Masculinity and Bliss: Men and the Science of Happiness

by Patrick McGann
Director of Strategy and Planning

I just finished reading Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss. He’s a correspondent for National Public Radio who took time off to travel to some of the world’s happiest countries (yes, there is a “science of happiness,” and research measuring a country’s level of happiness; in 2010, Norway topped the list). He worked in one or two of the unhappiest also (the standout was Moldova, a landlocked country in Eastern Europe that used to be part of the Soviet Union). In each country he met with some of its citizens to try and discern what it is exactly that makes them happy – or unhappy. In Thailand, for instance, he supposedly learns that the path to happiness lies in not thinking; in Switzerland it lies in regulation and even extends into boredom; and in the U.S. happiness is just around the corner waiting for us if we put in the effort.

One of my takeaways from the book is the role of trust in creating happiness. It would seem, perhaps not surprisingly, that one of the strong indicators of unhappiness is distrust – from the smallest to the broadest sense, from personal relationships to work to the government and other institutions. This resonates with me. I know from the experiences of people in my life, for instance, that when they have worked under someone they distrust, when their supervisor does not have their best interests at heart, they exhibit symptoms of unhappiness – sleepless nights, trouble concentrating, anger, anxiety, and insecurity. I assume the reverse is true as well, that people who are distrusted aren’t truly happy.

I’m interested in applying this equation of trust and happiness to masculinity. It seems to me that hyper or hegemonic masculinity as we experience in the U.S. has an individualistic leaning and is in part based on distrust. If one of the goals is to prove yourself as better than the men and women around you – prove you can beat them at sports, prove you can out drink them, prove you can make more money, prove you are tougher, and so on – it can be hard to eliminate the sense that most men are in the end invested in looking out for themselves to make sure they are on a higher rung of the masculine ladder. Yet I wonder if this dynamic really makes most men happy.

I, of course, don’t think it does. So I propose that masculinity be added to the geography of happiness. Assuming that masculinity has different cross-cultural constructions, it would be interesting to investigate which constructions in which cultures and countries are happier. I would bet my bottom dollar that those men in countries where masculinity is more connected to gender equity are a happier bunch. But I’d like to know for sure.

So all you science of happiness scientists, get your gender on. Take a look at masculinity.

REFERENCES

Weiner, E. (2009). The geography of bliss: One grump's search for the happiest places in the world. New York, TWELVE.

Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. As Director of Strategy and Planning, Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008 and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD in 2010. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence. Share

Starting to Define Healthy Masculinity

by Patrick McGann
Director of Strategy and Planning

When I typed in “defining healthy masculinity” to do a Google search, the first link that came up was to “Choosing Healthy Masculinity and What That Means” on the Men Can Stop Rape Web site, and I thought, oh, good, maybe we’ve already defined it. “Healthy masculinity” seems to be a term gaining credence in world of gender-based violence prevention. I use it all the time. We’re all about healthy masculinity, I say. And I mean it. Even if I don’t know exactly what it means.

Joe Samalin (2009), my colleague who wrote “Choosing Healthy Masculinity…” gives examples – it “is a group of high school boys volunteering at a local domestic violence shelter, it is straight and cis-gendered college men partnering as allies with LGBTQ student organizations, and it is the enlisted men and officers in the Air Force who come to us for training on how to create safer workplaces.” But when it comes to defining it, he claims “there is no single definition or ideal of healthy masculinity—there are as many definitions as there are men.” I love Joe; it’s an honor to work with him, but that is a lot of definitions.

So is healthy masculinity a kind of “I know it when I see it” thing? Or is it, “You do your healthy masculinity, I do mine”? Maybe it’s the recovering academic in me, but I’m feeling definition-deficient. Maybe I’m holding onto some grand ivory tower illusion that a definition will help solidify our shared understanding of the term.

