The State of Masculinity in 2023 | Dean Pohlman | Better Man Podcast Ep. 051

Hey, guys, it’s Dean. Welcome to the Better Man podcast. Today’s episode is a solo episode, and I’m going to talk about something that comes up a lot in the Better Man podcast, and that is the idea of masculinity. So I’ve titled this solo podcast, The State of Masculinity, and 2023, I kind of want to go through some of the discussions that are happening right now.

I want to try and be somewhat objective in presenting the different ideas that are put forward. I also want to share some of my own thoughts and try to create some dialog around a topic that is not safe to talk about in this current climate. So I think this is something that’s important for me, and I know that just because of how meaningful yoga developed, if I am interested in something, I know that somebody else is going to be interested in something.

You have to understand that for the sake of this solo podcast, I’m coming at this from the perspective of a cisgender white heterosexual male married with two kids, so cis gender, meaning I identify as either male or female and not transgender. So I’m thinking about much of this in terms of man and woman. That is a lot of the conversations that I have on this podcast.

So this is the perspective that I’m most able to empathize with and to see it from. And so that’s what I’m going to be talking about this in. When it comes to my own personal views, I’m also going to share what some of the other perspectives could be, someone coming at this from the LGBT plus community, someone who doesn’t care about whether or not there are being masculine are web developer in his own words, is incredibly gay.

And he’s not going to listen to this podcast and think that, you know, he’s going to start behaving in a way that’s more masculine because he doesn’t care. He’s happy with how he acts. He’s happy with how he behaves. He’s living his life in accordance with his values. And this isn’t something that he’s going to listen to and start changing, you know, changing what he does.

For me personally, I do believe in having a kind of certain set of standards for myself as a man, as a man who values masculinity. And I want to strive for a healthy, positive expression of that. I’m interested in learning and having conversations about what does that mean? This is it’s important to me. And that doesn’t mean that I’m imposing this on you.

That doesn’t mean that I mean evaluating your own worth of a man based on the amount of masculinity that you choose to utilize or not utilize. I think that’s an important thing to mention, is that first off, the value of a man is not determined based on how masculine he is. It’s that’s just you are either you can be really masculine or you can be not masculine.

It doesn’t doesn’t, doesn’t change your value as a man. The only important thing for that would be how you evaluate yourself, right? We’re not imposing these standards on somebody else. We’re just kind of figuring out for ourselves what works best for me. And if I am a biological man and I identify as a man, then it might be helpful for me to know what are traditionally masculine behaviors.

But we also want to bring up the idea that traditional, some traditional masculine behaviors are no longer serving us in this day and age. So so thinking about, okay, this has worked in the past, but now thinking about, okay, is this still working for us? I think that’s important conversation to have. It’s a lot of the reason why I started the Better Man podcast, because I looked around and I saw expressions of masculinity and I looked at ideas of what it means to be a man.

And I thought, Hey, that doesn’t make sense. Like you know, for let’s think about stereotypical, let’s think about stereotypes for men and what makes them good or bad, so to speak. Right? So, you know, a man should be able to to build a house, to frame, to frame a deck, to hang a TV, to do all these things with his hands.

I’m not a handyman. I can do something to some extent, but I’m not going to try and do something that I think a carpenter should be doing. And there is a, you know, a stereotype idea that men should be able to build things. Right. So, you know, that’s just one example. But something that exists in all of our lives would be, you know, the idea that men don’t cry and men don’t show emotions.

And I know that in order to be healthy, both physically and emotionally, because the two affect one another, that we do need to be emotional Sometimes we do need to express ourselves. We need to acknowledge our own feelings. So I think that there are some things that we can do when it comes to evaluating traditional masculinity, that we can look at that and say, okay, this isn’t this.

Maybe this worked, You know, however long ago, this work, this was good because it helped show, you know, there’s a reason for it there. We it helped to provide stability, help provide reassurance if we did not express our own worries, if we showed, hey, we’re confident and we know that we think that we’re safe and we’re going to convey that to our tribe or whatever it was then that was helpful at a time.

I think it’s the same way that we learn certain behaviors. You can compare this to how we learned certain behaviors as kids. We learned certain protective behaviors. We talked about this a lot on this podcast, but we learned certain behaviors that help to protect us emotionally, maybe physically and we continue those behaviors into adulthood, even though they aren’t serving us anymore.

