We have to negotiate a new "masculinity"

Now before anything else, I in tandem with this article referred to in the title-link, would strongly recognise the way that women are still bedevilled by glass ceilings and being disproportionately involved with childcare and domestic labour and being sexually victimised and exploited.

That said, the writing is on the wall for once-unquestioned definitions of masculinity in terms of how we understand it in wider cultural milieus. And this article tries to point up some of the challenge.

The general impression of millions of men as essentially confused, hidebound creatures, in search of certainties that the modern world has left behind, adds up. This is hardly new – quite rightly, Rosin goes back to Susan Faludi's trailblazing 1999 book Stiffed. But in the last 15 years or so, the problem seems to have got even worse, and it seems incontestably true that millions of men have "lost the architecture of manliness but … not replaced it with any new ones".The end of men? Cardboard man is dead. Now let's redefine masculinity | John Harris

 Unfortunately we've not got much of a handle on alternative narratives except the for the clearly unhelpful Peter Pan reactions.

if you're the average halfway educated white male, what have you got to hang on to, besides what looks like textbook overcompensation? An affected interest in that great theatre of tissue-thin masculinity, football? Some vague, porn-informed idea that you can transplant the comical power relations glimpsed online into the bedroom, and demonstrate who's boss? Or just my own generation's large-scale retreat into a kind of blank infantilism, whereby even grownup dads wear saggy shorts they bought in Fat Face, fidget with their phones, and talk loudly about how much they had to drink last night? Men, writes Rosin, "could move more quickly into new roles open to them … nurse, teacher, full-time father." They could, but they usually don't.

I'd want to bring to the discussion the observation that a 'customer-service culture' requires a fuller ability with attributes traditionally associated with traditional definitions of femininity: empathy, attention to the needs of others and similar. Now note that I use words like 'associated' and 'traditional definitions'. There are very few genuine differences between men and women that are hard-and-fast. There are statistical likelihoods, but even these may be more due to culture than biochemical hard-wiring. (For more see Delusions of Gender). Men are quite capable of learning to do all this stuff -as many demonstrate- even where they have shown little interest or apparent aptitude before. The only thing stopping them/us is laddishness and similar dysadaptations of cultural repertoire.

So the real issue is about us negotiating a new cultural settlement. And this can only really happen by men thinking about this together and with women, trying things out and not accepting sexist responses.

I'm wondering what Christian men have to bring to the table. In some cases a restatement of the attitudes that are now a problem: certain traditional 'readings' of scripture or complementarianism, it seems to me, are simply attempting to fix an unsustainable and ulitimately unjust and personhood-diminishing set of gender stereotypes. at best this may help some men (and perhaps some women) to hold on until something new appears.

Let me say what I think that Christian men might be bringing to the big cultural negotiation, at our best. We follow someone who taught that being great is about serving others (including women and children), who showed leadership in promoting good for those around him and in setting them free to be fuller people with more expansive opportunities. It seems to me that however we define (cultural) masculinity, it has to work within a set of parameters which  embed service and the common good, the welfare of others. In fact, I can't see how that differs from femininity. This is counter cultural in terms of old definitions. But we have to question traditional masculinities which would problematise turning the other cheek or walking an extra mile as being 'unmanly'.

The real difficulty with masculinity is that there is no universally accepted/approved version any longer, leaving some men in crisis, trying to live out of models which seem ridiculous to many and which tend to lead to diminishing outcomes and failure in life strategies. Paradoxically, we have to ask; are we 'man enough' to change and to do the right thing. Are we 'man enough' to reject laddishness, yobbishness and emotional-stuntedness? We have to be 'man enough' to be be comfortable in our own gendered skins and not to be fazed by the fact that many times who we are does not fit the stereotypes. We have to be 'man enough' to affirm others who are unstereotypical in their self-presentation of masculinity.

Ironically, too, I suspect that part of helping us to negotiate through into a new world of male and female, could be learning from and with gay and transgender people. They are potentially part of the solution and a God-given gift to us all to help us understand culture, nature and nurture in gender and relationships.