By Peter Wright & Paul Elam

 

Anxiety may be the most pervasive “psychiatric” problem in the world. All the more interesting, then, that it is a problem with so little general attention in the media and the medical establishment.

The symptoms can be a mildly annoying, with the occasional and temporary sense of unrest and unease. The reasons for it happening maybe quite obvious at the time. Then again, it can appear to come straight out of the blue. It can come or go without visible “triggers,” like high-stress events.

In more extreme, but very common incidents of the disorder, the symptoms can be life-diminshing, horrific experiences. Full blown anxiety attacks, commonly known as “panic attacks” include tachycardia (rapid, runaway pulse), sweating palms, frightening disorientation, an overwhelming sense of impending death or doom and crippling levels of fear that last anywhere from minutes to hours.

Even when the sufferer knows the events are not lethal; even after experiencing them hundreds of times, it does not put the sufferer at ease during an attack. Each one is as bad as the last. It can become a living hell in which the sufferer feels like a ticking time bomb in between debilitating attacks.

The Latin root of anxiety is angere which means to choke, squeeze or compress tightly. That’s what happens to our bodies when anxiety hits – our chest muscles seize up and breathing tightens. Our neck constricts and creates a lump in the throat. We choke on the words, can’t get them out. Lips, face, hands, legs stiffen and make it hard to move, and our blood vessels constrict to create tension headaches. It’s as if we are caught by a giant who squashes us in his fist.

Anxiety disorders are the most common of all psychiatric complaints, appearing at twice the rate of mood disorders such as depression and bipolar illness.¹ Anxiety is characterized by:

a. bodily symptoms of tension, racing heart, shakiness or sweating.

b. state of uneasiness, nervousness, dread, distress, fear, panic and in extreme cases terror.

c. apprehension about failure, misfortune or danger.²

Anxiety also colors the way we think, feel and act. “It is a petty monster,” writes author Daniel Smith “able to work such humdrum tricks as paralyzing you over your salad, convincing you that a choice between blue cheese and vinaigrette is as dire as that between life and death.”³

Numerous forms exist, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, performance anxiety, stranger anxiety, agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, situational anxiety, phobias and panic disorder to name but a few. Each has its own peculiarities and triggers (though they may be very difficult to identify), and each requires a different approach to understand and manage it.

With so many anxiety disorders, we will limit ourselves to a category affecting men, one that you won’t find mentioned in the textbooks on therapists desks.

The anxiety disorder with no name

In the past, psychologists have spoken of ‘performance anxiety’ and ‘castration anxiety’ as ways to understand men, but these terms do not go near far enough. Men’s anxieties are born of far broader concerns than having a metaphorical (or real) penis chopped off.

The cause of men’s anxiety, in this case, is the the entire misandric culture they must daily rise from bed to face. Most men will be unaware of this as facing and dealing with misandric pressures is socially forbidden and often sequestered behind a wall of denial. It’s the culture itself that demands they perform, be in service, be under constant scrutiny and suspicion for wrongdoings, and one that will penalize them if they step out of line.

In that sense, men’s denial of that anxiety is a survival mechanism.

As a man in this world, if you are NOT anxious then there is either something terribly wrong with you or you are one of the lucky few who has unlocked the answers to this problem.

All men (and boys) are under assault from social forces and the resultant anxiety is a natural response. These forces berate you every minute about your supposed violent tendencies, about rape culture, child maintenance, alimony and manning up for women. All of this punishes you with the stress of failure or the stress of disobedience. The whole society you live in colludes to keep you silent about all of it.

So let’s talk about it. In fact, lets also give it a name – Misandric Culture Anxiety (MCA). To be perfectly blunt, we are asserting that the modern male gender role and the unattainable demands it places on boys and men in misandric culture causes mental illness in men.

Among the many causes of anxiety, MCA is one of the big ones. And if you happen to have another underlying anxiety disorder, MCA will exacerbate it. If you have social phobias, MCA will make you even more nervous about mixing with other people.

If you take Valium or alprazolam (Xanax) for generalized anxiety disorder, the added load of MCA will tempt you to unilaterally increase your dose. This is highly dangerous in terms of tolerance and addiction. Both Valium and Xanax are benzodiazepines which can have bad synergistic side effects with alcohol and which can both result in dangerous withdrawal symptoms from high doses over a prolonged period of time. Actually, withdrawal from these drugs can possibly kill you.

