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288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
When an old Celtic warrior, such as Cuchulain, returned from battle, the whole community would take part in the ritual. Sometimes a group of women, his mother among them, would bare their breasts at him to awaken compassion, and the men would place him, still in the madness of the heated midbrain, into three tubs of water, one after the other, to cool him down. The first tub of water would vanish on contact, the second would boil away, and so on. We asked the Vietnam men to become soldiers. But there have been no ceremonies emphasizing compassion, no acknowledgement of heat, no honouring of a requested madness.At the other end of this journey is a pride in masculinity, comfortable and non-violent, like that of the heron, deer or peacock ("'the pride of the peacock is the glory of God', Blake says"), although Bly is never big on details.
Geneticists have discovered recently that the genetic difference in DNA between men and women amounts to just over three percent. That isn’t much. However the difference exists in every cell of the body. We know that many contemporary men have become ashamed of their three percent. Some feel shame over the historical past, over oppressive patriarchies, insane wars, rigidities long imposed. Other men who have seen their fathers fail to be true to the masculine and its values don’t want to be men. But they are. I think that for this century and this moment it is important to emphasize the three percent difference that makes a person masculine, while not losing sight of the ninety-seven percent that men and women have in common.
Some say, "Well, let’s just be human, and not talk about masculine or feminine at all." People who say that imagine they are occupying the moral high ground. I say that we have to be a little gentle here, and allow the word masculine and the word feminine to be spoken, and not be afraid that some moral carpenter will make boxes of those words and imprison us in them. We are all afraid of boxes, and rightly so.
Many men say to me they literally don’t know what the word man means, nor whether they are grown men or not. When an older man riskily names some masculine qualities which he sees, then the younger man can see how far he is from that spot, in what direction it lies, and whether he wants to go in that direction at all. Simply naming human attributes doesn’t help such a man. I’ve mentioned that certain contemporary female psychologists believe in naming womanly attributes as well, so that a woman can become a conscious woman instead of an unconscious one. All naming of qualities is dangerous, because the naming can be made into boxes. But we have to hope to do better than in the past...
Some people believe that "men’s work" is important only for some men, the "sensitive ones." "Well, all this mythology stuff is fine for the sensitive men; they probably need it. But I see construction workers eating their lunch with other men - they don’t have any problem with their masculinity. They don’t even think about it. They are the real men..."
But do the twenty-six-year-old journalists, men and women, who say this truly believe that blue-collar workers do not feel shame about being men? Do they imagine that the childhood homes of these "men’s men" were not also messed-up? Whenever a man makes insulting remarks to women going by he is usually doubly insecure in that he remains unaware of the shame.
Dividing men that way into "sensitive men" and "construction workers" makes no sense anyway. The blue-collar workers and woodsmen who have participated in the conferences that I have experienced are just as thoughtful and sensitive as any professors, CEOs, or therapists. So I think we have to say that the shame over the three percent and the pride over the three percent belong to all contemporary men, not just to some.