Should we give up on older men?

I’ve heard this question a lot lately, but I think it's the wrong one

I was recently in conversation with a group of amazing, strong, intelligent women, when the conversation turned to the problems many of us are seeing around older males. The general consensus was that women are sick of having exhausting, ineffective conversations with the men in their lives. There was talk of women in their forties and fifties leaving their husbands in droves, men with their heads in the sand about what is going on in the world, men who really need therapy, and men who might be subconsciously practising avoidance techniques like ice baths and yoga. I even made a joke about my husband’s current love of handstands, because it fitted the moment, and we all chuckled. The future, it was proposed, would likely be feminine, both in energy and leadership, since men are responsible for messing up the world so badly. And then the question was posed: Do we give up on even trying to talk to older men? And a follow-on question: Perhaps we find hope in our sons, and not with their fathers?

I had a very strong internal reaction to this, which I’ll come back to in a moment. Let me say first that this was at once the most truthful, interesting and uncomfortable conversation I have had in the last twelve months. It hit a nerve at a time my husband and I had been struggling to communicate well with each other, exhausted from the runaround of life and seemingly coping with things in very different ways. It hit a nerve because I’ve had extremely problematic experiences around older men for my entire life, some of which have left me with long-term, deep trauma. It hit a nerve because I’m so sick and exhausted by toxic masculinity and the way it influences our culture. And it hit a nerve because I now only had a few seconds in what I felt was a very important conversation, to jump in and defend older men.

I put my hand up and gave a slightly rambling response about how it’s really important that the older generation isn’t discounted but rather encouraged to be visible; how my husband is always willing to listen and put in his part of the work on whatever situation we’re experiencing; how my girls – all our children – desperately need great male role models; and how I’d studied this kind of generational disconnect as part of my PhD. This was all true, but I knew it didn’t quite hit the right note. Everyone smiled kindly. I don’t know if anything I said resonated, but if I had to give my response a score, both in terms of eloquence and impact, I’d say it was about a four out of ten.

I left the meeting with my thoughts swirling, while feeling that I’d somehow also managed to make my husband a bit of a laughing stock with the comment about handstands. It didn’t feel great, since it’s always felt like a very positive thing, and we’ve had a lot of fun with it as a family. I walked into town to meet my daughter, and halfway along the route, I’d figured out what I’d really wanted and meant to say.

We were talking about ‘men’, but that in itself was the problem. Instead, I think we should have been talking about the patriarchal mindset that has governed and dominated our culture for so long. Because, regardless of our gender, we ALL live inside this airless bubble of male-oriented ideology that might well have its roots in the days of the caveman, when some kind of practical dispersion of jobs was agreed upon due to the physiology of men and women (i.e. women as childbearers, men having superior physical strength), and which probably didn’t suit those maladaptive members of the tribes even then. Think of those long-forgotten puny cavemen who just wanted to make musical instruments out of plants, and who were doubtless derided and overlooked, and are now uncelebrated in history. As are the women with the strength of ten men, who despised kids, brought home half the meat for the feast and dumped it at the feet of their hairy testosterone-fuelled leaders as they sat around the fire gossiping. Who the heck knows! But in so many ways, our society and our mental landscape remains clouded by the effects of this ancient and pervasive division of gender roles, identities and labour.

When we talk about the patriarchy, we’re referring to a system of society or government in which men hold power and women are largely excluded. It is a pervasive, destructive ideology and has a stalwart companion in dogmatic religion. However, our western society has been organised that way for a long time, and despite the resistance and advances of the last hundred years, we remain bound by an insidious patriarchal inheritance that can still blind us and divide us. Many men subscribe to it and cling fiercely to the acceptability of the ideas espoused by this ‘men as superior’ world view (although they can just as easily become victims of it) – and many women do too. How else do we arrive at a point where the essential legislation around women’s bodily autonomy outlined in Roe v. Wade is rescinded in America in 2022?

I agree that it’s very hard to find hope around people who can’t see beyond an outdated status quo, and pretty much pointless debating with them. And these people are often power-seekers and sometimes it feels like they’re in charge of EVERYTHING! It’s also hard to talk about the patriarchy nowadays without being labelled as a radical feminist, and that’s another problem. Our language is not always adequate for this discussion, and our words can easily be skewed or turned against us, deepening the divides. For example, as a culture we really need to have ongoing conversations about destructive and toxic masculinity, but we must recognise that this behaviour is not applicable to all men. We cannot debate any issues as male or female without making massive generalisations that exclude an appreciation of the complex diversity of individuals. I can think of many older men whom I deeply admire, who must carry this same weight of patriarchal inheritance as a burden they grapple with, but who strive and yearn to be more emotionally connected, who fight hard to make a difference in their communities and the efforts to heal and protect the planet, and who are spiritually and deeply connected to the earth. Many of them are also in struggle with themselves and the world around them, just as women are. But all of these men are effectively carried away and abandoned within the collective labelling of their gender as the exhausting, irredeemable problem.

Debating these complex issues with precision is really hard, and we might have to accept that our words can fail us in the moment, as happened to me when I had something important to say in that female-centred conversation last week. However, I know I have to keep trying if I want to be an effective part of the conversation. And the other day, as my husband and I pushed through a particularly tricky topic, we went from intense frustration with each other to having some really valuable insights as to how we both tick, and how we can lean in and support each other. Afterwards, both of us felt we’d made a breakthrough. It was hard work, but always worth the effort, and we are allies again.

I would love to move away from discussing men as the problem, and reframe the discussion as a more inclusive one, about what we want to collectively value going forward. I believe we’ll go further if we keep our questions centred around the ongoing challenge of loosening and dispersing the iron grip that our patriarchal history and inheritance has on us all, because there are men and women standing firmly on both sides of that divide, and we’re all wrestling with what it means. If we believe in a kinder, fairer, calmer world, we can’t afford to dismiss anyone based on a gender generalisation. Every conversation, every connection we can form, every complexity we can negotiate, as individuals looking to remove the outdated ideological shackles that keep us apart from one another, has to be a win.