These are my intensely personal recollections of being inculcated with

toxic male role patterns so I would grow up to be a "real man" and how I
struggled for most of my life to shed them and become a better
husband, father, and man.

ON GROWING UP A BOY IN AMERICA:

MY TOXIC MALE ROLE TRAINING

Stuart A. Schlegel
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Cruz
June 10, 2016

With regard to how I perceive the world and treat others, the greatest
influences on me occurred during two specific periods. The first was my
upbringing as a child born in 1932 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I
learned what is expected of a proper male. The second was a period of
field research, deep in a southern Philippine rainforest, where I came to
see clearly that many toxic role patterns I had been socialized into were not
only deeply questionable, but far from universal.

I.
 Page 2 of 24

I was the only child in a household of five. Having lost everything in

the Great Depression, my mothers parents lived with us. We were all
krauts; my grandparents were named Meyer, Wagner, Kaiser, and
Schlegel. We were middle-class; my father an engineer, my mother a
librarian, both with excellent educations. My grandmother had studied in
Germany at a conservatory of music, and my grandfather was a district
manager for Anheuser-Busch. We had all the advantages of our status and
all the prejudices that often go hand-in-hand with our social and financial
standing.

The five of us on
our back porch.

My parents and grandparents wanted me to become a successful

adult. Like all our friends and neighbors with sons, that meant above all that
I learn to be a real boy, so I would become a real man, ready to take my
place in the male-dominated mainstream, and to think and behave as real
men do.

This involved many aspects of my being and behavior, but paramount

was the insistence that I have rigidly controlled emotions and no effeminate
sensitivities. My family, playmates, and peers conditioned me, as early as I
can remember, never to be a sissy," which meant acting like a girl by
showing pain, fear, or vulnerability. However much I hurt, inside or out, I
must never be a crybaby. Girls cry; boys do not, and I would be ridiculed
and possibly hurt by other boys if I didnt act like a real boy. Along with
 Page 3 of 24

playing with trucks and guns, that included treating girls as lesser beings,
not playing too often with them, and inwardly isolating myself from them. It
further included feeling superior to and demeaning other boys who cried,
were sensitive, or didnt sufficiently denigrate girls. None of these
imperatives were explicit; they were all just vibes that surrounded me.

My concern that other boys would assault me verbally or physically if

I did not fill my proper role was not an idle worry. I saw such incidents
repeatedly. I recently heard a man say that he was taught that boys were
predators and girls were prey, but boys did not conform to the rules would
also become prey. That was certainly my perception when I was growing
up.

On numerous occasions before I even reached adolescence, my

father sternly warned me not to be weak, and if either he or my mother
thought I was playing too frequently with girls, or not being tough and stoic
enough among my male friends, he literally whipped me. Such behavior, I
was admonished, would make me into a sissy, and destroy all hope of
approval and companionship of the real, normal guys. Naturally, all this had
a huge effect on how I viewed and related to both genders.

The American preoccupation with gender began with my birth. Having now
had two sons myself, I have no doubt that the first question on everybodys
mind, when I was born was whether I was a boy or a girl, as though that
was a matter of enormous significance. As a toddler, I was taught in
countless direct and indirect ways that boys and girls cannot have the
same interests or toys, because they are so different: boys have very
different destinies in life than girls, and being male was far superior. By my
tenth birthday, I knew that as a boy, I belonged to the best gender; as
white, I belonged to the best race; and, as an American, I lived in the
 Page 4 of 24

worlds best country. Those were undebatable facts, simply the way the
world was.

I was subjected to very clear and specific exhortations about how I

should deal with the opposite sex. With regard to sexuality, I was taught
early in my teenage years indirectly and often without words that my
penis was only to be used for pleasure and procreation within heterosexual
marriage. Homosexuality, although an undercurrent in their concern that I
not become a sissy, was never openly discussed, but everyone I grew up
around "knew" that having sex was only proper in marriage. And yet at the
same time, we boys soon also "knew" that we would never be real men if
we could not talk some girl into having sex with us before marriage.

