SO, let’s talk Bears!

No, not the large, hairy forest creature with an affinity for picnic baskets. Rather, I’m talking about the large, hairy man creature with an affinity for other large, hairy men. That is, gay bears.

And just what is a gay bear? Read on.

In the gay community, there’s a large and growing subgroup of men who are generally larger, hairier, and more traditionally masculine in behavior and appearance than the mainstream gay male stereotype.

These men call themselves bears, and in the last twenty-five years or so, a rather large and diverse bear subculture has emerged, complete with its own media, terminology, and social scene. There are even classifications for the different types of bear. There are regular bears, cubs, chubs, otters, wolves, polar bears, chasers…*quick breath*…grizzlies, cinnabears (yep), and the list goes on. Check back later for more on the various bear species.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be researching, interviewing, and writing about bears in an attempt to learn how the bear community is redefining masculinity for generation Y. Until then, check out the links below for more on bears.

Resources for Bears – a collection of links and some background on bears

A Bear’s Life – a Bear-oriented magazine

Bear411 – an online social network for bears and their admirers

The Bear Hug – a ridiculously cute blog written by a couple of English bears

The Bear Guide – a list of bear groups, events, and businesses

The Bad Cub Club – a web-zine for the bear community (NSFW)

They had been waiting for him.

When they reached his car, the leader of the group stepped forward and demanded Kohos’ wallet, Blackberry, and car keys. Reluctantly, he handed them over.

Two days later, Kohos got his stuff back and went home. After enduring his first New Warrior Training Adventure (NWTA), the flagship program of a mens’ group called The Mankind Project (MKP), Kohos says he finally found his life mission. He hasn’t been the same since.

“That weekend completely changed my life. I realized that I’d spent most of my life following paths laid out for me by others,” he said. A father of two, an accountant at a private equity firm in Manhattan, Kohos is now a national spokesman for the ManKind Project (MKP), which in twenty-two years has grown from a small group of disaffected men to an international organization with more than 40,000 members worldwide.

Kohos’ interest in the ManKind Project was sparked when he had an emotional breakdown in front of his wife. “Two weeks before the weekend, I blew up at my wife and almost hit her,” he said. Facing increasing pressure at work, ongoing conflict with his two teenage daughters, and an upcoming presentation he was to give before a committee at his synagogue, Kohos says his outburst was prompted when his wife asked what kind of chairs he wanted for their living room. “It was the classic mid-life crisis. I started crying and realized I was completely overwhelmed…I had spent my whole life busting my ass to please everyone around me, everyone but myself,” he said.

Knowing something was wrong, Kohos reached out to some friends at his synagogue, one of whom suggested that he look into the ManKind Project.

Founded in 1987, the ManKind Project grew out of the so-called “mythopoetic” men’s movement of the early 1980s and the writings of Jungian authors who promote psychological self-exploration – using stories, myths and poetry – to help men deal with issues of gender identity.

In the best-selling book, Iron John: A Book About Men, Robert Bly, poet and founder of the mythopoetic men’s movement, wrote that modern men have lost touch with themselves and, as a result of that, each other. “By the time a man is 35 he knows that the images of the right man, the tough man, the true man which he received in high school do not work in life,” he wrote.

Combining rituals from pagan tradition, Native American rites, and the initiation programs of earlier men’s groups, the New Warriors Training Adventure (NWTA) aims “to help every man…step into his own unique sense of himself as a man among men,” according to the MKP’s official website.

The MKP is a way for men to break down traditional gender roles and define masculinity for themselves, said Kohos. “The concept of what it is to be manly is more about inner strength and character than material things, and with the MKP you are given, through a series of exercises like guided meditations and discussions, the tools to find a personal mission for yourself,” he said.

The organization’s longevity and large membership – the MKP claims to have grown to nearly 45,000 members since it was founded in 1987 – demonstrate that a lot of men find the NWTA weekend powerful and enriching.

Boysen Hodgson, an NWTA alumnus and graphic designer in Springfield, Massachusetts described his experience with the MKP in men’s publication Voice Male. Hodgson described his own shame in identifying with “unhealthy and destructive male archetypes,” that are a part of the traditional conception of masculinity. He said that the MKP helped him get over a fear of connection and intimacy. “MKP has helped me to work through my shame, so that I can have an honest, deep, emotionally connected relationship with my wife,” he said.

