JOSEPH GELFER

What an optimistic vision of masculinity in the new issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality. In her article, “Masculinity as a Center, Centered Masculinity,” Susan B. Parlow writes of the men she sees:

White, heterosexual, well-educated, affluent, and in their early 20s, these “insider” men could be seen as the canonical center of American culture. They were expected by parents, teachers, friends and selves to master our ways and ascend to privileges, powers, and rewards—heading major companies, holding positions in government, marrying well. Even so, in each analysis “how to be a man” was in some way an organizing question. Each man identified some personally sticky feature of traditional masculinity—dominance in relationship, refusal to feel emotions, resisting vulnerability, preferring the instrumental to the aesthetic—and adopted the task of changing it. They were aware that our social imaginary of the masculine is stressed and challenged. They were viscerally in conversation with others whose political criticisms were directed straight at them.

To what strange constituency of men does she refer, you may ask? Men in therapy, of course. This supports a position I have held for a while that the “solution” to masculinity is chiefly a thinking exercise. And therapy forces you to think.

My feeling is that a lot of the pathological aspects of normative masculinity are not down to proactive decisions, rather an absence of thought. Of course, that’s not to say that thinking about masculinity always results in useful conclusions, as evidenced by the feminist backlash from some men’s rights groups. However, on the whole I believe that genuinely thinking about masculinity—perhaps for the first time—is a key variable in the way forward.

It may be that this is why gay men often have more nuanced understandings of masculinity than straight men: not due to anything inherent in “gayness,” simply that gay men have been forced by society more than straight men to think deeply about their identity.

Just this morning, someone arrived at my blog by confidently Googling “Joseph Gelfer is gay”. I get this kind of thing quite a bit. Sometimes it comes as a direct question, other times it is about someone revising my biographical data on Wikipedia (oddly, the same wiki-vandal also had a bone to pick with the Methodist revivalist Howell Harris, Jazz musician John Mehegan and actor Christopher Eccleston).

As it happens, I don’t believe in the gay/straight binary, so would reject this statement not in terms of whether it is true, but because the category of “gay” has insufficient or restrictive meaning.

But it gets me thinking: which scenario is more acceptable to the kind of people who find my critique of masculinity objectionable:

• Gelfer is openly gay;
• Gelfer might be gay;
• Gelfer is straight?

My feeling is that “Gelfer is openly gay” is the most preferable option to these people as it allows them to dismiss my position as simply a bit of gay propaganda. These folks may have no problem with gay people, but won’t take them very seriously as critics of masculinity, as they are considered to perform only a faux-masculinity in the first place.

“Gelfer is straight” is a more challenging proposition as it suggests that I speak from a position of “full” masculinity, yet still feel inclined to critique it. Folks attempt to dismiss it by declaring I am wallowing in self-hate and misandry, even if this is clearly not the case in light of my many pro-people/pro-male comments.

However, “Gelfer might be gay” is an altogether more troubling possibility. If I were openly gay, they could dismiss me. If I were clearly straight, they at least would know what they’re dealing with. But if they’re not sure? Whoa: that’s where the panic sets in; things may not be as they seem!

There’s a niggling kernel to this panic that begrudgingly states, “feck … Gelfer … might … actually … be …right.” This is the moment when the Masculinity Conspiracy is ideally revealed, or I am dismissed as slightly mad (even if madness—like masculinity—is largely a social construction).

Such are the outcomes of arriving at this blog on a particular search term. I may need to unpack my recent favourite of “joseph gelfer prophetic hippie”. It’s all about me, you know

Further to the previous post about Perez’s article: when I originally wrote Numen, Old Men I included a few thoughts about Perez’s book Soulfully Gay, but they didn’t make the final draft. I really wanted to like Perez’s book, because of the importance of bringing gay (i.e. counterhegemonic) voices to the integral table, but I found it rather limited in perspective. Here’s the outtake, which originally followed my discussion of David Deida:

