I often refer to what I do, professionally and avocationally, as my “work.” I talk about “youth work” and “pro-feminist work” and “men’s work”. I had thought that everyone would understand that what I meant was clear, but a recent comment by Toy Soldier below my “Sheer desecrated hurt and anger” post makes it obvious that I need to be more explicit.
I wrote:
Real men’s work is about reaching young men where they are. Not just the ones who are obviously willing to be reached, either. Real men’s work — especially in school settings — is about initiating relationship with the shy, the bookish, the brooding and the hostile. It is frustrating, difficult, painful, and very tiring work. It is also joyous, especially when the breakthroughs happen. I’ve been working to do this for many years now, with a wide variety of young men. And it may be the most important thing I do.
Toy Soldier replied:
If one considers it work to aid a young man in need then one has already missed the point. Speaking as a “brooding†young man from Cho’s generation, I think the above attitude is one of the many reasons why Cho’s hurt and anger remained suppressed. As John mentioned above, one must approach helping young men with the intent to actually help them because it is the right thing to do for them. It requires respect, which the above–no offense–selfish, self-serving attitude completely lacks.
Whoa, cowboy. I’ll ignore the “selfish and self-serving” bit and focus instead on the misunderstanding of what I mean by “work.”
Sometimes, it’s fairly obvious that (at least on my mother’s side) I am descended from a lot of Scots-Irish Calvinists and North German Lutherans. The “Protestant work ethic”, stripped of its theological nuances, is one of my family’s secular religions (the other being good manners). Somehow, early on in life, I picked up the idea that there was no greater sin than idleness. Sin was, I believed and still often do believe, more about what you didn’t do than what you did. From my cousins, I picked up a “work hard, play hard” ethos. As long as I was doing the former, I was allowed great (perhaps too much) latitude for the latter. Getting straight As or making money weren’t vitally important, mind you — but having focus and goals were.
So I end up talking about almost everything as “work.” I’ll be the first to say that my marriage is blissful. It is also challenging work. Indeed, if my marriage wasn’t sometimes a hell of a lot of work, I’d figure that there was something amiss. If I’m too comfortable, I’m stagnating; the only way to fight decay is to keep in constant motion, in near-constant effort. My teaching is work. I am good at what I do, I think, but I know I could be better. I could be kinder, more sympathetic, even more passionate. Teaching is joy — teaching is hard work.
I “work out” every day. I do it for the thrill of the endorphin rush to which I am most definitely addicted, but I also do it because I like working at physical things. I like pushing up mountain trails and doing ever-more difficult positions in Pilates. Is there an element of playfulness, of creativity, of fun in all of this “working” out? Of course there is. But is it also mental and physical work? Abso-flippin’-lutely.
And my youth ministry is also “work.” I work at being a better, kinder, more intuitive mentor to girls and boys. I work at new ways to reach the kids who are toughest to reach. Is it often exhilarating and fulfilling? Sure. But it is also often tiring and disheartening. If I only did youth ministry in order to be adored, to be wanted, and to be validated, I’d be a piss-poor volunteer. If I only did youth ministry with the kids whom it is easy to reach, I’d be a fraud and a coward. Every danged week, I have to push myself out of my comfort zone to try and connect with the sullen, the angry, the hurting, the defensive. I have to be willing to have my initial efforts at connection rebuffed, knowing that building trust with a wounded, alienated kid takes a long time and is frequently hard work.
Toy Soldier — and some other men’s rights activists — think that pro-feminist men have only one motive to work with boys: we want to make sure that they don’t hurt women. The implication, and it’s one that I hear often, is that men like me don’t really like or care for other men or boys. Yet because as pro-feminists we see the colossal harm men and boys inflict on women and girls, we apparently consider it our distasteful duty to reach out to our little brothers in the hopes of molding them into respectful egalitarians like ourselves. According to this theory, men like me have no interest in working with boys as boys, only in working to “defuse” their toxic masculinity. It’s a cute theory, but it’s simply not true.