The other problem, even aside from MCA, is that of tolerance. Like most other drugs, tolerance develops and higher doses are needed for the same therapeutic benefit. While they may provide short term solutions, these psychoactive drugs are a treatment that can easily become worse than the problem they are treating.

While anxiety attacks may have very obscure triggers, reducing the overall exposure and impact of MCA on our lives can reduce the stress and anxiety that comes with it. Before touching on ways to do that, lets first have a look at the way men have traditionally dealt with it – by self-medicating, often destructively, as a way of reducing the choke-hold of anxiety.

Is it any wonder men drink more alcohol?

How many times are cocktails after work to “de-stress” actually just a form of self-medication for anxiety? How much of that becomes problem drinking because of tolerance? How many other drugs, particularly benzodiazepines, are combined with alcohol or otherwise abused to provide more synergistic effect on the anxiety?

Anxiety can be difficult to treat. There are no magic cures and the many manifestations of anxiety require varied responses. However, there are general strategies that can, for many men, reduce anxiety and with it the need to self-medicate. The first thing to investigate is potential or known triggers, a no-brainer, but in this model it is done in conjunction with assessing the self-narratives that might be needlessly, pointlessly placing you in front of those triggers. If for instance your anxiety is triggered by a desire to provide for a woman, creating anxiety lest you fall short or fail in your “duty,” then you need to rewrite that narrative with one that changes your behavior and attitudes.

If you can’t pinpoint the triggers, or they are ones you can’t avoid, there are still ways to reduce the intensity of your anxiety. Neurofeedback treatments, along with efforts to monitor your body’s emotional arousal will help you better detect anxiety levels and apply strategies to regulate their intensity. But first you have to agree to pay attention to your own needs and well-being – something many men have a hard time doing.

Meditation, breathing control, exercise, reducing caffeine (and other stimulants) can also help. Even some forms of cannibis are now demonstrating anxiolytic effects, though regarding that as a singular approach is something we deem to be unwise. Drugs that mask problems, even non addictive ones, do not ultimately lead to addressing the root causes of the problem.

In some people, anxiety can be more or less “cured,” yet in others its symptoms can be made much more manageable. As always, the dedication and determination of the sufferer will have the greatest impact on results.

It is a complicated subject which we will be handling in a series of articles in the future which are focused on solutions.

One thing is certain, at least in our opinion. Any efforts to address anxiety issues in men without an intense focus on narrative reconstruction are substandard. If you want to reduce anxiety, you must change the expectations you place on yourself which produce it in the first place. You will also need to withdraw permission from the people in your circles, and society at large, to burden you with their expectations.

References

[1] Daniel Smith, It’s Still the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It? – New York Times, (Jan 2012)
[2] Andrew M. Colman, Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, (2009)
[3] Daniel Smith, It’s Still the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It? – New York Times, (Jan 2012)

 

– A New Psychology For Men
– “The One True Masculinity – Part 1”
– “The One True Masculinity – Part 2”
– Servant, Slave and Scapegoat
– Men Authoring Their Own Lives
– Narrative Therapy With Men
– Don’t just do something, SIT THERE!
– Sex and Attachment
– Love, Friendship and Attachment
– Pleasure-Seeking vs. Relationships
– Apollo – God Of Incels
– When Male Anger Is Legitimate
– Treating Anxiety With A New Narrative
– The Wildman In The Cage: Anger In Therapy
– Self-Actualization and The Red Pill
– Heracles: A Slave To Guilt and Shame
– The Psychology Of Guilting
– Quality Mate Selection: Two-Factor Attractiveness Scale
– How To Stop School Shootings By Supporting Vulnerable Men
– Men Tend to Regulate Emotions Through Actions Rather Than Words

Men who speak out about personal issues, along with others advocating for men’s issues, are sometimes charged with being ‘angry men.’ The accusation is designed to reduce a man’s story to a single emotion; he is no longer a man telling his story with a tone of anger, but a story-less freak whose entire manhood is synonymous with anger – angry man – no more and no less than a single taboo emotion.

By labeling him an angry man, a complex human being is reduced to a one-dimensional caricature that dehumanizes him, discredits his claims to a wider audience, and ultimately aims to censor his evidence of pain or unfair treatment. The implication is that angry men are irrational and should be listened to only after they have calmed down and domesticated the raw emotionalism. However calming down would be better termed as pushing down, because that’s what happens to a man’s concerns and sense of passion in the face of the angry man charge.

