Jack Donovan - The Way of Men

Copyright 2012 by Jack Donovan.

All rights reserved.

Cover Design and Artwork by Jack Donovan.

First electronic edition.

Released March 26, 2012.
Published by Jack Donovan via [DISSONANT HUM]

Milwaukie, Oregon. USA.

http://www.dissonant-hum.com/
Also by Jack Donovan:

Blood-Brotherhood and Other Rites of Male Alliance

(Co-authored with Nathan F. Miller)

ASIN: B005FLU4ZA

For more information, news, new essays, and to contact the author, visit:

http://www.jack-donovan.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jack-Donovan/125037104227038

To like The Way of Men on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/TheWayOfMen

gangsta culture is the essence of patriarchal masculinity.

bell hooks

I present this book to you without ego.

It is not an advertisement for my own manhood or a boast to flatter the men of my own tribe.

This book is my answer to the question: What is masculinity?

If men are a certain way, and there is a way to be manly, then: What is The Way of Men?

For decades, people have been talking about a crisis of masculinity. Our leaders have created a world in spite of men, a world that refuses to accept who men are and doesnt care what they want. Our world asks men to change for the better, but offers men less of value to them than their fathers and grandfathers had. The voices who speak for the future say that men must abandon their old way and find a new way. But what is that way and where does it lead?

As I came to understand The Way of Men, I became more concerned about where men are today, and where they are headed. I wondered if there was a way for men to follow their own way into a future that belongs to men.

Thats the path of this book. My answers may not be the kind of answers you want to hear, but they are the only answers that satisfied my inquiry.

Jack Donovan

March 2012

Milwaukie, Oregon

When someone tells a man to be a man, they mean that there is a way to be a man. A man is not just a thing to beit is also a way to be, a path to follow and a way to walk. Some try to make manhood mean everything. Others believe that it means nothing at all. Being good at being a man cant mean everything, but it has always meant something.

Most traditions have viewed masculinity and femininity as complementary opposites. It makes sense to say that masculinity is that which is least feminine and femininity is that which is least masculine, but saying that doesnt tell us much about The Way of Men.

Boys and girls dont pair off at birth and scurry off to a dank cave together. Humans have always been social animals. We live in cooperative groups. Our bodies sort us into groups of males or females. We interact socially as members of one group or the other. These groups arent arbitrary or culturaltheyre basic and biological. Males have to negotiate male and female groups as males. Males arent simply reacting to females. We react to other males, as males. Who we are has a lot to do with how we see ourselves in relationship to other males, as members of the male group.

A man is not merely a man but a man among men, in a world of men. Being good at being a man has more to do with a mans ability to succeed with men and within groups of men than it does with a mans relationship to any woman or any group of women. When someone tells a man to be a man, they are telling him to be more like other men, more like the majority of men, and ideally more like the men whom other men hold in high regard.

Women believe they can improve men by making masculinity about what women want from men. Men want women to want them, but female approval isnt the only thing men care about. When men compete against each other for status, they are competing for each others approval. The women whom men find most desirable have historically been attracted toor been claimed bymen who were feared or revered by other men. Female approval has regularly been a consequence of male approval.

Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other .

If The Way of Men seems confusing, it is only because there are so many different groups of men who want so many different things from men. Established men of wealth and power have always wanted men to believe that being a man was about duty and obedience, or that manhood could be proved by attaining wealth and power through established channels. Men of religion and ideology have always wanted men to believe that being a man was a spiritual or moral endeavor, and that manhood could be proved through various means of self-mastery, self-denial, self-sacrifice or evangelism. Men who have something to sell have always wanted men to believe that masculinity can be proved or improved by buying it.

In a united tribe with a strong sense of its own identity, there is some harmony between the interests of male groups, and The Way of Men seems straightforward enough. In a complex, cosmopolitan, individualistic, disunited civilization with many thin, la carte identities, The Way of Men is unclear. The ways touted by rich and powerful men are tossed with the ways of gurus and ideologues and jumbled with the macho trinkets of merchants in such a mess that its easy to see why some say masculinity can mean anything, everything, or nothing at all. Add to that the improvements suggested by women and The Way of Men becomes an unreadable map to a junkyard of ideals.

To understand who men are, what they have in common and why men struggle to prove their worth to each other, reduce male groups to their nucleic form. Sprawling, complex civilizations made up of millions of people are relatively new to men. For most of their time on this planet, men have organized in small survival bands, set against a hostile environment, competing for women and resources with other bands of men. Understanding the way men react to each other demands an understanding of their most basic social unit. Understanding what men want from each other requires an understanding of what men have most often needed from each other, and a sense of how these needs have shaped masculine psychology.

Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive.

The Way of Men is the way of that gang.

You are part of a small human group fighting to stay alive.

The reason why doesnt matter.

Conquest, war, death, hunger or diseaseany of The Horsemen will do.

You could be our primal ancestors, you could be pioneers, you could be stranded in some remote location, you could be survivors of a nuclear holocaust or the zombie apocalypse. Again, it doesnt matter. For humans without access to advanced technology, the scenario plays out more or less the same way.

You have to define your group. You need to define who is in and who is out, and you need to identify potential threats. You need to create and maintain some sort of safe zone around the perimeter of your group. Everyone will have to contribute to the groups survival in some way unless the group agrees to protect and feed someone who cant contribute due to age or illness. For those who can work, youll need to decide who does what, based on what they are good at, who works well together, and what makes the most practical sense.

Hunting and Fighting