Moreover, when we did have sex, we had to do it right. My adolescent

friends made it clear that being good in bed was crucial. They would boast
about all the lurid sex they had had with their girlfriends almost certainly
fictions and fantasies saying things like: She said I was really good, and
a much better lover than her previous boyfriend. Nothing was ever said
about what might please girls, or what they might want from a sexual
experience. My chums cared as little as my parents about womens wants
and needs, but I was certain that being good at sex was all-important long
before I had much idea of what having sex was like or how sexual
competence might look. In that respect, my preoccupation with good
sexual performance was like my fear of being called a fag; I didnt know
what either of them even referred to just that it they were terribly
important. As I grew older, anxiety about these matters hung over me like a
dark cloud.

At first with almost no information or support I began to be

obsessed about kissing, and doing that right. Soon my preoccupation with
kissing morphed into one about "getting laid," and doing that right. Sex with
 Page 5 of 24

a woman according to my folks at home and my buddies at school

would unquestionably be the greatest and most exciting triumph of my
young life. Touted by all my friends and the media of the day as the highest
ecstasy, it would identify me as one of the guys, even, perhaps, a "stud."
But, I must not do it wrong whatever that meant and I must not fall
behind my peers in getting there. To my maturing consciousness, sex was
a deadly serious business that had little to do with love or playfulness; it
was win or lose, success or failure, a competitive necessity and a
performative challenge.

Furthermore, the rules of the game rendered the sex partner I

yearned for so frantically little more than a means to satisfy my physical
needs. That was "how it was," and, with little helpful information or anything
yet to share and brag about with the guys, I had to figure out the sexual
aspects of my life alone. For many years before and after I began to be
sexually active I was frustrated beyond description, and anything but
joyous.

Not because I had lots of lovers I had no one worthy of the name
until I was married but because the whole time I was in high school, all I
achieved with girls I dated were hours of kissing in the back of automobiles,
until I thought my lips would go numb. My family had moved to Southern
California in 1943 and, in my social class and neighborhood at that time,
we boys divided all potential dates into "good girls" (who wouldn't) and "bad
girls" (who would). The principle was clear: men married the good girls, and
slept with the bad girls. Well, I tried and tried, but never managed to find
one of those bad girls.

I realize now that when I met Audrey, my wife-to-be, in 1957, and

soon thereafter married her, I immediately began treating her as an object.
She was a good girl who had married me, so now I could have regular sex.
 Page 6 of 24

Above all, as my wife, she would always be on hand to show me, through
sex and other acts of affirmation, that I was okay. None of this seemed
selfish; it was what many men of my background assumed marriage was all
about.

On our wedding day.

June 7, 1958

Of course, she was lots more to me than just a bed partner; Audrey
was fun to be with, extremely smart, and interesting to talk to about books,
politics, and world affairs. I made innumerable demands of her, but knowing
nothing about her own wants and having no sense of the importance of
knowing or paying attention to such things, I paid scant attention to any of
them. I took her away from her small Wisconsin hometown all the way to
the Philippines without a second thought, because that is where my career
seemed to beckon. There, my job required me to be away from home half
of each week, while she was left to cope alone with an unfamiliar culture,
outlaw bands, rural markets, and two tiny children, in a home without
running water, electricity, or other amenities. I just took for granted that she
would accept all this, cheerfully and without complaint.

In practice, she would often become sullen, distant, and resistant,

and angrily confront me about how I was relating to her, saying she felt
used. But, I could not get her point: werent we having lots of fun and great
 Page 7 of 24

times together? Deep down inside, I saw her life as essentially all about
me. So I would panic. What if she left me? Who would take care of all my
sexual and many other needs, validate me as a man, and give me constant
approval? Shame, guilt, frustration, and fear of abandonment would well up
within me, and I felt like a failure whose inferior performance as a husband
and lover had proven me useless as a man, and the very loser that I had
been inwardly afraid of being since my playground days.

Whenever this happened, I felt defensive and unreasonably attacked

by Audrey, who, as a woman, was supposed to be supportive. From her
female role training, Audrey seemed to understand marriage as basically
about romance and being taken care of; but she got very little of either from
me. Those were just not factors in how I understood men, women, or
marriage.

