“
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- con rming 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 con ded 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 thirtysomething 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 dif cult 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 dif cult, 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 signi ers 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 unof cial 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. men struggled with addiction and take a look online to nd the reac- By far the savviest and most normal- depression, or other conditions that tionary and often violent ways in seeming of the new men’s groups is Evry- could be named, but the more com- which men have responded to their man, a bene t corporation founded in mon complaint was something ailments. On the rightmost end of New York City during the winter of vaguer—a quiet desperation that, if the spectrum are factions like incels, 2017. I stumbled across their website
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Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 24 9/24/19 1:41 PM early last November and scrutinized were promising to help men get in Introductions are made with vise- like their sleek, unfussy aesthetic, no doubt touch with their emotions. For a handshakes, plus baritone recitations of intended to appeal to a more sophisti- thousand bucks, I could spend three provenance and profession. “I’m Matt. I cated gentleman, the kind of guy who days in the woods and nd an endur- do nance in Michigan.” “I’m Rick, and might scrub himself with Dove’s Men ing brotherhood. The condition was I’m a scientist from Ohio.” Before din- Care and consult Esther Perel’s podcast. I couldn’t just be a y on the wall, ner, I meet a lean, tan man with basset- What set Evryman hound eyes named Robert, apart was that they seemed who tells me that he’s au- acutely conscious of the thored over twenty vol- tradition of men’s groups, umes for something called which have a knotty his- greatbooksforboys.com. tory of being both reac- “What a lot of literacy tionary and essentialist. folks don’t realize is that This was most glaringly boys have a different brain apparent in the knuckle- structure than girls,” he dragging machismo of the says. Females are auditory Iron John movement from learners, he tells me, the 1990s, when men par- whereas boys are “more vi- took in “hero quests” and sual.” Over the past de- occasional nudity to re- cade, Robert spent a mil- cover their “true” mascu- lion dollars on market linity. More than anything research, trying to figure else, Evryman seemed hell- out what boys wanted to bent on destigmatizing read by visiting schools and men’s groups—to the speaking with parents point where their insis- and teachers, all of which tence bordered on preemp- yielded an adventure series tive apology or outright called Time Soldiers. In it, embarrassment. The camo- clad tweens defy the group’s most popular ad to space- time continuum date opens with Evryman’s with helmets and skate- brand and marketing direc- boards. The series pairs tor, Ebenezer Bond, offer- cinematic photos with ing a “candid” testimonial. skimpy blocks of text, cre- Wearing a Williamsburg ating what Robert suggests beanie and a faddish lum- is an entirely new type of berjack beard, he says, literature. To me, though, “When I told people I was it sounds like your standard going to a men’s retreat, I picture book. “What do was like, ‘This is going to you call this genre?” I ask. be fucking awful. If I have “They’re movie books,” he to get in a loincloth and says. Part of the reason he’s dance around a re and beat a drum, they said. “If you want to write some- joined the Evryman movement is that I’m never going back.’ ” “So Evryman thing, you have to participate.” he lost four million dollars in the ven- isn’t that?” asks some off- screen inter- ture and has been lugging around a locutor. “It’s not that,” Bond says. t’s the rst weekend in March, and surfeit of anger as a result. Soon he Evryman had already received II’m driving along meandering introduces me to Ben from West Vir- splashy news coverage from GQ Aus- county roads toward the Cedar ginia. Both of them have previously tralia (“This Men’s Camp Is Fixing Grove Retreat Center in Logan, Ohio, attended Evryman retreats and freely Toxic Masculinity”) and Men’s Health a shire of log cabins studded among admit to being “criers.” (“Inside the Retreat Where Men the quaint Hocking Hills forest. As After dinner, we hunker down in a Purge Toxic Emotions”), plus a hagio- with most men’s groups, Evryman op- circle of bone- white folding chairs, graphic spot on the Tod ay show, erates from the Thoreauvian premise over which the cambered ceiling of the where some of the guys got emotional that bucolic isolation can be good for lodge has been festooned with Italian with Carson Daly and Al Roker. And the spirit, that this kind of “work” can lights, an accoutrement better meant yet I couldn’t quite see how a gender- only be performed when one is seques- for a shabby- chic wedding. For all the exclusive space would be the best tered from one’s family. enlightened bluster on the Evryman venue for interrogating masculinity. Inside the main lodge, I’m bom- website, I can’t help noticing that both Still, they were promising to provide barded by the roar of fty male voices registration and the catered dinner a “life- changing experience.” They meeting one another for the rst time. were staffed exclusively by women,
