22 Harper's Magazine / November 2019

“ 22 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2019 Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 22 9/24/19 1:41 PM REPORT MEN AT WORK Is there a masculine cure for toxic masculinity? By Barrett Swanson ou’re being reborn,” the voice I’ve been the recipient of countless un- exhorting us to recall certain touch- “Ysays. “Exiting the womb of sought hugs. Already I have sat in stones from our childhoods. Earlier in your mother. Coming into the Large Groups and Small Groups, and the weekend, he’d recounted for us the earth as a small baby. Everything is watched dozens of middle- aged men sense of brotherhood he’d shared with new.” It is a Saturday morning in mid- weep with shame and contrition. I’ve his platoon, as well as the abyss of anx- March, and right now I’m lying on a had a guy in the military tell me he iety and depression he’d fallen into after yoga mat in a lodge in Ohio, sur- wants to be “a rock for his family.” I’ve returning from deployment. “I had lost rounded by fifty other men who’ve heard a guy from Ohio say that his my tribe,” he’d said. Blaine now serves come to the Midwest for a weekend of beard “means something.” Twice I’ve as a director of programming at Evry- manhood- conrming adventures. The hiked through the woods to “recon- man, which is run by a coterie of guys voice in question belongs to Aaron nect with Mother Nature,” and I have from the tech and media industries. For Blaine, a facilitator for Evryman, the been addressed by numerous men as the past two years, they’ve been hold- men’s group orchestrating this three- both “dude” and “brother.” I have per- ing weekend retreats in places like the day retreat. All around me, men are formed yoga and yard drills and Berkshires and Joshua Tree, hoping to shedding tears as Blaine leads us on a morning calisthenics. I’ve heard seven foster what they call “masculine emo- guided meditation, a kind of arche- different men play acoustic guitar. I’ve tional intelligence.” In preparation for typal montage of Norman Rockwell heard a man describe his father by say- the retreat, I did my best to acquaint boyhood. “You’re starting to figure ing, “There wasn’t a lot of ball- tossing myself with their rhetoric. Mostly this things out,” he says, in somniferous when I was growing up.” Three times consisted of spending a lot of time on baritone. “Snow, for the first time. I’ve been queried about how I’m “pro- their Instagram, marveling at the pre- Sunshine. Start to notice the smells, cessing everything,” and at the urinal ponderance of Ansel Adams–type the tastes, the confusion. The fear. on Friday night, two men warned me photographs: black- and- white shots of And you’re growing. You’re about ten about the upcoming “Anger Cere- mountaintops overhung by frescoed years old. The world’s huge and scary.” mony,” which is rumored to be the skies, with smiling guys in the foreground Even though it’s only the second weekend’s “pièce de résistance.” wearing rucksacks and ball caps. The day of the Evryman retreat, it’s worth As we lie there on the floor, I’m photos were underscored with heart- noting that I’ve already been the sub- vaguely aware of Blaine, a U.S. Special rustling captions— about men breaking ject of light fraternal teasing. Already Forces veteran with tattooed shoulders down stereotypes, about men no longer and a corn-silk mustache, who’s pacing suppressing their emotions— to which Barrett Swanson is based in the Midwest. around the labyrinth of yoga mats, still had been appended a host of earnest Collages by Ben Giles REPORT 23 Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 23 9/24/19 1:41 PM hashtags: #manup, one said; #wilder- I were forced to generalize, seemed those pale, misanthropic creatures nessmakesyoubetter, said another. to stem from a gnawing sense of who contend that feminism has After several minutes, Blaine’s med- purposelessness. Granted, I myself caused their downfall on the sexual itation transitions into adulthood, and was no stranger to the bleak terrain marketplace and who have responded almost immediately, the mood in the of melancholy. I’d weathered a series of with either “blackpilling” (accepting lodge changes. Lots of guys around me Richter- scale depressions in my mid- one’s fate) or “looksmaxing” (using are sighing raggedly as Blaine offers a twenties, and if these friends conded extreme plastic surgery to carve one- more grueling contemporary update: in me so readily, it was probably be- self into an Adonis). No less odious “Then all of a sudden you’re responsi- cause they sensed that, on some level, are