After a decade of marriage, Audrey and I had built up a considerable

amount of tension between us. It is now clear to me that our cultural role
expectations had set us up to be less than whole people to each other. We
each wanted to have good will toward the other, but actually treated each
other in quietly inhumane ways.

Not surprisingly, this appeared most dramatically in our sexual

relations. I could not recognize it as such, but had been systematically
taught to be a thing in need of a thing. I seldom concerned myself with what
Audreys needs might be, whether she was in the mood for intercourse,
was reaching climax, or even having much pleasure. We never discussed
any of this another symptom of our upbringing but I did not actually
enjoy our intimate times; she hated them, and we both were mired in
hopelessness.
 Page 8 of 24

And yet, I did it! I lived out all those self-absorbed, inconsiderate
attitudes, in spite of faintly sensing that we should both have more delight,
and that humans were surely meant to live kinder lives. For better or worse,
all my patterns seemed rooted in the very nature of existence. I had no clue
how to be genuinely loving to women, not even to Audrey, a fine person
who had joined her life to mine, gamely gone to distant and difficult places
with me, and borne us two fine boys. I could not revolt, because of how I
unconsciously understood the world, and, besides, to what different
arrangement could I turn? I knew no other.

Specific notions concerning what real men do and dont do also had a
powerful influence on how I related to other men. We were generally
isolated and distrustful with each other, and wary of rivalries or enmities,
which seemed as likely to develop between us as friendship. To admit
mistakes or show vulnerability; to express emotions or deep feelings; to talk
about intimate matters rather than cars or sports; or to allow casual
touching or any other physical contact were strictly taboo. My friends all
conformed to these unspoken rules and never questioned them.

Was this the ultimate payoff of the American male role, as I had
learned it? I could have social privilege and access to power, but only at the
cost of emotional and physical disconnection from other men, and
perpetual anxiety about the one committed and valued relationship I had
with a woman. Living that way was surely torture for Audrey, and a daily
nightmare for me, but never having seen or heard of any other possibility, I
assumed it was as good as things got.

II.
Then, I had an awakening that was to lay the foundations for my
values and attitudes ever after. In the mid-1960s, as part of a doctoral
program in anthropology at the University of Chicago, I spent almost two
 Page 9 of 24

years doing field research among the Teduray people in a southern

Philippine rainforest and was astonished by their understanding of the
world and how to live in it. I described their vision of the good life and the
good society in detail in my 1998 book, Wisdom from a Rainforest: The
Spiritual Journey of an Anthropologist; here I will just note some of its
characteristics that are salient to all I have been saying.

Figel from the air.

Figel the Teduray community where I lived, learned the language,

and asked a zillion questions was typical of the forest Teduray. It was a
fourteen-hour hike from the nearest road, a tough trek that involved wading
repeatedly across a shallow, but wide and fast-flowing river. It was
composed of seven small hamlets that were within easy walking distance of
each other, the women and men of which regularly worked together in
subsistence and ritual activities.

An anthropologist investigating another culture must learn to grasp

those peoples particular reality. Despite the common nave assumption,
all humans do not regard themselves as part of an identical universe. Every
culture has its own conception of what the world is like, and how we should
 Page 10 of 24

live in it, and participants in a culture assume their worldview to be true for
all humans, or believe it should be. But what everyone knows to be true" in
a given society are not simple facts of life; beliefs about what is real,
important, and sheer common sense differ greatly from one culture to
another.

I quickly saw that the Teduray picture of the world and their concepts
and values for proper living contrasted starkly at almost every turn with my
cultural heritage. My graduate training had led me to expect a take on
reality among these people of Figel that was different from my own, but I
had no idea how different it would be, or how beautiful and appealing it
would seem to me.

