It's Not a Struggle to Find Good Male Role Models

And, it’s time we got our heads screwed on straight about the ”patriarchy.”

Aug 12, 2023

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Tim Corcoran of Headwaters Outdoor School with one of this apprentices

People, it’s time to stop going around saying that it’s a “struggle to find male role models,” or that we’re somehow still stuck with just ‘two ways’ of seeing men—either the macho ‘breadwinner’ that originally emerged from the 1950’s and is increasingly—and rightfully—unhappy about his inability to earn a satisfying amount of bread, or the under-sexed, unsexy, and largely undesired post-feminist ‘sensitive man’ whose, according to the Onion’s tounge-in-cheek reporting, have been deployed to the southern border to repel migrants with their social awkwardness and ill-fitting clothes. I feel like both the author of the piece I linked to above and the “Men are Lost” WaPo opinion piece by Christine Emba that he was commenting on are purposefully overlooking the fact there are actually plenty of good male role models around these days, even if our stereotypes about masculinity haven’t quite caught up.

The fit, loving, thoughtful, well-adjusted, and very alive-looking guys that I run into as I make my way around the world certainly don’t fit into either of those obsolete stereotypes about men, nor the idea that there aren’t any good role models. In fact, nobody that I know does, and that’s not due any kind of privledge—it’s just because I like good people, and there are lots of them around, if you make the effort to look.

A key part of our job as writers and thinkers is to actively refuse to perpetuate obsolete ideas that are still getting airtime based on cultural momentum from the past, but not on their current relevance. It’s most often the case that by the time we’re able to look back clearly at something that’s crystallized in our collective imagination—like the ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ male for example—something beyond that has already begun to enter the actual, day-to-day cultural zeitgeist.

Contrary to these sensationalist accounts that may give the appearance of, but fail to actually serve the cause of advancing the discourse, I would argue that there are no lack of role models for high-quality masculinity. Rather than continually decry how the “digital audience capture dynamics skew so many to the extremes,” (I mean, of course they do, that’s the air we all breathe these days) or replaying retread criticisms of those extremes (which are no longer current anyhow), why not spend our precious tiem lifting up the many, varied, and quite present examples of positive masculinity that are all around us?

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that we’re making a difference by commenting, yet again, on someone else’s comment about something that we wish were different. We do ourselves no favors by continuing to gaze in the mirror of the past while the sun is rising elsewhere.

What the heck does “patriarchy” mean, anyhow?

Before I cite some examples, we have to clear something up about the “patriarchy,” because, like “gentrification,” the big P is often cited as some nefarious force that is also somehow so nebulous as to escape any meaningful definition. Most of us still live with the received idea that “the patriarchy” was some sort of ancient conspiracy designed from on high, specifically to elevate men and to oppress women.

Many have worked hard to counter this pervasive, simplistic—and, I would say, impossible—gloss, including celebrated and widely varied feminist writers including bell hooks^⁠1, Robert Jensen^⁠2, Gerda Lerner^⁠3, Warren Farrell^⁠4, Grayson Perry^⁠5, Justin Baldoni^⁠6, Traver Boehm^⁠7, Frank Pittman^⁠8, and Liz Plank^⁠9, just to name a few. A real reading of this history will reveal that the word “patriarchy” is best understood as a backwards-looking descriptor of a broad cultural thread which defies simplistic encapsulation, as opposed to some sort of top-down initiative.

Furthermore, most serious thinkers that I’ve read characterize “patriarchy” overall as an expression of capitalism rather than sexism; despite the literal translation of ‘rule of the father,’ this is descriptive of what these writers were documenting, and that ‘rule’ was itself an outgrowth of patrilineal property systems that were not necessarily encoded by a cabal of men, but evolved as part of culture. To the extent that we ended up with some aspects of our culture exhibiting what some refer to using the word “patriarchy,” patriarchy itself cannot also be the cause for that having come about, and to say so is untrue. What’s going on here is a linguistic phenomenon wherein a descriptor becomes, over time, perceived as the cause of the effect described, as if the sky is blue because it’s blue. No, “blue” is an arbirtary linguistic symbol that means nothing at all by itself and simply refers to what we’ve agreed upon as blue; similarly, “patriarchy” is a linguistic symbol that serves as a placeholder for… what? it’s not really clear at all, which is why many of the same authors I mentioned above have suggested^⁠10 that, rather than continue to use the heavily overloaded p-word, “our culture” would serve better.