I did manage to track down one attempt to define healthy masculinity. Michael Obsatz (2003) takes a stab at it, listing 15 qualities, all of them beginning with P:

1. Purpose
2. Power for and with, not over
3. Passion
4. Paternity
5. Piety
6. Persistence
7. Presence
8. Patience
9. Pardon
10. Partnership
11. Pliability
12. Playfulness
13. Peacemaking
14. Politeness
15. Perspective

He goes onto explain each of the 15 in a sentence or two. While I am a fan of the letter P and while I appreciate his comprehensiveness, I was hoping for a little more compactness. So, I’ll attempt something briefer, with the recognition that it’s very much a definition in progress. Healthy masculinity:

• involves the ability to recognize unhealthy aspects of masculinity – those features that are harmful to the self and/or others
• replaces risky and violent masculine attitudes and behaviors with empathetic behaviors and attitudes that benefit men and others
• is based on supporting gender equity and other forms of equity
• includes social and emotional skills used to positively challenge in yourself and in others unhealthy masculine attitudes and behaviors

Anyone else out there feel the need to define? If so, indulge your elucidation tendencies and say what you would keep or change about these two definitions of healthy masculinity.

REFERENCES

Obsatz, M. (2003). From shame-based masculinity to holistic masculinity. Retrieved May 12, 2011 from the Anger Resources Web site: http://www.angeresources.com/shamebased.html

Samalin, J. (2009). Choosing healthy masculinity and what that means. Retrieved May 12, 2011 from the Men Can Stop Rape Web site: http://www.mencanstoprape.org/info-url2699/info-url_show.htm?doc_id=1090665

Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. As Director of Strategy and Planning, Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008 and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD in 2010. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence. Share

When is a Hookup Not a Hookup?

by Patrick McGann

Director of Strategy and Planning

We’ve been conducting focus groups with the help of our Men Creating Change chapters to develop a new college bystander intervention public education campaign, and we realized we needed to update our understanding of what the most common sexual assault scenarios are on campuses. After talking with some sexual assault service coordinators at universities, it would seem that the most common assault scenario involves a young woman, alcohol, a peer group, and what some students might perceive as the start of a hookup.

I first heard Antonia Abbey (2002) present her research on alcohol and sexual assault at a summit organized by the U.S. Department of Defense. She’s one of the foremost experts on the subject, and she’ll tell you that at a minimum, 50% of college students’ sexual assaults involve alcohol use. She’ll also make clear alcohol isn’t the cause of acquaintance rape, but it increases the likelihood. Some of the coordinators we talked to would put the percentage of assaults involving alcohol even higher – 90% or 95%.

And they would tell you that alcohol and the hookup – a sexual encounter with no strings attached – have become so commonplace on college campuses, that many students have a difficult time telling when a line is crossed. The sexual assault scenario can go something like this: a young woman is at a house party or club with a group of friends; she gets drunk. A guy – usually someone she sort of knows, like a friend of a friend – starts paying attention to her, and she becomes separated from her group of friends. Maybe she makes out with the guy – something some of her friends notice. Later, her friends see her, very drunk, getting in a cab with the guy or getting in his car or going upstairs with him, and they think, well, she made out with him earlier. They’re hooking up.

Afterwards, though, the friends find out from her that she didn’t want to get in the cab or the car or go upstairs and that she didn’t want to hook up.

This scenario leaves us with some questions we’re hoping that those of you on college campuses can help answer:

1. Is the above a common sexual assault scenario on your campus? Are there other common scenarios?

2. What attitudes and behaviors make it difficult for young men and women as bystanders to tell when a line might be crossed in a potential hookup?

3. How can a bystander – especially a young man – intervene to make sure an apparent hookup is safe and consensual?

4. If you provide services for sexual assault survivors on a college campus or/and conduct bystander trainings on a college campus, would you be willing to talk with us about your work? Email Patrick McGann.

REFERENCES

Abby, A. (2002). Alcohol-related sexual assault: A common problem among college students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol. Supplement 2002; (14): 118-28.

Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. As Director of Strategy and Planning, Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in 2008 and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD in 2010. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence. Share

Are You Talking to Me? What We Know about Men and Bystander Intervention

by Patrick McGann

Director of Strategy and Planning

In the cramped confines of a flight to Knoxville and the University of Tennessee, Patrick Lemmon and I spent most of our time brainstorming. It was 2000 and my first out-of-town trip for the Men’s Rape Prevention Project, now know as Men Can Stop Rape. Patrick would be speaking during Tennessee’s Take Back the Night, and then the both of us would conduct a workshop for men immediately after the event. In those days, we were advocating bystander intervention before we knew it was called bystander intervention. It wasn’t until later that we learned what we were doing.