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Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 25 9/24/19 1:41 PM who subsequently disappear, presum- heavy- lidded guy in question has had room is clotted with male bodies, a ably to some other cabin on the an emotional breakthrough or has haphazard ballet of anxious gaits and grounds, as the facilitators settle down maybe just returned from hitting uncertain smiles. Some men maintain to business. some really dank sativa. unabashed eye contact, while others On the far side of the room is the Whereas the male liberationists of are so overcome with trepidation that Evryman staff, a veritable A- team of the 1960s and ’70s were inspired by their eyes are glinting with tears. All “new” masculinity. This includes the second- wave feminism to interrogate around me is an epidemic of Carhartt movement’s éminence grise, Owen the ways in which modern mascu linity and Patagonia, plus an impressive Marcus, a man in his sixties who’s been was socially constructed, both by the spectrum of facial hair, ranging from running men’s groups for over three imperatives of Madison Avenue and chic stubble to Talmudic beards. The decades. Next to him is Dan Doty, the ats of consumer capitalism, to- ages span from early twenties to mid- the public face of the organization day’s men’s movement tends to focus seventies, and the group turns out to and the host of the Evryman podcast. on emotional intelligence. Instead of be resoundingly Caucasian. Before serving as a director for a Net- “consciousness- raising” sessions, Evry- Finally, after a couple minutes of ix hunting show called MeatEater, man is big on somatic awareness. this anguished waltz, MacCombie tells Doty ran therapeutic wil- us to pair up with whom- derness adventures for ever we’re looking at, and juvenile offenders, lead- I find myself standing ing groups of boys across from a short blond through the forest, dis- man starchily attired cussing coping mecha- in a powder- blue merino nisms for life’s problems, sweater and loosely tting and gathering them pants. We trade restive around the re at night salutations, and when he for readings from Sid- glances up at me, his wide dhartha. Also in atten- searchlight eyes are pan- dance this weekend is ning across my face. Lucas Krump, Evryman’s MacCombie then in- CEO, who made his structs us to take a step bones in the tech indus- closer to our partner until try, until the soul- we’re facing off at a kiss- withering demands of able proximity, at which corporate life left him point we’re enjoined to isolated and bereft. Now complete the following he’s funneled his wealth prompt: If you really knew into the Evryman busi- me, you’d know . . . For ness, hoping to spawn an internation- “Turn the feeling lever up,” Blaine me, this resembles nothing so much as al movement. Beside him are the afore- commands at one point. “And turn the forced intimacy of a middle school mentioned Aaron Blaine, as well as the thinking lever down.” The linch- sleepover, but out of journalistic duty, Dan MacCombie, whose LinkedIn pin of the Evryman program is some- I can do nothing but dive right in. “If pro le describes him as “Entrepreneur, thing called the ROC (read: “rock”) you really knew me, you’d know that Coach, Human.” method, which stands for “relax, open I’m full of self- loathing. That through- Blaine and MacCombie are leading up, and connect,” an acronym that out my twenties, I struggled with ad- the retreat this weekend and begin by seems designed to subvert the notion diction and depression. That there reviewing the Evyrman “Agreements.” that emotionality is somehow effemi- have been several times throughout These include an indemnifying waiver nate. To relax, we perform a brief my life when I’ve contemplated sui- and a promise of confidentiality. meditation because, as men, we’ve cide.” I’m a little surprised by my pro- Moreover, in the spirit of getting in supposedly been inculcated with the miscuous self- disclosure, and I watch touch with our “true, authentic” belief that we should muzzle our pain now as the man’s Adam’s apple bobs emotions, Evryman has put a strict as a means of proving our toughness. up and down—a courage- endowing embargo on any mood- altering sub- But this, Marcus stresses, only causes gulp. Then it’s his turn. “If you really stance. Later, however, I’ll get wind of our emotions to putrefy and fester. knew me, you’d know that I’ve never several rogue factions who scuttle What this weekend will offer, in other had any friends, that I’ve never wanted into the woods to smoke weed words, is a chance to open the spigot any. If you really knew me, you’d know throughout the weekend, and jour- of those emotions. that I recently came out as gay, that nalistically speaking, this will be kind Blaine and MacCombie then I’ve had sex with over four hundred of a nightmare, since the unsanc- launch into the evening’s central ex- men, that last October I tried to com- tioned bowl- smoking will make red ercise, and we’re asked to start wander- mit suicide after I confessed every- eyes an untrustworthy signi er, and it ing around the main hall, gazing into thing to my wife.” will no longer be clear whether the the eyes of the men we pass. Soon the “Switch!” MacCombie yells.