All the core elements in their worldview stemmed from a radical

egalitarianism. Teduray believed all living beings were completely equal
and due equal respect men and women, even plants and animals and
this showed up in innumerable ways. For instance, the Teduray language
was completely without gender markings: pronouns were not masculine or
feminine; a single term denoted both husband and wife; and adults were
addressed by a short phrase that named their first born child, whether a
boy or girl. I was called Mo-Lini, which meant Father of Lenny. Men did the
heavy physical work, like cutting down big trees, while women weeded, but
nobody valued felling trees as higher work than weeding. Unless physically
impossible men could not be mothers all social statuses, however
prestigious, were open equally to women and men: both were shamans,
legal sages, and healers. Those who played those roles were widely
appreciated and honored, but given no compensation or other symbol of
status such as a larger house. Moreover, anyone who had to commit a
violent act against a plant or animal cut rice stalks for harvest, or kill a
wild pig for food invariably addressed an oral apology to the associated
 Page 11 of 24

spirit, expressing respect and gratitude for their victim and stating how
tragic it was that survival made such sacrifices necessary.

This pervasive opposition to any sort of hierarchical ranking extended

to rejecting any institution or personal exercise of coercive power; the
Teduray considered such things to be merely tools of ranking. Likewise,
they wanted no part of violence, which, in their eyes, was simply a tool of
power to support ranking.

It followed from this egalitarian worldview that competition was

inhumane and wrong-headed, and people should always cooperate and
actively care for everyone else. The most fundamental obligation of
Teduray morality was to help anyone to achieve acceptable desires, in any
way and whenever possible, and they were profoundly conscientious about
doing this.

I experienced this commitment to proactive kindness every day I was

among them, beginning almost the moment I arrived. A Teduray friend,
whom I knew from my earlier stay in a nearby community outside the
forest, recommended Figel as an ideal site for my research and offered to
guide me there. When we arrived after the long, hard walk, he told the
community I was a good fellow, who wanted to stay with them for a couple
of years in order to write a book about their way of life. They knew nothing
else about me, or why I would want to do such a thing; they were even
apprehensive that I might have some hidden motive, such as converting
them to Christianity or preparing the way for loggers to cut down the forest.
But they immediately agreed to welcome and help me in any way they
could. They gave me and my two assistants a couple of small empty
houses to live in, offered to feed us everyday, and even dug a toilet pit that
they assumed would be more familiar for me to use than the adjoining
fields. This compelling urge to help us in every possible way proved to be
 Page 12 of 24

characteristic of these people throughout our stay; busy women and men
sat for hours patiently answering my endless questions about aspects of
their life that to them were surely obvious and unremarkable, simply
because they saw it would help me.

One act of overwhelming compassion stands in my memory as

perhaps the most emblematic case of the Teduray willingness to go to any
lengths to be helpful. Audrey and my two small boys had not accompanied
me into the forest, as their presence would have been unacceptably
intrusive on the daily routines and lives of the people, and would have
obscured all I wanted to observe. We therefore put up a small, simple
house on the farm of a good friend in Mirab, near where we had lived a few
years earlier when we were missionaries. They were well cared for and
safe there, but it was a full three-day trip to or from Figel. Once, after I had
been in Figel for quite a while, and was in Mirab for a brief respite with my
family, my six-year-old son Len asked if he could go back with me to Figel
for a short stay. Audrey and I felt I was well enough established there to
know he would be okay, and we agreed.

Since we had to walk so many hours into the forest from the coast,
and ford a deep and swift river more than a dozen times along the trail,
some Teduray men carried Lenny on their shoulders most of the way. That
was a considerable effort in itself, but the real story has to do with them
carrying him back out.

We arrived rather late at night, and Len and I went right to bed on my
sleeping mat. During the night, it became clear that Lenny was very ill, with
a high fever. Also, all that night, it had rained hard. In the morning, Lenny
was unable to control his bladder or bowels, and I was frantic. At dawn,
several men gathered outside my hut, discussed the matter briefly, and told
 Page 13 of 24

me they would carry Lenny out to the coast, where he could be seen by
my kind of doctor.

It was an incredible offer. Figel Teduray knew from going to the

coastal market that there were Western style doctors, but had no notion of
germs, or what my kind of doctor even did. They knew that Lennys illness
came from his somehow having angered a spirit, so had asked their
shaman go into the spirit world to arrange a cure. But they assumed I
would desperately want my son to be seen by a Western style doctor, so
were literally willing to risk their lives to do that for us.