Before we left, we had been revising and developing our training manual, and Patrick wanted to use the time on the plane to continue working on it by coming up with reasons why men don’t speak up when other men behave in sexist and potentially sexually violent ways. We wanted to personalize the reasons, so they were all first person, and the list was long. I managed to track down the list on our server and will only present half of it:

I don’t rape so it’s not my problem * They’ll think I’m gay * My friends will laugh at me * No one will agree with me * I’ll get my ass kicked * I’ll lose my “manhood club” card * It’s not my responsibility * I’m not into that touchy-feely stuff * People will know I’m gay * The jokes are funny * Women choose to be in Playboy * None of my friends do it * Maybe she just needed to get laid * I don’t know what to say * What can one guy do? * Maybe she asked for it * Look what she was wearing * It won’t make any difference anyway * I don’t know the person * I’m no activist * That’s women’s work * What’s the big deal * I’m too drunk * They’re just words * Can’t she take a joke? * It’s okay if women don’t hear it * It’s just guy talk * Women do it too * I’m just minding my own business * It’ll piss my friend off * I’d be confronting people all the time * It’s how THEY talk, not me * There’s only one of me and a bunch of them * He didn’t mean it that way * He’ll think I’m being racist * I did it once and it didn’t go well * Why do I always have to be the one? * I’ll get fired * It’ll piss her off * It’s a compliment * I do that, say that, feel that, and believe that, too.

We don’t use the list any longer, but I wanted to share it because it suggests the complicated and myriad ways that men react to and resist opportunities for intervention. Recent research suggests that men’s resistance is stronger than women’s. We are starting to know from studies like Sarah McMahon, Judy Postmus, and Ruth Anne Koenick’s (2011) that compared to college age males, college age females have more positive bystander attitudes and behaviors. The researchers claim that gender “is a salient factor….” Vicki Banyard, Mary Moynihan, and Elizabeth Plante (2007) come to a similar conclusion and call for more studies to investigate whether bystander intervention education may be different for men and women. Sarah McMahon and Alexandria Dick (2011) also comment on how men are less likely to intervene and attribute it to the social norms of hegemonic masculinity, characterized by “heterosexuality, strength, and sexual prowess.” The pressure to “do masculinity” is especially present in certain group contexts where hegemonic norms dominate. Therefore, men are concerned about how other men will see them and treat them if they speak out against those norms, and this is a significant inhibiting factor.

I bring up this difference between men and women because it indicates that we shouldn’t overlook gender in relation to bystander intervention. If we want men to speak up and talk to others when they have the opportunity to intervene, we first have to listen to them when developing our trainings and programs. Then, on the basis of what we hear, we have to make sure that we are talking to them – or in the words of Men Can Stop Rape, that we’re meeting them where they are. And the research suggests we can’t do this without addressing masculinity.

Patrick McGann, Ph.D. has been involved with Men Can Stop Rape (MCSR) since the organization’s inception in 1997. Patrick co-authored a sexual assault prevention strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and oversaw the development of the HURTS ONE. AFFECTS ALL. public education campaign for DoD. He regularly gives presentations across the country on engaging men in the prevention of gender-based violence.

REFERENCES

Banyard, V.L., Moynihan, M. M., & Plante, E. G. (2007). Sexual violence prevention through bystander education: An experimental evaluation. Journal of Community Psychology, 35 (4), 463-481.

McMahon, S. and A. Dick. (2011). “Being in a room of like-minded men”: An exploratory study of men’s participation in a bystander intervention program to prevent intimate partner violence. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 19 (1), 3-18.

McMahon, S., J. L. Postmus, and R. A. Koenick. (2011). Conceptualizing the engaging bystander approach to sexual violence prevention on college campuses. Journal of College Student Development, 52 (1), 115-130. Share