26 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2019 Source images: Appalachian Mountains © F42PIX/Alamy; Clasped hands © istetiana/Getty Images
Swanson Miscellany Final 12.indd 26 9/25/19 3:14 PM Briskly, I thank the man in front sanitized manner of Ken dolls or news- drew on his “work,” while the other of me for his courage and candor, casters, and in all his relationships, he guys are smiling and slapping him on and proceed to execute this confes- explains, he puts others before himself. the thigh with chummy jocularity. sional musical chairs with two other “Can I help you with that?” Owen The atmosphere in the room is primal men, hugging each one in turn. For Marcus says. He’s helming our Small and festive, as if we were celebrating a the nal face- off, I’m paired with a Group and has settled into a rakish rite of passage— a cliff summited, say, hulking, bearded guy from Ohio, posture on the couch. “You’re very ar- or the vanquishing of one’s enemy. who has boyish eyes and a twangy, ticulate, and you’re very good at de- What baf es me, though, is the utter land- grant accent, something you scribing those emotions, but see if you lack of a post- script. Scarcely do we only nd in rural quadrants of the can slow down and just feel them.” wonder whether Andrew’s impulse Midwest. Our prompt this time is: If At this point, Andrew is squirming toward sel essness is actually a virtue, I wasn’t acting out of fear, I would . . . in his chair, his hands flexing like nor do we conjure solutions to his in- He tells me he’d nally start his real anemones. “Um, in order to do that, I terpersonal dilemmas. Instead, what estate business. think we’d have to go outside.” takes pri macy is the outpouring of his “Let’s do it,” Owen says. emotions. That these discussions are he next morning, I’m the rst Soon, we’re gathered on the balcony resistant to broader considerations T man to cry in Small Group. In overlooking the scum- laden water, and won’t fully hit me until later that day, my defense, I’ve slept a total of Andrew clutches the railing, quaking during our second Small Group, when four hours across the past two nights, I’ll share feelings of isolation and doubtless the result of the cramped disenchantment as a result of teach- and foreign sleeping arrangements, ing university students, whose sad- which involve bunking with ve “IF YOU REALLY KNEW ME, YOU’D ness and despair is so rampant that, other men whose nocturnal rumpus KNOW THAT I’VE NEVER HAD ANY on my evening commute, I often of atulence and snoring has pierced FRIENDS, THAT I RECENTLY TRIED nd myself in tears. Audibly, I won- my every attempt at unconscious- der if we, as a culture, are doing ness. Plus, I like to think that I’m TO COMMIT SUICIDE” enough to furnish them with mean- fairly in touch with my emotions, ingful systems of belief, or if their becoming, as I do, a geyser of tears only recourse has been to the dic- at the slightest provocation. I confess with disquiet and grief. I’m standing tates of corporate success and the soft that, among friends in middle school, directly behind him, giving him the nihilism of self- improvement. Yet even my special playground epithet was widest possible berth, and so force- this attempt to discuss larger social “The Sprinkler.” fully is he juddering that it looks as phenomena gets trampled, because Small Group takes place in Still- though he’s manning a jackhammer. Owen will ask if I’ve ever heard of water Lodge, a three- story cabin out- “Okay,” Owen says. “Let it come “Mirror Theory,” suggesting that per- tted with a pool table and hot tub, out. From your balls all the way up.” haps my characterization of my stu- plus a panoramic balcony overlooking Andrew rears back and screams. dents is actually a fun-house re ection a pond of Kermit green. Right now, “FUCK IT ALL!” of my own sadness, so instead of talk- we’re sitting on a quadrangle of brown We listen as his echo booms deso- ing about the culture, why don’t we Naugahyde couches, while a gas- lately across the forest. Disturbed by the talk about that maybe? fueled re sizzles in the corner. uproar, a ock of mallards erupts from First up is Matt, an active- duty the shrubbery near the pond, apping otions of American mascu- Green Beret who reports his passion as it ascends, the birds’ honks dull and Nlinity have long drawn on a for “kicking down doors and shooting metallic. I glance at the other guys, who shallow pool of tropes, most guys in the head.” He speaks uxori- watch Andrew’s purgation with be- of which we tend to associate with ously about his wife but laments his musement and approval, like flinty- ctionalizations of the frontier: the inability to reconnect with her be- eyed onlookers at a boxing match. lonesome swagger of John Wayne, tween deployments. Possibly sharing “Let it overwhelm you,” Owen says. the gruff reticence of the cowboy. But his war stories would help, but he The intervening silence is woodsy up until the end of the nineteenth knows they’d give her nightmares for and tranquil. Somewhere across century, the ideal of American mas- the rest of her life. Next is Tim, an campus, the female staff members culinity was far more communal. The ashen man in his early thirties with a are preparing food for lunch, and I historian E. Anthony Rotundo has swoop of wheat- blond hair, who con- picture them all looking up from observed that the masculinity of the fesses that he tried to kill himself in pots and pans to identify the source colonial era wasn’t de ned by chest- 2017 and that Evryman has saved his of this commotion. thumping machismo or brawny, entre- life. Apparently, this is his second Pausing between each syllable for preneurial pluck, but was measured weekend retreat. But the real emo- emphasis, Andrew yells, “FUCK. IT. instead by a man’s willingness to for- tional acme of today’s Small Group ALL.” Then, after a brief caesura, feit his time and resources for the bet- occurs when Andrew takes the oor. “IT STARTS NOW!” terment of his community. Hardly was A scrubbed corporate guy from Cleve- When we get back inside and perch this a matter of “emotional intelli- land, he is handsome in the bland, beside the re, Owen commends An- gence.” Rather, his duties were ful lled