Perez contains none of the misogynistic flavour of Deida, although he does rate The Way of the Superior Man as “one of my favourites” whose writing he sees as allowing for “complex permutations of gender and sexual preference” and focuses on Deida’s presentation of masculine and feminine essences. Also, following Jungian analyst Mitch Walker, Perez suggests that underlining gayness is a mythic archetype, “that straights are drawn to connect to the divine through otherness, and gays through sameness”. Clearly, this appeal to archetypal (prototypal) reality as well as its polarity (straight/gay, otherness/sameness) is problematic within integral thought, as outlined above. It is also another example of how mythopoetic themes again bubble to the surface of integral thought in relation to masculinity, heterosexual or otherwise. It comes, then, as little surprise to find Perez discussing Robert Bly’s approach to the spiritual journey. Perez also pays special attention to the “men’s gatherings” he has attending via the ManKind Project, one of the more widely-known mythopoetic organisations responsible for running the “New Warrior Training Adventure” course. Perez also admires Toby Johnson, acclaimed gay spiritual writer and advocate of Joseph Campbell’s archetypal perspective who will be discussed in some detail in the next chapter about gay spirituality. But during his integral journey Perez has read Wilber’s critique of Campbell and decided that contemplating archetypes is insufficient for spiritual development.

Why archetypes remain in the background of integral discussions remains unanswered: one would think such Jungian hangovers would have been transcended and included. Perez provides a clear example of how integral thought cannot shake free of polar/mythic reasoning, seeking to honour “the value both of dualistic thinking (yin and yang, male and female) and the principle of unity”. But this equation is itself a manifestation of dualistic thinking (duality versus unity). A more valuable equation (assuming one desires to continue the realities of yin and yang, male and female) is to honour “the value both of dualistic thinking and the principle of multiplicity”. The Deleuzean concept of the multiple in regard to gender is one of the key themes of chapter 7. Clearly the multiple exists in integral thought, which is perhaps even based upon it, but the fact that it is transcended and included with a directional impetus towards “orienting generalizations” gives an impression that the integral seeks less to honour the multiple, rather to erase it in “the principle of unity”. Perez seems aware of these dangers, but that he must be ready to move beyond such concerns: ‘I must be even more willing to be perceived by others as mean, intolerant, elitist, arrogant, or worse. I must be willing to be called names by hypersensitive folks … “too Western” or “too white” or “too androcentric”’. Indeed he must.

Much of Perez’s presentation of the integral consists of little more than commenting on how very clever Wilber is, and relaying his various core theories. His most original contribution, however, locates what he describes as “homophilia” at the heart of his own take on masculine and feminine principles. Perez suggests notions of self-transcendence and self-immanence can be equated with the terms “heterophilia” and “homophilia”:

In self-transcendence, all holons transform through an interplay of masculine and feminine principles. Self-transcendence is the root drive underlying heterosexuality in all species. And in self-immanence, all holons transform through an interplay of masculine and masculine or feminine and feminine (that is, the holon turns inward on itself). Self-immanence is the root drive underlying homosexuality in all species.

On one level this is a welcome addition to the integral model, locating same-sex orientation on a par with heterosexuality. However, it is stuck in the old pattern of polarity, and it is noteworthy that same-sex orientation equates with a downward momentum, while heterosexuality equates with transcendence, the ultimate direction of the integral. We have already seen how Wilber privileges transcendence, so even here homophilia suffers relegation. Perez’s model, while seeking to be integral, does not seem able to escape heteronormativity, which itself is a masculine assertion.

The following is a pre-print of the editorial for the next Journal of Men, Masculinities and Spirituality, which comprises the address I delivered recently at the Parliament of the World’s Religions.

In one of Plato’s dialogues between Phaedrus and Socrates, we are faced with the paradox of the “pharmakon.” The pharmakon is alternatively or simultaneously beneficent and maleficent; it is both remedy and poison; at once fascinating and abhorrent. I find Plato’s pharmakon a useful tool in understanding how men and masculinities function in all religions, both in their histories and futures. Without a doubt, in the name of numerous divinities, men have wrought great turmoil on the world: on women, children, less powerful men, animals, and the earth on which we live. We tend to think in these allegedly post-feminist times that many of the ills men have performed in times past are in some way solved, but they are not. Patriarchy and its damaging effects are alive and well, even among those people who speak about masculinity in spiritual terms. I want to plot a brief course of these masculine spiritualities in recent times: via the mythopoetic men’s movement, the Christian men’s movement, and how what might be described as an “alternative spirituality” men’s movement expresses itself today. These offer us an insight into the poison of the pharmakon. I will then conclude with a different vision for men and spirituality: the remedy.

