Eric Bandholz is the founder of Beardbrand. His newsletter and YouTube channel have been great sources of healthy masculinity. Here is a newsletter he sent out today.

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FRIENDSHIPS

There is this Venn diagram for many men over thirty – one circle is for "friendships where you can be vulnerable." The other circle is for "friends who live close to you." Sadly, the circles do not overlap.

Over the years, I have developed many great friendships with incredible men. But as life happens, distance comes between those friendships. Suddenly, you’re back at square one and trying to build another strong relationship. Commonly, those new connections aren’t just right, and you can only keep it to surface-level pleasantries.

I’ve felt alone in this world many times. I needed a friend who could understand my work challenges, my relationship challenges, or my parenting challenges and could discuss them over a beer in person.

I had no release, and it only led to darkness.

Fortunately, right now, I feel I have it as good as it gets in today’s world. No, I can’t walk down a few houses to a good friend, but I have several in Austin. No, I can’t usually be spontaneous, but many are down to grab lunch at a moment’s notice.

I talked to my dad about how hard it is to have friendships as an adult man, and he shared a similar sentiment. I know this happens to men of all generations.

WHAT CAN YOU DO ABOUT IT?

This past week, I went to Olympic National Park to sleep in a cold-ass tent for three nights and test our new deodorant prototype.

This trip is an annual event put on by my good friend, Will Roman of Chisos. It’s approximately 15 like-minded guys from Austin and around the States. I know about half of them, and I get to know the others. We disconnect from technology from families and spend much time sharing our current challenges (and a little bit of roasting each other). Basically, we can let loose, know that we’re in good company who won’t judge, and build stronger relationships.

WHAT ARE THE LOGISTICS?

Step 1: Many months in advance, find three consecutive nights in a beautiful park. We’ve found majestic environments create more intense experiences. It’s also nice to have a bathroom.Step 2: Set the values for the group and start recruiting people. It’s more enticing if you can handle food & water. Include a fee to cover those costs. Plan on a couple of last-minute cancellations.Step 3: Create an online document with trip details, gear needed, contact information, and attendee arrival/departure information.Step 4: Start an email thread for those committed to help start conversations and allow other newbies to get to know others digitally.Step 5: Meet up in nature and enjoy the time together. Have one or two hikes planned, and leave the schedule mostly open and flexible.Step 6: Repeat next year.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO LEAD

People don’t know if you’re looking for this type of experience. Sometimes, you need to take a risk and be the person to create the world you want to be part of. Most people will say "no," but if you can get a few core people on board, you can leverage their friendships and network.

Be sure to set expectations. You can make the event whatever you want—friend roasting, spirituality, yoga, fitness, beer drinking, fishing, etc. (or maybe all of the above).

What’s important is that you do something like this regularly.

There’s no reason that you tackle the world’s challenges alone. These events will help you close that Venn diagram and can help you make friends who are physically and emotionally close.

Keep on growing!

Eric BandholzFounder, Beardbrand

This discussion was inspired by discussion on this post.

Toxic man: oh guess I am just gunna keep doing what I am doing if you aren’t going to tell me what to do.

The reason this comes up is that masculinity is largely based around externally conferred social status. You have to constantly be doing something to maintain an image of masculinity. Often this means some sort of social or physical violence in the right time or place (beat up the mugger to defend your partner, call out your boss when you're being treated unfairly, put rival men in their place). Just as frequently, however, it is the expectation of a certain amount of self sacrifice (paying for meals, military service).

What they don't understand is how anyone can expect them to maintain their social status when they are avoiding this role that they have been explicitly shown that there will be consequences if they fail to meet. The answer is simple: once you're out of the masculinity rat race, you're out. By refusing to take part in the hierarchy of dominance you will eventually be subject to a more general and, frankly, human set of standards.

The only problem is that all of these pressures are external in the first place and this whole dynamic creates strong social gender boundaries. It is very easy for a lot of men to look at their social circles and see exclusively people who punish them for a failure to live up to a masculine ideal.

Gift article, no paywall

The involuntary celibate community (aka ‘incels’) are often thought to be rightwing, white supremacist, and prone to violence. But how much of that is true?

Ash Sarkar is joined by William Costello - a researcher whose work focuses on the psychology of incels - to discuss what we get wrong about incels, what incels get wrong about women, and the catastrophe that is modern dating culture.

I’m kind of amazed that this is getting downvotes after 20 minutes, even though the video is 33 minutes. I guess you already saw this?

As has been discussed already here in this community, the key takeaway from the bear hypothetical is that it is an opportunity to truly listen to the lived experiences of women under patriarchal systems. I encourage "first response" to the bear discussion to head back to this post, as I am looking for discussion kind of after the fact. If this is your first exposure to the bear thing, head there, then pop back here after you have a good handle on the situation.

My question has two parts:

1. Positive Steps: Let's explore resources for folks to act on the things they have learned from this discussion.
2. Creating a Safe Space: During the course of the debate, it's likely that high emotions have led to lashing out and unkind words, perhaps even unintentionally directed towards men who may be survivors of SA themselves. Can we create a space here for listening and affirming one another about these potentially painful experiences?

Inspired by this essay https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/d504rr026

The parallels between the contemporary MRM and Environmentalism are striking, and elucidated sharply in the writings of dissidents within The Green Movement, similar to those expressed in the link above. Just a few parallels

Quote: "There is a paradox at the heart of contemporary American environ- mentalism. On the one hand, its organizations are generally larger, stronger, bet- ter funded, and more knowledgeable than ever before. Membership has grown in recent years; there are now more than eight million dues- paying members of the major national organi- zations—and many more in local and statewide organizations—compared to about two million in 1980. Moreover, polls consistently show very high levels of public support for environmen- tal protection, levels that would be the envy of many progressive movements."