The sudden heavy rains during the night had swollen the river and
made it totally uncrossable, and Figel people never tried to go to the coast
when the river was that high. To do it for us that morning, they had to
fashion a stretcher from a sarong and two bamboo poles, then carefully
carry it while torturously making their way along the sides of the river,
clinging to roots and branches of shrubs, with the now deadly river raging
just below them. I went along to comfort my sick and frightened son. It took
over twenty hours, but they got Lenny safely to medical help.

I will never forget that day and night, and the gift that they gave my
boy and me by risking their lives for something they felt was medically
irrelevant, but would matter a lot to us. It was a pure gift of life, and of
themselves.

In short, I was living among people for whom everyone and

everything were connected and equal in value and dignity and who thus led
lives of partnership, mutual help, and interdependence. To Teduray, that
was entirely natural, even obvious. Theirs was an abundant world, but one
that no one could tackle alone; it required cooperation, sensitivity to others,
and constant readiness to be helpful, and that was how all beings were
 Page 14 of 24

intended to live. Figel children were therefore reared to take their place in a
society marked by cooperation, compassion, and civility, all values deeply
rooted in their understanding of the good life and the good society. The
Figel Teduray were perfectly well aware that the ranking, power, violence,
and competition they abhorred were rampant among people outside the
forest, but they merely said that is no way to live.

The Teduray were not flawless. Like all people everywhere, their
actions sometimes fell short of their intentions. Occasionally anger spilled
over into insult, assault and even murder; people eloped with other
people's spouses, although Teduray held such behavior to be morally
wrong and to threaten bloodshed. The Teduray were not a version of
Rousseaus too-good-to-be-true noble savages. But they took their ethical
values very seriously and worked hard at them, and the resulting quality of
life was stunningly gracious. Their normal, day-to-day lives manifested a
degree of generosity and caring with none of the adversarial sharp edge
that competition seems to inevitably insert between people that I found
astonishing.

Dwelling amidst such a conception of reality, with people who

constantly scanned the world for ways to be helpful, changed my life. As
the months went by, I felt more and more compelled to ask whether their
vision of the good society might make for a much healthier way to live than
mine.

III.

As for intimate male-female relationships: from numerous interviews

and casual conversations, and by watching Teduray women and men
interact with each other, I could see that everyone appeared to find clear
joy in sex. It was judged to be a good and valued feature of life, a delight
 Page 15 of 24

for everyone who engaged in it, and something that people discussed
openly. Their primary concern about sexual activity was that it be mutually
desirable and caring, and partners were expected to show reciprocal care
for each others dignity and wellbeing. There was no double standard,
because women were not property to be owned, controlled or exchanged
by men. What was good for men was good for women. Both could initiate
sexual activity, and both had to follow the same rules. The feelings of each
partner were to be respected, and lovers were expected to help each other
realize their desires. All sex whether in or out of marriage that was not
strictly consensual was grievously immoral and legally actionable as rape.

If not for some encounters that made it impossible to ignore, I could

easily have missed the immense significance of these facets of Teduray
thinking and ethics. I arrived in Figel wearing the opaque glasses of my
own unconscious American social conditioning. I had never before run into
an understanding of sexual matters like that of the Teduray, because I had
never encountered a society where people saw each other as cooperative
equals. Men enjoyed sex, but did not obsess about it, and they certainly
did not treat women as objects. They would have vehemently viewed such
behavior as no way to live.

One striking example of Teduray cultural beliefs and values around

sexuality was their casual assumption that all people were free to choose
which gender they would like to be. With no notion of male superiority,
there was no gender politics, and men had no turf to defend. If you were
born a boy, but would rather be a girl, it was not a problem; just think,
dress, and act like a girl and you are one! Not like one, but a genuine girl.
So, too, if you were born a girl, but would prefer being a boy. I might have
simply not noticed how radically different their thought about this was from
what I knew in America, if another extraordinary incident had not opened
my eyes.
 Page 16 of 24

The Figel people loved music, and made most of their own
instruments; one was a bamboo zither that in the hands of a skilled player
had a charming harp-like sound. One evening, as I listened to a neighbor
woman playing her zither, I commented on how lovely it was. She said I
should hear Uk play, because she was the best among all the Teduray.
She lived several mountain crests away, but, when informed that I wanted
to hear her play, Uk in true Teduray fashion hiked to Figel and stayed with
us for several days, performing beautifully every evening.