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Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 27 9/24/19 1:42 PM through “publick usefulness.” Often hind men’s fear and instability, the ber accused Bly of condoning battery this led to nascent forms of mutual aid, powers that be put the onus on women. against women, he tried, fruitlessly, to because in a world where “creditors “Part of the unemployment,” Ronald walk back his statement. “I meant, hit were neighbors and kinsmen were cli- Reagan suggested in a 1982 address on those women verbally.” ents, a man’s failure at work was never the economy, “is not as much recession It’s easy to see how this revanchism a private concern.” Meanwhile, those as it is the great increase of people go- has played out in the Trump era. And men who saddled up and lit out for the ing into the job market, and—ladies, yet even when men aren’t exhorted to territories were roundly condemned as I’m not picking on anyone but— engage in such blatant Otherism, the “frontier wastrels,” as the historian Ver- because of the increase in women who American male has been inculcated non Louis Parrington called them, are working today.” with the belief that the culprit behind princes of thoughtlessness who pursued Such outpourings of essentialist ma- his woes is either psychological or bio- their own agendas and roamed the chismo have always accompanied logical. Keen ironists will note that country as they pleased. surges in feminism. Even before the when biological factors such as testos- Yet the rise of industrialization and acquisition of female suffrage, men re- terone are pegged as the locus of toxic the birth of modern capitalism rewarded acted to the entrance of women into masculinity, the argument relies on the precisely those attributes that colonial politics with wariness and hesitation. same sort of essentialism that gets in- communities were prone to denigrate: Theodore Roosevelt, for instance, added voked by chauvinists who claim that aggression, guile, and an overwhelm- women are biologically determined ing will to power. Even when men to be more emotional or dif dent. failed to thrive in the marketplace, When the A.P.A. noted that tradi- they nevertheless succumbed to its IT’S NAÏVE TO THINK THAT tional masculinity was toxic, it was sanctioned forms of masculinity. THERAPY ALONE WOULD BE ENOUGH suggesting that men’s hard-nosed The feminist scholar Joseph Pleck TO REDRESS THE SYSTEMIC FORCES disposition causes them to reject notes that during the Great Depres- therapeutic assistance. Scanter atten- sion men no longer had access to the BEHIND TOXIC MASCULINITY tion gets paid to the structural forces sorts of external achievements that behind this reluctance, which in- once granted them a stabilizing dose clude not only the steep economic of virility— wartime brawn or nancial women’s suffrage to his Progressive costs of therapy but also the paucity of independence—so they deferred in- Party platform, but he compensated for resources in many rural communities. stead to psychological or behavioral this by doubling down on testosteronic Around the time the A.P.A. released its attributes to restore their sense of iden- rhetoric and championing football and guidelines, a number of other, less- tity. Lacerated by the dehumanizing boxing. The Iron Johns responded to talked- about articles recounted the conditions of the factory, male workers third- wave feminism by resuscitating shortage of psychologists and counselors typically responded with a cocksure their inner “Wild Man,” a term coined in America’s heartland, with stories of “hardhat culture,” as the writer Pankaj by the Minnesotan poet Robert Bly, rural men sometimes traveling several Mishra calls it, whereby heavy drink- who founded the mythopoetic men’s hours to receive the care they need. ing, coarse language, and prurience movement. (His book Iron John spent Oddly, in supposing that men’s lone became tokens of masculinity, a con- sixty- two weeks on the New York Times motivation for eschewing mental health ception that Mishra believes has bestseller list.) Invoking Jungian arche- services is toxic masculinity, we are as- “reached deep into blue- collar work- types about masculinity and relying on suming that their hesitance is a per- places during the decades- long reign harebrained interpretations of Brothers sonal choice rather than a structural of neoliberalism.” Grimm fairy tales, the Iron John move- impediment, thereby perpetuating the Rather than confront these struc- ment believed that the Industrial Rev- Marlboro Man myth that each guy is in tural changes head-on, men were of- olution sequestered fathers from sons control of his destiny. ten encouraged to blame other cul- and created an environment in which Of course, it’s breathtakingly naïve prits: usually immigrants or women. In patriarchal authority became rotten to think that therapy alone would be Backlash, her mammoth history of and suspect. enough to redress the larger systemic antifeminism, Susan Faludi notes that Though Bly’s Iron Johns and Roo- forces behind a problem like toxic the antagonism toward women in the sevelt’s disciples claimed to be in masculinity. But this hasn’t stopped a 1980s coincided with lackluster growth sympathy with their era’s feminist whole plethora of personalized reme- of traditionally male industries, causing movements, most critics saw in their dies from getting pitched to men as a a precipitous drop in real wages for objectives an attempt to reclaim the tonic— a new membership with households in which a man was the patriarchy. Sometimes even Bly him- CrossFit, a cathartic jaunt to Burning sole breadwinner. In describing this era, self let the mask slip. At a 1987 semi- Man, a weekend retreat in the woods she writes, “The 1980s was a decade in nar, a male participant asked Bly what to recover his “deep masculine.” “Pop- which plant closings put blue- collar he should do if he revealed his true ular accounts of the male crisis and men out of work by the millions, and feelings to women and they dismissed male confusion,” Faludi writes, only 60 percent found new jobs—about him, to which Bly responded, “So, half at lower pay.” And yet instead of then you bust them in the mouth.” are unrelievedly ahistorical. The con- investigating the economic woes be- When a abbergasted audience mem- ditions under which men live are ig-
