Toxic Masculinity

Photo by jurien huggins on Unsplash

“I recently re-watched some of the Mad Men series. On one early episode, Betty says to dinner companions, ‘Don doesn’t like to talk about himself. I know better than to ask.’ She doesn’t really know better, though, because she is a silly woman who wants to know her husband intimately, and that night she asks Don a question about his childhood. ‘Jesus, Betty,’ he responds, his face contorting to show his utter confoundment at this kind of prying. ‘What difference does it make?’ Instead of talking to her, then, he kisses her, and they have sex. It’s classic. The scene cuts to Don sleeping soundly while Betty sits up in bed smoking a cigarette, distressed. She stubs her cigarette, lies down next to him, places her hand gently on his back, and whispers to that eternal enigma of a man who stands for so many men, ‘Who’s in there?’ The scene goes dark. So often when trying to see into the inner worlds of men, the scene goes dark.”

Introduction from An Essay About Men: Considering the Inner Worlds of Those Who Are Taught to Deny Them by Holly Hayworth in Lit Hub

The writer’s subtitle tells all: Holly Haworth on Robert Bly, Toxic Masculinity, and the Hole at the Center of Our World. With that long a title, she might have skipped the article. Further on, I found the full giveaway:

“I had been navigating yet another horrendously painful relationship with an emotionally unavailable man, giving it my all in the hopes that I could get him to open up, and in so doing, that I could win a love that was supportive, that thrived o n communication and connection—because what else might love thrive on?” from An Essay About Men: Considering the Inner Worlds of Those Who Are Taught to Deny Them by Holly Hayworth

Past a certain age, we’ve all lived through relationships we’d have been better off without, men, women, et al. Though what doesn’t kill you… etc.

It occurred to me that Don was actually telling Betsy not to be a silly person—notice, I didn’t say ditzy dame like they did in the 50s. In some cases, it's a style thing, Holly. If men don’t always share enough of their feelings, do women blather? I know, one over-broad generalization shouldn’t bring on another…

It would seem Hayworth has a weakness for falling in love with her father. It’s not so unusual. In fact, it seems to be a common curse of both sexes—when you get it wrong as a parent, you pass it down—though she claims the patriarchy made her do it.

“My father turned 70 last year. As he went through the upheaval of homelessness, unemployment, and illness during what might have been a more honorable passage into elderhood, he told me, when I called to ask how he was doing, what he always had, that ‘Everything is good.’ He left when I was a baby and never seemed to be able to face me, or fatherhood, or much of anything, but all has always been good and well.?” from An Essay About Men: Considering the Inner Worlds of Those Who Are Taught to Deny Them by Holly Hayworth

Hers is a frank but sad admission to make: that she would still call this person who contributed genes and not much more. “He left when I was a baby…” Her need requires no further explanation, being so palpable. Did they ever reconcile? If he ever owned up to his story, she doesn’t say, but one gets the impression it was too much effort for him.

Which is about the most heartless behavior imaginable. Because we are conditioned to seek connections with our families, abandonment is a darker cruelty than orphanity. Losing one’s parent to death is a random finality; abandonment is willful disregard continuing over decades.

For someone who never knew his father, who died when I was four, the idea a parent could walk away from their child is about as foreign as murder. I know other fathers—and mothers—who feel the same. It’s the most natural of emotions. It should be, as they say, instinctive, and when it isn’t, bad things follow. Does that make it prevalent? Possibly more than I realize? And confined to one sex?

…

A woman friend—she’s been in my life and D’s for decades now—freely says she had a toxic mother—and a father she’s still emotionally tied to, though he’s been dead for years. He gave her a love of music; her mother not so much. Her mother was as poisonous as they come.

When on the subject, I’d share stories of my ex-wife’s mother, who was equally rotten at being humane to her only child. It was as if she couldn’t help herself, yet I couldn’t forgive her. Growing up in poverty as she did will play with your head, though the explanation doesn’t justify it. She might have been jealous of her genius-artist daughter; her chief talent lay in accumulating the trappings of wealth—southern comfort. She’s dead now, so she can’t defend herself and I can’t ask her.

Suppose we say the worst crime Hayworth commits in the piece is to employ clickbait expressions in the practice of pop psychology—on herself. It’s frustratingly difficult to sympathize—even to empathize—with someone who won’t take better care of their emotions. One can only mourn the wasted cycles she evidently has lived through.

