The Mandate Letter, by Jason Rogers, focuses on masculinity, emotional fitness, and mental health. Thanks for being here. If you enjoyed this content, please give it a heart. If you were forwarded this email, you can subscribe below.
If you feel like masculinity might be having another moment, you are not alone.
There has been a notable uptick in the number of prominent men who appear to be guided by an automatic reflex to make destructive choices. We can never truly know why men do the things they do. However, having spent several years writing about the ways that culture shapes how men think about their place in the world, I have come to rely on a useful analogy to help explain why guys tend to act out in specific ways.
With conversations about artificial intelligence now commonplace, it’s not that difficult to imagine a man’s brain as a piece of hardware (or “wetware,” as it has been called in various sci-fi books and films). Naturally, that hardware runs software, including various programs, each with its own set of rules, principles, strategies, and goals that help a man decide how to interact with the world.
Masculinity is one of those programs; however, it is specifically tuned to guide the way a man performs his gender. And how this program develops over time creates behavioral tendencies.
There is an old computer science adage: “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” If a man’s masculinity program contains a bunch of junky code, it doesn’t process information well. As a result, it can guide him away from constructive behaviors like kindness, compassion, and care. Worse, it can lead him toward behaviors likely to cause harm.
But to explain the general, I’d like to get specific. Let’s apply this analogy to Eric, a fictional 28-year-old man that I just made up. I’ll caveat that Eric is going to be a hetero-normative, neurotypical example. Of course, individual identity and life differences like sexual orientation as well as racial, social, and economic privilege play a significant role in a man’s development. However, for now, let’s try to focus on the core motivational framework that a lot of men share.
The development of Eric’s masculinity program has largely been a social exercise. That is, it has accumulated massive amounts of data by monitoring a lifetime of interactions with the people who make up his world — notably his family, friends, teachers, idols, and peers. As a baby, Eric struggled to interpret his mother’s facial expressions. Was she happy, or was she sad? As a boy, he closely watched the way his best friend responded when a bully put him down. As a pre-teen, he noted how his father reacted when Eric admitted that he felt sad. Each micro-interaction translated to a new line of code.
As I mentioned, masculinity is not the only program running on his system. Eric was born with an emotional program, which instilled the need to seek love and connection. He began developing his creativity program while scratching out the beginnings of shapes with his Crayons. Then he was introduced to his morality program after he was scolded for making a mess with those Crayons and blaming it on someone else. This list is not exhaustive; there are many, many more.
As Eric got older, navigating life became an increasingly difficult struggle between overlapping and contradictory directives. However, as he entered his teen years, the masculinity program began to extend its roots. On the first day of high school, Eric slammed his thumb in his locker, and the emotional program (which exerted so much control over his boyhood) issued the command to cry. But the masculinity program sounded a piercing alarm, reminding him of what happened to all the other boys he witnessed showing those kinds of emotions in public. Masculinity won, and he did not shed a single tear.
When Eric felt insecure about how to react to a situation, he started repeating the rules to himself in his head. Sometimes, when friends looked weak or uncertain, he even spoke the words out loud. He was neither a wordsmith nor a man outright. And yet, he had somehow assimilated all kinds of pithy axioms to describe what men do. For example, “Men don’t back down” or “Men don’t cry.” He felt strange saying these things, but he hoped that if he repeated them enough times, they would start to feel true.
Midway through high school, something shifted within Eric. He had been accumulating questionable code for years. But his masculinity program had suddenly developed the capacity to hijack all of his processing power. And sometimes, when he encountered conflict or uncertainty, his other programs were no longer able to intervene.
The first few times this occurred, it was a shock to his system. One day at school, Eric’s friend pointed out that his first girlfriend was talking with another guy. The whole thing seemed innocent, but something about the way his friend said, “Dude, she’s talking to another guy,” made the hair on the back of Eric’s neck stand up. Later, when she approached Eric while he was around his friends, he was surprised that he could be so rude.
Eric’s girlfriend gave him a weird look and walked off. He made sure to appear unaffected, but he found it difficult to shrug off the moment. Later, when she asked him what was wrong, he felt a tingling heat on his skin. He did not have the emotional vocabulary to call it “shame,” but he knew his masculinity program did not like this feeling. Some part of him wanted to say sorry or maybe even share his fear that she might stop liking him someday. But the masculinity program took control. “Nothing,” he muttered instead.
The next day, the guy that his girlfriend was talking to accidentally bumped Eric on the basketball court. The same tingly feeling returned, except today, he felt it ten times more after noticing that his friends were nearby. The masculinity program swooped in again, and Eric said the first thing that came to mind, an insult. The guy responded. The rest unfolded in a flash. All of sudden, Eric was standing over the other guy, his breath heavy, his knuckles bloodied. What happened, he thought, why did I just do that?
Eventually, these reactions became more common at parties, bars, or even random moments on the street. But, by the time manhood arrived, Eric was less interested in investigating his behavioral malfunctions because most of his attention was now focused on keeping pace with his peers. By that point, he had learned a number of skills to earn, maintain, and broker the currency of respect. However, he became obsessed with what seemed like a dependable few. He could make and display wealth. He could rack up sexual partners. Or, he could physically or verbally overpower his competition to move up the hierarchical scale.
The masculinity program never ceased to remind him that moving up in the pecking order brought pride. Sliding backward brought shame. So, whenever his status was challenged, his program flashed the words “attack!” And attack, he did.
Today, Eric is 28, and he’s been in so many fights, he’s stop counting. And he’s pushed half a dozen romantic partners away when they got too close. And he will step on anyone or anything to get ahead in work. He doesn’t know it, but he’s reached a turning point. If he continues on this path, his crappy masculinity program may transform into malicious malware. If that happens, it will instruct him to respond to all threats — real or imagined — with vicious attempts to dominate and destroy.
Some may look at Eric and think there’s little hope for this man; however, no masculinity program is beyond repair. But rewriting thousands of lines of bad code will require years of therapy, reading, self-inquiry, listening, and more. It will require returning his focus to redeveloping the helpful programs — especially the emotional one — that always tried to intervene. It is difficult, unpleasant, and, sometimes, thankless work.
Eric isn’t entirely blind to his situation. He looks at his life and sees chaos. But he also sees his friends, and even celebrities, continuing to exhibit the same kinds of behaviors. Eric can shift to a better version of himself that lives somewhere inside. But he must consciously choose to update his problematic code. The masculinity program will not fix itself.
Department of Links
🏈 A Star College Football Player Opens Up About Mental Health — Harry Miller, a center on the Ohio State football team, recently announced his retirement from the sport he loves. He’s long struggled with depression and was on the brink of ending his life. However, he sought help and, later, opened up on the Today Show about his journey. It’s another example of a man sharing their story to inspire those who remain silent. — The Today Show
⚾️. Take Me Out — Broadway has resurrected a play about a star baseball player (think Derek Jeter) who comes out of the closet. The result is a “disquisition on maleness.” If I get back east anytime soon, I plan to check this out. — NY Times
😤 Louis CK won Grammy. Many are Pissed. — On Sunday, Louis CK won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album. The win is notable because it punctuates the end of a five-year period during which the comedian was more or less banished from public view after accusations that he had repeatedly engaged in sexual misconduct. A few voices (other than his diehard fans) have defended the award's validity. However, the main reaction has been outrage. Many believe the win sends an enabling message to sexual predators — that they can do whatever they want and (eventually) get away with it. — NPR
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