28 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2019
Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 28 9/24/19 1:42 PM nored and men themselves are re- Like Rick, a few of these guys have DAVID HOLDRIDGE duced to a perennial Everyman . . . gothic backstories and are dealing with “describes humanitarian aid How would men’s problems be per- unresolved childhood trauma. But 2>;9@413>;A:0A< -05Ŋ1>1:@ ceived, though, if we were to consider more consistently the men report feel- men as the subjects of the world, not ing spiritually lost or existentially and fascinating perspective.” just its authors? adrift. High achievers in their profes- sional lives—CEOs or team leaders, — JOSEPH S. NYE, former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government he rest of day two is a derby of tech moguls or restaurateurs— these T self- expression. We take a men feel wary about their status in the midafternoon hike through workplace and are searching for more the woods and “reconnect with Mother meaningful interpersonal connections. Nature,” which involves staggering Again and again throughout the week- through the wilderness and “speak- end, the guys will sing arias about the ing to the universe.” It’s a ritual, we’re soul- withering effects of corporate life, told, that’s been performed in the claiming that all the benchmarks of Middle East for thousands of years, neoliberal achievement— “big salary,” with roots in early Judaism, though I “sexy title,” “an of ce in the C suite”— don’t remember the Torah mentioning have not conferred upon them any anything about Moses’ unbalanced sense of lasting ful llment. chakras. For all their attempts to dis- After yoga that morning I meet tance themselves from the mythopo- Francis,* an oaken- voiced man with etic men’s movement, Evryman never- an Anderson Cooper haircut, who theless embraces essentialist precepts tells me, “My career has been a fuck- (gender exclusion, for one), as well as ing mess.” A graduate of the Wharton the Iron Johns’ impulse toward post- School, he worked for a long time on modern sampling. Whereas Robert Wall Street, where, he avers, “you Bly pulled from Teutonic folklore and don’t have time to be a human being.” African fables, the new men’s move- While he was checking all the boxes ment relies on Gestalt therapy and from a professional standpoint, “mak- A MEMOIR BY DAVID HOLDRIDGE Eastern traditions, as well as lush ing my parents happy and doing what strings of corporate slogans and the I was supposed to be doing,” he was vi- WINNER OF THE PRIZE AMERICANA frothiness of wellness bromides. I can’t tiated by the cutthroat wagers of the tell you how many times I heard guys, job, and when the markets failed in when struggling with vulnerability, say 2008, he decided to become an entre- THE AVANT GARDE they really wanted to “lean in.” preneur. First, he tried to buy a tortilla- Still, the carnival of openness af- manufacturing plant, and later he OF WESTERN CIV fords me a chance to learn more about started a frozen yogurt shop in Florida, my Evryman brothers. I hear about lost but when both ventures crumpled, so jobs and unfaithful wives, gambling did his mental health. “At the time, I “David and his team in problems and squandered ambitions. was living in Miami, with the balcony the Shia heartland of Iraq One man, during a “connection” rit- overlooking the ocean, and I kept hav- ual in the woods, confesses to me that ing visions of going over. And that re- represented the best values he’s grown addicted to massage par- ally scared me. That was when I hit and hopes of his country . . . lors, a meager compensation for his my bottom. So I pulled myself up by in pursuit of leaving some etiolated marriage. Rick, the above- the bootstraps and made the best of lasting good behind within mentioned scientist from Ohio, recounts my situation.” What he proceeds to his earliest memory: his stepfather describe is a regimen of self- curated the larger Iraqi context of trying to drown him in a bathtub therapies: reading books on psychology dismay and disintegration.” when he was only two years old. Up and neuroscience, experiments with until he started doing this work, he acupuncture and massage, as well as a — CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, mitigated his trauma with a whole revolving door of self- actualization former congressman, R. Conn. menu of iniquitous behavior: patho- trainings through various corporate logical overachievement in high platforms. And yet, despite this pag- school, visits to brothels in the Air eant of self- renovation, Francis says, Force, to say nothing of monstrous “There’s somebody different who shows eruptions at his kids and spouse. “My up at work. I’m not the guy that’s there. son has not spoken my name in eleven I get stressed and fall into a warlike AVAILABLE ONLINE AT years. Will not say my name,” he says. mode and become a different person, www.avantgardeofwesternciv.com “I was kind of a bear when he was * This participant’s name has been changed growing up.” to protect his privacy. OR FOR PURCHASE FROM AMAZON + BARNES & NOBLE