One night, as she was playing, I asked the fellow next to me why Uk
did not use a name based on that of her oldest child, as adults normally
did. He replied that she could not marry or have children, because she was
a mentefuwaley libun. I had never heard that phrase before, but it was
perfectly clear, and means one-who-became-a-woman. I said, Oh, so
she is really a man, and he immediately responded, No, she is a genuine
woman. I was familiar with the word for real or genuine, but it confused
me here; how did it accord with her having become a woman? Keep in
mind that this whole conversation was in Teduray, and there are no
pronouns like he or she. I kept asking in various ways whether Uk was
a boy or a girl, finally posing my trump card question that I figured would
clear up the puzzle: Look, does she have a penis? He said, with some
disbelief at my inability to see the patently obvious: Of course, she has a
penis; she is one-who-became-a-woman.

Uk
 Page 17 of 24

I finally began to comprehend that these people regarded gender in a

totally different way than anyone I had ever known. Further conversations
with numerous men and women taught me that, in the Teduray mind, what
makes you really male or female is the social role you choose to play
how you dress, how you wear your hair, what you do all day: all that
express the gender you want to be. In one such discussion, someone
asked whether America had people who chose to be the other sex. I said,
Well, we have women and men who think they should be the other gender,
and some who dress like the other, but most Americans tend to think of
such folks as bad, and give them a very tough time. I can still hear his
reply: Why? Why are you people so cruel?

From then on, I knew that this was another area where our different
cultures had given us not merely different languages, customs, and ways of
settling disputes, but truly different realities to inhabit.

IV.

Living in that forest with the Teduray was like a second socialization
that challenged and transformed what I had learned in Pittsburgh values
I could no longer see as inherent in all human life, but now understood to
arise from our particular cultural conventions. The experience ignited within
me an unsettling desire to fundamentally change how I operated. Ever
since my time in Figel, I have thought seriously about the way the Teduray
lived together, and I have tried to bring their values to bear on my relations
to other people. It has not been an easy or comfortable task, because it
goes against so much of what I internalized in growing up.

I pondered this disparity on many evenings in Figel, sitting at my

homemade desk. As memories of the day's conversations and
observations stared up at me from my field notebooks and 3x5 cards, my
 Page 18 of 24

mind would drift away from the personalities and events recorded there,
and fasten on the stark contrasts they were revealing with my upbringing. I
was increasingly coming to agree that a lot of what we in America do is,
indeed, no way to live.

I now see clearly that as a child, I was systematically initiated into a

sense of superiority over women, and later over gays, and that American
gender ranking, coercive power relations, and competition had been
drummed into my head and heart when I was a small boy. I reflect on how
the penalties for wandering, even slightly, outside of my prescribed role had
felt more frightening than I could handle, and how I had been systematically
disconnected from girls, women, and fellow males. I recognize how our
notions about gender and sex were saturated with assumptions about male
dominance, and those truths now appear to me as patent lies that have
been unmasked. I realized there could be another way, and that possibility
continues to excite me. I remain moved by the fact that I never saw or
heard a hint of any Teduray person, young or old, obsessing about being a
"real man" or a "real woman.

A transformation began within me in Figel, as I watched children grow

and learn values and patterns of living that were so much healthier than
mine, and as I contemplated how adults construed their interpersonal
relationships. I was not put off by the Teduray peoples occasional failures; I
was beguiled by their fundamental assumptions. With every passing month
in Figel, the American exceptionalism I had grown up with the notion that
our society is the best of all possible worlds and a beacon of decency to the
world seemed increasingly dubious, at least in the arena of human
relations. In my moments of solitary reflection in my Figel hut, I discovered
that I wanted a life like theirs for myself. I knew that going native, or
moving to a rural farm or an isolated rainforest was not the route, but I
could see clearly that, if my values were to change for the better, my life
 Page 19 of 24

would also have to change in fundamental ways and that was scary. I
had been taught that bucking the established male norms would bring dire
consequences, but I now began considering very seriously that it might be
worth paying any social costs to have what the Teduray have.