And it takes us actually addressing, being consciously addressing some of these behaviors that we subconsciously develop in response to the need to protect ourselves. And it takes, you know, bringing bringing these things up and looking at them critically. And that’s kind of what we’re doing right now. And that’s why I wanted to bring this up. And so a podcast is to kind of encourage dialog about what is masculinity, how should if we’re interested in this, how should we, you know, how can we evaluate ourselves if, again, if you want to evaluate yourselves in this way, how can how can we evaluate ourselves as men?

How does masculinity figure into that? So and I want to be able to talk about this issue. I don’t want to have to say I don’t want to not talk about it because it’s something that I do talk about and something that I personally value and I think about a lot. And instead of just shouting over the other person or, you know, sharing a meme with them, I’d like to actually have a conversation and try to understand where the other person is coming from and try to create some some common ground.

So. So yeah, I think that’s that’s where I’m coming out from this. I actually did have a discussion with the man for yoga team about this in our weekly meeting last week because I wanted to make sure that I did this in a way that was respectful. I didn’t want people to hear this and and cancel me or I don’t know, I wanted to be able to do this in a way that was respectful.

I wanted to account for multiple perspectives, and I wanted to do it in accordance with, you know, the values of this show, this podcast, and in my own personal values, which is has a huge impact on this podcast.

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with all that being said, let’s get into this. So first off, I think, you know, I mentioned this in the intro, but your masculinity does not determine your worth as a man.

And I think the I think a problem is if we do use that as a barometer to to kind of rate men or to evaluate their effectiveness of men, if we’re saying, okay, the more masculine behaviors you do, the more of a man you are, which is not true, you’re a man. If you say you’re a man, that’s period end stop.

Right. But you might actually be surprised to learn what the definition of masculine is. So I looked it up because I’m like, What is what does masculinity actually mean? And all it really means is behaviors that are traditionally associated with men. So it’s there’s not really a lot to go on with that. So masculinity is then things that we traditionally associate with men that have a little a little graphic that I’m going to refer to here.

So things that are typically masculine are traditionally masculine, and they’re stereotypes, but aggressive, independent, not easily influence, dominant, active, not easily hurt, emotionally decisive, not very talkative, tough, less sensitive to others feelings, not very desirous of security. They probably already feel secure, doesn’t cry, logical, not emotional, analytical, blunt and not nurturing. So these are all you know, these are all things that are traditionally masculine.

And it’s not really up for debate. Those are things that are traditionally considered masculine. That doesn’t mean that we need to take those into the future or that that’s the only way that men can behave. Because if you are a man that only did that, you would be probably a very emotionally disturbed man, you know. So but that is what that is what masculinity is.

It’s it’s behaviors that are traditionally associated with men. So some behaviors could be considered masculine, some could be considered neutral, and some are feminine. And later in this episode, I’m actually in to question, do we even know what’s the value of assigning behaviors as masculine or feminine? There’s some other ideas that that might make more sense, because again, I think the implication is that if you’re a man, you want to be manly, that you have to be manly all the time, or you’re less of a man, or if you’re a woman, then you should be womanly and you should be feminine all the time.

And if you act masculine, then you’re less of a woman. And that’s not true because again, men and women both do feminine or masculine things. So. So yeah, I think that’s it. I think that’s important. And an important point to bring up. The other thing that I realized as I was thinking about this was I personally know nothing about masculinity.

Everything that I’ve learned has been subconsciously gleaned through my own experiences or through kind of pop culture. And a lot of those things are negative behaviors. A lot of those things would fall into the category of what I would call a toxic masculinity. And we’ll talk about that a little bit as well in this episode. You know, so I have I have my assumptions about what masculinity is, but I never sat down with a tribal elder to tell me what it means to be a man, you know?

So I never went through some sort of, you know, I never went through some sort of process like that. I think the closest thing for me for that was my experience with sports and, you know, being tough in sports, being aggressive, being surrounded by other men, you know, And the sport that I played was a pretty violent game, right?

It was lacrosse. So were beating people with sticks, were checking people or pushing people. And, you know, we’re doing it somewhat respectfully. Most of the time. It’s respectful. Sometimes you have games where it’s, you know, where you get chippy. But, you know, for the most part, it’s it’s done in a way that is a a safe environment. Not to say that I’m not have injuries, but anyways, I’m getting our point here.