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Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 29 9/24/19 1:42 PM $QQSPWFEXJUIXBSOJOHT which leads to loneliness and dis- the way men can take up all this matters at Evryman. What matters is connection.” You’d be forgiven for space.’ And I threw my arms out, your pain. thinking that such callousness was and one of the other guys in the at least partly due to his vocational group asked, ‘How does that feel?’ unday morning, pre- dawn dark- situation. But when I posit this, And then I sat with it for a second, Sness. The men of Stillwater Francis is quick to personalize the and I was like, ‘Actually, this feels re- Lodge lumber through the issue, saying the onus is on him to ally good.’ And he was like, ‘Right. gloom of our bunkhouse, looking for recalibrate his temperament. Yeah, take it up and enjoy it.’ ” jackets and boots. We’ve been asked to Back in the Main Lodge, it seems That such comments might bene t report to the Main Lodge in outdoor like everyone’s defenses have been from feminist scrutiny seems too ob- gear, and soon we’re trudging across lowered. One consequence of having vious to mention, but the docket is so campus, shuf ing under a dark laven- overactive tear ducts is that the other chock- full of activities that we’re der sky still salted with stars. Inside, guys keep assuming I’m having a slew soon shepherded to the evening’s the coffee tastes like a brown crayon of emotional breakthroughs and keep next event, which is the Evryman and does little to remedy my exhaus- sidling over with tender voices to ask Talent Show, during which one of my tion. Sifting through my emotions, how it’s going, jokingly wondering if bunkmates, Steve, sings Tom Petty’s “holding space” for other men, plus the I’m maybe getting more out of this re- “Learning to Fly,” a sterling tenor ren- gauntlet of hikes and exercises, has left portorial assignment than I had ini- dition that leaves several men (okay, me ragged with fatigue. I can barely tially bargained for. At one break, me) in tears. By this point, unabashed uncurtain my teeth for a smile or a Owen totters over and rubs my back fraternal P.D.A.s have become rote morning hello, and in the bathroom encouragingly, saying, “Wow. Way to and commonplace. Two men during mirror, I observe with interest that my show up in Small Group.” But if you the second half of the Talent Show— eyes and jowls have begun to sag like spend three days in a claustrophobi- one a real estate broker from Canada, those of second- term presidents. cally isolated environment with four and the other a construction worker Pretty soon we’re told to congregate dozen other men, all of whom are from Illinois— take turns tenderly in the central hall and nd a place on reckoning with childhood trauma or resting their heads on each other’s the ground. Fifty men now lie supine existential dissatisfaction, then see if shoulders, looking very much like on the floor, their arms splayed out you, too, aren’t shredded and raw. See high school sweethearts. messianically to the side. Leading this if you, too, aren’t strangely moved. This is mostly nice, and in this cli- exercise is Tom, one of the Evryman fa- The relevant question for me, mate, who could possibly complain cilitators, a svelte, handsome man from though, by the end of day two, is about well- intentioned men partak- New York City who moonlights as a whether this torrent of emotion is a ing in fulsome acts of affection? After photographer. “So we’re gonna do meaningful intervention into the de- all, is this not a herald of our “mascu- some pranayama breath work,” Tom bate about masculinity, whether line emotional intelligence?” Except I says. “I just want you to know that Evryman is treating the symptom or remember that I have paid for this there’s nothing dangerous about what the cause. So insistent are they open- armed embrace. I’ve shelled out we’re doing here.” about auditioning and accepting good money for a domain in which I The doth- protest-too-much quality each man’s grief that sometimes I can say anything without fear of of Tom’s proviso already makes me find myself alarmed by the state- judgment, where I can wail and cat- uneasy, even before he explains the ments that go unaddressed. At a erwaul without batting anyone else’s technique. It consists of two huffy Large Group check- in on Saturday, eye. And because the Evryman pro- in- breaths and one violent out- after a hike through the forest, one tocol asks us to refrain from sharing breath, a labored respiration that man says, “I found an animal bone our “stories,” and because I have of- when performed sounds vaguely in the woods. And I put mud on my fered only thumbnail sketches of my Lamaze- ish. “In-In-Out,” Tom in- face. And I missed the meeting.” He isolation and despair, there’s no tones, snapping his ngers, keeping starts crying. “And I realized that I’m meaningful sense in which these us in time, occasionally pelting us a wild man un t for modern society. guys actually know me, apart from with varsity- coach commendations: And for that I feel shame.” Another having a vague understanding of my “Good!” “You’ve got it!” “Listen to man named Tom tells me that he most tender psychological wounds. the cadence of your brothers!” came to Evryman because he felt What else could result from this but I now confront the problem of con- timid and unassertive but that dur- the thin simulacrum of brotherhood, veying just how discom ting this gets, ing his initial Small Group the rst a bond based not upon the speci cs how unnatural it is to respire so force- words out of his mouth were, I hate of my life but upon the shared con- fully while exerting no other physical men. “And I looked around and I’m dition of a Y chromosome? That effort. The result is a self- imposed hyper- like, fuck, I just ruined the whole there might be more important sim- ventilation. The result is a vertiginous weekend. They’re going to chase me ilarities or differences between us— nausea that sends me pinwheeling to- out of here with burning sticks.” In- that our respective ideological, spir- ward the bathroom, though the men stead, his Small Group facilitator itual, or political commitments might still breathe at a decibel level loud looked him in the eye and invited actually be radically divergent, if not enough to permeate its heavy chestnut him to elaborate. “And I said, ‘I hate downright antithetical— none of this door. Sip-sip-ah, they breathe. Sip-sip-ah.
