By STUART HORWITZ
I was fortunate enough to be in the room when the idea for Good Men, Vol. II was revealed to a public audience for the first time. The concept is simple: invite the voices of young men (aged 12-19) through a nationwide essay contest and community outreach to respond to a prompt like: “What’s the hardest thing you have had to do and how did that change what you think is right?” The Good Men Project would then select several dozen essays to be developed further with the help of the original Good Men (now “GOOD MENtors.”) The best essays would be published in book form with the rest being posted on the website.
The excitement was palpable. The occasion was the 2010 ISHA Conference titled “The View From Mars: Where Does this Sexualized Culture Leave Today’s Youth?” We were in a room full of educators: health ed. teachers and nurses, deans and dorm advisors, who are on the front lines of boys trying to become men amidst widely-disseminated messages of violence, impulsiveness, sexual conquest, and intense pressures to achieve. The faces were welcoming; the follow-up questions supportive. I should have been thrilled by the reaction, but something didn’t feel quite right.
The very popularity of the concept made me wonder if men were washed up – maybe it’s too late for us – in the eyes of some of the audience members (who were 70% women). Men striving to be good men were interesting, but men helping boys to become good men were truly praiseworthy. It’s been an undercurrent I’ve noticed for the past year I’ve been involved with the Good Men Project: men, and men’s issues, are threatening. When the discourse switched from men to boys the room seemed to exhale.
We distributed index cards that bore the question: “What adjectives/phrases would you use to define/come to mind when you think of a good man?” The most common response for the women in the room was, “kind.” The most common response for the men in the room was “honest.” At one point a woman in the crowd described a good man as “tender and caring with his children,” and “chivalrous and polite” with his wife. I understand; I want to fit both of those descriptions. But being a man is more than that, and I’m afraid that it is going to have to be the men who plant and unfurl that flag.
As Tom Matlack, The Good Men Project cofounder, put it very succinctly that day, “We’re not talking about boys and men becoming more like women.” Thinking again about the prompt for the nationwide essay contest (“What’s the hardest thing you have had to do and how did that change what you think is right?”), I think we can say that being a good man starts with knowing your own mind. It’s not a coincidence that the word “confidence” comes from the root “to confide.” To be able to express shameful and confusing secrets in a constructive way – to be boldly vulnerable – is a process by which one becomes okay with one’s self, by which one realizes perhaps for the first real time that one has a self.
I’m looking forward to a prompt or a series of prompts that put boys on the line to confide their moments of truth. On the drive home from the presentation, I was greeted with a small parade of the moments that made me a man. Those were the moments when I had only myself to query, when I had to make a decision that I could live with, often in contrast with the expectations of family and even the dictates of society. I anticipate that a boy hearing his own voice could be the beginning of him knowing who he is. That could reduce crime. That could reduce teen suicide. That could be considered kind. But I don’t think we can get there any way but by encouraging writing that is honest, first.
Stuart Horwitz’s essay, “The Act You’ve Known for All These Years,” appears in The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Frontlines of Modern Manhood.
A dirty little secret: I have a copy of Mr. Baldwin’s book about fatherhood, A Promise to Ourselves, and it’s inscribed: “Tom, keep fighting. Alec.”