In a similar fashion, "men's issues" have, in a sense never enjoyed the sort of exposure that they enjoy today. While MRA organizations aren't necessarily larger and stronger than they were in the past, more of them exist than was the case at the beginning of the 2010s, especially at the local and state level. Similarly, polls consistently show that public support for initiatives like shared parenting legislation, criminal justice reform, and restoring due process on university campuses is high

"And yet: environmentalists find themselves playing defense far more than offense, devoting time and resources to fighting proposals such as drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, rather than forging new responses to crises such as climate change. Indeed, noth- ing that these large and expert organizations accomplished during the Clinton-Gore years— to say nothing of the present Bush years—com- pares to such landmark victories as the Na- tional Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, which a much more inchoate movement won a generation ago."

We here at The MRM have similarly been playing defense more than offense since this iteration of the movement began in the mid-10s. During the movement's heyday between '15 and '19, our activity was mostly confined to Triggering The Libs on social media, and issuing rebuttals to things like The Gillete Ad and Brie Larson's comments( https://variety.com/video/brie-larson-crystal-lucy-awards-critics/ )via YouTube videos, rather than forging fresh responses to crises like under and unemployment in America, a phenomena which disproportionately affects men. The present MRM's achievements during The Trump years(an era which was ostensibly more friendly to MRA talking points) aren't remotely comparable to the legislative and social victories of a more inchoate movement during The 90s and The 2000s https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10183 https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1991-06-30-9102270767-story.html https://reason.com/1994/07/01/man-troubles/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d28usWdvmSg Robert Glover published his seminal book No More Nice Guy in '02 https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20020509&slug=niceguy09 , and Marc Rudov published his book around the same time https://www.amazon.com/Mans-No-Nonsense-Guide-Women-Succeed/dp/0974501719

James Cook and David Levy won imperfect yet monumental legislative victories, while advocates like Baber, Kammer, and Arst gave us what The Woke Warriors over at The Take now lament as The Post-Feminist late 90s-2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBxgEIcMB6o Ya know, the days where Askmen.com was writing from an unapologetically male standpoint ( https://uk.askmen.com/top_10/dating/top-10-signs-youre-too-good-for-her.html https://www.askmen.com/dating/dating_advice_60/80b_dating_tips.html https://www.askmen.com/top_10/dating/top-10-signs-shell-be-a-bad-mother.html https://au.askmen.com/top_10/dating/things-women-do-to-emasculate-men_3.html ); loudly as today's Ayatollahs Of Red Pill Theology doth protest to the contrary, they haven't said anything new.

Starting in the early 2000s, public willingness to acknowledge that women were just as prone to murderous acts as we men are led to the creation of the series Snapped, which didn't portray the gals they profiled as anything but the criminals that they are. In '09, one of NPR's flagship programs-Talk Of The Nation-brought the terrific Ned Holstein on to discuss the fraud that is The Duluth Model https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106820029 , and even Tyra Banks devoted an entire hour to female on male DV, in which the perpetrator wasn't given a free pass because she was female https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdC0a_agt0E By contrast, the present day MRM is largely seen as sideshow unto itself, more famous for it's association with non-troverseries like Gamer Gate and Comics Gate than anything else. Here in '22, Third Wave Feminism still exerts the stranglehold over the mainstream media that an earlier decade of feminism did during the late 70s-the late 90s, and there's no signs of this stranglehold loosening it's grip anytime soon

"The same polls that regularly show high levels of public support also reveal this support to be quite shallow. The environ- ment rarely rises to the upper levels of con- cern. This may help explain why, despite the gulf between George W. Bush’s and John Kerry’s policy proposals, environmental issues generated almost no attention during the presi- dential campaign."

Not much of a rewrite required here. The polls also indicate that while public support for making shared parenting legislation the law of the land, criminal justice reform, and enforcing due process on campus are high, that support is also remarkably shallow, and rarely coming anywhere close to the Top 5 worries which are foremost in the minds of most Americans. This may account, at least in part, for the fact that neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden said much about men's issues during the last election cycle, despite The MRM having enjoyed 18 minutes of fame during the mid-10s, during which time they were often blamed for Trump's victory by the mainstream media

For all of they hype around Cassie Jaye's documentary The Red Pill upon it's release, it was also largely a phenomena among self-proclaimed Anti-sJWs(the contemporary MRM is an outgrowth of this subculture, much in the same Environmentalism is an outgrown of of this subculture, much in the same Environmentalism is an outgrown of The Counterculture of The 60s)and their followers. The general public still continues to view The MRM as little more than a gaggle of socially inept and neck bearded man-babies, who blame all of the disappointment sin their lives on women, feminism, The New World Order, The Lizard People, etc etc

I could go with the parallels, but I'm not sufficiently motivated to do so. The rest of you all read Meyer's essay, and let me know where you agree with me or think I'm flat out wrong

So, I'm just assuming we've all seen the discussions about the bear.
Personally I feel that this is an opportunity for everyone to stop and think a little about it. The knee-jerk reaction from many men seems to be something along the lines of "You would choose a dangerous animal over me? That makes me feel bad about myself." which results in endless comments of the "Akchully... according to Bayes theorem you are much more likely to..." kind.
It should be clear by now that it doesn't lead to good places.
Maybe, and I'm open to being wrong, but maybe the real message is women saying: "We are scared of unknown men."
Then, if that is the message intended, what do we do next? Maybe the best thing is just to listen. To ask questions. What have you experienced to make you feel that way?
I firmly believe that the empathy we give lays a foundation for other people being willing to have empathy for the things we try to communicate.
It doesn't mean we should feel bad about ourselves, but just to recognize that someone is trying to say something, and it's not a technical discussion about bears.
What do you think?

Paywall Removed