I work with girls, and I work with boys. Ask anyone who has seen me do youth ministry: my time is evenly divided with all of “my kids”, and my joy in their growth and my concern at their setbacks is equal, whether they are male or female. I do youth work because I want these teens to grow up into empowered, socially responsible, authentically happy human beings who delight in their own createdness and who feel a strong desire to help heal the world. I want them to do justice and love mercy. I want them to know that they are loved and adored no matter what they do or who they do it with. And I am willing to do a hell of a lot of work to help get them there. And make no mistake, it is frequently very hard work.
There’s a lot of work to be done, people! The earth needs savin’, the animals need protectin’, the poor need housin’, the naked need clothin’, the rivers need cleanin’, the kids need lovin’. We need God’s help to get all this done, but we are His co-workers, His commissioned agents, His proxies. There’s too much pain in the world for us to be self-indulgent or lazy for too long. Let’s get crackin’.
Three words: You rock, dude!
You sound like a profoundly nice guy, so let me be blunt: Is there some reason you haven’t bothered to reply to my email, sent over two weeks ago, even though I carefully identified myself as a male feminist and not a MRA? Just wondered.
I wanted my criticisms to be taken seriously, so sent the email. I didn’t want to start a public row here. I wanted to take up these matters with you privately. I didn’t realize your ableism and related problems in totally ignoring disability politics extended into actually ignoring gimps who try to engage you in discussion.
I hope you don’t treat your disabled students as inferiors also.
Sincerely,
TJ
McSoul, I get dozens of e-mails. Generally, when folks call what I write “crap” I don’t bother to look and see if they have any valid points. Send me another e-mail that isn’t laced with profanity, and I’ll consider a response.
And as someone who has struggled with mental illness for many years, I am well aware of disabily — and I know that even the physically fit can struggle with profound challenges.
But this is thread drift. Shoot me another email, I deleted your original as I delete all unsolicited emails that come dripping with four-letter words.
I didn’t realize “bullshit” was a four-letter word, I count 8. That was the only profanity in my email.
I’ll write you another later today.
Hugo said: “According to this theory, men like me have no interest in working with boys as boys, only in working to “defuse†their toxic masculinity. It’s a cute theory, but it’s simply not true.”
Yet I’ve seen not one single morsel of evidence supporting this statement, and as you and many others here know, I’ve been hanging around your blog for years. From my years here, it appears to me that your work with boys is primarily – if not exclusively – intended to make the world a better place for girls and women. A worthy goal, but if not “self-serving,” then surely serving people other than the boys you work with.
Care to offer some support for your claims above?
Mr. Bad, anything I say probably won’t work for you, but read this:
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2005/04/06/more-on-the-retreat-and-the-smell-of-boys-in-the-morning/
Firstly, let me apologize. I mistook the usage of “real men’s work” to imply that it is a job to be done as an extension of feminism’s deconstruction of masculinity, not as an “work” ethos.
I agree, particularly since it is not a view I hold. However, most pro-feminists fail to demonstrate concern for boys as boys, choosing rather to focus primarily on the harm males inflict on females. By this I mean there is no discussion about issues that specifically concern boys without involving the status of women, typically to diminish the importance of impact those issues have on boys and men. What pro-feminists demonstrated is a restrained concern for boys and men. This does not mean individual pro-feminists cannot or do not genuinely care about the boys they help, but that as a collective pro-feminists fail to demonstrate genuine concern. This can best be shown by the lack of pro-feminist involvement in addressing
issuesmyths like male child abuse, unfortunate adult and childhood sexual encounters, suicide, drug abuse, imprisonment, unfortunate prison sexual encounters, the boy crisis in schools, male bullying, etc.If you are working out of a genuine desire to help boys then I applaud your effort.
Hugo, I admire how hard you try to connect with boys as boys, I really do, but the link you provided doesn’t do much to prove to me that you are connecting with boys from a masculine perspective. You describe your need to connect with boys on an emotional level even while acknowledging that boys don’t normally connect in this manner; they – we – are more apt to connect on an intellectual level, which many people like you misinterpret as impersonal when in fact it is not; it’s just different. Further you go so far as to say: “As I’ve written before, as a teenage boy, all of my good friends were girls. I disliked and distrusted men and boys, even as I craved their approval. Over the years, slowly and painfully, I processed through my issues with men, and came to the point where I now have a community of men with whom I interact on a regular basis.” What this says to me is that over the years you’ve been able to identify a community of men who you can interact with on your own feminine level, so even though you feel you’ve processed through your issues with men you’ve never really resolved those issues, you’ve simply adapted a lifestyle that allows you to avoid them most of the time.