When most people think of the men’s movement, the image they conjure in their minds is usually one of the mythopoetic men’s movement. It is an image of partially clothed, bearded men, smeared with mud in the woods. It is an image of men getting in touch with their feelings, weeping in the company of brothers or releasing a primal scream. It is an image of storytelling, sweat lodges, drumming and talking sticks. For many, the mythopoetic movement is synonymous with Robert Bly’s Iron John, which recreates a Grimm Brothers’ tale about a wild, hairy man, “Iron John” who becomes a mentor to a young boy. The experiences shared by Iron John and the boy are intended to reflect the stages of masculine development.

There were lots of good intentions behind the mythopoetic movement: its leaders and participants understood that there was something wrong with masculinity in society. Men appeared to be dysfunctional, and something quite rightly needed to be done about it. However, the movement made a crucial mistake. They assumed that there was some better way of doing masculinity that could be recaptured, something from the past, something that dwelled inside men which needed to be rediscovered. They did this primarily via the adoption of archetypes: Iron John, or the “wild man” was the first of these archetypes, which was followed soon after by others such as the king and the warrior. We were told that these archetypes existed whether we liked it or not. Some said, following Jung, that they dwelled in the collective unconscious, others that they were hard-wired into the reptilian brain. And if we ignore them, we were told, problems occur, and this is why modern men were in trouble.

But the problem with these archetypes was that they promoted a certain type of masculinity. The wild man required an earthy, hirsute individual who belonged deep in the forest. He demanded challenging initiation rituals that transitioned boys into a certain vision of authentic and mature masculinity. The king archetype demanded that men see themselves at the center of their own mini kingdom, the people in their lives as subjects who need to be directed, resources to be secured and exploited. The warrior archetype demanded that men see themselves as soldiers on some kind of crusade. Life is to be framed in militaristic terms: battles are to be fought and won. All these archetypes, for all the noises about thinking of them in terms of myth and metaphor, promoted a type of masculinity that is at best oppressive, and at worst pathological and violent. Anyone thinking this interpretation is rather excessive is gently reminded of the recent tragic deaths of three people in a sweat lodge at Sedona who were involved in precisely this thing: seeking the spiritual warrior within.

The mythopoetic movement was part alternative spirituality, part pop psychology. But traditional religions also perpetuate similar problems. Around the same time that Iron John was released we saw the establishment of Promise Keepers which sought to re-establish male authority in the home. Promise Keepers is just one of many thousands of men’s ministries operating around the Western world. Today, Christian manhood has once again been realigned with biblical manhood, where the husband and father is the intermediary between his family and God. Even academics have begun to speak about this in positive terms with the identification of “soft patriarchs” who are more involved with family life than non-Christian men due to their “symbolic” headship of the family. Presumably soft patriarchy results in soft oppression.

Other men’s ministries revolve around the theme of sport. Training manuals for these ministries are laid out like play books, and talk about life in terms of sporting metaphors and how men must lead their families in the way a coach leads his team. Other men’s ministries base their whole identity around military themes such as Band of Brothers, BattleZone ministries and Top Gun ministries. They read books such as John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart in which the author dances around his house wielding replica swords and defining masculinity by battles that must be fought. Again, there are real-world ramifications of this, and not just by families damaged by the assumption of a patriarchal male figure. Recently, it has been discovered that John Eldredge’s book is used by the violent Mexican Christian drugs cartel, La Familia, to provide a model of masculinity to which to aspire which results in being, quite literally, murderous.

