Masculinity is a transmission. It gets passed from men to boys by proximity, and before the factories that happened all day, every day, standing next to your father and his friends while they worked. That transmission largely stopped, and what filled the gap is a set of rules you absorbed without ever agreeing to them. Researchers call it precarious manhood: the idea that being a man is a status you can lose, which is why so much of it gets spent on defense. You carry that defense as a low hum in the jaw and shoulders long before you can name it. Jason Lange has been in men's work for over twenty years, and the pattern he sees is men enforcing a script on themselves that nobody has read out loud in decades.
If you found this page, you may be tired of the culture war version of this conversation, where you are either the problem or you are being told nothing is wrong. "Precarious Manhood and the Manbox" names the two scripts running underneath it. "Masculinity is a Transmission" covers what got lost and where a man goes to receive it now. "From Toxic to Tonic Masculinity" is the generative version, and "The World Needs MORE Angry Men" makes the case that the dangerous ones are the aggressive men who have no idea they are angry. Full archive below.
In this episode I talk with Dr. Daniel Ellenberg. He has directed men's groups for more than forty years and earned the Practitioner of the Year award from the American Psychological Association's division for the psychology of men.
Provider, protector, procreator is real advice and it is half a map. The two quadrants Scott Galloway skips, your interior life and other men, are where the crisis actually lives.
Keith Martin-Smith grew up where shutting down was what men did, and his father never once cried. Twenty years in circle later, what came out the other side of that.
Roy Arthur Blodgett reads a hillside the way most men read a room. Land literacy, the fear of doing harm that keeps men spectating, and what changes when you participate.
The story that your manhood was taken from you is comforting, and it costs you your agency. Dr. Luke Adler and I on why victim masculinity sells so well right now.
The wound was handed to you and the work on it is still yours. What it means to take responsibility for pain that started before you were even born.
Ted Riter spent thirty years as a rabbi before a collapse in his own life sent him into men's work. Grief, sacred masculinity, and what depth actually asks of you.
Anything you do by repetition is getting automated. Four capacities worth building now so that what you bring to work and to your family still has value in ten years.
Shame carries information about what you actually value, and most men only know how to drown it. Dr. Keith Witt on working with it instead of running from it.
Michael Holt came up through violence and addiction and now teaches men to hold the primal and the sacred at once. Why a healed man still has teeth.
Amir Khalighi has spent three decades walking men back into their bodies and out into the natural world. What embodied masculine means in practice, and where men get lost.
Comfort is the thing that quietly takes men out. Tripp Lanier, my first men's coach, on what makes a man dangerous in the good sense, starting with being genuinely alive.
The cowboy alone on his own acreage is the image most of us were handed. Dr. Luke Adler and I get into what that fantasy costs you every time you refuse help.
The dating gap and the jobs numbers are the symptoms everybody is counting. Dr. Luke Adler and I get into the emotional illiteracy underneath them that nobody is measuring.
At some point your body fails in a way you cannot push through, and you fall back on whatever support you built beforehand. Why posturing is still fear wearing a hard face.
One letter separates toxic from tonic. What masculine love looks like when it is generative, and how a man calls the best out of the people standing around him.
Men's work loves to talk about killing the nice guy. He is already an upgrade on the man who came before him, and the work is to add power to him.
You were told to open up, you did it, and her reaction was not what you expected. Dr. Luke Adler and I on what happens when a man brings feeling into the room.
The most dangerous men are the aggressive ones who have no idea they are angry. The difference between the two, and how to carry anger in a way that stays clean.
Manhood gets treated as a status you can lose, so you spend your life defending it. The two scripts running that, and what happens once you can actually see them.
James Cameron called testosterone a toxin you slowly work out of your system. It is the go hormone and men need it. What the actual problem is, and where it sits.
Comparison runs from locker room measurements to somebody's vacation photos, and it has never once moved a man closer to what he wants. What to measure yourself against instead.
Men connect through a third thing, the game or the car or the job, sitting shoulder to shoulder. What becomes available the first time you turn and face another man.
The guru model came out of a different culture and a different century. Practical questions to ask anyone you are about to hand your development to, including me.
The wolf on its own is the one that got pushed out of the pack, and it rarely lasts long. What accountability from other men does for your reach.
Before the factories, boys learned manhood standing next to men all day long. What got lost in that shift, and where a man goes to receive the transmission now.
A man who cannot be with his felt sense ends up run by it, and the charge bleeds into everything else. Why feeling all of it is the stronger move.
WHEN LISTENING ISN’T ENOUGH
Most of what Jason talks about here gets practiced somewhere else, with other men, over months. That’s what the programs are for.
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