Shine a Light Men's Project

This is question we should address upfront. Why are we focusing on men and boys when women are still fighting for equal rights, equal pay and social empowerment? The answer is simple: these are not zero-sum challenges. Concern for men and boys does not negate our concern for women and girls. Only there are far fewer opportunities for men to collaborate on their own challenges.

Why a men's group? This is a question we hear a lot. Sure, women meet in groups, and there are many women's groups focusing on still-serious inequities in western societies. Men play sports, attend football games, work on projects together. They don't do groups. Or at least this is the prevailing misconception among many misconceptions regarding gender identity. In any case, what we are offering is not just a group, but an on-going project wherein men may develop their own solutions and share them with other men, and hopefully the communities where they live.

The modern world is filled with noise. Most workers are overloaded by multiple, simultaneous streams of messages. Social life is experienced via overlapping channels of electronic activity leading to stress and exhaustion. In contrast, meditation practices invariably depend on silence, or at least the quieting of one’s mind and body. Silence is at the heart of such crucial peacemaking practices as deep listening, forgiveness, love and compassion. And yet many men fear lapses into silence and resist meditation as contrived and unnatural.

The Men's Mindfulness Project, otherwise known as the Shine a Light Men's Project, began when it became clear that men's groups were not taking on men's issues with a mindfulness framework. The latter is foundational to the stated agenda: a call to action by men, for men, to  come together and discuss the issues most profoundly influencing their lives. The mindfulness framework encourages safe, respectful and open dialogue - even among a diverse group of guys - and also a means of applying what we learn in our respective communities. 

Men need male friends. For most of human history, male fraternity has been paramount in men’s lives. Yet as we have seen, many of the social factors underpinning men’s friendships have worn away in the current era. What once was taken for granted - men’s place in the social order - is now enmeshed in challenges. Friendship within the clan is a major casualty.

Humans are a particularly imaginative species. Our enlarged prefrontal cortex is constantly at work drawing our imaginations from here to there and everywhere. You know the feeling, those moments when you suddenly realize that for the past several minutes your mind has been wandering, touching on all manner of details, desires and curiosities from the day's experiences and beyond. This experience is common to both men and women, although for men, a much higher proportion of their mental wandering is sexual in nature. No surprise there!

Brotherhood in 21st century western society is in decline. Most traditional men’s organizations, including the Freemasons, Elks, and Odd Fellows, report significant declines in membership in recent years. We find a similar trend with the closing of so many pubs and bars where men once gathered to drink, tell bawdy stories and blow off steam.

In the early 1980s Paul Kivel and others at the Oakland Men's Project developed a paper and pencil exercise which illustrated gender expectations by drawing "Act Like a Man" and "Act Like a Lady" boxes. Workshop students responded to open-ended statements in each box and outlined how they believed men and women should act. For some years this "act like a man box" exercise was used in various men's programs.

A friend pointed out recently that, although xe agrees that escaping the man box is not likely, except maybe for Superman, some men appear to slip by relatively unscathed. After running through our catalogs of male friends, we each confirmed this observation. Consider this an addendum to the "Stuck in the Man Box" entry a few days ago. 

If this were the only topic to be addressed, we would need only a brief conversation. There is absolutely no doubt that the #MeToo movement exposed a tremendous amount of despicable behavior by men toward women, behavior that follows from traditional gender roles as performed by old fashioned men. In particular, the notion that men need to be aggressive, dominant, violent and denigrating toward women.

In a medical review posted November 2022, the online medical information service WebMD presents an overview, diagnosis and treatment plan for toxic masculinity. To be clear, no where in this piece does WebMD identify toxic masculinity as a medical condition. Nevertheless, treating it as a social disorder, the medical reviewer points out:

Author, actor and children's book writer Justin Baldoni introduced his recent TED talk like this: "For most of us (men), at the end of the day our identities are wrapped up in whether we are 'man enough.'" Baldoni is an astute observer of the new multi-faceted man. But the real question for most guys is how to get there from here?