Introduction
The men’s consciousness-raising movement, also known as the “Men’s Liberation” movement, emerged primarily in the 1970s alongside the second wave of feminism, when men (like me in 1972) began forming groups to discuss and analyze the societal pressures and expectations associated with traditional masculinity, inspired by feminist critiques of gender roles. Men began sharing personal experiences, which was quite novel at that time, and tried to understand how societal expectations impacted their lives, similar to the consciousness-raising groups of feminist women at the time.
The few hundred men I’ve guided and shared self-reflection and paths of personal development have progressed in self-awareness and changing gender roles. But our emotional dimensions remained in the background until 2019, when my Love and Power Institute cofounder, Marsha Hudson, and I led a weekend workshop on vulnerable emotions. Since then I’ve led a small zoom men’s group with a steady focus on the vulnerable emotions-shame, distress/anguish, fear and their frequent consequence, joy. And now we’re beginning a systematic project of improving our emotional intelligence.
Why and How would we expand our emotional versatility as men?
First let’s consider “why.” The major motive for “why” is that we need to help save the world we inhabit from us. Us includes both men and women. For men have spent much of their time for millennia making war against other animal predators, then other tribes of humans, and also with and against other animals and plants that we’ve eaten and exploited as well as natural resources we have weaponized to subdue and exploit each other and the rest of the planet. Now the planet and every species on it may go extinct except ants, cockroaches and some germs and microbes that can survive global climate catastrophes. Many more men than before need to make love not war and get better at it. And many more women than before need to raise less babies and devote more nurture to nature to rectify the balance of populations between us and zillions of other species. In order to adjust our roles and goals we all need to expand our awareness of the emotions that have guided our actions from within, whether we knew it or not.
Now on to How
We’re expanding men’s emotional intelligence by starting with the traditional men’s group practices of self-reflection, discussion of issues and exploring the aspects of normal masculine actions and attitudes that women have discussed and then researched. To this we’ll add confidential sharing in pairs to explore what has helped and harmed our relations with those that matter to us. We’ll also begin a deep exploration of one specific emotion through short readings, experiential exercises and private journal writing for two weeks at a time. Thus we’ll actually create a hybrid of the Love-and-Power-Institute’s Emotional Versatility Training course and the best of what a 10-week men’s consciousness group can offer.
After getting to know a little about each other, we’ll spend a session delving into the first emotion, interest, curiosity, excitement, with its benefits and challenges. This emotion is so important that Darwin and all his followers through the last 150 years, including the brains behind Inside Out 1 & 2, have never noticed it. Yet interest/excitement powers human freedom and all of our population expansions and our discoveries, creations and achievements, both valuable and problematic, and it keeps on adding more innovations and new perspectives to our experience. Among the most precious gifts of interest is our curiosity that can make studying all the other emotions fascinating, even for the ugliest and scariest, like shame, anger, fear, distress/sorrow and contempt. Being interested rewards us so we can learn from difficult emotions and get more comfortable with each one as a force both for and against us in our lives.
Our 10 men’s group sessions will give us two weeks for each emotion. We will begin by exploring an emotion’s dimensions with its benefits and challenges and how we have reacted and experienced it in our lives. After a week of paying attention to that emotion we’ll share what we’ve learned with each other and use these discussions to deepen our trust and community with each other.
Our Men’s Groups guarantee each person safety, confidentiality and equal participation. Expanding emotional versatility can lead to many other gains in personality. We’ll build closer friendships and loosen the shell of inner guardedness that keeps many of us from benefitting from sharing what’s important in our lives. When we understand our emotions, we can explore what helps and hurts us and practice repairing damaged and threatened relationships.
For example, there are many fascinating pair-relations between emotions, such as interest and shame. For when we’re interested enough in a person to call or text them on our cell phone and all we get is an answering device or no response at all, we may feel awkward, a mild form of shame, and start second-guessing whether the person likes us or not. We may stay uncomfortable or just switch our attention to something else. A different form of shame is “hurt feelings” that may actually warn us that a damaged personal connection needs some work. But if a supportive men’s group is interested enough in understanding what happened to role-play the scene with the person involved, they might take notice of small moments of interest, disappointment, depression and irritation. and come to respect each of them. By slowing down this real-life experience the group could benefit from examining all four of these emotional moments or more in sequence with interest and respect. Then they could experiment with different feelings and ways to act towards the other person to begin the work of mending this relationship. Everyone involved could then consider and discuss similar approaches to their own comparable situations.
Our men’s group experience and enhanced emotional intelligence will bring brighter colored experience and wisdom into our lives. This communal practice can also lead to longer lasting men’s groups and train men in new habits that promote more lasting, trusting and fulfilling relationships with individuals, partners or families.