A self-described “veteran” of various self-help books and personal development workshops, MKP member William Pike, 43, a lawyer from Atlanta, called the NWTA “a highly evolved and spiritual initiation,” and said that the weekend was “the most transformative and empowering experience – bar none – I have ever experienced.”

Though many NWTA alumni write glowing testimonials of their experiences, others feel that the organization’s rituals can be harmful to men who emotionally unstable. One man’s family even blames MKP for scaring their son to death, literally.

The story of Michael Scinto, a 29-year-old recovering alcoholic and cocaine user who killed himself shortly after attending a NTWA weekend in 2005, has dogged the organization since 2007, when an article on the incident was published in the Houston Press.

Before his suicide, Scinto wrote a letter to the Madison County Sheriff in which he blamed the MKP program for forcing him to relive a traumatic childhood experience in front of strangers, depicting several horrific scenes of verbal abuse of initiates by the staff. In the same letter, Scinto described some of the bizarre activities he claimed he was forced to endure, from taking blindfolded walking tours in the nude to seeing naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammer. He also claimed that he asked multiple times to leave and was refused.

After discovering his body, Scinto’s family filed a wrongful death suit against the MKP, arguing that their program was emotionally abusive and that the group was practicing dangerous therapy without a state license. The suit was settled out of court for $75,000 in 2008, with the MKP promising to screen its applicants more thoroughly to make sure they are emotionally stable enough to withstand the intense NWTA weekend.

Michael Young, an attorney for the MKP, argued that Scinto was unstable and that the NWTA had not held him against his will. “Michael had a troubled adult life and obviously he was seeking some answers that he didn’t find,” he said in the Houston Press article.

Today, the MKP is still dealing with negative press from the incident. Critics like Rick Ross, a self-styled “cult watcher” who maintains an online database of organizations suspected to be cults, argue that the organization forces its members to endure painful emotional abuse of questionable quality and pay dues supporting a pyramid-style scam. Ross, along with an anonymous NWTA alumnus, even established a Yahoo group in 2004 for MKP members who have problems with the organization. The group, which currently has 436 members, is still active.

Kohos responded that though some of the activities in the NWTA may be a bit strange, the MKP is not a cult. “The thing that differentiates the MKP from a cult is that we’re not for-profit and we don’t have a specific dogma or deity that we force people to follow or believe in. It’s a powerful and emotionally intensive program but everything you do at a weekend is something you choose to do. The whole goal is to help you find your own mission, not to follow ours,” he said.

Despite the Scinto incident and the resulting criticism, the MKP is still growing after twenty years, serving a new generation of men in need of male guidance and bonding.

“The interesting thing about the latest generation is that they’re coming to the realization sooner that they’re unhappy with their lives,” said Kohos, “A traditional weekend would be filled with guys at around 40. Now, men are coming to that realization before they’ve established their lives, before they’re in the rat race.”

Kohos believes the access to information and other people it provides, has been a catalyst for the self-actualization of the men of generation Y. “[in generation Y] you have the internet, you have cell phones, you have the ability to independently verify facts. You don’t have to take things at face value. [Generation Y] has made a tremendous revelation around quality of life issues: You’re not prepared to sacrifice your wellbeing for prosperity.”

Perhaps this trend means that the next generation of men will find a purpose before their mid-life crisis. In the testimonials section of the Chicago Mankind Project website, by far the most common comment is, “I wish I’d done this years ago.”

“A lot of the issues about men haven’t changed a lot over time. Men simply don’t have deep, intimate connections to other men. It hasn’t always been this way. Prior to the industrial revolution, boys were reared into manhood by the men of their community and had opportunities for apprenticeships. They were surrounded by male energy, so the values of the community could be passed readily from the older generation to the younger generation. Now, males in the post-industrial revolution are reared almost exclusively by women. A woman can show her son what type of man they would like, but it really takes a man to teach a man what it mens to be a man…. With the men of my generation, we weren’t being mentored or apprenticed by men… it created a vacuum in the soul, a longing that gets filled with stuff: addiction, bigger houses and cars, power, etc.”