Calming down leads that initial anger, which longs to effect positive changes to the world, to look for another outlet. Sometimes it intensifies into destructive or violent acting out, or worse, is converted into a neurotic self-censorship through the aid of drugs, depression and not infrequently suicide. If censorship is the desired aim of the angry man taunt, then suicide is delivering it in spades.

One would assume psychotherapists and counselors are savvy to the therapeutic benefits of anger, and sometimes they are. The more aware therapist knows that even the famous and talented are driven to greatness by giving expression to anger, with the trick being to direct it intelligently toward a goal.

The bulk of the therapeutic industry however is captured by the feelgood cliches of PC culture, advising men to find ways other than anger to express themselves, referring to it as an ‘anger problem,’ or ‘toxic anger’ or perhaps simply ‘unhealthy anger.’ Such practitioners are unlikely to consider any expression of anger acceptable, preferring instead to nip it in the bud with kindly admonishments about it being a barrier to progress and personal growth.

While we can agree that some expressions of anger move beyond healthy expression and into the rage-zone, these incidents often come on the tail of being ignored, perhaps serially and over a long periods of time when a man is expressing anger within more normal ranges. That rejection is what the PC therapist ironically tends to specialize in through his refusal of the anger that a man might otherwise use to articulate what’s pissing him off.

For many men anger is the vehicle that gets the message out, a message that remains buried in its absence.

The purpose of emotions, or rather the aim of them is to find a way out; as tears on the cheek, smiles on the lips, clenched fists, or the quivering of the bowels.

Anger likewise wants out – as outrage. By this move anger finds a target; it rages out at the family law courts, the misandric TV ads, the lack of funding for male health problems, infant circumcision, male homelessness. Outrage gets political – takes its concerns to the polis; letters to politicians, making a stand at the polling booth, a placard in the street, or thoughts written on a blog. So too with a man’s personal life; his long hours in a shitty job, his pressurized marriage to a nagging wife, his lack of liesure time, all of which might be tackled with some healthy outrage.

We don’t even need to have solutions to the things we’re angry about, at least not initially. As the late psychologist James Hillman suggests we can start out with an empty protest:

Take your outrage seriously, but you don’t force yourself to have answers. Trust your nose. You know what stinks. Don’t try to replace the helpless frustration you feel, the powerless victimization, by working out a rational answer. The answers will come, if they come, when they come, to you, to others, but don’t fill in the emptiness of the protest with positive suggestions before their time. First, protest! I don’t know what should be done about most of the major political dilemmas, but my gut (my soul, my heart, my skin, my eyes) sinks, creeps, crawls, weeps, cringes, shakes. It’s wrong, simply wrong, what’s going on here.¹

How different his advice from that of the average therapist! The idea here is that we follow our animal response to the insults and thoughtlessness of the world around us, and not follow the therapists’ advice that we have cold rational answers before we open our mouths in protest.

The real danger here is that if you don’t get the anger out, if you don’t engage in outrage, it always finds another way. One of those ways is through conversion of anger to psychosomatic symptoms, often crippling ones which cause long-term disease and disability. Alternatively the reaction might be to convert anger into a less outwardly destructive mood such as depression, which is all too common. The old saying “Anger turned inward is depression” rings true for far too many men.

The process of anger morphing into depression can be referred to as sublimation, a swapping of a supposedly unacceptable emotion for a more acceptable one in the eyes of our PC culture. The end result of that process is often suicide, and the therapeutic industry is directly implicated for some of those suicides by reason of its suppression of male clients’ anger.

On the other side of that coin, depressed people who receive encouragement to express anger often experience a lessening of their depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts. Psychologists have given moving accounts of men who, when put in touch with the things that anger them, experience a lifting of depression and witness the blood flow back into their cheeks. The upshot is that contrary to the therapists who recommend we men bury our anger, the opposite is a likely way to bring about psychological health.

In summary it is therapeutic per se to express anger,² and when allowed that opportunity it’s less likely to be intensified into uncontrolled rage or conversely transmuted into a death wish. The man-friendly therapist encourages expression of anger as a prophylactic against depression and suicide, and as a way to potentially reverse depression and suicidality in those already there. Outrage might even bring the bonus of changing an ugly world into a better one, because a man sticking apologetically to his convictions compels the world to sit up and listen.

