Northern European feminized men (and the effect we have on women)

Being a strong man is something that has become suspect in Northern Europe, for many years the liberation of men had to do with finding our feminine side. We did a great job here in Northern Europe, we definitely found it!

The last two Sunday afternoons I spent with groups of men, in Denmark and in the Netherlands, talking about this predicament of being feminized, spineless men. In both gatherings every single man recognized that this is who we are. All of us are, when it comes to our relationships with women, the weaker sex. And none of us seemed to know anyone from our own culture for whom that wasn't the case.

We have learned to be understanding and un-oppressive, being the head of the family is something we have long outgrown, and we have taken this all the way; we got into the habit of letting women make almost all the important decisions.

I found it is very hard, if not impossible, for a woman to respect a man like that, yet most of us are like this (even those of us, like myself, that seem quite macho and sure of  ourselves have, in the way we relate to life, the same angst and weakness). What do women do when they don't respect men and feel they cannot trust them? They become (excuse my French) controlling b**ches. It's hard to blame them, if a man lets a woman take almost all the life decisions, she is forced to take matters in her own hands. And lets face it, you wouldn't consult a person whom you don't respect if you need to make decisions that you find important would you?

So what is the good news? Well, in these conversations I mentioned before, we found facing this predicament a great source of strength! It is extraordinary when a group of men like I just described come together and pierce into the root of almost all of their problems, into the root of their sense of slavery and prisonership, from the point of view of wanting to be free from it, wanting to be a real player in life. A kind of impersonal strength emerges out of the collective that seems to empower every individual.

We were not talking about going back to being traditional men, we also were not seeking to overcome our condition by psychologically facing the causes of it, we were simply, as we were recognizing this, so personally felt, weakness in ourselves and each other, finding new ways to be a man, new ways to be together,  where strength and vulnerability, openness and autonomy were all present at once. Usually we either feel on top of life and are quite arrogant, or we recoil and become passive spectators, but in these meetings we are exploring ways to be a man who is free, strong and engaged, and not the self-centred consumer or the victim of life that we tend to see ourselves as.