Book Review by Carlton Rounds on:Toxic Masculinity: Curing the Virus: making men smarter, healthier, safer

Toxic Masculinity: Curing the Virus: making men smarter, healthier, safer

Written by Stephen Whitehead

And Reviewed by Carlton Rounds

This book could not be more timely or relevant. When toxic masculinity pours forth from the highest political offices in the land, the urgency to understand the challenges and the opportunities poised at the intersection of power, justice and gender hints at outcomes and predicts the potential future of humankind. I loved this book. It called me out, it reassured me, and it rekindled my curiosity.

The book is accessible and well structured allowing individuals with different levels of gender awareness to follow the observations and narrative. The book explores and defines intersecting zones of masculine identity and behavior making specific, well explained and targeted points. The helpful lists of behaviors and questions could literally be applied as a rough diagnostic tool, or to really get a group going during a facilitated discussion. The author’s approach is neither cajoling nor condescending. His feminist platform is not submerged, and his commitment to the term renews its “spirit” making feminist identity seem more expansive and engaging than what it has become, it feels to me, flattened academic dogma.

It is clear the author would like to see men and women evolve into progressive gender expression, and he calls out both sexes for perpetuating toxicity. In the author’s world, everyone is part of a constellation of behaviors that pollute the integrity of our world. As a progressive masculine man myself, this book helped me recognize issues I need to work on, and due to Stephen’s writing, I have new concepts and language I can drop into discussions I am determined to spark.

I am particularly inspired by the “futurist” scenarios used to show trajectories of change over time. As a historian, this stylistic technique is very compelling. It stretches my perspective and my sociological imagination by requiring continuous growth and evolution not just about gender but about what is possible in human society. My woke style in the year 2019 might be the unenlightened cave of thought by 2050. Finally, Stephen brings not just a lifetime of experience and self reflection to his findings, but an Asian cultural awareness making his work not just a western anchored exploration, but a conversation with a global cadence.

Having met Stephen in person, his warmth and emotional intelligence are much like you would imagine. His role at 70 as gender journeyman is not just fitting, but reassuring. He is helping define what a mature progressive masculinity looks like, not leaving the work and the responsibility to the emerging younger generation. In addition, for those of us who never had the benefit of non toxic Dads or Grandpas, Stephen’s desire for a more deeply connected experience feels personal, validating and healing.

In service,

Carlton Rounds

Reflections of a Caregiver: LGBTQ Seniors

I

t’s been a week now since beginning my work with LGBT seniors. The work is not hard on one level but very difficult on another. After years of independence the indignities of age seem to strike hard and deep. The men I am working with are in their late 80’s having lived through the times when being openly gay was not an option. Some were pressured into marrying women just to be socially and economically viable. Others stayed single and were workaholics hiding their same sex attractions and redirecting that energy into powerful careers. Now, they are being looked after by someone like me. I am trying to absorb the life experience and insight these men can share with me as I care for them. 

One is single the other is still living with his partner. The couple has a twenty year age gap, so as one is entering the last months of his life, the other is still strong and vital. I can see that what once was a Union of minds, passion, sex, and a social gay life has morphed into 2 men who now face the fading dynamics of the relationship. Now one needs 24 hour care to dress, eat, bathe, use the bathroom, and remember what happened the day before. They are now like companions. With advanced age, the gap in years is very significant. How do you prepare to be alone after an intense time of caregiving? Who will take care of the man left behind? In comparison, the single guy wears his isolation with a curmudgeonly vibe with exasperation aimed at the intersectional identity of youth and what he sees as frivolous gay cultural obsessions. This is punctuated by references to what I think is a preoccupation with gay sex for hire. His closeted life was about being sneaky about wanting sex with men, loving men, but being transactional with them. Deeply sexist and polarized in his views, he uses his pronouncements as a mask for his profound sense of loneliness. This is a man with lots of dirty sex secrets. 

I know the type having met them before. They steep in their own male toxicity and only gay men who are similar in psychological makeup like to share space with them. They eschew deep reflection, present with an entitled persona, but don’t trust or understand love, and yet they have giggly crushes that sometimes drip out from cracks in their protective walls. What is clear though is a misogynist world view. Any man, no matter how bland, is held in higher esteem than any bitch woman. Forced into marriage, forced to provide and forced to have children, women are resented for the roles society made these men live or be judged for not living well enough. I get it. How dare the world now allow gender fluidity? What would it mean if in your 80’s you choose face the fact that you can see the freedoms you never had access to, and not feel like you suffered for no reason except for being born too early in the century. Very few people can change at age 25 much less 85. 

So for me, I find the emotional environment tiring but important to experience. Maybe this kind of care is one of the only places inter generational discussions happen and some cosmic issues get worked on in both parties? Through feeling their pain and frustration I learn more about the obligation I have to honor my own emotional and social life. When I am 85, my caregiver might find me and my life symptomatic of the times I lived. Will I want to be told I did not live up to my potential? Will I shun these judgements, too old and tired to want to explain something they will never understand unless they lived it? So with this in mind, I am trying to listen with my heart, not my language sensitive ears. Trying to be in a space where I encourage and validate the unique moments of overlap I discover when buttoning a button or changing a diaper. I know that these random men are not truly random for me. I don’t accept random. 

Each day when I leave, I touch a shoulder or shake a hand and thank them for having spent the day with them. I am absorbing things unconsciously that I know have value, even when I try to be so conscious of the interactions. Managing communication in such a multitude of directions, across historical time, and informed by the dimensions of spirit, while simultaneously cooking soup and finding a lost sock demands a somatic versatility and resilience. This strength training is part of the gift of this work. As I slowly walk into my golden years, it gives me perspective and highlights the choices I still have, and must pay dedicated attention to, so that I continue to grow and change and evolve.

Carlton
December 10th, 2019