In praise of men's sheds...

When I was 8 my male school teacher, who was probably in his late 50s, retired.  Retirement was a foreign concept to me then, just as it is now.  Anyway, one week later I read in the newspaper that he died.  I remember at the time wondering that if you take someone's vocation away from them, do they just shrivel up and die?  Are these the consequences of retirement?   Knowing what I know now, I wonder about his death and the causes, and the consequences for men in general who retire.  So much of a man's identity seems to be caught up in what he does for a living.  That can be a source of great pride, but also the consequences are huge when that ends.  Often one of the first things two men who meet each other ask is, "What do you do?"  So when so much of a man's self-definition is caught up in his work role, and that is taken away on retirement or disability, you have to wonder about what comes after.

A brilliant meeting place for those men dealing with retirement (or younger men with some time on their hands) has sprung up in towns and cities across Australia.  It's called the Men's Shed.  This movement is amazing.  Basically, these sheds are meeting places for men that may have common interests, including technical skills (i.e., fixing stuff), arts, crafts, gardening, etc.  At their heart, the Men's Shed promotes shared interests and often involves activities built around the things that would be done in a traditional Australian back yard shed but done in a communal way, thereby introducing social interaction among participants that is an important part of promoting health and well-being.  So, in many ways the sheds act as a de facto work place for men where they can go and share time with fellow men in a non-threatening environment.

The importance of meeting places like the sheds for men cannot be understated.  Generally speaking, when men gather in groups, it is more likely "to do something" together, rather than to sit around talking to each other (of course, that happens, but it is the function of the doing, rather than vice versa).  The sharing of action-oriented activities is a way for boys and men to develop friendships.  Compared to females who might develop relationships through disclosure of personal information through discussion, men develop friendships through shared activities, particularly physical or skill-based activities.  Although there may well be less exchanges of intimate personal information, men can nevertheless develop pretty strong friendships in this way.  Unfortunately there has been a marked tendency by many helping professionals to judge male friendships and the way they are formed from the perspective of how female relationships come about.  When they are judged by this standard, they may across as lacking because for men, there may be initially very little verbal  sharing about one's inner life with another man.  I would argue that the way men go about friendships is a bit more covert, and that emotional closeness is indeed developed through self-disclosure that can occur in the context of shared activities.  There is research out there that supports this notion, that Men's Sheds become a haven for men to share details about their lives while doing other things, thus developing a support group culture, without the support group stigma.

This is why the Men's Sheds have been so successful.  They take into account men's relational styles and means of establishing friendships, and respect and support them wholeheartedly in building a place that is more than just about "fixing things".

Are "Men" the New "Women"?

I'm constantly fascinated by the large spectrum of masculinity that exists in Australia.  In equal measure I'm fascinated by the way the media and popular culture keeps seeking to reinforce and manipulate the dominant type of masculinity, which is seen as more valid than any other, purely for entertainment purposes.  Why is your average muscled bloke seen to be considered more "manly" than a hipster-dufus from Brunswick with foppish hair and ultra-trendy clothes?  Sure, the former can be seen to dominate others physically on the sports field, but when the capability to dominate physically can turn into something ugly and violent (e.g., please google former NRL star Craig Field who was recently charged with murder following an "assault" on a fellow pub patron), this seems a rather perverse way of determining the validity of ones masculine status.

There is a new slate of television shows is due to begin screening after the Olympics on various Australian free-to-air stations, all doing their bit for traditional gender stereotyping, or getting their (cheap) laughs by manipulating ones masculine status.

Firstly, on Channel 9 there is something called "House Husbands".  This show is described as depicting four modern families and "gives a real perspective on the way we live today from four modern families with one thing in common: the men are in charge of raising the kids."  I have seen a couple of promos for this show.  In one, Gary Sweet appears to be fixing something around the house, while his daughter makes her own lunch, and his wife, played by Julia Morris berates him.  So, if I have this right, the man is doing maintenance, the child is being ignored by her father, and the woman is a whining shrew?   In another promo, Rhys Muldoon is questioned by his female boss as to why he works only 4 days a week?  4 days a week!  What sort of real man would only work 4 days a week?  Again, the woman appears to be portrayed as a bitch, and Rhys Muldoon is the castrated man who (barely) works part-time.  Yes indeed - ground breaking stuff.

Channel Ten has a new show called "Don't Tell the Bride" in which couples who can't afford the wedding they want, are given $25,000 to plan their wedding, but (wait for it) the men have to plan the whole thing.  The promo portrays men as mindless idiots without class or taste who do things like have the bridesmaids dress as comic book characters, and serve only beer in schooners.  Seriously?  This is a show?  Channel Ten (again) go one better with the talent show, "I Will Survive" which seemingly seeks to humiliate an all male cast by getting them to dress up in drag and drive around the outback of Australia in a bus doing various performances with the "winner" getting some cash and a performance on Broadway.  The comedy in the show seems to be taking men, forcing them to dress up like women, and then taking them to places where traditional masculine stereotypes dominate.  Masculinity clash ensues.

On the face of it, these shows say very little about the complexity of what it means to be a man today.  These shows were conceived in production meetings and were tested in focus groups, so they were created by consensus not by imaginative human beings.  Memo to TV execs: Men can fix stuff around the house, but they can also prepare their children's lunches, and have a respectful interaction with their wife, all at the same time.  Men can work part-time and not be made to feel castrated for doing so.  They can plan a classy, elegant wedding without reverting to some sort of 18-year-old's version of what this may look like.  They can even make it in show business without getting themselves humiliated in some weird reality TV program.  They can do all this, because men aren't the new women - they are the new everything.