My key theme for this weekend (there were elements of a holiday Monday and Tuesday too, please don’t tell Dai) has been vulnerability. Growing up, I have had an ongoing struggle with showing and accepting weakness – thanks, dad – which is a pretty pertinent issue for most men too, I think.
My immediate reaction to a vulnerability is to hide it, get over it, be stronger than it. But in rejecting an insecurity I hold, I am snubbing an aspect of myself and preventing reconciliation.
Being vulnerable involves shining the light on things we don’t perhaps want to see: feelings of powerlessness, or of rejection, or shame for feeling emotional.
Rejecting vulnerabilities
While in rejecting these issues, one will pursue the exact opposite. A man who feels like he cannot provide will do everything in his power to do so. He who fears powerless will attempt to control his external environment – people or actual. A man fearing rejection would preclude it by cutting himself off from others. A man rejecting caring and compassion would, in turn, reject empathy around him.
The greatest remedy to my insecurities has been to open up and own them. That’s partly why I’m posting this blog online. Almost paradoxically, making open your weaknesses to others is very empowering. Sharing washes away feelings of shame and guilt–to tell someone is to reach the point of not giving a fuck.
How it plays out on the big stage
If you accept that men are chronically unable to accept their weaknesses, I think it is easy to see why we act the way we do towards the environment.
Holding the majority of power positions, these chronic issues regarding masculinity play out as a collective power struggle between institutions of men who disdain anything which is weak and use what they can for their own advantage.
The environment is weak, it is other and external. As men, it is a means to provision and power, something we have separated ourselves from, as we have our emotions.
