HE

“Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where blood shed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something – and so does a man, even if it’s only a little white ball on a tee. He wants to whack it into kingdom come.” John Eldredge in Wild at Heart

In church yesterday, I asked some of the kids what kind of games they play. Lisa said she plays with her little horses. She grooms them, feeds them and talks to them. Jean-Pierre likes snakes and ladders. What does he like most about it? “Winning!”

I think of masculinity and femininity as poles on a spectrum. Most people have a mixture of both, while tending toward one pole more than the other. I am not sure whether this is because of the way we are raised or whether this is genetic. From what I’ve read, I think it’s a bit of both.

One thing I am sure of is that the culture I was raised in has failed to control, let alone understand, masculinity. It is why men outnumber women in prison but women outnumber men in church.

I grew up believing that my maleness was a handicap, something I had to control, rein-in lest it get out of hand and I become a rapist or start a war. I became desperately afraid of my feelings, my passion. But fear does not make these things go away, no matter how hard one tries to bury them. In fact, ones passion simply becomes uncontrolled, leading to any number of problems: addiction, violence, misogyny and other anti-social pathologies, or panic attacks, suicide and depression.

Yesterday was Father’s Day – my second one as a new Dad. It has become a very significant day for me – not because I get spoilt by Katie and Yvette, much as I like that – but because I met my Dad on Father’s Day in 1993. There is something words cannot plumb about an experience as visceral as discovering who your parents are. I have known Mom since I was born, but meeting Dad (particularly because I am a man) was like looking at an older version of me. An older version… It occurred to me that I do get to choose something of how I will turn out. What kind of man will I be? What kind of father, husband, friend, colleague? Father’s Day get’s me thinking about that.

I grew up believing that men must be tamed otherwise they become a danger to society. More recently, I have become convinced that this is exactly what we shouldn’t be doing. To tame a lion means caging it. A caged lion becomes at once two things: dead and frighteningly unpredictable. A caged man is no different.

Too many wives complain about passionless marriages, husbands who are absent in everything but their bodies – and even these have become pale shadows of former glory. Too many times I hear people gasp in surprise that the paedophile or serial rapist was such a fine upstanding man in the community. No one saw it coming.

There is something dangerous and frightening about a man. But to tame a man is asking only trouble – or at best it is asking for that man’s death. There is a wildness that needs expression. There is an energy that needs an outlet. But how to do so in healthy ways?

In my bike circle recently, we talked about knives. Not kitchen knives. KNIVES. Like that classic scene in Crocodile Dundee when Hogan’s character is held up in New York by a knife wielding street punk. His soon-to-be-girlfriend says, “He’s got a knife!” to which Dundee says: “That’s not a knife, this is a knife.” He draws out his huge Bowie like a sword sending the punk scurrying for his life.

Interesting thing about a knife is that it is more dangerous when it is blunt. One can become unwary with a blunt knife, thinking it is harmless, when in fact it can still cut. Or one has to use one’s own power to compensate for the weakness of the blade, forcing the implement to cut and running the risk of slipping. A sharp knife on the other hand one is immediately cautious of. You trust its sharpness and so don’t overcompensate for it. You use it carefully, only within the limits of one’s own skill.

Masculinity is like that. There are too many blunt men in the world, blunted by patriarchy, violence or the failure of society to channel the dreams of a boy.

There are not enough sharp men in the world. Men whose example might be Jesus: a man who welcomed the caress of an outcast woman, and embraced children scorned by others, but whose rage was sufficient to single-handedly drive out a crowd of ecclesiastical corruption. A man who feared nothing, not even death, dying for his friends.

How do we sharpen the raw, wildness of men that it can become an implement of exquisite beauty wielded by consummate human skill?

First of all we need good role models. We need fathers who live lives of faithfulness and daring; fathers whose word is their bond; who can be trusted. We need fathers who will risk for the sake of a good cause, even if this is unpopular.

Second of all, we need to understand men better. Instead of dealing with men as if they are responsible for all that is wrong in the world, we need to find ways to heal men of their addiction to patriarchy and false ideas of where their power lies. This means healing women of their co-dependent addiction to the same oppressive systems. What we put in its place is not something we can engineer, but something that must be grown organically once we, together, have grieved the loss of our former power; lest we run the risk of replacing one form of domination with another.

Thirdly, we need spaces where men can learn to trust what is inside them; where they can learn again to play, for play is the school of life’s greatest skills.

There are other things we can do, I s’pose, but these occur to me at the moment.

I am reminded again of the story of Narnia in which Aslan the brave lion is described as: "Tame? Why no! He is dangerous... but he is good."