all arrive together at the top.

Shortly after we head out, the young guys unconsciously begin to immediately sort themselves by age, personality type, and fitness level. The men will initially struggle to wrangle the pack, and then eventually yield to the overwhelming energy of the young males who take off up the trail. Also, as it always happens, the oldest alpha male in the boy-pack follows the leader's instructions and holds the young dudes back till the slower boys and men catch up. Waiting for those at the back of the pack is a challenge for the faster guys, and trying to step it up and not be the caboose is a challenge for the slower guys. As a result of these demands and sacrifices, somewhere along the way up the mountain, we become a true band of brothers. Along the way, we explored a long wash, scrambled over huge boulders, and found ancient petroglyphs on the walls. We passed fenced-off entrances to old mines and had spectacular vistas all the way.

At the top there was relief, awe at the vista, and lots of congratulations all around. The group photo really says it all. All males, pulled together in a common victory. The way down was quieter as the fatigue set in, but we were welded together in a way, and the waiting and supporting each other got easier. It was a demanding five-hour round trip hike that ended with very tired bodies and many new friends and happy memories. Oh, the young guys reminded me they got awesome Facebook pictures and some serious bragging rights along the way.

In the check-out circle, everyone is asked to name a feeling as a highlight from the hike. I guess "tired" is a feeling because many claimed it, and even in that, we were on common ground. The majority of the check-out statements reflected how the experience had exceeded their expectations, that it was really a lot of fun, and that it was good to be outdoors and active and with a group of guys. Even being physically exhausted and with tired legs and sore feet, most of the young dudes said they wanted more, soon! There were four men who individually came up to me after the hike, thanked me, and said they, too, were interested additional events, our Rite of Passage weekends, and the other work of our Desert Men's Council group. It's all about masculine gravity.

Here is the link to just a few of the photos from the hike. These pictures only begin to tell the story of the perfect day, the laughs, new friends, physical effort, BIG vistas, and tired bodies at the end. If you look very closely, you can see the masculine gravity working, pulling the guys together, and pulling men toward man-making!

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