As Angela Y. Davis told us in 1979, “In a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.” The former is a passive existence that enables oppression, while the latter is an active identity of resistance to the status quo. In a sexist and patriarchal society, it is not enough to be non-sexist, we must be anti-sexist and anti-patriarchal.
Challenging the ideals of toxic/hegemonic masculinity can and must take on a multitude of forms in a culture that expects men to be stoic, strong, powerful, wealthy, sex-crazed, confident, self-centered, angry, and violent. To be non-sexist/patriarchal is to be vulnerable, to cry, to ask for help, to admit weakness, to admit failure, to have a range of emotions, to be unsure, to wear pink, to have friends who are men, to have friends who are women without the expectation or interest that it might be sexual, and so on and on and on.
As discussed in several articles featured on The Bridges We Burn (such as here and here), as men age, they isolate and their primary partners, wives, or sisters must bear the burden of their emotional labor. Loneliness is a documented cause of men’s declining physical and mental health across their lifespan. Men rarely to turn to other men to work through their experiences of pain, trauma, heartbreak, or loneliness.
In response to this reality, a group of men in Philadelphia formed the Men’s Therapeutic Cuddle Group. The men work through their experiences of trauma in ways that actively challenge the mandates of toxic masculinity, in particular the assertion that “real men” cannot be platonically physical with other men unless in superficial ways such as side-hugs, handshakes, high-fives, or by being playfully aggressive.
Intimacy and physicality between men opens up a necessary can of worms particularly for heterosexual men who have been socialized to not be vulnerable with, or in front of, other men. These sorts of spaces open up a range of possibilities for embodying and enacting anti-sexism/patriarchy and are fundamental for fostering healthy masculinities.
Read the full profile of the Men’s Therapeutic Cuddle Group and other similar initiatives via The Inquirer on Philly.com
– Brett Goldberg
Cover photo by Tom Gralish, Staff Photographer from the original article by Aneri Pattani for Philly.com