Even more importantly, these same thinkers, feminist and otherwise, agree that our culture exerts power over power over men in many ways, just as it exerts power over women in so many others. Women are controlled and men are controlled—and control is what feeds the machine. Femininity is diminished, and masculinity is diminished. “Patriarchy harms both men and women by forcing men to act as if they don’t have or need relationships and women to act as if they don’t have or need a self.”¹²

Regardless, I appreciate Kim Stanley Robinson’s point of view that, whether we’re talking about technology, the environment, or our culture in general, “It's not a smart thing we've done now, but on the other hand, a lot of that happened by accident.”¹¹ Basically, we were all doing our best at the time, we got what we got as we went along, and rather than spend more time lamenting the past, we’d be better served by working on what’s next.

Men live with the reality that initiation into patriarchal masculinity “requires losing ones authentic voice,”^⁠12 “…the sacrifice of relationship in order to have ‘relationships,’”^⁠12 and the acceptance of lifelong competition with all other men in a “paradigm that creates unnoticed consent to a hierarchy of power^⁠11”—all of which are contrary to connection, and to freedom—and, among other things, therefore aligned with anxiety and depression.

Our culture oppresses—and depresses—one another. That’s why so many men are unhappy. In many ways, we have created a world that is trying to kill us.

It’s time we got our heads screwed on straight about this “patriarchy” thing. We have to remember that our culture was not constructed by some other people to oppress us. As with almost every case where we’re tempted to say that “they” did something (and therefore how we didn’t), in most cases there is no they. It was some prior version of we that, over the centuries, created what eventually resulted in the culture that we live in—which, of course, is constantly evolving. We built it, and we can—and are—changing it.

Plenty of good men

On to the present reality, and the plethora of positive male role models available to anyone who bothers to look around in any direction whatsoever, really. To begin with, I want to say that all of the men that I’m close with in my own life are examples of what a man can and should be, and I’m going to name them here to call out their individual, collective, and unique essence: Desmond Wheatley, John Yelding-Sloan, Peter Carnochan, Michael Lipson, Michael “Roddy” McDowell, Atom Gayner, Anton Haramis, Anthony David Adams, Skip Taylor, Kit Steven, Michael Mohr,

, Noah Rainey, Christo Johnson, Nate Scott, Chris Gramly, Ant Chavez, Chris Ryan, Peter Mayer, Ben Anderson, Eric Ams, Steve Bodner, Zach Backas, Kenyon Phillips, and Hitch McDermid—just to name a few.

None of these men are stereotypical sportswatching dudebros, oblivious beerhounds, superficial idiots, fools, narcissists, or oppressors—and nor are they weaklings, soyboys, sheep, ‘beta’ men, or even really civilians of any sort at all. I know not one loser, zero, failure to launch, 4chan troll, or basement-dwelling incel. Not one—and not because they don’t exist—I know that they do, and there are good reasons why so many men are terminally unhappy, but that’s not the point here. I don’t know any because, like most other people, it’s simply more interesting to spend time with open-minded, positive people who have learned how to lead, starting with themselves—and there are plenty of good men to surround and ally myself with.

At one point, I would have been surprised to meet a good man myself, but not becuase there were so few—it was because I had not yet learned the value of strong homosocial relationships with quality men. Now, I’m surprised if a man that I meet isn’t someone that I lean towards with trust, love and respect.

None of the men that I know are dicks…despite the fact that yes, they do all have one—and even like to use them!

Imagine that.

I challenge anyone who claims not to know any good men: what kind of men do you align yourself with, and how well do you know the men in your life?