Reference:

[1] James Hillman and Michael Ventura: We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and The World is Getting Worse, HarperOne 1993

[2] Catharsis, Dictionary.com

 

Wright, P. ‘Unintended Effects Of Transgender Activism On Men’s Issues,’ in New Male Studies An International Journal, ISSN 1839-7816 ~ Vol10, Issue 2,2021, Pp. 71–80, Issue 2, © 2021 Australian Institute Of Male Health And Studies

ARTICLES DESCRIBING THE NATURE OF ‘DAMSELING‘

 

• What is Damseling? Chat GPT Definition
• Damseling, chivalry and courtly love (Peter Wright)
• Women of color feminists vs. white feminist tears (Peter Wright)
• Alison Phipps: White Men’s Ship Floats on White Women’s Tears (Peter Wright)
• Damseling and ‘Chivalry’ in International Negotiations (Study)
• The Damsel In Distress Trope (Wikipedia)
• The Near-Irresistible Lure of Damseling (Janice Fiamengo)
• The Origins And Structure Of Damseling (Peter Wright)
• The Biological Origins of Damseling (Peter Wright)
• Two Modes of Damseling (Peter Wright)
• The Power of Feminine Weakness (Greta Aurora)
• The Victim Industrial Complex (Warren Farrell)
• Damseling in International Negotiations: A Survey Experiment in the Council of the European Union

ARTICLES ON WOMEN’S ATTRACTION TO THE CHILD ARCHETYPE

 

• Time To Throw The Baby Out With The Bathwater (P. Wright & P. Elam)
• With This Ring I Thee Adopt (Esther Vilar)
• The Child Archetype As Responsible for Woke Dystopia (Peter Wright)
• Fascinating Womanhood: How To Use Childlikeness to Manipulate Men (video)
• Fascinating Womanhood: Women’s Introduction To Cultivating Childlikeness (pdf text)
• Peter Pan Wives: A Menace To Marriage (1938)

The following article was first published at A Voice for Men in September 2012

 

A giant 8 foot penis is joyfully carried through a crowded Japanese street by a dozen happy teenage girls. No, this is not a scenario from an odd mix of a pervy Macy’s Parade flotilla and the supple nymphs in “Bilitis.” It’s real and the annual event is called the “Kanamara Matsuri.”

The Kanamara Matsuri, which translates to “Big Iron Penis Lord,” is celebrated during the first week of April in Kawasaki, Japan and it has been around since the 1600’s. Interestingly, such phallic processions were once very widespread, but it appears Japan is one of the few remaining places daring to place a penis at the center of a public celebration. Almost everywhere else the penis is today seen as a dreaded object of violence and oppression, a thing in need of castration, sterilization, circumcision and, most importantly, suppression from view.

If we go back to Ancient Greece, Rome, India, Egypt -in fact anywhere at all- we find adoration of the penis (and vagina) a comfortable norm. To give but one example, so welcome was the penis that Ancient Egyptians had no mother earth but instead a ‘father earth’ named Geb, a nurturing god portrayed reclining on his back with a huge erect penis. His was a benevolent phallus that brought fertility to the land, nourished its people, and bestowed prosperity and harmony to the world.  

In Ancient Rome we have examples of phallic charms called fascinum, which were often winged, and were ubiquitous in the culture from jewellery to bells and wind chimes to lamps. The fascinus was thought particularly to ward off evil from children, mainly boys. Pliny notes the custom of hanging a phallic charm on a baby’s neck, and examples have been found of phallus-bearing rings too small to be worn except by children. [1] It’s not important here to delve into the entire history of phallic representations, but what is important is to know that there once was a time when the penis did not equal oppression. Why is it important to know this?

 

 

 

When we stop to remember a time before the scorched earth policy of feminism emolliated our respect for the male form, we thereby ‘re-member’ ourselves and how we once were. Once we remind ourselves of this we are inspired, even angered, to drop our chocolates and flowers and  pick up a blade and hack and thrash our way through a great tangle of confusion and doubt to our way back home- to the penis as symbol of beauty of form and masculine identity.

The penis as symbol of beauty of form has only recently been quashed as a concept and is never really discussed in our gynocentric universe. In fact, it is disparaged. I think it is time to change this, but first we must see through the feminist inspired bad press about the phallus.