30 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2019
Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 30 9/24/19 1:42 PM I don’t quite know how to describe kid’s chest. He talks now in a fatherly, what happens next. Tom instructs the pastoral way. “Let it come out. You’ve men to pick up the pace and says, “If been holding that for a long time.” there’s a noise that wants to come out, “This is insane,” the kid says. “I feel let it come out.” One man unfurls a like I’m on acid right now.” woozy bellow, a sound that recalls the “Yeah,” Marcus says. “Just let the zigzagging deflation of an unknotted acid take over. Enjoy the trip.” balloon. Another man groans The analogy turns out to be star- Neanderthalically— the first croak a tlingly accurate. For while the Evry- zombie makes after it’s been disinterred. man crew alleges that this breath “Let your body do what it wants,” work derives from the pranayama tra- Tom yells. “Nothing is wrong here. dition, which Tom later tells me he Make noise. Get primal!” learned about in “a class at a yoga stu- Now the men become loudly un- dio,” it is actually a form of Holo- glued. There are ferocious growls and tropic Breathwork, a method devel- unbridled sobs, anguished shrieks oped by Stanislav Grof, a Czech-born and boyish gasps. It sounds Dantean transpersonal psychologist who in u- in its anger and pain. enced the New Age movement “Almost there,” Tom says, after a throughout the 1970s. Grof came up half hour. “Just a few more minutes. with Holotropic breathing after lab Let it scare you.” experiments with LSD were out- “I need help!” one man cries. lawed, and he found that hyper- “Please! I need help!” Quickly I dash oxygenation of the blood could pro- over, whereupon I discover that the duce similar results. Participants anguished man is Steve, one of my underwent visions, muscle spasms, Stillwater bunkmates, and already and hysterical crying jags, all of he’s been swarmed by Doty and two which induced near- death experiences other facilitators, one of whom says, and helped participants uncork long “He’s hyperventilating. Does anyone dormant emotions. Setting aside the have a paper bag?” I hustle to the technique’s possible salutary effects, it nearby kitchen and scan the storage bears noting that over the past few cubby, but there’s nothing in either decades the strategy has received no cabinet. Yet when I glance back at small amount of disapproval. A 1993 Steve, it looks like he’s calmed down report on the practice, for instance, while Doty lies beside him, whispering found that it could often trigger sei- assuagements in his ear. Meanwhile, zures in participants or lead to psy- the oor is covered with several doz- chosis in vulnerable people. To be en men who still writhe and weep, fair, Evryman isn’t alone in resusci- like gures in a tableau vivant of a tating this technique. Holotropic Hieronymus Bosch painting. Once I Breathwork has become popular at settle back on my mat, it proves dif- many wellness junkets and spiritual cult to reenter “the cadence of my retreats, the sorts of places where brothers,” and so I mostly just try to muumuus are worn without irony and wish myself elsewhere. No matter people sip kombucha on tap. how daffy and potentially dangerous Huf ng on a yoga mat, I’m now I nd this exercise, it’s clear that the in a position to grasp the contempo- pain unleashed by these guys is rary men’s movement’s fundamental bone- deep and very real. The man appeal. Far from interrogating mascu- to my right is sobbing inconsolably, linity head-on, these groups are ap- his limbs tangled in a fetal position, proaching the issue at a dodgy, and he’s rocking back and forth in a sidelong angle, pitching men’s work lost, desolate way, his face violet as a hip, new wellness therapy, no with woe. different from any of the other prac- Things reach some sort of apogee tices that have become faddish in when the boy to my left, an undergrad Silicon Valley. See, for instance, Jack from Ohio State who’s spending his Dorsey’s regimen of weekend fasts or spring break with Evryman, whimpers, Elon Musk’s use of nootropics. Later “Holy shit. This is everything.” that weekend, Evryman’s CEO will Owen Marcus comes over and kneels tell me that he wants men’s groups beside the boy, putting a hand on the to be regarded as “CrossFit for your
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Swanson Miscellany Final 11.indd 31 9/24/19 1:42 PM insides,” which is precisely what so in place, we’re gonna howl. Like a morning sun peek through a raft of confounds me about the weekend wolf. That’s when it starts.” fast- dispersing clouds. Here I nd my thus far. They are operating from “Don’t start howling on your buddy Tom, a general contractor from the premise that masculinity can be own,” Dan MacCombie says. “No California, not screaming but down on depoliticized and dehistoricized, that false howls.” his knees, his hands threaded in prayer all men need is a good old catharsis. After all the early morning activi- until he eventually presses them to his It is a worldview that persists under ties, I can’t imagine who might be ears. Whatever else I might feel about a kind of end- of- history insouciance, a feeling constipated or repressed, but the virtue of this exercise, I nd my- belief that because the system cannot before I can ask what we’re supposed self choking up at the sight of a man be changed, the best that one can to do if we’re already feeling well- praying for, and terri ed by, this out- hope for is the chance to blow off ventilated, Aaron says, “Go ahead pouring of human emotion. some steam. and nd your spots.” It turns out Tom and I aren’t alone With this, we disperse crunchingly in our trepidation. After the group ven though many of us are still through the forest, weaving around a reassembles for a round- robin of E visibly attenuated from the Ho- wasteland of sclerotic- looking trees. check- ins, several men reveal their lotropic Breathwork, we are im- Eventually, I stumble upon a clear- skepticism about the purpose of the mediately shunted outside and told to ing, at which point Dan and Aaron Anger Ceremony. “Having grown up walk toward a copse of distant trees, unleash the inaugural wolf call, with all of that in the house,” one for what activity, exactly, the facilitators one that ricochets crisply across man says. “I had a hard time with will not say. In single le, we tramp the forest. In the distance are the those noises.” Another man says, across blond, withered grasses, with low sounds of men stirring with pent “Anger just isn’t in me.” Other men, clouds scudding overhead, their edges rage, the tentative throat- clearings when asked to describe how it went, pink- tinged by the dawn. Several men of long- suppressed ire. Out of a are far more enthusiastic. One bull- are still glassy- eyed from the purge, and sense of journalistic obligation, I do necked man named Tony, who as- so our procession into