Introduction after a sixties 'I got me a man' type song.

GR: Good afternoon Graeme, how are you? I guess you remember that song?

GD: Is that an insinuation about the 60's and me?

GR: No, not at all.

GD: I guess you would be far too young to remember the 60's.

GR: Oh, yes, yes, no really, I love 60's music, it's so bright and happy.

GD: But pretty corny as well.

GR: Well OK.

GD: Like the purple people eater and green door and all those songs.

GR: I can't say that I fully agree with all the sentiments that are expressed by girls in the music of that time, like, 'if you don't come back to me I'll die'.

GD: We've talked about this before, but that's where a lot of our mythology about relationships come from. You know, 'everyone's going to die without each other'.

GR: But it's amazing how you sing along with it. I grew up with it and it's only now when I've been presenting on air that I think about some of the lyrics. When I play some I just cringe.

GD: And even the terms like 'my baby'. What does baby mean really?

GR: O yeah baby.

GD: I think that in those days there was a sense of, I will cuddle you, protect you, and do it for you as my little baby. Sadly things didn't work out like that in the end. The baby grew up and men couldn't deal with the growing up.

GR: And thank goodness that women do see things differently now. I used to love Dusty Springfield's music and when you look at her lyrics, there's a lot of, 'I'm going to die if you leave me' stuff. Fortunately women don't put everything in that pigeon hole. They now know that while it is wonderful to have a man about, they can coexist without them.

GD: Last week we were going through our series on manhood on the book by Steve Biddulph called 'Manhood - A book about setting men free'. We started this series because we were noticing that men were feeling lost or screwed up or doing things wrong somehow and not being able to find themselves in their manhood. Of course I think the result of that is seen in much of the domestic violence in our society and a lot of anger and sexual abuse. I think that what you were saying about women earlier, the mythology of 'the baby' is that they have not stayed the baby and stayed totally reliant on men. Yes, women did have that revolution in the 50's, 60's and 70's with what we call the Woman's Movement and as a result are a lot more self assured and independent.

GR: And actually make better partners if they know who they are and are not so dependent.

GD: That's right, not dependent, but independent or interdependent. What has happened of course is that most women have stepped up to the plate to play a full adult role a responsibility within the family. Unfortunately men have lagged behind at this level and have tried to use their dominant features of physicality to cope. They also use emotional, social and economic deprivation as a rebound from the women's movement. Steve Biddulph says that on the rebound from women's liberation, men have got lost.

GR: Yes, and are still trying to find their way.

GD: That's not to say that all women have got it together and it's not to say either, that all men are in that deficit category.

GR: Well that's given the listeners a bit of an idea where we are going, we might just have a music track and we'll be back.

Music Track

GR: Back with Graeme for his fortnightly segment. Graeme is from Valley Care Counselling Service and today we are talking more about the issues of Manhood, Graeme.

GD: That's right the issue of manhood. Biddulph has a section in his book called, 'developing into a man', and he talks about the initiation ceremonies of the American Indians, the Zulu warriors and the Aboriginal peoples. He also talks about medieval craftsman who had ways of initiating their young men into manhood. Sometimes that was very heavy emotionally and physically, because some of those boys were only fourteen or fifteen at the time. A fifteen-year-old boy had to shoulder almost manhood responsibility. I think back to my early days as a carpentry apprentice, shouldering the load with mature men on the job and working very hard. One of my brothers was a plumbing apprentice who started by digging deep trenches through rock to a depth of two or three metres. My father's father died when he was fourteen and my father had to take a grocery apprenticeship and ride a bike to Elsternwick from Kew.

GR: And often men got married a lot earlier in those days compared to now.

GD: Yes, I'm not sure of the legal age of marriage then, but they married as soon as they were of age.

GR: A lot of our boys at eighteen are still in study and at home with mum.

GD: That's right, I've got friends in Tasmania with four generations living and the youngest has just moved in with his girlfriend at eighteen. 

GR: Wonderful!

GD: Talking about hard work. I knew a carpenter who used to ride a bike to Frankston from Box Hill on a Monday morning to start work by 8:00am. He would stay on the job all week and then ride home after work on Friday. 

GR: Amazing!

GD: My father in law in Scotland was dumped on a job with hand tools and he had to lay a complete house floor of flooring boards by himself in a day or get the sack.

GR: Yes, there were vastly different expectations on young men back in those days.

GD: But that's life and we have moved on in different ways. If you look at this whole initiation process, I guess my apprenticeship was very much that. The closest I got to an initiation was mixing with men as a fifteen-year-old and some of the influences were a bit shady. I was with a foreman for two years training every day and even now I can think of every mannerism of that man. I didn't adopt some of his principles of life but I learning the skills of the trade. He was one of the icons in a past era of carpenters and one of the best of his time.

