All that is Wrong with "Being a Man About It."

I will be brutally honest. If you aren’t the type that would be easily entangled by the dictates of a ‘woke’ world, then I invite you to engage in a sober, factual conversation. Otherwise, please sit this one out. It's time we looked at each other through the mirror of our society and shook off the temptation to identify with woke elitism. There’s something utterly wrong with “Being a Man” about anything. Why not be “Human About It” instead? And why should taking the higher moral ground be the only way if compromise can be mutual?

I despise the phrase not just for what it represents but also because, of its consequence, young men have sunk into depression and unimaginable addiction. In its path, these young men have fallen victim to suicide, while many others degenerate to violent conduct and crime. And even when help can be found, the stigma turns them the other way to their sinkholes. ?To be “A Man About It” has created a brood of men who would never put their needs first, whose confidence is so beaten up that they would prefer to keep to themselves than to work towards building meaningful social networks or connecting with anything.? It has created a generation of men who believe to be dominant you must be observably Alpha. To be Alpha you must rack up muscle at the gym, then bulldoze and bully, be rude, to do unto them as they did unto you; or if it be “Nice Guy,” to turn the other cheek and let anyone run over them like a tarmac upon a descending slope. What is even worse is that it has birthed a generation of dishonest men; men who would lie with no tinge of shame, corrupt their way to leadership and lead society to civil strife. To be “A Man About It” has elevated corruption over honest work, and regrettably alienated man from God, and the tenets of good morals and ethical conduct.

When I think about it my mind rolls to ten years ago, when I walked into the lecture halls of a university for the first time as an Undergraduate Student.? There was a young man named Shadrack in our class. He was a good lad too, brilliant, and had likely topped his class from the village secondary school that he had been fortunate enough to attend on a bursary. And he struggled, just like many of the rest of us did. He didn’t have many changes of clothes that would make him stand out to the girls in class, enough change to afford a meal at the several food kiosks scattered over the marketplace we called Talai Centre, or enough vibe to be invited to the Friday parties the rich boys threw every week. And while I was self-aware at that age not to be bothered by the fear of missing out on all the fun and life that was flying off past, I wish I had known Shadrack wasn’t. I wish I had known he wallowed in self-pity and the shame of a disadvantaged background. I wish I could have known he needed counselling help because one morning after he had missed a class, I would go looking for him at his hostel, only for the Janitor to inform me that he had gone crazy the night before and disappeared from campus. I remember the next morning his father had been called, and he had rushed from somewhere in Bungoma— exhausted, in torn trousers and a beat-up shirt, and flip-flops on his murram-hardened feet. I remember when he couldn’t find his son he wept, and I silently wept with him too. Now, after the fact, no one was willing to tell him to be “A Man About It” or anything else anymore. The society that would have uttered these heinous words to his son was nowhere to console him. ?His pain demanded to be felt, as helpless as he was in that moment of loss.

This memory still bothers me, because I have heard of neither Shadrack nor his father again to this day.

And I am sure there are many young men out here with stories akin to Shadrack’s, if not similar. I know many struggling with the burden of responsibilities they can’t say no to. There are others who out of the need to be accepted, they have sacrificed their happiness to become appeasers, not just of women but fellow men as well. Such are the likes that would promise more than they can give, or do more than they should, the ones they call “the Nice Guys.” I know men who have been conditioned to think that seeking psychological help is a sign of weakness and be it as it may, they should carry their stresses as Men, embrace their addictions and go with them to the grave as Men. I know Men who have been taught to embrace pain at all costs, even if it renders them paralysed, because “A man must carry his burden in silence." I know men who even when it is necessary to speak out and air their concerns or their side of the story, have been gaslighted to imagine every bad thing occurring is their fault and it is their responsibility to do everything to fix it.

But how do we get here? How does it all begin? ?

Normative Beginnings

Every man and woman reading this remembers a time when they were young and they would fall or hurt themselves, and on many occasions, they would cry, and a parent would come to pick them up. The next time you saw that step that tripped you down you would be careful to go around it carefully, and that is how you came to learn to walk. Or you would remember the time you played with a knife, and it cut you, and your mother or father would pick you up and nurse your wound. That time you learnt that sharp things could hurt, and they need to be held by the end with a handle.

But also, you remember a time when you tripped on that step, and instead of somebody picking you up when you cried, they came with a slipper and spanked you for being clumsy. That was not the time you learnt to walk but to avoid things. You learned to avoid it because if you didn't it attracted pain.

And then you grew up two years or more, and now you could not only walk but understand what those sounds around you meant. Everyone remembers a time they were told "Boys don't cry" or "You're a big girl now." This is not the time you realized that you were a big boy or girl, but rather, the time you learnt to look up for acceptance from people, especially those with authority over you, and to suppress your desires and want for adventure. This is the time you learnt that expressing your feelings could potentially bring you shame, and you were better off acting like you finally came of age and understood. In essence, this is the time you were forced to grow up before you came of age.