the woods has a my best to participate in the exercise cended the glade and rejoined the somber, funereal aspect. and train my mind on a gure for my circle shirtless and glistening, says, At long last, we enter a clearing anger. But ipping through the Rolo- “Mother Earth took a beating today. and wordlessly gather into a circle. dex of possible subjects— my wife, And for that I’m grateful.” Later that Some of the men have put their arms my parents, my students, my sib- day, I’ll notice that his knuckles are around one another’s shoulders, sort lings— I nd myself wholly devoid of gashed and bleeding, grim relics of of in a band-of- brothers- ish way, and the impulse to, as it were, “let it rip.” the pummeling. all of our faces are woebegone and de- Whether this reveals my habits of pleted. Eventually, Aaron Blaine says, suppression and self- blame, or fter the Anger Ceremony, “Okay. This is the Anger Ceremony. whether this exposes Evryman’s false A we’re given a much- needed It’s your chance to be a victim and let assumption about the exigency of ca- respite, and since this is the things come up.” tharsis, I cannot say. All I can tell nal day of the retreat, lots of us are In case any of us are confused you for sure is that over the next engaged in last- day- of- camp valedic- about what this might mean, Owen twenty minutes, I’m made to endure tions, swapping hugs and phone num- Marcus elucidates, “This is a chance the catacombs of the male psyche, bers, tentatively expressing the kernel for you to let it rip. So, a few things: an opera of full- throated pain. of new friendship. I myself, in the Be safe. Use your body, but don’t “I’m not your fucking parent! Take weeks and months to come, will trade throw things or break things, because care of yourself!” emails and texts with Rick and there might be other guys around.” “Stop fucking laughing at me!” Francis, trying to stay engaged in the The goal, in other words, is a kind of “Get out! Get the fuck out!” switchbacks of their lives. Francis volcanic expulsion. “Choose someone “Pay attention to me! Fuck me!” wants to set up a monthly phone call to get mad at. So who is that person “I don’t want to be fucking dead!” and work on “staying connected,” and in your life that you’re pissed at? It “Be a parent!” Rick wants to apply to M.F.A. pro- could be your partner. It could be Apart from the troubling implica- grams, so I offer to lend advice. This your business partner. It could be your tions of this exercise, I can’t help is part of what Evryman calls the father. Just start with that one person, wondering whether this aural hell- “reintegration” process, a term with a and if it goes somewhere else, fine. scape might be triggering for some pungent whiff of the military. But not you!” he says. “The earth can of the men in our company, several of At lunch, I sit with a group of guys take it. Grandmother Earth, and all whom are Special Forces veterans, to whom I haven’t spoken yet. One is the four elements. Actually, it’s a re- and others of whom have confided a redheaded Aussie who works in cor- lease. The traditional people say, that they were victims of abuse as porate branding. He tells me that he ‘Give it away to the earth.’ ” children. For a while, in the interest came to “the wilds of Ohio” on a Aaron then explains that we of not going to pieces here in the for- fact- nding mission. One of his clients should spread out across the forest but est, I turn away from the ceremony is looking for “an institutional re- stay in view of a partner, presumably and stare at the sylvan resplendence sponse to masculine challenges,” and for safety purposes. “Once everyone’s of the clearing, watching the early- with Evryman, he believes he’s found
32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / NOVEMBER 2019
Swanson Miscellany Final 12.indd 32 9/25/19 3:14 PM the best bet. It turns out the Aussie That afternoon, we reconvene in cisions that we civilians have tacitly isn’t alone in thinking so. Evryman the Main Lodge and gather into one endorsed. Or when I lock arms with a has already been approached by sev- last scrum, with our arms hitched at smart- home entrepreneur, I’m invited eral marquee corporations looking to the elbows or threaded over one an- to ignore the fact that the automation run workshops for their employees. other’s backs. And as Owen Marcus of Silicon Valley might eventually put While loath to give speci c names, proceeds to put us into a kind of some two million truck drivers out of the Evryman crew does tell me they’ve trance, gruf y exhorting us to “feel work, an impending structural shift been approached by a tech colossus in what it feels like to be supported,” I that no doubt runs the risk of increas- Silicon Valley, as well as one “large- begin drifting off into my own inter- ing toxic masculinity. It is an insidi- scale blue- collar industrial giant.” nal hypnosis, feeling myself oat to ous habit of our time to assume that And yet by focusing so monomania- some removed point overhead, and personal deprivations don’t have so- cally on the crusade of unbridled ca- I’m remembering ten years ago cial or political dimensions, that the tharsis, Evryman has ignored the when I put a leather belt around my cure- all can be found in the detour of extent to which these institutions neck. I was living in a garden apart- a retreat or the ablutions of self- care. themselves can be instruments of in- ment on the North Side of Chicago, But what I feel most acutely in this justice. After all, we may have good where my life had contracted to moment, and during the long drive reason to be wary of kinder, gentler something dismal and small, a reality home across the byways of the Mid- men, particularly when they’re willing trivial enough to abandon. And yet west, is loneliness. We had talked of to let the structures of capitalism do in the waning afternoon light of the an enduring brotherhood, and yet as the work of patriarchy for them. And retreat center, arm in arm with my soon as I leave the retreat center, I re- in failing to address how some of these Evryman brothers, I am skeptical of alize these men are strangers to me. I men are themselves victims of patri- dwelling exclusively in the bog of my try to imagine them making similar archy, Evryman has erased the poten- own sadness. After all, when we shed journeys home, drawing divergent tial for men to see their plight as tears for the veteran Matt, we’re ig- routes across the country, waiting out bound up with other communities, noring the extent to which his grief layovers in airport lounges, standing particularly those who’ve long suf- has been caused by his armed service, under the sickly lights of convenience fered, in far greater ways, under the that his inability to connect with his stores—each man returning to his yoke of this arrangement. wife stems from the foreign- policy de- private grief. Q
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