Guys should be willing to talk about their feelings, right? That's a good thing. Men have too long been locked up internally--devoid of psychological facility, uncomfortable with being... er... uhm.... sensitive. So let the man talk. If your a guy just grab that talking stick from the person next to you and and unleash that fury of pent-up emotions that has been held at bay for far too long. Let her loose! Let her rip! Get in touch with your ... uhm.... (cliche' of the day alert) feminine-side.

At least up to a point. I mean, you don't want to become a 'girl' do you? Who wants all the guys of the world passing around a box of Kleenex and rehashing old traumas. I know I don't want to get a guy going on and on about his feelings; unless I was his psychotherapist and was getting my $150 to $250 per therapeutic hour! Then maybe I would encourage him to talk and process until I was ready to retire!

'Keep going,' I would say. As he may not know that I have a young son about to enter college. 'I think we need to explore this some more.'

Yet, secretly I would say to myself, 'God, I hope my son doesn't want to go to Grad school--and heaven forbid he wants to get his Doctorate... because then I will have to listen to this guy talk about his relationship with his Mommy some more!'

Waiter can you pass me the gun.

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Ok. Now that I have thoroughly annoyed you with my insensitive humour, I would like to get serious and investigate this matter some more. I want to start by saying that I am all for feelings. Shit! I play sappy acoustic-rock on my Gibson so if it weren't for 'feelings' I would be out of a friggin' job!! So don't think I am just tossing feelings aside as if they are inconsequential. I like feelings. Feelings are good. Exploring feelings is good. Guys talking about their feelings is a good thing too. So talk. Feel. But damn.... let's please not get lost in feeling-only state where that is all that occurs. I simply don't think it serves anyone (except for maybe 'ego' and 'therapist' in some settings) to get into that endless processing; where feelings and emotions are held up as Gods and Goddesses---if not the pathway to them.

My gut tells me that 'feelings' and 'psycho-emotional content of human-consciousness' was under-explored for so long--or perhaps humanity had not yet developed to the point where we were ready for Dr. Phil, Oprah, and Woody Allen!--that there has come to be an over-extended fixation on feelings and the various psycho-emotional content of human consciousness as if these were more essential than they are.

You know, when we are denied something we tend to make a fetish out of it. And I truly believe that is what has happened for many .... ahem... men... as well as for a wide swath of the psycho-therapeutic community that includes all sorts of accreditted systems, methods, models, theories, and schools. Having been denied access to our 'feeling-aspects' many men have come to fetishize their feelings. Doesn't mean I think guys get a literal 'hard-on' from talking about their feelings... but I think you know what I mean!! Namely, that the denial of a man's 'feeling-aspect' tends to result in that man fetishizing his feelings (and feelings in general) once he has been granted a little access to those feelings.

And you know what happens when you threaten a man's fetish. He gets mighty pissed off!!

It's one way of showing a man how cathected (love those crazy psyhoanalytic terms, don't you?--though I still get cathected and catheter mixed up.... good thing I am not a nurse, eh?)... anyway... my point is that when you question a man's right to his feeling-aspect and het gets all hoober-wonky on ya, like you are threatening his very life, then you can pretty much be rest assured that the man in question has made his feelings his fetish. They are no longer just the ordinary, mundane stuff of the human psyche--like natural phenomena that arise and pass away all around us, all within us. Not at all. For the one who has created a fetish out of feeling and emotion those feelings and emotions are 'more sacred' than anything else. They are, like I said, virtual Gods and Goddesses to that person. Reason is less-sacred. Intution is less-sacred. Intelligence is less-sacred. Everything that could balance the man who has fetishized the feeling-nature of human-beings is 'less sacred' than those precious feelings. And that's where I see the movements of the sensitive man being bound up: not that feelings are important... but that feelings are held above and beyond other aspects of our humanity.... like... er.... uhm.... HUMOUR!!   ; o )

'Feelings... nothing more than feelings...
Whoa...ohh...ohhh...ohhh... Feelings.'

Remember that sappy-song from the 1970's--so syrupy and sticky sweet that it stuck inside of you regardless of what you... er... uhm... felt about it? I wonder if that song would be a good 'theme song' for the movement to get Men more in touch with their sensitive-side. Come on guys, we could all light candles and gather round a cricle, listen to that song before we put on the Carpenters Greatest Hits for the rest of the evening. Sound like fun to you. Wanna sign up? I'll get the 'Sensitive Man' Pod going pronto!!

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Actually, you know I am joking, don't you? Not that I have an aversion to 'feelings' the sort of which poets and troubadours, romantics and soap-opera vixens know all too well. I love feelings. Feelings are good. Feelings are vital and rich and nourishing of the human-condition. We would be... er... uhm.... well.... virtual zombies without the capacity to 'feel.'

My concern, though, is that there is something amiss in the over-sensitization of people to their 'feelings,' as if these whimsome ephemera of consciousness were the royal road to freedom and liberation. Perhaps that is part and parcel of living in the Age of Psychological Humanity--the post-Freudian, post-Jungian, post-Rogerian, post-Oprah era where everyone's feelings were given such great importance. After too long being denied the right to say what we all 'felt' it turned out that there was a literal 'feeding frenzy' of emotional exhibitionism. Yeah, I like that phrase---emotional exhibitionism. That I think describes it well: that many now wanted to be able to display their 'emotions' after having gone through the hyper-repressed Victorian-Era; where the tight-stitched and starched clothes matched the button-downed and corsetted emotional displays of those subject to that Era.