That we need real, honest-to-goodness change is probably harder for

people to face and accept than it is to actually do. I could not discuss these
unsettling matters in Figel with any of the wise old men; my experiences
would be too foreign to them, too distant and surreal. Nor, during my
interludes out of the forest with my family in Mirab, could I talk to Audrey in
any depth about the uneasiness creeping into my consciousness; on the
occasions when I tried initiating such conversations, she simply did not
want to discuss the matter. Perhaps, all these new thoughts about
American role conditioning, gender ranking, and male dominance being
arbitrary cultural values, and my interest in changing our relationship in
their direction were too threatening to her and to the little power she had in
her own domains. Moreover, at that time I had not developed the language
with which to articulate my dawning realizations clearly and constructively,
such that Audrey could see the liberating possibilities they represented for
us both.

So I mulled them over all alone, increasingly determined to try to live

differently from then on and to relate to other people in a more healthy way.
I wanted to be a different kind of man, teacher, husband, father, and friend,
to no longer reflexively exercise rank, interpersonal coercive power, or any
sort of physical, emotional or bureaucratic violence. It has been a slow
learning curve for me, requiring constant attention and recommitment, and I
have experienced many failures. But, I believe deeply in the effort. In my
personal and professional life, I have tried ever since leaving Figel to live in
a fundamentally different way.
 Page 20 of 24

V.

Relating differently with women, especially Audrey, was a big goal of

my new stance. Although we had always loved and often enjoyed each
other in spite of everything, I never wanted to think of her again as an
object that exists to provide me with an easier and more delightful life,
regardless of the cost to her. This involved recalibrating every facet of my
accustomed behavior, and was a constant challenge. Old habits are
persistent, and Audrey and I had many of them that had to be faced and
broken. Accepting that and finding new ones was not easy for either of us.

For example, I had no training in how to help with housework; my

mother had always assumed that to be womens work, and unmanly for a
boy. Whenever I made a stab at learning to vacuum the floor, take out the
garbage, or do the dishes, Audrey resisted viscerally. She was no villain;
she too had been brought up to think of that as her domain, and one place
in our lives where she was the expert. She criticized my efforts relentlessly,
even though she complained often to me and others that I was no help to
her. Curiously, when the feminist movement entered our lives, I was more
open to it, in some ways, than she was.

Audrey in 1990 Me in 2014

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We both desperately wanted a different kind of sex life together, as I

described earlier, but were in uncharted waters. Like many couples in the
1950s through the 1970s, we were conflicted and frustrated. We worked at
improving things, but values and behaviors internalized early are very
obdurate, even when recognized as culturally determined. There were
some writings we could read that helped; a few therapists gave us good,
usable tips, and we were encouraged by several friends who were also
trying to make the same changes, We made some real progress, had a few
genuine victories, enjoyed some more positive times with each other, and
the effort to change both in and out of bed made us both feel a little
more human.

My efforts to retool my sensibilities about male-male relations were

less difficult, and met with more tangible success. In my late teens, when I
was in the Navy, I had some purely social and positive encounters with gay
men that freed me from much of the homophobia in my upbringing. Since
then, I have become friends with LGBTQ people of all stripes. Just as I
strive to eliminate violence, power-plays, and competition from all aspects
of my thinking and acting, I have come to despise homophobia with the
same fervor that colors my response to racism or anti-Semitism. Hatred,
fear, and cruelty toward gay people seem so obviously to be no way to
live.

In addition, my time in Figel had shown me unmistakably that anti-gay

prejudice has greater costs than just overt scorn. It instills a fear of
closeness with other men; it makes us worry that we might actually be gay
at some level, and just not know it, and it frightens us that we may be
perceived as queer in my fathers words, a sissy: a box that not only
stifles and keeps us from enjoying close male friendships, but causes
incalculable cruelty and pain to others.
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The contrast between this and the Teduray attitude took my breath
away, but gave me hope, They had no such concerns, so I too could break
free of them. I could learn to trust other men, to share sensitive feelings,
and to touch without erotic implications. We could enjoy each others
companionship rather than assume we are locked into unrelenting
competition. Today, I rejoice that I am no longer afraid to cry or show
vulnerability, and feel more human because of it. I cherish many close
friendships with other men, in ways I once thought impossible. I am
straight, but do not fret for a moment over how my sexuality may look to
anyone else.