The point is that for me, a lot of my ideas about masculinity develop subconsciously or also through the the activities in which I was with other men predominantly. So. So yeah, that is all to say that I know nothing about masculinity and I think that’s probably where most people are. We probably don’t think a lot about masculinity, we don’t critically think about it.

And now that I’m doing this podcast, I’m like, Oh wow, okay, I do want to explore this a little bit more. What does it mean to be masculine and how do we do that in a way that is better suited toward toward our day, toward this year, toward 2023, as opposed to 50 years ago, as opposed to what we did 50 years ago as opposed to what we traditionally did?

What are some what are some new ways to look at how to be masculine? So, you know, we couldn’t do this without bringing up the idea of toxic masculinity. So we’re realizing that there are a lot of behaviors that are harmful. There are a lot of things that are done and kind of explained away as, Oh, that’s just men being men when really that’s just an asshole being an asshole, right?

So I think it’s it’s a good thing that we brought up this idea that we’re pointing out behavior and saying like, No, that’s not that’s not being masculine. You’re being an asshole. And I saw something the other day where somebody said, Toxic masculinity is what happens in the absence of of masculinity. And I thought that was an interesting idea because, you know, I’d like to imagine that masculinity is something comforting.

I’d like to I this is a terrible analogy, but I like to think of it as as a warm weighted blanket that’s slowly bringing you to where you need to go, you know, providing reassuring reassurance along the way. But at the same time, hey, we’re going here, we’re going to get there. And that’s just, you know, a random or random analogy that I had.

But, you know, I, I think that it’s a fair point that that I think it’s a fair point when we say that masculinity can be toxic or it can be positive. And I think the I think that what’s happening with with the emergence of toxic masculinity and questioning traditional masculine behaviors is that we are now suspicious of something that is all male.

We think that that’s toxically masculine because it’s all male, because it’s there’s no feminine or there’s no there’s no woman involved or we’re also instead of we’re also looking at traditionally masculine behaviors. And instead of picking out which ones we should keep, which ones we should throw away, and maybe which ones we should kind of make more neutral.

We’re looking at it and saying, Oh, this was traditionally masculine. Traditional masculinity is toxic. So now we’re going to do the opposite of that. And I don’t think that’s the right way to do it either. You know, I think about I think about I was raised in a house where I had a very masculine mom. She she was masculine because that was what she needed to do in order to be successful with her career.

And that was what she needed to do to be safe. So so for her, like, you know, it makes sense that she was masculine and she and she taught me that other women are masculine too, and that they they didn’t need my help and they didn’t need me to protect them and they didn’t need me to make decisions for them, you know?

So these are all things that are while a lot of those things are, I think are somewhat valid, it’s it it doesn’t mean that women never want me to make the decision or women never want me to be able to protect them. So I think for me, it would have been more helpful for me to to not just do the complete opposite, but to try and integrate the two.

And that’s that’s kind of what I want to do. That’s kind of why I’m doing this So episode. I want to I want to bring up, Hey, yes, Toxic masculinity is bad. There are certain expressions of traditional masculinity that we should not be doing anymore. At the same time, we shouldn’t get rid of all traditional masculinity because there are some things in it that are helpful.

And I think it’s also, you know, the other point that kind of comes up here is that there’s no reason why a woman can’t do masculine behaviors. And it’s ultimately up to you, right? It’s up to you. It’s not it’s not it’s not you imposing or other people imposing how feminine you are or masculine you are. It’s ultimately up to you to figure out what works best for you.

So I, I think the issue is I think the issue is when that’s imposed on other people. When we evaluate people, when we evaluate their worth based on how masculine they are or how feminine they are, that’s the issue.

So for me, I’m looking at traditionally masculine behaviors that I think no longer need are no longer serving us. So it’s that’s a big idea behind the Better Man podcast. It’s a huge reason why I started the Better Man podcast is to figure out how can we be more effective as men in a way that is kinder to ourselves?

In a lot of ways, I think that traditional masculinity, I think that it’s important to be tough. I think it’s important to be to have grit. I think it’s important to do, you know, to be relentless in certain regards. But I think that we can also do that in a way that is kinder to ourselves. I think that we can do hard things while at the same time acknowledging to ourselves, this is hard, this is hard to do, and talking to people around you and saying, this is hard, I’m struggling with this because I think that’s actually going to help us be more successful.