Feminists have characterized the penis as an object of violence, oppression and viral dirt. To them it is synonymous with a deadly snake. But not to be satisfied with their maligning of the male body feminists have gone further by claiming that all of society is suffering from a toxic “phallocentrism,” which is defined as, “a doctrine or belief centered on the phallus, especially a belief in the superiority of the male sex.”[2] Phallocentrism is further defined as “any perspective usually considered characteristic of patriarchal systems.”[3]

But does such a dreaded symbol actually exist today, and if so where? It appears feminists have not stopped to notice that the actual phallus of phallocentrism has suffered a universal repression within the very culture claimed to be dominated by the penis. Therefore the hatchet job they continue to do on our penises, both metaphorically and literally, might better be redirected to their deadwood ideology before another generation of boys is alienated from this essential feature of male identity.

The time has come to drop our complicity with anti-male narratives and learn again to love the male form. We need no longer view the penis through the gynocentric lens of (a) only gay men talk about the beauty of the penis, albeit as an emblem of homosexuality, or (b) straight men view the penis as an instrument of action packed machismo- the façade of “tough.” Take for example our usual heterosexual talk about genitalia; prick, balls, nuts, dong, boner, cock, tool, weapon, suck, blow, wank, shoot; and gash, snatch, twat, hole, cunt, bush, clit. James Hillman invites us to compare this kind of language “with the marvelous language of foreign erotica: jade stalk, palace gates, ambrosia… A Chinese plum is to be deliciously enjoyed; our cherries are to be taken, popped, or broken. [4]

Clearly we Western males have internalised feminist characterizations of the male member by continuing with this derogatory language of penis = violent = male.

“Suppose instead we were to call him, as he once was named, Jolly Roger or Little Johnny Jump-up, or Happy Prince, smiling wand, black magic, little brother, or Purusha who is smaller-than-small and bigger-than-big.”[4] There is no need to impose images of violence on the penis.

 

We might even begin to think of him as man’s best friend- a precious facet of my body and dignified symbol of my masculinity.

Imagine if we transformed our cultural obsession with penis porn into penis art, crafting representations in plastic form to be put on display like those bare breasted, pregnant and vulvad’ female sculptures that dot our landscapes and galleries. By ditching the false dichotomy of beautiful-gay-penis versus machismo-straight-penis we might begin to relate to the penis as a representation of male identity, no longer divided into gay and straight only, but reborn as a complex symbol of men’s multifaceted natures. Imagine, the phallus standing as a dignified symbol of our masculinity, much like the breasts and pregnant bellies benefit women everywhere as symbols of pride and identity.

References:

[1] Martin Henig, Religion in Roman Britain (London: BT Batsford LTD, 1984), pp. 185–186
[2] ‘Phallocentrism’ at Dictionary.com  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phallocentrism
[3] ‘Phallocentrism’ at About.com http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/aesthetics/bldef_phallocentrism.htm
[4] Thomas Moore (Ed.) ‘The Essential James Hillman: A Blue Fire’, Routledge 1990.  p. 179

Editor’s note: This article is also available in Portuguese and Romanian.

International Men’s and Women’s days involve numerous objectives, with both days highlighting issues considered unique to men or women. The following highlights two central narratives of IWD and IMD respectively; women’s supposed fight against oppression, and men’s attempts to promote positive recognition of men and boys in a misandric society.

Several popular myths concerning the origins of International Women’s Day exist, and after a survey of the literature it seems the variety of accounts have created confusion for commentators. For example, a widely bruited falsehood about IWD which surfaced in French Communist circles claimed women from clothing and textile factories had staged a protest on 8 March 1857 in New York City. This story alleged that garment workers protested against very poor working conditions and low wages and were attacked and dispersed by police. It was claimed that this event led to a rally in commemoration of its fiftieth anniversary (in 1907), with this commemorative gathering constituting the very first IWD. In response to these legendary claims Temma Kaplan explains that “Neither event seems to have taken place, but many Europeans think March 8, 1907 inaugurated International Women’s Day.”¹

This fantasy of origins clearly attempts to position International Woman’s Day in a narrative of woman-as-victim, but it goes further. Speculating about the origins of the 1857 legend Liliane Kandel and Françoise Picq suggested it was likely that some felt it opportune to detach International Women’s Day from its true basis in Soviet history and ascribe to it a more ‘international’ origin which could be painted as more ancient than Bolshevism and more spontaneous than a decision of Congress or the initiative of those women affiliated to The Party.²

Whilst numerous apocryphal stories of this nature exist, we can safely say that International Women’s Day was first initiated by German socialist Clara Zetkin in 1910 as a way to promote socialist political objectives and was always referred to by the political name ‘International Working Women’s Day’. Observation of the event was primarily restricted to the Soviet bloc. It wasn’t until the 1970s when women outside of the Soviet bloc looked to celebrating the event that the word ‘working’ was increasingly omitted along with much of it’s socialist meaning.

