It's Time for FrauenTimes

You're invited to join me in exploring manliness, making work better and moving toward a more conscious, soulful world.

I’ve been meaning to start this newsletter for more than four years.

Fear of failure, uncertainty about my exact message and excessive worrying about which tool to use held me back.

No longer.

It’s time for FrauenTimes. That is, this is the moment for me to speak out, share thoughts and pose questions. Time for me to engage in conversation with folks also passionate about masculinity, work and the prospects for a more conscious, soulful world.

The time is right for me. And the time is right for the wider world.

It’s right for me because, to quote my college besty, “I’m too old for this shit.” At 57, I’m too old for insecurities to limit me. And I’ve spent years working to heal wounds and rewrite stories that told me I was a loser, a failure.

A heart attack in 2021, and subsequent panic attacks, actually helped me on this journey to a healthier me.

They helped me go deeper in unearthing the ways that conventional, confined views of manliness have harmed me and others.

My health scares also helped me see how our organizations and economy set us up to see through a lens of scarcity. Such that even straight, middle-class, white men like me with plenty of privilege and status are frightened by the constant threat of poverty and shame.

So I’m ready. And I think the world is ready for a richer conversation about masculinity, work and our broader culture.

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The recent election of Donald Trump was fueled in large part by men unhappy with the status quo. Rather than reject Trump’s misogyny, his might-makes-right ethos and his caricatured claims of invincibility, many men (and many people overall) are drawn to Trump’s version of masculinity.

Trump is one of many would-be “strong men” that have arisen across the globe. And one way to understand their appeal is to consider that men today in the United States and worldwide are hurting.

• Men take their own lives twice as often as women globally. U.S. men die by suicide at four times the rate as their female counterparts. White men make up 30 percent of the U.S. population, yet account for 70 percent of our suicides.

• There’s a loneliness epidemic hitting men hard. The share of U.S. men who lack a single close friend quintupled since 1990, to 15%.

• While 39 percent of women globally are “thriving” in their lives overall, just 31 percent of men are doing so.

• Just 22 percent of men today are engaged at work.

• U.S. boys and young men are falling behind on educational outcomes.

These struggles have much to do with new pressures facing boys and men. Automation, globalization and the emphasis on equitable, empathetic, collaborative cultures pose challenges for men. We’ve been socialized to be successful, stoic, and self-reliant. We men can feel we’ve lost a sense of control over our lives, that we’re under a microscope, that efforts to create more diverse and inclusive workplaces mean things are being taken away from us.

Over the past decade, there’s been a long-overdue reckoning on matters of privilege and power. #Metoo, Black Lives Matter and other movements for greater equity have rightly put the spotlight on the abuses of those holding the greatest authority in our society: typically white men.

But these efforts have often obscured a basic fact:

While men have the most power, most men have little power.

Most men are many layers down in corporate hierarchies. Most are not well-off in a society that increasingly funnels wealth to a small group of “winners.”

So there’s been increased scrutiny on men and decreased empathy for the suffering that many men feel. It’s a recipe for resentment and grievance. A reason to double-down on an outdated, unhealthy, cramped version of masculinity.

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But that isn’t the way forward.

Conventional masculinity puts us men in an emotional straightjacket, damaging our mental health and leading us to depression or worse. Traditional, confined manliness also undermines our organizations and all but prevents us from collaborating to solve the pressing problems of our day, including widening socio-economic inequality, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the growing prospects of climate catastrophe.

And yet there are new possibilities. For men and for everyone.

These possibilities are captured in the notion of “Liberating Masculinity”—a term that my co-author Ed Adams and I used in our 2020 book Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection. Liberating Masculinity frees men to relate in new ways and offers them more roles to play.

Men are sanctioned to feel the range of their emotions, to be vulnerable, to recognize their interdependence. They can cooperate along with compete. They can share power as well as make decisions when needed. They can lean into care responsibilities besides providing through a paycheck. They can pursue matters of the spirit besides material success.

Liberating masculinity enable men to meet this moment in a positive manner. It meshes with a world that is becoming faster, flatter, fairer and more fully human.

In short, liberating masculinity frees men–and everyone–to live fuller, healthier, more soulful lives.

This is a hopeful manliness that I see emerging. In my own life. And—often quietly—in our collective culture.

My work now is to amplify and accelerate this hopeful development. I want to help men, especially, see a different path and play a different game. Not the same old zero-sum contests that result in so many “losers.” But new, creative projects that allow us all to thrive. That elevate our consciousness so we see all humans as family—as soul siblings. That enable us to treat the earth as a precious, living home, and to build a bright future for our children and their children.

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FrauenTimes will spotlight the positive shifts underway for men and all those around them.

It also will help me write the book I’ve been meaning to write for several years. An outward-facing memoir, about my own journey as a man and about the bigger story that surrounds my little story. My sense is this promising tale is not widely told at the moment. We hear mostly about the men who want to take us backwards, who love to hog the limelight, who can’t let their guard down.

FrauenTimes posts will aim to give permission to men, especially, to widen our definition of how man can show up. Permission to be fully human.

So expect a monthly post from me, and perhaps more than one. In each edition, I’ll share thoughts about issues of the day. I’ll also publish a video with advice designed to support men at work—as part of workplaces that work for all. And I’ll share excerpts from the forthcoming book.

My working title for the book is “F*** the Tough Guy Show.” I owe the title to my pal Jay Rydd. Jay uttered those words after two men from his ski resort took their own lives in the span of 18 months.

F*** the Tough Guy Show sums up what I’ve been trying to do for much of the past decade.

The F-bomb also helps the timing and name of this newsletter. One of my epiphanies at age 57 is “F*** it.” Stop the perfectionist self-sabotage. Or, as they say in The Bear, “Let it rip.”

For a long time, I was torn about what to title a newsletter. Make it about masculinity? About work? About the wider culture and consciousness we’re growing into?

Can I write about all these things that interest me? Doesn’t that go against tried-and-true wisdom to segment markets and pick a niche?

F*** it. FrauenTimes will be about integrating, listening and responding to all these things that call me in this moment You’re invited to join me.

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