So we swung like that as a species (though I do acknowledge a Euro-centric bent to my argument here for all of post-colonial, post-coital freaks out there, SO DON'T GET ALL RUFFLED!). We went from the total denial of emotional exhibitionism, ala pre-Fruedian historical epoch... to being like a flaming gay pissed at his lover for calling him a 'drama queen,' ala post-Freud!

'You listen here Honey....'  (can you see my finger wagging back-and-forth as I talk).

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Of course, the sense is that we are all going to be 'healed' and 'set-free' by being able to be emotional exhibitionists. Don't 'hold back' is the unspoken motto The figurative message of the Sensitivity Movement is that we are to 'hold no emotional fever within.' Take the friggin' lid of of your repressed psyche and let the babies come out and play! Come on. Set yourself free!!

Oh... but wait a New York minute here! Not so fast. Where are we releasing all of our emotional exhibitions to? Where are they going? Do they just exit us and we are relieved of the psychic pressure that was building within us from under-expressed emotions and feelings? Do they just disappear? Or is something else going on? Something like the possibility that we are releasing our emotions and feelings out 'into the Greater Community' around us.

What if our emotions don't dissipate and we are not liberated from them in the way it is often assumed by the proponents and purveyours of the Sensitivity Movement? What if there is a sort of Thermodynamics of Emotional Exhibitionism and the unspoken assumption that we are supposed to display our emotions is --- from the standpoint of Community --- both ignorant and unethical. 

What if the wiser path of the Sensitivity Movement is to now begin to consider what, where, and when is a proper release of Energy (which is what emotions and feelings actually are in their essence)? What if emotional exhibitionism for the sake of exhibiting our emotional, sensitive... yes, our oh so sensitive... self... is both psychologically shallow and under-informed as well as communally irresponsible and ... er... uhm.... pretty much narcissistic?

What if in the post-Freudian era everyone is a 'Drama Queen' to one degree or another? 

'Now you listen here Sista....  I've had about enough of....

(Oh yes, comes with more finger-wagging).    ; o)

In many ways I feel sorry for us dudes. I mean I don't pity guys. It is not like I think I am better than other guys--as if I am above all of this somehow. Shit, I am right in the mix. I am right there too in everything I mention. I am the one mentioning it after all. You know, subject/object non-duality. Perceiver is the perceived. Yadda... yadda...

Anyway, like I was saying, I feel sorry for us dudes. We have gotten so much shit over the past century. We were pretty much blamed for everything that has gone 'wrong' with the world. In many instances we still are being 'blamed.' If it weren't for guys the world, I suppose, would be a happy place.

Ellen DeGeneres would be president of the USA! Or something like that. At least the trouble-makers who have spread the ills of .... ahem... 'patriarchy' would be removed from the scene. So all you ladies you wouldn't have to deal with the aggressive foibles of the testosterone-laden side of our species. The world would be at peace.

Of course, the ladies would still comment on so and so's hair and how 'I can't believe she is wearing those shoes with that dress! Doesn't she know how fat it makes her ankles look. I mean, look at those cankles!!'

What's my point? Uhmmm..... my point is that guys have gotten shit on pretty intensively for the past century or so. Because guys were believed to 'rule the world' (as if no Nancy Reagans ever existed, pulling the strings of a man without him ever knowing it) all of the troubles of the world were laid at the feet of Man. Man was the problem. So it happened that a ton of men grew up with the awareness of just how 'fucked up' they were by virtue of their being... well... a Guy!

GUY GUILT

That's what happened. At least that is what I am getting the sense as to what took place. That guys grew up with guilt over being a Man, and this guilt resulted in them wanting to explore and investigate their interiors (to the painstaking degree I mentioned in previous entries) so as to potentially be able to root out the evil that was inherent in them.

Equation is this:

1) The assumption that 'Guys are the problem with the world' =
2) Boys feeling guilty about being a guy one day =
3) Boys wrestling with their identity and trying to discover 'who they are' =
4) A definite shortage of GUYNESS in the world due to boys not wanting to be 'guys' because 'guys' are 'bad.'

That's the problem when you label someone 'bad' or potentially 'evil' on the basis of gender or sex. You create in them a no-win situation. Due to the plethora of punches thrown in the direction of men (many of them deserved of course) there has come to be this state of affairs where even 'middle-aged men' are still trying to figure our what it means to be a man. And that is sad. That is a PITY! And I don't think the blame lays at the feet of the men exploring their existence and investigating their feelings till the next cosmic cycle turns. I feel that the situation is simply the result of a historical condition wherein humanity was searching for a 'scapegoat' for a pretty fucked up condition (and by the way, Hello people, this is the realm of dukkha and desire... it tain't supposed to be all lovey-dovey and sweet, is it?). So Guys got the shaft! Guys got the blame. Perhaps 10,000 years ago when a whole slew of Matriarchical Societies feel it was Women who were getting the .... uhm.... shaft. maybe Woman were a scapegoat for the 'ills of this-world' 10,000 years ago and we have been on a Masculine bent ever since... and that has resulted in a 'backlash' against Men... so that we have the recent Feminist Movement seeking to make Sensitive Men who... oddly enough.... following the directions of well-meaning Women and Therapists results in Men not even knowing how to take a piss while standing up. Now guys have to 'sit down' even to pee!!   ; o )