GR: He would have been like a mentor to you. 

GD: Yes and this is a word that Biddulph uses, the mentor. However we are seeing less and less apprenticeships which I'm sure is going to come up and bite us at some stage. The government is pouring more money into academic streams of education for boys rather than practical streams. Yes, mentoring. Whether it is mentoring by an apprenticeship boss or somebody you work under, a foreman or someone like that, at least they are teaching us. As I said some bad habits along the way too. I remember on the rainy days, the dirty joke book would come out and it would be read all day. Those influences are still there but they didn't stick, I got to sort those things out for myself.

GR: One of the more positive things that I experienced when we were a single parent family for a number of years was that my son got an apprenticeship as a glazier. Although the chap he was working for was probably only about ten years older than my son, he acted much like a Mentor for him. The boy's father had shifted over to Adelaide and he did not have any contact with his sons. Colin took Lee under his wing and he trained him up but he showed him different aspects of life that I wasn't able to as a single mum. I was so limited in this area and it was just the most wonderful experience and Lee has actually moved on now and started his own business.

GD: You're right about that and Biddulph, later in the book does make quite a specific point about boys who haven't had fathering or have been brought up in a single parent home with the mother. He says that they need some kind of external fathering, they need male mentors, they need uncles, bosses, apprentices, men around them who they can rub shoulders with. Biddulph talks about a need to touch 'sweaty bodies'. The need to rub shoulders with sweaty smelly men. No woman can provide that. Boys need to have the rough and tumble and have men's stuff talked about. He recommends his book for men, for women in order to understand men, and single mum's who want to impart manhood to their sons.

GR: Exactly, it can give us a bit of a look behind the scenes so we can see how men think, but we might just have a music break.

GD: 60's?

Music track

GR: Today we have Graeme Dawson from the Valley Care Counseling Service and we've been having a chat about the issue of manhood.

GD: We have and Glenda has her own copy of the book here today and wants her own boys to read it and for those of you listening, you can buy it through Collins Bookstore or borrow it through the local library system. I recommend it as a worthwhile investment. You can use it as a workshop manual and if you're a single mum with a son it's so helpful. If you're a man and are open to make changes, as things are not working so well, then this book will help you work through things. If you're a woman listening today and you can't fathom out your man and he looks like he's in the cave age, the book will be helpful too.

GR: There will be a lot of women nodding to that one.

GD: I have a little difficulty with the book 'Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus' because it tends to stereotype people into boxes and reinforce the alienation. Biddulph, in manhood, tries to have each sex understand the differences. But you were right before when you were talking about the mentoring process and single mums needing help. For instance, if a single mum doesn't think that her son is getting sufficient fathering, or good enough fathering, or has no male mentors in his life, then maybe she should look at her son's school and see if she could find a male teacher. The difficulty with that is that most schools have a majority of women teachers which means their sons are having women teach them all day long. You may need to consider how you can get your boy rubbing shoulders with a man and getting a handle on how men do things.

GR: Perhaps even join a club, you know there are a lot of clubs like scouts and groups like that.

GD: That's right, we need men to help boys to some kind of an initiation like tribal peoples do.

GR: Isn't there a sense that sometimes with the tribal folk that they will take the boys off into the jungle away from the women.

GD: Yes it becomes 'secret men's business'. Biddulph tells the story about Charles Perkins who was the first Aborigine in Canberra in politics and mixed it with all the white collars and the white people. Later in his life he was challenged to initiation by one of the Aboriginal Elders because he was an Arunta Man from the Arunta Tribe. He had never really entered full Aboriginal manhood through initiation so he took it on board. While he can't explain the 'Curoo' or tell of exactly what happened from the point of view of secrecy, he said it was absolutely mind-blowing and life changing and suddenly trees were not trees but they were friends, and things like that.

GR: Wow!

GD: He goes on to say that when he became an Arunta initiate, he spent a lot of time trying to learn the tribal dances and songs and the tribal myths and stories. Sadly Charles Perkins died two years ago. But that's a story that we might have to look at ourselves as men and ask ourselves, what is it that we need? Do we need to go back to the older men and be 'initiated' into our form of manhood? What have we missed out on? To be a leader of our family or our business or our government, we need to have that leadership grounded in a proper initiation into our own manhood for a start. Without this we are not going to be able to lead other men or people in society or business if we are not grounded properly. 

GR: Bless you, I thought that was going to be a sneeze. Maybe we'll come back and look at the 'Seven Steps to Manhood' after a music break.

Music break.

GD: I was tapping away to that song given that when I was a carpentry apprentice that song broke onto the airwaves.

GR: Were you?