He went on to describe how he grew up and why he first sought help from the MKP.

“My parents were divorced when I was 12, before people were divorced. Kids couldn’t play with me. I felt excluded and unwelcome. That disconnect lived inside me, made me bottle everything up because letting on that I was upset or vulnerable would be a sign of weakness, a sign that I wasn’t man enough… It got to a point where, about two weeks before the [initial NWTA] weekend, I blew up at my wife and almost hit her. It was a whole bunch of shit. There was all kinds of pressure at work, my kids were acting up, I had a presentation for the outreach committee at my Synagogue coming up and she was bugging me about some new chairs for our living room. For some reason, that was the last straw. It was the classic mid-life crisis. I started crying and realized I was completely overwhelmed…I had spent my whole life busting my ass to please everyone around me, everyone but myself.”

The week after breaking down, Kohos reached out to some of his friends at the Synagogue, one of whom suggested he check out the ManKind project. Kohos says that after an intense weekend of guided meditation, emotional introspection and male bonding, he felt like he had finally found a way to break down the barriers between himself and his family. One idea he kept going back to was the importance recognizing and accepting your own emotions.

“[Men] have been programmed to respond to stimuli in a way that is completely disconnected from our physical feelings and body. What I’ve learned on the weekend is that now I will recognize, by identifying physically what’s happening to me, what emotion I’m feeling so I can deal with it. Now, if I’m in a situation like before, I can turn to [my wife], take an inventory of what’s going on with my body, and I tell her ‘honey, I’m feeling overwhelmed.’ At the ManKind Project, we try to reconnect what is going on in your body and your mind. I call it emotional literacy.”

Kohos says that at the end, the point of the ManKind project is to help men figure out what their mission is in life, something that can only be defined by the individual.

“The thing about the mankind project that makes it unique is that you are given, through a series of exercises like guided meditations and discussions, the ability to find a personal mission for yourself. A mission is vision plus action. My mission, because I always felt isolated from the other kids by the fact of my parents’ divorce, is to create a world of inclusion by showing up for others. I’m happy with that mission, but to figure it out I had to go to the weekend and drop all the labels the world had given me so I could find something of my own…. [When a man first arrives for the NWTA weekend] We take away their blackberry, their girlfriends, their boyfriends, and their job, and their car, and their power, and we say to him ‘who do you serve? Where are you going in your life?’”

15 days after attending the MKP’s New Warrior Training Adventure (NWTA) program, Scinto committed suicide. His parents, who filed a wrongful death suit against the organization, claim that the NWTA activities were emotionally abusive and drove Scinto (a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who was introduced to MKP by his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor) to suicide.

MKP is known for being very secretive about the NWTA activities – they require participants to sign a confidentiality agreement before they begin “training” – and apparently for good reason. In a letter Scinto wrote to the Houston sherrif’s office shortly before killing himself, Scinto described some of the pretty out-there stuff he witnessed at the NWTA weekend:

• Blindfolded walking tours in the nude;

• People blowing sage smoke in his face while 50 or so naked men danced around candles;

• Men sitting naked in a circle discussing their sexual histories while passing a wooden dildo called “The Cock”;

• Naked men beating cooked chickens with a hammer.

Naturally, the wrongful death claim was settled out of court and MKP lawyers argued that Scinto was an unstable man whose death, though unfortunate, was not their fault. Of course, that didn’t stop self-styled “cultwatcher” Rick Ross from launching a message board (no longer available) alongside an anonymous NWTA graduate to help others voice their concern with the NWTA activities. According to the Houston Press article on Scinto, the forum gathered thousands of posts from people claiming to have been traumatized by NWTA.

Recently, MKP reacted to critics by promising to be more transparent about their activities, acknowledging that most of the bad press they’ve received is a result of misconceptions about the nature of the NWTA weekend.

But I keep reading articles and testimonials about very satisfied MKP members who feel like the program has really helped them overcome emotional scars and feel comfortable in their masculinity. They may be bizarre, but perhaps the activities described above are, in context, actually effective at getting men to open up. Maybe the NWTA really was just a trigger for Scinto’s inevitable self-destruction. Is the ManKind Project a cult or a cure? Could be both.