Beginning in the 1970’s IWD became subject to a feminist revision. Whereas IWWD was previously used to highlight working women’s oppression by a bourgeois and powerful upper class of both men and women, 1970s feminists revisioned the basis of the day by stating that it was now men alone, as a class of “chauvinists,” who wielded all power over all women who had each become victims of men’s domination. It was men’s oppressive rule which IWD must now focus on overthrowing.

A decisive moment of the feminist revision came from the United Nations which officially endorsed and promoted the event from the late 1970s. Along with this endorsement the UN worked very hard to get rid of IWDs socialist traits, a move which was not accepted by many socialist women’s groups. For instance, in 1980 in Sweden, the socialist women’s ‘Grupp 8’ rejected working with other women’s organizations to promote IWD because it wanted to maintain the socialist origins and aims of the event: “We have now conducted a number of discussions within our organization and come to the conclusion that, as representatives of the socialist women’s movement, we cannot take part in a joint-party March 8 demonstration. After all, from the historical perspective, March 8 is the ‘International Socialist Working Women’s Day’ and our organization feels that this should absolutely remain the case. Changing this would be like changing May 1. For this reason we are unable to endorse the UNs appeal.”³ The revisioned event was seen by many as a betrayal of both it’s history and fundamental goals.

With this new ideological turn women were no longer viewed as part of the privileged upper class, and those former oppressors of women- i.e. capitalism; traditional gender schemas imposed by powerful men and women; various laws, language and so on- were reduced to one all-encompassing enemy: males and their patriarchal belief system. The new ideological basis for IWD was elaborated in the late 1970s-80s under the label “patriarchy theory”⁴ and it’s arrival correlated with a sharp increase in the numbers of women observing IWD,⁵ an interest generated by heightened concerns or fears over ‘patriarchal oppression’ of women.

It’s true that women have sought to dismantle restrictive gender stereotypes, but IWD appears more concerned with perpetuating those gender stereotypes rather than dismantling them. In light of the oversimplified explanations proposed by feminist ‘patriarchy theory’⁶ one hopes that whatever issues remain for women that they be explored in more sophisticated and nuanced ways to give International Women’s Day a more credible platform for promoting gender equality and improving gender relations.

International Men’s Day, as conceived by Dr. Jerome Teelucksingh in 1999, has a completely different ideological basis to both the early and later phases of International Women’s Day. Although the objectives of IMD occasionally intersect with those of IWD, such as advocating equality between the sexes, it is primarily concerned with celebrating positive portrayals of men and other issues unique to men’s and boys experiences. This approach is deemed necessary in a social context which is often fascinated with images of males behaving badly, eg. media portrayals of males as stupid, emotionless, greedy, violent, dangerous, power-hungry, selfish, irresponsible and so on. Such negative male stereotypes are frequently promoted in an attempt to shame males into behaving more positively, ignoring the fact that the negative behaviours do not apply to the vast majority of men and boys, or that such negativity may detrimentally impact the self-image and self-esteem of boys, which in turn impacts their willingness to engage in intimate relationships and in communities. In highlighting positive images of men IMD attempts to show that males of all ages respond more energetically to positive portrayals than they do to negative stereotyping.

In summary, International Women’s Day started as a day for women to promote socialist objectives, especially for proletarian women to fight against oppression by the powerful upper classes comprised of men and women both. In the 1970’s it became a new movement claiming that men alone oppressed women, and that IWD will be used as a vehicle to highlight, primarily, the results of an assumed gender war. Said differently the focus of IWD shifted from a class war, to a gender war.

International Men’s Day is not based on the assumption of a gender war. IMD is primarily about celebrating positive images of men as an alternative to negative male stereotyping, the aim being to inspire a new generation of men and boys to develop self-worth and a desire to participate in a society that will (hopefully) one day be free from misandry.