I’m interested in how do I be more successful and how do I do so in a way that’s healthier for me. So I think that, you know, I think that there are I think that we can do I think that we can do things in a way that is better for ourselves and also for better people. And so other things that I want to question with traditional masculinity, men don’t cry.

If you don’t cry, you know you’re going to have some pent up emotions. I realized a few years ago that you cannot experience the extreme ranges of emotion if you choose to disregard one of them. So if you don’t let yourself feel sad, you’re going to struggle with allowing yourself to feel happy. You don’t get to choose one or the other.

So. So not crying, not showing emotions. This is something that is that is I think it can be helpful in providing stability when necessary, but restricting it all the time and not expressing that I think that is harmful for us. So I also think that, you know, the idea that men don’t ask for help is something that we should not be doing or men should do everything themselves, or again, a man should be able to build his own deck.

I am for sure getting on the phone and calling somebody to build that deck. I’m not going to attempt to do that myself. So I think that it makes sense to question traditional ideas of masculinity and figure out which ones are helping and which ones are are not helping.

I also think it’s important to bring up the, I think, an aspect of toxic masculinity that imposes standards on other men.

And I talked about this throughout the show already, and I bring this up because I had a guest on the show recently. His name is Lance. He is a pelvic floor physical therapist specialist. And when I asked him the question that I ask everybody on the show, which is what do you think is the number one threat facing men, he said toxic masculinity.

And because I think there are so many different ways that we think about toxic masculinity, I wanted to ask them, well, what what are you talking about? And he said he he explained it as the toxic masculinity, as imposing standards on other men. So saying that, you know, you’re a man, so you’re you’re supposed to behave this way or you’re a woman, so you’re supposed to behave this way.

And I think that has been an answer to a lot of that has been an answer for me. That’s been an answer to a lot of different quandaries presented is that we are being told how to behave. We are trying to behave in accordance with how people think we should be behaving instead of doing it from our our core, doing it from the values that are most important to us.

And I think it’s I think I think it’s I think a relevant little analogy here to bring up is is a book is from a book that I read called The Hypothesis of Happiness. And in this book it goes into the benefits and the cons of both conservatism and progressivism. So the the prose of conservatism are that there are established values, that there is less questioning.

Right. People are able to people are kind of on the same page with one another, that if they value the same thing, if they are behaving in the same way, then there’s less confusion. Of course, the con of this is that there are a lot of people who don’t want to behave in this particular way. And this year and every year since, we have gotten more and more to realize that, hey, there are a lot of people who don’t fit this norm.

And in order for them to be happy, we need to expand these ideas of how we have acceptable behaviors. So, you know, for for these people, obviously, the conservative mentality is not going to be helpful because it doesn’t account for what they want. On the other hand, progressivism is great because it gives people it gives people more freedom.

There are less established norms, right? You can figure out for yourself what’s important and how you want to behave. The drawback there is that there is more confusion. It’s it’s it’s moving more toward it’s it’s it’s more in the direction of anarchy. And I’m not saying that like, okay, if we like if we let people behave how they want to behave, then we’re going to have like a total shutdown of government.

And, you know, that’s that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that there are different spectrums and this is that’s the one where that’s leaning toward. But I guess if you want to think about conservatism, then that’s leaning toward autocracy, right? Or that’s leading toward a dictatorship. So these are just the two different spectrums. And I think it’s important to consider the the the pros and cons of both.

The author is is liberal and he talks about that. But I think he does a pretty good job of neutrally assessing both of these point of views. You know, I’m watching a show right now called Ted Lasso. If you’re a Ted Lasso fan, it’s an amazing show. It’s it’s super inspirational. And there’s this amazing scene where he’s in he’s in a pub and he’s having a darts match with the bad guy in the show, and he doesn’t know that he’s a great darts player.

He’s he got kind of, you know, kind of hustles him a little bit and he’s about to score the winning point and he says, be curious, not judgmental. And the idea there is to be curious about what other people are thinking, not not being judged or not make assumptions, but to be curious, to recognize that you don’t have it all figured out and to try and figure out where are these other people coming from, what are they thinking.

And I think that’s a really good mentality to approach these things with, to to be able to critically think, to be able to realize, am I judging this person? Am I making an assumption or do I really understand where they’re coming from? So one other concept I did want to explore before I wrap things up is, is there a better way to think about masculine and feminine behaviors?