Like the mythopoetic movement, the intentions of the Christian men’s movement are often good. They want to think more closely about masculinity, and they want to support their families and communities in which they live. But their answer to this is to promote rather unsavory masculinities: male authority in the home, whether it be biblical patriarch or sports coach. Where is the mutuality and respect here? What signals are young boys being sent in these families about the role of women in society? Or, as with mythopoetic archetypes, masculinity is aligned with violence. Why? Where is the inspiration for men who do not want to lead families, who may not even be part of a family, or who do not like sport, or playing real or imaginary war games? And we tend to think of the men’s movement as historical, but there are more and more men’s ministries every year. And new forms of men’s movement adopting themes of male power and archetypes are appearing right now.

For example, alternative masculine spirituality today looks quite a lot like previous forms of masculine spirituality. One popular book is David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work and Sexual Desire. Deida presents himself as a kind of Buddhist sexual radical, but his message is anything but. Deida promotes a very muscular way of being a man: of taking control, making decisions and generally being a success with women. Deida is very popular in the pick-up-artist community, which provides techniques for men to seduce women, which seems rather at odds with the kind of spiritual development Deida promotes. Old ways of doing masculinity in new spiritualities appear in other venues such as Andrew Cohen’s EnlightenNext magazine. A recent edition focusing on the “new masculinity” kicks off with an interview with Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield, author of the book Manliness, which paints a picture of a feminized society that could benefit from learning about the history and virtues of traditional manliness stretching all the way back to roaming the savannah. The next article, “Beyond the Rambo Mentality” sounds much more promising; however, it speaks of “authentic” masculinity, archetypes and initiation, which could have been lifted directly out of Robert Bly’s Iron John. Next is an interview with Erwin McManus, a Christian minister popular at Promise Keepers events whose book The Barbarian Way wants men to engage with “the ancient, primal, and dangerous.” This is followed by the story of Nathaniel Fick, an Ivy League graduate who learned how to be a man in the Marines. Later we read about how Scandinavian men lost their Viking spirit, the “confessions of a formerly sensitive New Age man” in which a Californian generation-Xer laments being feminized by his psychotherapist mother, and finally Cohen and the “integral philosopher” Ken Wilber bemoan postmodernity which “creates weak, inauthentic men” who have overly bought into the myth of patriarchy. It seems that even at the glittering edge of alternative spiritualities, when men are referred to we come back to the same old story: power, control, strength, the poison of the pharmakon that has got us in the hole we are in today. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Consider this quote from a leader of a particular form of men’s movement, outlining the attributes of its participants:

• They are not, by nature, territorially aggressive and do not impose their political claims on others.
• They are not, by nature, competitive but are passionately interested in sharing with others.
• They are not interested in conquering nature but are interested in harmonious living with all of nature.
• They are not interested in denying bodiliness and carnality but are passionately involved in celebrating all aspects of human sexuality.

That sounds like quite an interesting complement to the previous forms of masculine spirituality I’ve been discussing, doesn’t it? Not aggressive, not competitive, harmonious with nature. This is actually a quote from Harry Hay, the unofficial leader of the gay men’s movement. What I find interesting about this quote, and I’ll out myself here as a straight man, is that there’s nothing specifically “gay” about it. There’s nothing in it that should unsettle even the straightest of men. Gay spirituality is a useful example for all men. I’m not suggesting that straight men should all go out and try and adopt a different form of sexual orientation, rather there are things that can be learned from the way that gay men see masculinity, and the way they express themselves spiritually.

The key issue is multiple masculinities. All the other forms of masculine spirituality assume masculinity to be a certain, fixed type of thing: specifically, a married, rather conservative man who should provide for, protect, and lead his family. Gay spirituality assumes there can be any number of ways of being a man: maybe married, maybe not, maybe tough, soft, competitive, whatever. These different types of masculinity offer complements to traditional masculinity. And as traditional masculinity in spiritual contexts has tended to be rather unfortunate, I’d suggest gay spirituality offers better types of masculinity.

But the gay issue is just a jumping off point, not the focus. I started by saying that without a doubt, in the name of numerous divinities, men have wrought great turmoil on the world: on women, children, less powerful men, animals, and the earth on which we live. Yet at the same time, many of the most peaceful and divinely inspired individuals of all religions have been men. Clearly, there is nothing inherent in men that demands destruction; clearly there is something in men that also seeks peace. The future of peace requires the mobilization of men in all faiths who reclaim what is naturally peaceful about being a religious man. It is a process of healing within each faith, between different faiths and with those who choose no faith. And it is not simply men’s work, but a partnership between men, women, children, less powerful men, animals, and the earth on which we live.