Huh?

More than 30,000 members strong, the MKP’s flagship program is the New Warrior Training Adventure, a weekend-long program of activities aimed at helping men feel comfortable opening up emotionally and bonding with other men.

In their vision statement, the MKP defines their goal and what they mean by “the sacred masculine”

The sacred masculine, what does that mean? Men with a deep sense of purpose, with integrity and compassion. Men dedicated to creating safety and peace. Men connected with authenticity to the relations in their lives, working as partners, husbands, brothers, fathers and sons. Men striving to be self aware and generous.

What is a safe circle? We help men build trust – trust in themselves and trust in others. We do this by helping each other and by taking responsibility for ourselves. When we are able to create a strong bond of trust, we each become able to take risks, to transform the fearful and painful into new opportunity. We do this in our local centers by creating and maintaining regular men’s circles.

The MKP was founded in 1987 and has has 37 interdependent centers in eight countries, so it’s a fairly established institution. Their longevity implies that they’ve struck a real nerve among contemporary men. Preliminary research looks promising. I’d be really interested to see if their program has had to adapt to the evolving landscape of masculinity, especially given greater cultural acceptance of homosexuality.

More on this will definitely follow, until then, check out some of the testimonials…fascinating stuff.

A few days ago, I wrote that Don Draper represents one of the most powerful male archetypes that exist – the inexpressive, in-control, inaccessible alpha male.

Apparently, the men of the internet world (well, at least half a million of them) agree with me. Last Sunday AskMen.com, the No. 1 men’s site on the web with more than 7 million unique visitors per month, released the results of its lates poll “The Top 49 Most Influential Men of 2009,” The top spot went to Don Draper. The second and third-place spots went to Olympic runner Usain Bolt and President Barack Obama.

Yes, you read that right. A fictional character from a cable TV show set in the 1960s is more influential than the President.

This shit is bananas.

That’s all for now, here’s some classic Draper:

Here goes: So men are in a “crisis of masculinity”. The traditional male gender role is eroding and today’s young men have few role models to look up to. BUT…

WE HAVE THE INTERNET! A source of unlimited, free information and worldwide communication. Where we once had 3 channels to choose from, now we’re limited only by our search terms. The number of images we’re exposed to on a given day has increased exponentially in the last 20, 15, even 10 years. Though we still have a popular culture limited by social norms, men growing up today can find anything they want on the internet, any role model, any subculture. It’s all represented.

The effect would only now be measurable, but what could it be?

Though gen y girls have grown up the same access to this information, they’re encouraged to choose a high-achieving role, whatever that may be, the boys aren’t being encouraged to do anything at all except behave and play sports. They’re choosing for themselves. But not by themselves.

In my experience (backed up by research), groups of boys pick a model together, and then compete with each other to embody it the best. But why choose something hard when nobody asks you to? Today, the manliest boy-groups aren’t the achievers, they’re the jocks, skaters, punks, players, and druggies. I mean seriously, go watch any of the high-school movies made in the last 20 years.

yeah, that guy's going places...

Sure, these movies mostly make fun of the alpha boy groups, but they accurately describe the how modern male socialization promotes slacking and competitive “acting out”  while deriding academic achievement as dorky and feminine. (See: Mean Girls, Clueless, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, any John Hughes movie)

So my question is: how is the internet affecting boys? Are they using it at all? Are they using it just for porn? Are they using it to socialize in new ways? Are they using it to explore different identities with the safety of anonymity?

I’d love to find out the answers to these questions. Too bad each answer is a freaking book.

Ugh. I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

I’m frustrated that people working in the gender studies field seem to have such little interest in exploring the gender identities of men. Nearly half the world’s population is being ignored or treated as villains.