Because we talked about this earlier, but obviously there are there are men and women are going to both do masculine and feminine behaviors right there. A man is not only going to be masculine and a woman is not only going to be feminine. So the other ways that I’ve heard this described is the sea versus the ship. So this is a this is a podcast interview I did a couple of weeks ago.

It’s not going to be live for a couple more months now, but we explored this idea of the sea versus the ship. Right? The sea is the sea is chaos. The key the sea is uncontrollable. That is feminine. And the ship is what we control. This is the this has direction, right? And that’s masculine. Or we can think about yin and yang, right?

Yin is if you think about Yin yoga, right? Yin is the softer yoga. Yin is restorative. Vienna’s yin is more emotional, right? So that’s feminine. But the yang is is stronger. That’s more of a physical, more physical, that’s more intense. So that would be consider the masculine. So, you know, it might make sense in a it might be more sense to evaluate behaviors in this way, yin and yang and see and ship instead of saying, oh, that’s that belongs to feminine or that belongs to masculine.

If we don’t want to change masculine and feminine, then understanding that masculine feminine does not equate to male and female, but it’s just, you know, you could think about it if you think about a very masculine man, if you think about a biological man who’s very masculine, then for him, masculine behaviors are going to be easier. And if you think about a very feminine woman, then for her, those feminine behaviors might come easier.

Doesn’t mean that they can’t do both of those things, but it might mean that one is easier for them or that, or that they will be happier if they engage in behaviors that that resonate with them more. But again, we’re not imposing that some other people. This is a question for yourself. And if you identify as more feminine or if you identify as more masculine, then it could be helpful to test out.

Maybe if I am more masculine, I’m going to be happier. Maybe if I do more masculine behaviors, I’m going to be happier. Or maybe if I live in a way, if I live my life in a way that has more femininity, then maybe I will be happier by doing this. And you could be a man and have more feminine behaviors and be happier.

You could be a woman and be more masculine and also be happier. It’s up to you to figure out what is going to work for you. We’re not imposing that on others. And for me, I bring this up because I do care about I do care about being a better man. I do care about being masculine. I think that I will be happier if I if I if I skew my behavior in a way that’s that’s masculine.

I think that is and that is in deeper alignment with who I am. And so that’s why I’m interested in this. But if that doesn’t apply to you, then you don’t have to you don’t have to do that. And and we’re not imposing that on on other people. We’re figuring out for ourselves what is helpful and how can I love in a way that’s more in accordance with my own values.

So that’s kind of all I had on that. I think this could be a topic that could be explored endlessly. I don’t think that there’s a correct answer. I think it’s just presenting different ideas and figuring out which ones resonate for you. And then again, not imposing those standards on other people. Ryan Holiday has this great I follow Ryan holiday.

I’m a big fan of of reading Stoicism and he has this one quote or he he brings us up a lot but it basically says we don’t have time to judge other people. We don’t have time to hold other people to certain standards because we are already so busy with holding ourselves to our own standards. Right. So for me, it makes sense because like all the things that I do in the day, all of the willpower that I have, all the energy that I have, it takes a lot of willpower and energy to be able to to evaluate myself, to be able to monitor myself, to be able to behave in the way that makes

me happy, that makes me content and fulfilled at the end of the day that I don’t have time to evaluate other people. I don’t have time to hold them to standards. So I think that’s a good thing to mention. And this again, these are standards that you set for yourself. We’re not imposing them on others. So you stuck around the whole time.

Guys, I want I appreciate. I appreciate you. I hope you got something out of this this so discussion. Next up on the solar podcast for the Betterment podcast, I’m going to be talking about some strategies to getting results from your workout programs, specifically some mentalities that and some information, some strategies that I think you should be embracing if you want to be or if you want to be more successful, if you want to be more consistent, if you want to get better results from your workouts.

And that’s something that has been very important to me over the years and I’m excited to share that. So guys, thanks for listening to this solar podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you haven’t already, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you haven’t started Man Flow Yoga yet, we have an awesome brand new Getting Started series that is going to help you walk you through getting started step by step, get you on a program, follow a path and guide you through a series of workouts, a series of scheduled workouts that’s going to help you get results, learn the postures, learn how to do

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