If masculinity is in crisis, there is no shortage of opinions for how to address that crisis. These are issues that Fredric Rabinowitz, therapist and the author of five books on the subject, has been tracking for a long time.
Rabinowitz's books include “Man Alive: A Primer of Men’s Issues” and “Breaking Barriers in Counseling Men.” Among other things, since the 1980s, Rabinowitz has been convening weekly discussion groups for men, encouraging them to talk openly with each other about how they navigate things like fatherhood, friendship and the pressure to be seen as leaders.
Rabinowitz joined The Show to discuss why his work isn’t just about encouraging men to think about themselves differently — it’s about saving their lives.
Full conversation
FREDRIC RABINOWITZ: Men lead the statistics on everything from obesity to suicide. There’s a lot of things we don’t do very well, and I think a lot of it comes from not having outlets. And so we eat too much, we gamble too much, watch too much porn on the internet. There’s too many things that can distract us from actually dealing with our inner selves.
And I know that when guys come to like the men’s group, it’s a relief. They feel relieved to be able to be in a place where it’s safe to talk about what’s really going on in their lives.
SAM DINGMAN: And could you give us some examples of the kinds of things that you find men really want to talk about, that they are covering up with those other behaviors you were just alluding to?
RABINOWITZ: I would say a lot of guys have a lot of stress. They’re worried about their performance, whether it’s at work or whether it’s in terms of activities they’re doing. And they work really hard, a lot of them behind the scenes, and they don’t really have anyone to sort of debrief or process all that stuff with.
The other thing I know that’s happening is there’s a lot of relationship issues, guys who are in relationships. As we know — I know — relationships are hard. And so to only have your partner to bounce stuff off of can actually turn out to be kind of a distortion mirror. Because if you’re in a relationship where the dynamics are such where you feel bad or you feel ashamed or you feel angry, it’s really hard to kind of get an outside perspective on that.
DINGMAN: You’re making me think that in some ways I feel like, you know, the scariest thing to say out loud for a lot of men is, “Hey, guys, I don’t know what I’m doing.” Like, “I’m not prepared for this situation that I’m being called to navigate.”
RABINOWITZ: Right? We’re supposed to know what’s going on. We’re supposed to be in charge. There’s so many factors that are outside of our control.
The other thing I think is important is that knowing yourself is really important in terms of what you bring out to the world. And so having a relationship with various aspects of who you are: Who am I under stress? Who am I when I’m relaxed? What do I like to do? How do I feel about myself? How do I feel about my past history?
Having a good relationship with myself actually allows me to then choose to see what parts of myself I can reveal to other people.
DINGMAN: I want to ask you how you encourage men to open up at these men’s groups that you’ve been running for almost 40 years at this point. But I’m also inclined to ask, how do you encourage somebody to even come to one of those events? Because once they get there, I’m imagining that there’s at least some benevolent peer pressure to open up and talk about these things. But I can imagine you must encounter a lot of resistance in even convincing somebody to show up at one.
RABINOWITZ: I think a guy oftentimes has to be in a place where he’s really feeling the consequences of his own loneliness, or he’s feeling the consequences of keeping things inside. That could be depression, anxiety. Some of them are abusing drugs. Some of them are engaging in activities like with prostitutes or something, like they know something’s wrong. And so the group can sound pretty good.
DINGMAN: We’re sort of dancing around a provocative idea that there is potentially a correlation between a lot of things that we sometimes see as traditionally masculine, manly behaviors — like drinking a lot, visiting sex workers, doing certain kinds of drugs, like extreme behaviors, things you’ve alluded to already in this conversation — and loneliness.
RABINOWITZ: I would say there’s a high correlation there. A person is trying, in whatever way they know how, to either avoid that feeling of loneliness and sadness and depression, or they are at some level, not wanting to kind of really grasp with “What is really going on with me?”
DINGMAN: But obviously it would be better if people didn’t have to reach that point of extremity and danger to recognize the value of this.
RABINOWITZ: I agree. And I think things are changing. I have a waitlist for my men’s group. It’s not like I have guys that want to be in there that I don’t have room for. The way I promote my practice is that it’s geared towards guys.
And so I try to use stories and metaphors that are more oriented towards how men talk.
DINGMAN: Can you give me an example of that? What would one of those …
RABINOWITZ: Like when someone comes in, I go, “So what’s our game plan?” You know, something like that. Simple as that. And all of a sudden they’re like, “Yeah, I understand that. That’s common in sports. That’s common in business.”
And so I talk that language like, how are we going to do this? I’m also a poker player. So I oftentimes use poker metaphors. “It sounds like you went all in with that one.” And they’re like, “Yeah, I did.”
Those kinds of things make it feel like, oh, this is normal to talk about myself. And here are some words that I already know how to use.
I’ve worked with people that are on sports teams and stuff like that. Those guys tend to have pretty close relationships with each other, ironically. You would think that those are kind of traditional masculinity. But what happens is when you’re in close contact with people and you’re trying to perform together or trying to do activities, you need to talk.
DINGMAN: What do you make of the impact, or do you think there has been an impact of the most recent presidential election on this whole conversation? Because one of the things that was really striking to me in covering some of the more conservative political rallies last fall was this phenomenon of American masculinity being explicitly discussed, and the idea that we need a return to a much more conservative, traditional form of masculinity. Because in the framing of these particular activists, our relationship to gender has gotten all out of whack, I suppose, in their minds.
RABINOWITZ: There are aspects — this is like on both political sides — that I think need to be integrated. So on one hand, I think that if you’re talking from the left, where the feminists really helped out women in terms of becoming more equal partners, being in the workplace, being assertive, being strong. It feels like — I don’t think they meant to do this — the culture did kind of say, “Guys, you’re the problem.”
And so we didn’t come up with a lot of solutions if we’re the problem. And I think that’s where I work, is like, “Hey, there are skills. There are ways that we can become more self-aware, become more flexible, become more strong in how we present ourselves to the world. And also have a heart, be empathic, be understanding.”
They’re not mutually exclusive. We’re nuanced. We’re complex beings.
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