masculinity Archives – Grow Into Being

The Myth Of the Father Figure

November 24, 2023

An Unscientific Essay on What Is Really Missing Originally published at the Good Man Project The myth about boys raised by single moms having a higher chance of turning delinquents is crumbling, as studies show. Still, the question remains: how much do boys need a father figure? I have been exploring masculinity for the past two years. (Okay, to be fair, I’ve been exploring it much longer, but not systematically.) So far, I have interviewed close to seventy men and…

Stop the Toxic Labeling

May 19, 2021

Julia

Why Shaming Is Not the Solution About 150 years ago and lasting some decades, scores of women were labeled with a diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ which, as Mark Micale put it, described “everything that men found mysterious or unmanageable in women.”[1] Fortunately, such a thing would be impossible today. What an outrageous idea! It doesn’t matter that some of the women’s behavior may, in fact, have been very challenging to deal with; it is clear that indiscriminately lumping together all kinds…

Whatever Happened to the Good Old Asshole?

March 3, 2021

Julia

When I was 17, I got into a relationship with a 24-year-old man [note to U.S. readers: this is normal and not illegal in Europe]. I had not been really interested in him, but he was very insistent and I ran out of arguments. 18 months later I ended the relationship without really knowing why. I just felt I had to get out of it. Years later I met him again and he complained to me how I had ‘spoiled…