Nothing wrong with that mind you – I’m all for ‘live and let live’, etc. – but what you describe isn’t connecting with people as men, or at least, not masculine men. Thus, to me it seems that your efforts at ‘training’ boys is geared towards teaching them to interact in a feminine way, which IMO is Ok if you want to make the world more comfortable for women and girls but doesn’t really do anything more than characterize healthy masculinity as ‘abnormal’ and thus make the world generally less comfortable for ordinary, masculine boys and men.
Boys and girls are different. For example, perhaps if you were comfortable with sports (even baseball), video games, Grandmaster Flash, etc., you’d understand how natural it is for a boy to be comfortable enough to fully open up while at the same not gazing into your eyes, and similarly, how utterly foreign and uncomfortable it is for a boy to be compelled to do such a thing, especially when being asked to open up on a personal level. Boys have fairly large personal spaces, so many (if not most) of the time going for the eye-to-eye contact when discussing personal matters is a deal-breaker. What you described in the other thread sounds remarkably similar to the “iPod” thread when you blogged about your need to chat it up with people on airplanes, etc. – most guys just aren’t like that.
Like I said, I admire your efforts to connect with boys, but IMO your history of not being comfortable around healthy normal masculinity explains why to many of us guys it’s pretty clear you just don’t ‘get it’ vis-a-vis connecting with boys.
Before our time, Hugo, back in the early days of groups like Campus Crusade for Christ (one of several bizarro connections I have with you), that kind of decisional evangelism was known as one’s “personal work”–”so how’s it going with your personal work?” So, I got a chuckle out of the “work” discussion in the church context…
Bonding with, relating to, mentoring teenagers of either gender is hard WORK for youth workers of either gender. You give it more than some paid church staffers I know, so kudos.
Thanks, franksta!
Mr. Bad, just for the record, I love sports. I can talk sports with anyone. I’ve coached cross-country, love football and soccer and softball; I just hate baseball. Hell, I can even — when pressed — talk basketball. Still, the usual epistemic gulf between your view and mine has opened up very wide once again. I’m not interested in defending my masculine bona fides any further; what matters is not how manly I am in my appearance or my habits or my interactive skills, but how well I connect with boys and girls. And I do it damned well in my own ENFP-ness.
I know Ill regret this, but here I go:
“Hugo, I admire how hard you try to connect with boys as boys, I really do, but the link you provided doesn’t do much to prove to me that you are connecting with boys from a masculine perspective.”
Could you define “masculine perspective”?
>If I only did youth ministry in order to be adored, to be wanted, and to be validated, I’d be a piss-poor volunteer.
I’ll second that, as a teacher of adolescents.
Anyone who spends any time with teens understands that a person with an agenda never succeeds for long in youth work. Teens have excellent BS meters, first of all; second, it’s darn hard work just to meet teens’ needs, leaving very little energy to promote one’s agenda; third, as you proceed you begin to see teens as human beings rather than as units to be converted, or you drop out in frustration.
When I first got into teaching high school Latin a wise teacher said, “If you go into this job because you love Latin you’re going to fail. But if you go in because you love the kids, you will succeed.” To the extent that I do succeed with my students, it’s because I use Latin as a way to love them, rather than using them as a way to love Latin.
Shorter Mr. Bad: I own the definition of masculinity, and therefore Hugo is in the wrong simply by virtue of of doing his work in a way that I disapprove of.
Hugo, I simply am responding to things that you’ve written, in your own voice. You yourself said how uncomfortable you were/are with normal, regular, whatever masculinity, so I’m simply taking you at your word here.