VI.

It is clear to me now that the American male role I had learned not
only objectifies and enforces sexist power relationships with women, it
works against many of us having authentic closeness with either gender. I
am not alone; the contemporary feminist and LGBTQ movements are
gradually bringing to light the inhumanity of our social system that defines
women as sexual objects for men to exploit, and which labels some men
and women as homosexual," then unleashes fear and humiliation on them.
Many of us are learning to ask as my Teduray friend asked me why
do we do it? Why are we so cruel? We do it, of course many of us
because of the toxic cultural dance of status, domination, violence, and fear
we were taught by our families and peers as children.

I now believe that every one of us could, like Teduray, have sexual
and loving relationships that suit our physical nature, our desires, and our
code of morality, so long as they are consensual and respectful of other
persons. More than that, we could all be liberated across the whole
spectrum of human life from the horror of being objectified or objectifying,
brutalized or brutalizing. The capacity in every one of us for affection,
 Page 23 of 24

closeness, erotic pleasure, and committed, joyous and loving relationships,

could be released from our oppressive cultural shackles. Like the Teduray,
we could honor each other and be honored for who we are, not for who
others think we are supposed to be.

I do not have many ideas of how best to teach this different view of
manhood. It would seem that good sex education, if our culture would allow
it, might help if it were taught in addition to the physical facts of life and
prevention of unwanted pregnancy. Certainly, a great deal can be modeled
and discussed at home that would help. Audrey and I tried to create a
loving, accepting, and helpful environment for our sons, and both boys
turned out to personify all three of those qualities.

Freedom from destructive internalized rules and values around

matters of gender, sex and sexuality, around love and caring, around real
connection and community with each other would be life-giving and
wonderful. Importantly, it would reduce the chronic, pervasive, performance
anxiety that surrounds, not just sex, but the entire male experience. In
many ways, nagging worry about doing everything right and being a real
man, seen as manly by other men and women, was the most characteristic
feature of male life for boys who grew up in my place and time; it was a
game, I believe, that we were doomed to lose, because we were never
taught what good performance meant. Freedom from that would be a big
step toward true liberation for both American men and women.

It has been for me. I try earnestly to resist the symbols and attitudes
customarily associated with high status, such as differential forms of
address and dress, areas of special privilege, and authoritarian ways of
relating and behaving; to feel my feelings and express them with the
women and fellow men in my life; and to be aware of what I can learn from
my students, not just what I can teach them. I work hard to give serious
 Page 24 of 24

scholarly attention to issues of American social and political thinking, to the

rampant violence in our life and world, to the cruel prejudices that make
existence so grim for many Americans, and to the causes and effects of our
staggering economic inequality. I make a real effort to offer, wherever
possible, my time, talents, and what disposable treasure I control to make
life around me a bit better. I vote, write letters and checks, and volunteer for
tasks and roles that might make some difference in my various scenes of
social relations and work.

Crucially, when everything looks hopeless to me, I strive not to

become cynical about the big picture, and instead to make life a bit more
gracious and positive among my immediate circle of friends, neighbors, and
associates. Having witnessed, with such admiration, how the Teduray
scanned the world for ways to be helpful, I try do the same, and as far as I
can in the phrase I often use to articulate my goal to create islands of
sanity in a world gone mad.

I know I still have numerous persistent blind spots and experience

many more lapses than accomplishments; I have fallen short far more
frequently than I have succeeded. But I have no regrets, and count the
struggle to be well worth while. I believe the effort has positively enriched
my life, and I am deeply grateful to the Teduray for having set me on this
path. I saw Figel people fail, over and over, to always embody their
gracious and kindly notions of how to live, and, like them, I do my best.

And so it was that, bit by bit, what began as a graduate school

fieldwork requirement, a social science exercise, became for me something
far more serious and deeply personal. As it turned out, my time with the
Teduray was not merely about writing a dissertation, or having a marvelous
cross-cultural adventure, but about waking up to a thorough rethinking of
my whole existence as one who grew up as a boy in America.