the clerics of the “alt- right,” such ble for a lot. Wife, kids, partner— I could understand. as the lantern- jawed Gavin McInnes, everyone is looking at you. Dad, dad, Then there was my neighbor, the the paterfamilias of the Proud Boys, dad: What do I do? And you don’t even thirty something man who occupied who thunders about the virtues of know if you know yourself. You gotta the apartment next to mine, who patriarchy and forbids masturbation make the money. You gotta be tough. lived alone and worked at one of the among his adherents. And let’s not “That’s great and all,” Blaine forget the self- help maven Jordan continues. “But today you’re dead. Peterson, he of the all- beef diet You’re going to die today.” and three- piece suits, who relies ONE IS DISINCLINED THESE DAYS TO on fossilized Jungian archetypes to arly last January, the Amer- FEEL SORRY FOR MEN, CONSIDERING parse the differences between men E ican Psychological Associa- HOW ADEPT WE’VE BECOME AT and women. tion promoted its new Most of the contemporary men’s treatment protocols for men and FEELING SORRY FOR OURSELVES movement, though, isn’t so overtly noted, decisively, that “traditional political. For instance, the New masculinity” was toxic. Owing to York Times recently lauded the outworn habits of stoicism and aggres- big tech companies in town—I knew ManKind Project, which has been sion, it argued, men were hurting this thanks to his corporate- issue tote enlisting fresh recruits into its “New themselves and others, and were es- bag. I had never exchanged more Warrior Training Adventures” since chewing the care they needed. It was than a passing greeting with him in the mid-1980s. There’s also Brett difcult not to read this as an under- the hall, but through the scrim of Mc Kay’s Art of Manliness podcast, statement. After all, over the past few our parchment- thin walls, I could which has garnered over a million years, men have been killing them- hear the war- blitz of his video game subscribers and which idolizes the selves in unprecedented numbers console, which began like clock- bullish virility of Theodore Roosevelt. and, as of 2017, made up 79 percent of work each Friday evening and con- McKay believes that, just as in the the nation’s suicides. Men have also tinued without rest—rain or shine, nineteenth cen tury, men have been been disproportionately affected by winter or summer, with little regard swaddled by conveniences and thus the recent opioid epidemic, and ac- for holidays— until the end of the suffer from “malaise” and “excessive count for nearly 80 percent of the ar- weekend. It’s difcult, in hindsight, softness,” as well as faulty mental con- rests for violent crime. to account for the sadness I experi- trol. The panacea for such enervation, I came across this information enced listening to him holed up for McKay believes, is his online training last winter, but in truth, I didn’t days on end in front of a screen, regimen called “The Strenuous Life,” need a bulletin from America’s blasting Elder Dragons or whatever. which is essentially just Boy Scouts for foremost corps of psychologists to Sometimes, late at night, he would men. After completing “Weekly Ag- know that a lot of men are strug- get drunk, put on indie music from ons,” participants earn “badges” for gling. It’s hard to say when it started the late 1990s, and sing along in a competence in myriad skills, which exactly— two years ago, maybe voice that was full- throated, plain- are denoted with epithetic signiers three?—but most of my conversa- tive, and remarkably on key. such as “Gentleman Scholar,” “Social tions with male friends had begun For a long time, I told myself that Dynamo,” “Lock Picker,” and “Sarto- to resemble unofcial therapy ses- none of this was new. Probably ev- rialist.” The twelve- week program of- sions. Lots of these guys, whom I’d eryone felt this way as they began fers participants a snazzy gray and known since college, were scattered the long, slow descent into the dol- army- green uniform, plus a “hand- in cities across the country, and drums of middle age. And anyway, some, pocket- sized” handbook “styled whenever we called one another to one is disinclined these days to feel like the scouting manuals of old,” all catch up, the charade of light chit- sorry for men, especially considering of which veers into the self- parodic chat quickly devolved into a dirge of how adept we’ve become at feeling and possesses the zany, boutique aes- existential updates. Several of these sorry for ourselves. One need only thetics of a Wes Anderson lm.

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