GD: Yes, well let's quickly look over the 'Seven Steps to Manhood' that Steven Biddulph annunciates here. He talks about, 'Fixing it with your father'. He says that your father is your emotional line of contact to your masculinity. He talks about what happens if your father is dead of if he left you when you were only young and maybe you've never seen him since. He has ways in which he encourages people to go back and try to find their father. If he is dead, go back to the place where he used to work. Go back and walk around the factory and talk to some of his former workmates who might still be there. Catch the tram that he used to catch every morning to try to get a feeling of what it was like in your father's world. Talk to others who knew him and go back and look up records etc. You need to have that 'conversation' with your father. If you've got a father that you can have a conversation with he may not want to have that conversation with you. Often fathers have been too emotionally deprived to deal with that conversation and visa versa. Many sons are not able to have that conversation with their fathers either because they are not ready or equipped enough emotionally. He also talks about finding sacredness in your sexuality. Knowing the difference between ejaculation and orgasm for men. He says men sell themselves short in sexual things, they settle for less, they have done all sorts of things to get that momentary satisfaction.

GR: The high.

GD: They have not really gone in for the depth of intimacy that is available to them if they work at it. They don't know what it means to be a man and pursue a woman appropriately.

GR: Which means they are missing out on the quality of relationship.

GD: That's right and it's not a matter of doing the No.42 position in the book and supposedly thinking that you are the world's greatest lover, but being able to really contact the woman at an emotional level. Movies tend to stereotype women during orgasm screaming and scratching and so on yet that can be far from the case in real life. However, women these days have learned to let go more and enjoy what is rightfully theirs. Men, for all their bragging and bravado have somehow sold themselves short on real enjoyment from love making and best orgasmic experiences. Steve Biddulph has a chapter in the book on that and talks about men's experiences of the enormous highs of proper orgasms that men can achieve within their lifetimes. It not just a sexual thing either, he talks about it being a spiritual thing, the whole of being thing. Men need to learn the art of the chase. Not using posters or pornography or the Internet to satisfy themselves with sleaziness or obsessiveness. They need to do it properly with a woman and engage her with all your senses. Married men need to meet their wives on equal terms. I have a lot of instances in the counselling room where the relationship is dysfunctional because the man is not stepping up to the plate as a man. He acts very much like a child in the family. The complaint of many women is, I've got 1 more child in the house to look after.

GR: Yes! Yes!

GD: She says it's like I've got 4 children instead of 3, so she moves into parent mode and starts dealing with this guy as a child and then he starts to resent it. There needs to be an understanding on the part of the man that he needs to step up to the plate at an adult level and discuss the intimate and family problems of married life together with his wife. She needs to make sure she is not speaking to him from the parent level and being condescending, it's a tricky business.

GR: Yes, it's a matter of both partners being aware of how they are relating.

GD: And this is where I think a lot of couples need a bit of help to get unstuck. This is where counselling helps. You can sit down with a counsellor and get some strategies to work with. The counsellor can help you start to put the light of insight on some issues and work them through. Some things like, actively engaging with your kids, not just sitting with your head behind a newspaper and hoping that your wife will do everything, being tough yet tender, trying to keep that balance. Let the children see you cry when you need to but be tough when it's time for toughness. The walls of our personal boundaries need to be built tough enough to keep unwanted things out but soft enough to let others in. Biddulph talks about learning to have real male friends. He says that you will always find guys at the pub who are misogynists and want to drown their sorrows and bitch about women together. You will find them anywhere, but he says that's not helpful. Men need to try to establish real male friends, confidential friends, people with whom you can deal at all sorts of levels, but not an anti-women gang. Another Biddulph issue is, 'Finding your heart in your work'. He has a whole chapter on men in soul-destroying jobs, where they hate their work and it permeates every other area of their life. They can be motor mechanics during the day and hate going to the work 8 - 5 or work in the servo or where ever they work but that doesn't mean to say they don't love cars and don't love work per se. You will find many of those same guys working in a mates shed until midnight most nights with a lead light, banging away, restoring some old car.

GR: And finding they are totally satisfied.

GD: They love the work. It's not as though it's the work they don't like, they love cars and they love the friendship, they love the environment, even though they might be doing the same thing at work and hating it.

GR: Sometimes guys can think that they are locked in at work because they've got a mortgage to pay and can't leave.

GD: You're right, they need to free the wild spirit.

GR: That sounds like a good one.

GD: That needs to be unpacked, and maybe more fully at another time but it's not about the woman saying, oh good, I hope he gets rid of that wild spirit. No, Biddulph talks about the 'Wild Man'; it's a concept. He say's, you are not the wild man, but you need to talk to the wild man, run with the wild man, and learn from the wild man, in other words not wild, as in aggressive, but wild as in the beautiful wilderness. I guess that rounds up 'The Seven Steps of Manhood'.

GR: It's been great having you here today and I look forward to seeing you in two weeks time.