How Men Can Feel Shame In Relationship
And what we can do about it.
Sexual and gender narratives are complex and fluid because human beings are complex and fluid, my personal philosophy tells me that every person has a mixture of masculine and feminine traits in their nature. The names are helpful sometimes, other times they perpetuate a sense of otherness and estrange people from the ‘opposite’ gender, I can observe that the LGBTQIA+ community actively question these narratives in some ways, and embrace them in other ways; I feel like we all need to do that.
Awareness and acceptance of different sexuality has progressed a lot in some communities, but in others, not so much. I’m fortunate that I don’t spend much time with men who shame each other anymore however that’s largely due to my own decision to not allow that in my life. No matter how many times we say this is wrong, it continues. Why does it continue? Because there’s an accepted model of masculinity that celebrates shaming other men, and women, into silence for the sake of dominance. The underlying system that keeps these narratives in place, and the ways that they are perpetuated, is explored in Mark Greene’s book The Little #metoo Book For Men. This was born from men’s inability to accept and embrace the #metoo movement.