In almost every space, we seem to underestimate the eventual influence of a child's interaction with its outside environment and caregivers on the adult person. This is the reason I am very apprehensive of any caregiver who would spank a child just for crying. Crying is the way a child would communicate a need, and it would be the equivalent of punishing the adult person who just asked for water.

Sigmund Freud, the Austrian-born Neurologist and founder of modern-day Psychoanalysis argued for his Psychoanalytic theory that early childhood experiences significantly inform personality. He emphasized the role of unconscious processes and conflicts, even introducing stages of psychosexual development (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital). This is important because fixations or conflicts that occur during these stages could lead to personality issues in adulthood. You’ll see a young man drawn to be a responsible father, and that could be because he learnt this from an ever-present father himself, and he is drawn to be an even better father. You'll find another who is so undisciplined and irresponsible, and that could be because of childhood abuse, an absent father or another childhood experience we know nothing of. You'll notice that I insist on the presence of a father or male figure or their absence thereof. This is deliberate, and later, I will tell you why.

One thing you must appreciate is that inducing fear — especially from instilling pain as a deterrence to a child— does not necessarily create authentic obedience, but rather, it is the inception of a long-life journey of avoidance, especially if not accompanied by a tangible lesson. ?Discipline however does, and discipline in children is acquired rather than induced, often from observing a caregiver.

This was best argued by the American Canadian Psychologist Albert Bandura (Social Learning Theory, 1977) who insisted on the importance of observational learning, imitation, and modelling. Through his famous "Bobo doll" experiment, Bandura demonstrated that children learn behaviours best by watching others, not just through direct reinforcement. His theory underscores environmental factors and social interactions to play a crucial role in behaviour acquisition.

Dr Robert Glover, in his acclaimed book “No More Mr Nice Guy” argues that there are two important things that must be understood about Children. First is to understand that when they first come into this world, Children are totally helpless. They are dependent on others to recognize and respond to their needs in a timely, judicious manner. As a result of this dependency, every child's greatest fear is abandonment. To children, abandonment means death.

Second, Dr Glover makes a case that children are overwhelmingly egocentric. This is to mean children inherently believe they are the centre of the universe, and everything revolves and must revolve around them. As a result, they believe that they are the cause of everything that happens to them. These two factors, Dr Glover further observes, — their fear of abandonment and their ego-centeredness —create a very powerful dynamic for all children. Whenever children experience any kind of abandonment, they will always believe that they are the cause of what has happened to them. These abandonment experiences might include when they’re hungry and no one feeds them; when they cry and no one holds them, when they are lonely and no one pays attention to them, and when a parent neglects them, among others.

The fear of abandonment, if not adequately attended to by a caregiver, encourages the development of toxic shame which informs a coping behaviour. Overcompensation thus may be a coping behaviour. Isolation may be a coping behaviour. Unexplained anger may be coping behaviour; and so could be getting people to like you, or violence, or any other behaviour you may observe, you name them.

It is possible, therefore, that every time you see a certain behaviour that strikes you as odd, it was acquired in childhood. It is not in your place to pass judgment. At least if you can’t help them then don’t harm them; and for every man who is struggling with anything that comes to your understanding, the last thing you can ever think of saying is to tell them to be “A Man about it.” It is akin to condemning an innocent to the gallows.

Why Men; African Young Men in Particular?

As you can imagine the very fabric of African Society— from its inception to its administration and even outward perception, is overwhelmingly defined by patriarchy. This isn’t the reason, except that with patriarchy there is a silent, expected male dominance of society. To appear to have weaknesses, or to be struggling with shame, is not a conversation welcome at the table. The bottom line therefore is that many men who struggle with things they tell no one of simply do not have the safe spaces to have conversations without the likelihood of being reminded they need to handle it as examples to the very society that put them there. When you are the one who told a Man he is like a god, why would it surprise you when he tries to act like one?

By the time these Men come to depend on themselves (which is a good thing, except that it shouldn’t always come to this) they have learned to cope so much so that they can not connect with anything as expected. This is the beginning of the breakdown of society—when the men who are expected to lead it no longer connect with it. Men are afraid of opening up to their women and for a reason, because there are times in their moment of weakness this has become to their women an Ace in a game of poker. It becomes difficult, if not impossible to open this space with other men because men have zero tolerance for other men who appear or show signs of liability. We all remember a time at the playground when we scorned the sickly boys and termed them Weetabix babies, even going as far as kicking them off the football team.

So how do we move forward? How do we all collaborate and come to the rescue of those among us struggling? How do we ensure that no young man contemplates self-harm, and how do we even open the safe spaces and address the elephant in the room?

I reckon there are many things we can do together, and that is why I am opening this space for a constructive engagement. But until then, the first thing you can do is delete the words “Be A Man about it” from your vocabulary. This will be much appreciated.

1.Freud, S. (1905). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Standard Edition

2.Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

3.Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall

4.Glover, R. A. (2003). No more Mr. Nice Guy: A proven plan for getting what you want in love, sex, and life. Running Press