Think of yourself, and your own male friends.

Especially if you’re going around saying or thinking something like “I cannot tell you how hard it is to find a male role model who balances sense, spirit, strength, and heart”—ask yourself: in your own life, who are the men that you would hold up as examples—and, if you don’t know any, why not? And if you do, why are you not holding them up as examples? How do you rate yourself as a role model?

For a few examples of men who are actively speaking, writing, and leading others by way of the diverse masculinities that they embody, I would point you to:

John Wineland, for his deeply grounded teaching and writing on relationships and sexuality, including his book, From the Core.

Connor Beaton, host of the ManTalks podcast and a top-notch Insta.

Traver Boehm, for his community of strong, good men and his outstanding book Man Uncivilized.

Ben Goresky, host of the Evolving Man podcast.

Grayson Perry, cross-dressing heterosexual male multi-media artist and author of The Descent of Man.

Prof. Scott Galloway, host of the Prof G podcast, co-host of Pivot with Kara Swisher and author of Adrift.

Richard V Reeves

, author of Of Boys and Men.

Cameron Shayne, for his movement practice, personal philosophy, and honesty.

John Kim, with several books, very active Insta, and a strong community.

Ari Delashmutt, a fellow pilot with an excellent podcast called Ari In The Air.

Fernando Desouches, for his pioneering work to reposition masculinity with brands

Jayson Gaddis, founder of the Relationship School.

Jamie Wheal

and his fantastic

Homegrown Humans Newsletter

Chris Ryan

, author of Sex at Dawn and host of

Tangentially Speaking with Chris Ryan

Justin Baldoni, author of Man Enough and Boys Will Be Human and host of the Man Enough podcast.

Sherman Alexie

’s writing

Michael Mohr's Sincere American Writing

Get Real, Man by

Latham Turner

Just Enough to Get Me in Trouble by

Lyle McKeany

The Recovering Academic by

— the writer of the piece that promoted this rather heated riposte. His piece was, in turn, commenting on

Christine Emba

‘s opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.

Tim Corcoran, founder of Headwaters Outdoor School.

Pál Takáts, professional paraglider pilot.

Michael Meade and his Living Myth podcast.

I’d also point to

Meghan Daum

and her

The Unspeakable with Meghan Daum

podcast, which often speaks with depth and fairness to these issues, as does

Sophie Strand

in her outstanding book, The Flowering Wand.

…and finally, to groups like EVRYMAN and many others that are explicitly designed to provide community for men, and the opportunity for men to practice with each other.

These and many others clearly map what’s sometimes called a “third way^⁠7,” for men, a new model for masculinity that transcends the long-dead Marlboro Man and the Sensitive New Age Guy (aka SNAG), both of which are obsolete embodiments of what Grayson Perry calls ”Default Man.” More than anything else, this third wave is showing that being a man can be “whatever you want it to be^⁠5,” and that there are a “plurality of masculinities^⁠5” available as models to men, as opposed to any one path to blindly follow.

I’m not much of a pop-culture expert, but of course there are plenty of men in the public eye who manage to incorporate macho and sensitive, strong and emotional, thinking and feeling, providing and protecting and collaborating and communicating—consider Ewan MacGregor, Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones and Han Solo characters—even the fucking Fonz for gawdsake—the uber-cool, macho dude in the leather jacket who made out with both of the Tuscadero sisters (Leather and Pinky—perhaps even at once!), was often found deep in introspective conversation with Mr C., tender tears in his soft, dark eyes.

It’s an insult to ourselves, our brothers, fathers, and sons to say that it’s actually a struggle to find good male role models. Whatever words we speak or write are our invocations, and it behooves us to pay attention to what we call in. So as not to be complicit in our own undoing, we should not hesitate to use strong language to refute backwards-looking noise, and instead put forward a clear signal about where we are leading ourselves and each other. Let’s stop pretending that we don’t know which direction we should be heading in. We do, we are, and more of us need to speak up about it.

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