Addressing the remarks from the Trolls…
Okay, we’ve cleared the air here nicely. So if anyone has any further thoughts on the real topic of this post — which is the use of the term “work” in virtually all contexts — they are welcome to share them. Discussing my masculinity, or responding to Mr. Bad’s analysis thereof, will constitute thread drift.
Schwyzer: If I only did youth ministry in order to be adored, to be wanted, and to be validated, I’d be a piss-poor volunteer.
DF: I’ll second that, as a teacher of adolescents.
Anyone who spends any time with teens understands that a person with an agenda never succeeds for long in youth work.
More succeed than one would suspect, particularly if they support a popular agenda. Many people who work with teens assume their personal views never show. They forget that one’s personal views affect how one interacts with people, one’s choice of words, one’s overall behavior, etc. Schwyzer demonstrated this when he stated, “It’s a chance to move away from the theories I espouse on this blog and in my classroom, and put them into concrete practice.” John G. Spragge pointed the problems with that kind of approach.
It is not just what one says, but how one says it. And frankly it is impossible to completely shut off one’s personal views. However, it is possible to look beyond them. But this requires one to step back, listen to, learn from, value and respect those one wishes to mentor for who they are rather than what one wishes them to be.
As a side note, one particular point John made that stood out was about picking which boys are deserving of mentoring. I think that is a critical point that was overlooked.
I have to be willing to have my initial efforts at connection rebuffed, knowing that building trust with a wounded, alienated kid takes a long time and is frequently hard work.
As a brooding member of the generation previous to Cho and Toy Soldier, I have to break this too you, Hugo. (Mind you, this is just the personality reading I’m geting from your blog)
You’re a wholesome, optimistic, driven guy who wants to share with everybody and push himself to higher standards of living. You’re not only the complete opposite of the wounded, alienated type, you’re their worst nightmare. I managed to evade your type of teacher/counselor/etc throughout my teen and college years, and even now I cringe a bit when I meet one. They’re always trying to help, and there are only one or two people on this entire planet that I will accept unsolicited help from. (and believe me, I don’t do much soliciting either.)
In Cho’s case, I’m willing to bet there weren’t any at all.
Yes, you have your mental health wounds and alienation, but the vigor of your recovery is far too intimidating to those of us accustomed to being failures.
I haven’t read all the comments, so my apologies if this has already been hit on, dealt with or otherwise explained.
Hugo, I am talking about the use of the term “work.”
From your own mouth you’ve said that you’ve been uncomfortable around average, healthy, masculine men since at least your adolescence, discussed the manner in which you engage boys in your work, etc., so from what you’ve told us in your own words the way you engage with boys is very likely not in the ordinary manner. Therefore, it follows that you may actually be causing undue stress on those boys by sending negative – or at least mixed – messages about their normal, healthy masculinity. And at that point, IMO it is the boys that are doing the work in order to try and live up to the distorted model of a normal experience for healthy boys that you offer to them and in this sense I think that Toy Soldier was correct in his initial assessment that you’re not ‘working’ with boys so much for their sake as you’re serving you own interests and the interests of your feminist and pro-feminist allies and women in general. You say that “there’s too much pain in the world for us to be self-indulgent… for too long” in your last paragraph, yet I believe that your work with male youth belongs in the self-indulgent category for the reasons I offer above.
All this said, I don’t think anyone would say that you are lazy, least of all me.
I will be the first to admit that I have no illusion that I will always be successful with the unhappy, alienated teens. And I don’t foist myself on those who are completely closed off. I do make an opening — and sometimes, long after I made an overture, a kid opens up with a story about cutting, about drug use, about rage, about deep and painful shame. And sometimes I never reach them. I don’t have a Messiah complex; I know that in the end only two things can save a truly troubled teen: God Himself and the kid’s own free will. But I also believe we can embody the love of God to kids, and I also believe we can stir up a sense of free will in those who believe that they are powerless.
Mr. Bad, you’re actually right — I probably do cause stress for some boys. But sometimes, we only grow through stress. I bet their football coaches and chem teachers stress them too.
the vigor of your recovery is far too intimidating to those of us accustomed to being failures.
