Being but men Quotes

“Anger is the only emotion many men allow themselves to express. Growing up, we are taught to avoid anything that is seen as the least bit feminine. We are taught that men 'do' while women 'feel.' We learn to keep all emotions under wraps, to see them as unmanly. We cannot show we are hurt, afraid, worried, or panicked. The feeling we are allowed to express without being called feminine is anger. When men experience IMS, anger is often the primary emotion.”

“Our society has long treated men as machines, as bodies expendable in the name of progress or profit. Men have overruled their pain and soul's delight, taught to think of themselves as "mechanisms". Such an estrangement wounds very deeply; it has gone on so long and is so taken for granted that healing individuals, let alone a whole gender, is a dubious undertaking. But the beat goes on, the Saturnian shadow lives, the only game in town, and shame on the defector. The wounding is institutionalized and sanctified, and men unwittingly collude in their own crucifixion.”

“Free men are the strongest men.”

“Garp didn't want a daughter because of men. Because of bad men, certainly; but even, he thought, because of men like me.”

“In general men keep their internal lives–and their more complex emotions–closely guarded, because either they don't understand them or they are afraid of being betrayed by them.”

“In life; there are two things you should never believe: the tears of women and the hearts of men, and there are two things you should always believe in life; the hearts of women, and the tears of men.”

“To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different from simply being. In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.”

“It is very likely that men who are more gender role identified would never be seen as codependent because so many of their gender role traits are “normal” for an avoidantly attached codependent. Men with gender role conflict may pre-sent as more anxious, in general, and are more likely to be identified as codependent.”

“Surely the greatest tragedy for men in regard to the feminine principle is that their fear alienates them from their own anima, the principle of relatedness, feeling and connection to the life force. This alienation from self obliges alienation from other men as well. Often their only connection with each other comes through superficial talk about outer events, such as sports and politics.”