…

Scanning the Lit Hub intro to Hayworth’s piece, what caught my attention was the mention of Robert Bly in the subtitle. Bly was a poet of interesting obscurities I’d read in the 1990s when my own life was collapsing into a bad pile, and a therapist recommended I read his book on men, Iron John. I think my therapist knew I was sampling Bly’s poetry. Otherwise, she didn’t know creatures all scratch the same places and hope?

“Bly has a certain way with language, and it was the evocation and embrace of the unprocessed grief of men that spoke to me. [Nice line, that] It was Bly’s invitation to men to bring to light their inner worlds through the ancient technology of story that I felt was important.” from An Essay About Men: Considering the Inner Worlds of Those Who Are Taught to Deny Them by Holly Hayworth

Bly had come on a need to support his fellows by allowing them space to express themselves. I enjoyed Iron John but never took to the drumming ceremonies he describes as therapeutic for recovering Iron Johns. I concluded being closed to my emotions wasn’t my problem. Probably the opposite, since it can be a distraction to getting on with stuff.

Dawn Fields, whose BookBaby blog posts I looked forward to reading, was a fellow writer and all too briefly my novel’s editor. She became furious when I refused her flat declaration that ‘all men are created assholes.” Huh. I strove mightily not to delve further into the subject, though I found it harder than she did. For me, the personal is where you begin as a writer working outward from there. Having come from nearly a decade of writing poetry about my dead son, the exercise was working close to the bone. Hiding wouldn’t work.

It was obvious some man (or men) in Dawn’s past was what convinced her it was a genetic disposition all men carried on their twelfth chromosome. It was equally obvious I should shut the hell up and respect her privacy. We were attempting a professional working relationship, though the novel’s subject—relationships good and bad—made avoiding it awkward. She died several years ago, and I badly miss her keen edged analysis much as her passion for the art of writing.

We study ourselves by studying those around us. Poor mirrors to see ourselves, though what else is there? Besides, stumbling over one’s own mistakes is tedious and boring.

One measure of how faithful a piece of fiction is to reality has to be the relationships of its characters. Not that all writers abide by the practice. It’s likely the obsessive internal dialog Philip Roth was known for matched his personality, and his readers enjoyed the train wrecks he created. Now, as his personal life is leaking out, it becomes something of a matched set, writer to writing.

Hayworth talks to and reads what’s written by other women who view men as a foreign species. And as she puts it, she studies the subject closely. Only the more one grinds on the same question, the more planted it becomes as truth versus an opinion.

Some women struggle with stepping out from the shadow of their male acquaintances—lovers, fathers, et al. Some men are dumber than dirt when it comes to living, speaking of matched sets. Though there is this vast middle ground most of us work to inhabit. It doesn’t necessarily inspire a writer searching for vivid subjects. Vermillion produces better drama on canvas than ochre, if not always realistically—that’s just my personal opinion.  

…

We had dinner the other night with a woman friend D and I hadn’t seen in fifteen or more years. I’ve been catching up with her on Facebook. It was something of a reunion face to face. She was bringing her daughter east to visit colleges and old friends. What struck me, beyond the fact she was as warm as she’d always been, was how much more self assured she was. Self assurance comes naturally with age—and raising children—but years living on her own shaped her as well. I wonder if she’d recognize her younger self now, because my memory of first meeting her faded to smoke in the present day. The man she’d lived with back then wasn’t worth a life with him—a hard lesson, yet she figured it out.

She described being burned out of her house in the Sonoma fires of a few years ago as just one more trial to overcome.

We all are children living tremulously in late night hours, but when one climbs out of bed in the morning, grabs for the jeans, shirt and shoes to take the dog for her morning walk, we need dismiss the fear to get on with living.

…

Times when I’ve mentioned I have never watched Mad Men, it surprises people. Lots of folks say it’s a great show, so perhaps it is. But since I don’t watch much TV, I’m not boycotting that particular show, just TV in general. It takes too much time for too little payback. Judging from the scene Hayworth describes in her opening, if the bit about Don and Betty goes on long in this Venus and Mars stuff, unless the screenplay and the acting is top notch, I’d go look for a book to read—probably not one by Philip Roth.