But we cannot achieve this while masculine spirituality is defined by a patriarchal nature and restrictive treatment of gender: I would go so far as to say we should reject masculine spirituality as a term because it does not seem capable of shaking these critical issues. But, importantly, this does not close down in any way men discussing religion and spirituality in terms which resonate with being a man. It opens up a conversation which resonates with any number of ways of being a man (or masculine) that rejects patriarchy. It is a pro-man conversation because it is pro-person, which by necessity must involve the liberation of all people. Feminist and queer theories and theologies have done most of the work in making way for such a conversation. What is needed now is for predominantly straight men to step up and play their part in a process which will benefit the vast majority of people. This is hardly a new or radical suggestion, but its realization remains elusive. Such is the insidious nature of patriarchy. But, as the saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Here’s an article that runs counter to the usual nonsense: A Manifesto for Radical Masculinity (warning, link may not be safe for work) by Sinclair Sexsmith at Carnal SF. Sexsmith asks the questions, “How can I be a feminist and be masculine? Does feminism devalue masculinity? Isn’t that the same problem as devaluing femininity? And more personally, what does masculinity look like on me?’ and concludes, “Radical masculinity is a way to present, perform, play with, celebrate, and liberate masculinity, in thousands of multi-dimensional expressions. It is still being created, recreated, formed, and reformed, and I want to be a part of its ongoing evolution.”

The interesting twist here is that Sexsmith is a butch lesbian. In Numen, Old Men I write about how gay men can be exemplars for straight men, as they resist conforming to normative masculinity. Of course, female masculinities provide other interesting examples to be explored. Judith Halberstam’s book Female Masculinity is a great start on this. Halberstam is also useful for keeping in check the romanticizing of gay masculinities, via the lens of homonormativity, showing how they can replicate many of the same values of the broader patriarchal order.

A reader from Amazon.com asks the question, “Joe, are you gay?” after reading my suggestion that gay spirituality has some value for both gay and straight men (for what it’s worth, and if you think you can safely deduce an answer from this fact, I’m married with three children). He goes on to note, “I’m a hetrosexual advocate. I disagree with the premise of the book” (I doubt he’s read it). I can’t quite tell what offends this faux-reader more: that I might be gay, or that I am straight while advocating some value of gayness.

Reminds me of a time back in 2004 when someone took offence at something I must have written somewhere and defaced my Wikipedia page claiming “In 2002, Joseph came out as a practicing homosexual. He has spoken out on behalf of Gay Rights, and has pledged his future to fighting for the cause“. News to me. At least I was in good company: similar allegations were apparently made on the pages of the Methodist revivalist Howell Harris, Jazz musician John Mehegan and actor Christopher Eccleston. Go figure.

One of the dirty little secrets of having your own website is trawling through the user statistics to see where people come from to get to the site, and the search terms they use. Historically my favorite has been someone arriving from the search “related:www.iraniangaydoctors.com”. How I am related to iraniangaydoctors.com I do not know, but it’s amusing nonetheless.

Yesterday someone arrived by searching on “joseph gelfer dictator”. So, you, from Airstrip One IP 195.194.187.132 with IE6/WinXP: Uncle Joe is watching you, be doubleplus sure

One of the chapters in Numen, Old Men explores the idea that gay spirituality is a useful model for all masculine spirituality, as it is one type of spirituality performed solely by men (lesbian sisters clearly assumed to be separate) which resists the patriarchal tendencies often perpetuated by masculine spirituality.

This process also refers to the gay combination of sexuality and spirituality, which is largely ignored by regular masculine spirituality, except perhaps in reference to the fearful battle against lustful thoughts and addiction to pornography.

So it seems quite fitting that when I did some searching to see if Numen, Old Men had found its way in to the Twittersphere, that the one return I could find was by a gay man in Argentina whose blog hosts numerous pictures of young men having sex with one another. At least that particular browser history was at home rather than work…