Mm, yeah. It’s the vigorousness, Hugo, of your use of the word “work” that makes me wonder about how some particularly alienated teenagers I’ve known might react. A lot of my friends at school were, um, troubled, one way or the other, and I think they found more help in unexpected places than they did through the official channels – more, the anger that being subjected to the official channels evoked in them was pretty directly harmful, I think. There’s something frightening, to some people, about the professional. This is not to devalue in any way the work which you do, which I’m sure – from the sound of it – is tremendously helpful. But I think, in general, there are limits to what the “work” of mentorship can do; relative, for example, to what friendship can do.
Mr Bad,
I don’t understand why you think mentoring in the interests of women and girls is antagonistic to mentoring in the interests of men and boys. I don’t want to get into thread-drift, and “what is masculinity?”, but – while I understand that boys and girls might need different teaching to account for their different experiences – surely teaching boys not to harm girls, and girls not to harm boys, is in itself a good thing?
Gwen, the problem with blogging about youth ministry (or teaching) is that I’m describing things that really need to be seen. If you could “see me in action”, it might allay many of your concerns…
Hugo said: “Mr. Bad, you’re actually right — I probably do cause stress for some boys. But sometimes, we only grow through stress. I bet their football coaches and chem teachers stress them too.”
Good point – I bet I do that same thing with my students/protegees. The question remains, what is your primary motivation, making their lives better making you feel more fulfilled? For me, it’s the former – it certainly does not make me feel good to make my students/protegees uncomfortable, stressed-out, etc. In fact, I go out of my way to make mine feel as comfortable as possible. YMMV.
Not to get into thread drift here, but I second gwen – whatever your definition of ‘healthy masculinity’ is, surely it must include not causing harm to girls/women. This isn’t an either/or – causing harm to others is harmful FOR the men & boys doing it, too.
As for alienated teens/troubled teens, I think anyone working with such youth has to take the ‘long view’ in terms of being personally rewarded/seeing results. Any adult – especially one who wants to help – may be seen as an authority figure, part of society, and the teen will recognise that the ‘help’ being offered is a way to fit into society’s norms and values. Obviously, many young people are resistant to that idea, for one reason or another. No youth worker can reach everyone. But young people can tell if the adult is actually interested in and cares about them as a person. People don’t forget that.
Doing youth work for reasons of personal fulfilment only…would be pretty unfulfilling.
I will refrain from thread drift here because for me and other MRAs it get us banned. If Hugo wants to start a thread about masculinity – healthy or otherwise – I’ll be glad to discuss the topic with you. Otherwise you may come to Stand Your Ground, join our group and discuss it with us freely, with no restrictions or censorship other than abiding by our rules, which are quite reasonable.
Of course teaching youth, boys *and* girls, to respect each other and to do no harm is a no-brainer, which is why we in the MRA community, among other things, waged the campaign against the “Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them” t-shirts. If others as true to their stated mission as we MRAs are there’d be no problems.
Re. the topic of the thread, the meaning of “work,” I stand by my argument that Hugo is not doing “work” when he mentors young men in pro-feminist philosophy, any more than I am doing “work” when I practice my golf swing, fly casting, etc.
OK Mr Bad, fair enough, I’ll check it out.
Ok, FWIW: work.
I would assume that by work you mean (among other things) that which you take seriously. Let me propose a radical idea: that work necessarily entails keeping the faith with the people you work with or for, and that part of that keeping of the faith (particularly with people in vulnerable positions) entails knowing, understanding, and (here comes a word I suspect, based on your earlier posts, you won’t much like) accepting your limits.
Work means taking seriously the things I try to do, which in turn means allowing myself to state clearly (based on my personal limits, other commitments, nature, or temperament) I can’t do that. Taking something seriously means not doing it at all, rather than do it badly, or inconsistently, or incompetently. And that means knowing when to say no, and I have no idea how to do that other than facing and accepting my own limits. Because I take seriously what I do (or attempt), I have a responsibility to not make promises I cannot know I can keep (and I see no way to make them to myself without making them to others). And for that reason I see self-acceptance as an essential ingredient for serious work.