References:

[1] Temma Kaplan, On the Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day, in: Feminist Studies, 11, 1985, S. 163-171.
[2] Liliane Kandel / Françoise Picq, Le Mythe des origines à propos de la journée internationale des femmes, in: La Revue d’en face, 12, 1982, S. 67-80.
[3] Silke Neunsinger, Worlds Of Women; International Material in the Collections of ARAB, p23 – letter by Grupp 8, Stockholm, 1981
[4] Lindsey German, Theories of Patriarchy in International Socialism second series no 12. 1981.
[5] 1900-2010: Increased interest in IWD correlates with the emergence of ‘patriarchy theory’.

[6] Sandra Bloodworth, The Poverty of Patriarchy Theory Originally published in
Socialist Review (Australian), Issue 2, Winter 1990, pp. 5-33. (DOC)

 

There are many characters from Greek mythology who displayed involuntary celibacy, but perhaps none more famous than Apollo, the god of rational thought.

Jungian psychologists view Greek gods and goddesses as archetypes – themes that appear not only in mythology but also psychologically and behaviorally in the lives of men and women. Apollo was the god of many things, including music, education, knowledge, and other intellectual pursuits.

The Apollo archetype personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony. The Apollo archetype as it appears in the behavior of men (or women) favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.

Apollo can be viewed a metaphorical ‘incel‘ figure. The following from psychiatrist Jean Shinoda-Bolen’s book Gods in Everyman describes this aspect of Apollo or what she refers to as the ‘Apollo man’ :

Apollo was the most handsome of gods, as well as responsible and dependable: the sun always came up, rose and set when it was supposed to. He emphasized virtue and had precepts to live by carved on his temple walls. Yet he was unsuccessful in love, rejected by Cassandra, Sybil, Daphne, and Marpessa. The women Apollo the god wanted to have, and was rejected by, were the kind of women who also may reject an Apollo man.

The woman who rejects a handsome, virtuous, dependable Apollo man usually does so because he lacks qualities that are essential for her, such as depth and intensity, or emotional closeness, or sexual spontaneity. Apollo men are rejected by women who want a deeper bond, with more intensity and emotional expressiveness, than he can provide.

The integrity in which an Apollo man may live out his precepts or live up to his agreements draw admiration and respect, rather than love or passion. Women who are aware of these priorities will not choose him to begin with, or, on discovering what is lacking, may reject him as a lover later. ¹

She further tells:

Individuals who resemble Apollo have difficulties that are related to emotional distance, such as communication problems, and the inability to be intimate… Rapport with another person is hard for the Apollo man. He prefers to access (or judge) the situation or the person from a distance, not knowing that he must “get close up” – be vulnerable and empathic – in order to truly know someone else…. But if the woman wants a deeper, more personal relationship, then there are difficulties… she may become increasingly irrational or hysterical.¹

When considering the idea of using Greek deities as descriptors, I’m reminded of a statement by C.G. Jung who wrote, “To serve a mania [a modern psych label] is detestable and undignified, but to serve a God is full of meaning.”

If we translate Jung’s statement into one that speaks to our present topic it would say this: To be a devotee of Apollo amounts to a life filled with meaning, but to be labelled an incel is detestable and undignified.

Said differently, a focus on the many positives of a man’s life provides a more dignified estimation than focusing only on the negative of how he falls short of a petty, gynocentric value system.

Think for example of what would happen to human survival infrastructure if we removed all incel men from society; how would we invent, build or maintain  such infrastructure with lowered numbers of available men? What would happen to communications tech, sewage processing, clean water, food growing and transportation? If these men were not helping to help create such infrastructure, mass baby deaths would be the likely result….. wombs rendered irrelevant to survival of the human species. 

On a less grandiose level we might also consider incel contributions to family and community relationships. Taking Apollo as one archetype of an incel man, he was said to be one of the most important in the large family of Greek gods – celebrated more widely than the rest for his value and presence. Add to that Apollo’s contributions of poetry, music and the arts which enriched the culture and brought joy to the people.

With so much negative and maligning discourse around the topic of incels, perhaps its time we looked at the life of an involuntary celibate as every bit worthy as any other life. If we use Apollo as a model, we might even call parts of that life divine.

References:

[1] Shinoda-Bolen, J., Gods in Everyman: A New Psychology of Men’s Lives and Loves p.130-160 (1989)