And the research I’ve been digging through has helped me even less. Most studies, blogs, and articles I’ve read so far tend to fall into two depressing categories:

1. Nostalgic men complaining about the end of the good ‘ole days when John Wayne was on the TV and wifey was in front of the stove. Check out this guys long list…

“In no particular order, we’ve seen the definition of men as rapists, palimony suits, The New Man, sexual harassment laws, Title IX, anti-white European male sentiment, school curricula fashioned for girls, dick measuring jokes, female TV cops able to kick ass like men – yeah!, others quipping negatively about maleness (never the other way around), the arrival of gay culture on television, The View, females dominating news, Women’s Studies, Queer Studies, it’s alright to cry, the military discounted, jock mockery, men dramatized as predators, abusers and adulterers, as deadbeat dads and pedophiles, derided for owning guns, for being hunters, for being meat eaters, male police portrayed for their brutality, rarely cheered for their duty, sensitivity training, stay-at-home-daddyism and the gender differences attributed derisively over the years to a patriarchal culture and not biology”

Woah. Clearly this guy feels emasculated by modern American culture. He’s not alone.

2. Experts first lament the lack of academic interest in masculinity then go on to argue, usually with statistics about how poorly men boys vs. girls in school, that men are lost in a world they where our role is no longer clearly defined.

This second category is the most depressing. The gist of the argument is that while women grow up being encouraged to fight the glass ceiling and excel, men who grow up feeling ignored or demonized by the system are turning into directionless party boys.

One of the foremost experts on mascuilinity today, Michael Kimmel, wrote a book about college men entitled Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Kimmel begins with his visits to colleges across the country, describing a party-all-the-time lifestyle of binge drinking, drugs, and debauchery among the men he interviews. The “big men on campus,” he says, are the athletes, the class clowns, and the players. Social life revolves around alcohol-soaked parties, and he who makes the most touchdowns, holds the most liquor or bangs the most girls is king. And school? Fuck school.

Enjoying plenty of freedom and few responsibilities, these boys are holding on to what they know. Kimmel argues that men are now living into their mid-to-late twenties in this Peter Pan-type extended boyhood.

How depressing. Here’s hoping I’ll find something more optimistic for the next post.

On what it means to be a man and the appropriate ways to deal with emotions:

1. “In Protestant moral cultures men often grow up fearful about revelations of their ‘animal’ nature. They learn that they have inherited an evil nature and that only in subduing and controlling their emotions, feelings and desires can they hope to redeem themselves and gain moral worth. Traditionally this meant that men grew up identifying masculinity with self-control, meaning the domination of emotions that were deemed to be ‘feminine.’” – Victor J Seidler, Young Men & Masculinities, 2006

2. What does it mean for you to be a man? “The first thing that I think of are my responsibilities. You should be a rock, you should be providing, protecting, and strong. That’s what it is to be a man. There’s a degree of pride. I’m proud of being a man and I’m good at everything I try. A man says ‘I’m strong, so don’t even try and threaten me.’ You have to project strength. You need to be able to control and suppress your emotions: be stoic, be a rock. This idea of strength corresponds to not being emotional.” – Deborah Su, Interview, September 25, 2009

3. What does it mean to you to be a man? “The way I’ve always thought about it is that you have to be in control of things, to be able to manage everything. Even if you can’t do it all the time. A man is the first to explore something. He has the balls to do something and put himself out there. He takes charge. It’s kind of pre-emptive, you have to safeguard everything that’s important to you. You’re doing it because you care about something: yourself your family, your money. A lot about masculinity is being secure. Finding safety, not being vulnerable. You’re supposed to play everything off like you don’t care, like it came naturally.” – Milton de la Cruz, Interview, September 19, 2009

4. “I was born a female, but I’ve always been a guy’s guy. I’ve always performed masculinity consciously and subconsciously. In order to be one of the guys you had to convince them. Masculinity is about the respect of other men.” – Deborah Su, Interview, September 25, 2009

5. “Northwestern professor Charles Moskos--America’s leading military sociologist–explains that one of the few ways to get men in combat to behave so irrationally as to risk getting killed is to appeal to their masculinity. A study of the Spanish Civil War found that the greatest fear of men facing combat for the first time was that they would turn out to be cowards. Historian S.L.A. Marshall found that a man in combat will overcome his fear and do what’s required because he risks losing ‘the one thing that he is likely to value more highly than his life–his reputation as a man among other men.’” – O’Beirne, Karen. “An Army of Jessica’s: About Women in Combat: Let’s fight. Hard.” The National Review. 2005.

SO I’m not sure where i’m going to go with all this, but there’s definitely a lot of fertile territory for a story.

On a lighter note: