Men deserve better than Scott Galloway. Men deserve the Greek God Dionysus.
Seeking a more expansive male mythology.
Next Sunday April 19 at 11:00am PT is our book club discussion of The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini. You will need to register to join us. The registration link is under the paywall at the end of this post.
Last month, a documentary aired called “Into the Manosphere” spotlighting influencers from the internet subculture known for egregious misogyny.
The reaction was swift and familiar: We desperately need better role models for boys!
Right on time, enter Scott Galloway.
Described by The Guardian as “progressive Jordan Peterson,” Scott is happy to fill the vacant position of healthy male role model for today’s lost boys. He is an NYU economics professor with a new best-selling book on how to be a man in the modern era.
Whenever the crisis facing boys is brought up in the news, you can bet our man Scott is called in for an interview.
According to Scott what the world needs now is a “modern form of aspirational masculinity.”
Ok sure. Men are facing all these new challenges with the advent of new technology, a changing economy, shifting gender roles. Times are a-changin’. So what is Scott’s brand new, innovative upgraded masculinity?
…. wait for it….
“Galloway’s book presents a capital-letter credo: ‘Men Protect, Provide, and Procreate.’” - The New Yorker
Protecting, providing and procreating??
I juuuuust can’t help but notice one teensy, tinesy problem with his message for modern manhood…..
It’s literally the exact same message men have been receiving for the past 4000 years.
But wait! You should also like, be nice to girls.
And to be fair, the being nice to girls and not taking away their jobs is a nice contrast to the manosphere.
But still, at its heart, Scott’s message is same message the Manosphere peddles1. Its same message men have had shoved down their throats since 1400 BC when it was written in Deuteronomy that a man must provide for his household and protect them.
The oldest written legal system we have is the Code of Hammurabi in 1750 BC. And wouldn’t you know it, it also outlines an infrastructure where a man’s role is to provide, protect and procreate.
And for 35 centuries, what has all this providing, protecting and procreating done for the world? Has it protected us from war? Rape? The destruction of our planet? Rampant inequality? Colonialism? Isolated individualism?
Call me crazy but maybe instead of re-hashing these ancient ideas of manhood every generation, maybe I don’t know, it’s time for a new story?
In search of a more expansive myth
Sophie Strand is a writer, researcher and a poet obsessed with myths and mythology.
We like to think we create our own myths to follow, but usually we don’t write our myths, our myths write us.
In her book The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, Strand says that men having been handed the same old story for a very, very long time.
“Patriarchy says there is only one story—the hero’s story—the story of domination.” - Sophie Strand
The hero arc shows up in just about every myth, story and role model we have for boys—be they modern or ancient, religious or secular.
The story goes like this: once upon a time there was a weak boy, who through pain and violence is transformed into a hero. He fights the bad guys. He saves the village. He wins the damsel.
He protects. Then he procreates. Then he provides.
From David fighting Goliath to Odysseus to Attila the Hun to Hercules to William the Conqueror to Captain America to John Wayne to Mario to Harry Potter.
Same story. Same myth. The lone masculine dominator. Re-packaged anew every single generation.
It’s the same message Scott Galloway is preaching— if you stop being so lazy and weak, if you man up, you will win the girl and finally make something of yourself.
Which would be great if “manning up” actually helped men. Unfortunately research shows that the more a man tries to adhere to the tenants of masculinity—avoidance of the feminine, restrictive emotionality, self-esteem tied to financial success— the more likely he is to experience depression and suicidality, have difficulty forming close relationships, have issues with substance abuse and not ask for help.2
We can do so much better.
Men deserve better stories. Ones that don’t make them more depressed. Ones that don’t require good guys and bad guys.
Ones that don’t ravage the world.
Back to Sophie Strand
On the Life is a Festival podcast, on an episode called ‘A Mythic Probiotic for Masculinity” Sophie Strand said,
“I see men in my life who have had a very impoverished experience of what their life can look like because they’ve only been given one story. And so we can be really compassionate for the people who identify as male in our lives that they have not been given good stories to live out. When they make bad decisions, they were not given a lot of options.
And when you have a gut that doesn’t have a lot of microbes in it, a monologuing pathogen can take over. And the way you cure that is not by killing the monologuing pathogen, but by adding fermentation to it. Adding probiotics, adding more stuff in.
I just want to give the masculine a big probiotic hug. And say you know, you need a lot more options. You need options that come from fungi, from lizards, from weather systems, from different cultures. We need to have holobiont masculinity stories. Holobiont meaning beings that are composed of other beings.”
There's a lot of talk right now about combating the Manosphere and fighting “toxic masculinity.”
But Strand says the way you cure is not by killing and fighting, but by adding more stuff in.
Sophie says that she doesn’t want to kick “toxic masculinity” out of the room. She just doesn’t want to see it at the podium. She wants to see it seated in a room with 300 other speakers.
The man interviewing Strand in the Life is a Festival podcast, Eamon Armstrong says that growing up he tried to cut off his femininity. No! Bad! Get away!
That didn’t work. It was part of him. So then he became a new age man and tried to cut off his masculinity. No! Bad! Get away!
But that didn’t work. It was part of him. What was needed wasn’t severing off parts of himself, but integrating it all.
And adding in lots of diverse myths, models and stories into the mix as well.
This reminds me of an object lesson about how to get rid of a negative thought:
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If the thought “I am a failure” as represented by a line of Cheerios, isn’t helpful, don’t try to take away those ‘failure’ Cheerios. Instead, just keep adding even more Cheerios to the thoughts, “I am a success.” “I am a good friend.” “I am a human.”
We don’t need to fight to erase patriarchal masculinity (it isn’t going anywhere), what we need to do is add in LOTS of different options, different thoughts, different paths. And then pour attention into those.
What I love about Strand is that her work constantly expands the confines of my imagination, pushing me to think bigger, bigger, bigger.
I tend to be stuck on stretching masculinity bigger to include things typically associated with femininity—emotional expressiveness, vulnerability, community. But Strand says, that’s good and needed to add the “feminine” into the “masculine,” but it’s still too small. Think bigger! Add in some queerness.
Yes we should add queer stories to the masculine, but that is still thinking too small. Think bigger! Add in some animals.
Yes we should add in non-human living creatures to the masculine—monkeys, turtles, crabs and potato bugs, but that is still thinking too small. Think bigger! Add in more of the natural world.
Add in palm trees, riverbeds, dandelions, rotting leaves, weather systems and entire ecosystems of mycelial roots.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Dionysus: an interconnected, expansive model of masculinity/humanity/aliveness
One of Strand’s favorite myths for the masculine is the Greek god Dionysus.
Well, we say Greek God, but did you know that Dionysus appeared all over Europe and Asia across different cultures for thousands of years before the Greek or Roman Empires? Dionysus is actually the only Olympian God showing up in Minoan Crete for instance.
We’ve been sold an image of Dionysus as this good-for-nothing gallivanting drunk party god, but that’s actually the result of Christianity’s and imperialism’s smear campaign. Christianity felt threatened by his paganism3. And imperialism felt threatened by his “laziness,” “partying” and lack of concern with hierarchies or empire.
Dionysus is actually hard to pin down as just one thing. He is ever-shifting century to century. His depictions are incredibly expansive and varied across time and place.
Here’s why he fits in so well to Strand’s hunt for expansive, transforming myths:
Dionysus was masculine. He has numerous lovers and children. He’s no stranger to battle. He commands the Maenads and satyrs.
He was masculine yes, but he was so much more than just masculine.
Dionysus was feminine. To hide him from Hera, he was dressed and raised as a girl. Classical art shows him with long flowing hair, no beard and soft delicate features. Instead of armor, he wore dresses, flowing robes, and a crown of ivy. He was god of the dance and ecstasy.
He was feminine yes, but he was so much more than just feminine.
Dionysus was queer. He took male lovers (Ampelos and Adonis) as well as female lovers. He was androgynous—both man and woman and neither. His festivals were full of sexual fluidity—men dressing as women and socially transgressive sexuality.
He was queer yes, but he was so much more than just queer.
Dionysus was animal. He wasn’t just close to animals, he bled into them. He had a bull form and is often depicted with bull horns. He is shown riding on big cats, sometimes becoming half-leopard. He is related to the half-goat beings called satyrs.
He was part animal yes, but he was so much more than animal.
Dionysus was plant. He is god of the vine, but more than metaphorically, he is the grapevine. He is the god of fermentation and decomposition. In Orphic traditions, Dionysus himself is dismembered and reborn. His fennel staff called thyrsus was a tool of transformation. It could conjure water directly from the earth. It caused the land to flow with milk and honey.
Simply put, Dionysus was alive, not standing above life ruling over it, but intricately woven in and connected to all life on earth.
He is the god of wine-making, fermentation, orchards, fruits, vegetation, fertility, madness, ecstasy, decomposition and theater. He is a mischievous prankster who loves a party. He is ever-changing. He is interconnected, rooted and growing.
He is less mono-culture, more diverse ecosystem.
He is the sole Olympian God to traverse thousands of years of stories because he adapted time and again to new cultures and circumstances.
Where patriarchy’s model of masculinity is set, linear and individual, Dionysus’s is transformational, cyclical and relational.
Come on down! Join us!
Strand’s prescription for relating to men is not to shun them, not to isolate or shame them, but simply to invite them to step down from their place in the hierarchy above us and come join us in the rich relationality we share together.
This reminds me of Robin Wall Kimmerer—an Indigenous botanist and environmental science professor. Her prescription for humans relating to nature is very similar to Strand’s for men.
Kimmerer teaches all these college students who are full of shame about how humans have treated the earth— bulldozing miles and miles of old growth forests to build parking lots and new kitchens, time and again caring more about profit than preservation.
But shame is not what is needed. What is needed is stepping down from our dominant place in the hierarchy above nature to take our rightful place among it. To join all plants and animals in the rich relationality we share together.
The call for both masculinity and humanity is to go from this:
To this:
Just as nature says to us: come down! Join us in the circle of life! We don’t want you ruling over us and destroying us, but we want you among us, taking your place as equals to us. We say to men: come down! We don’t want you ruling over us and destroying us, but we want you among us, taking your place as equals to us.
A non-evolving ecosystem is not a healthy ecosystem
“We are so stuck inside a human idea of gender and gender dualism that we forget that nature is very queer and creative and always changing.
And if you look at archetypes in nature, they are in movement. To have a stable archetype in nature is to stop evolving. Masculinity will stay healthy if it keeps changing. Species that stop changing are not adapted to changing climate and environmental pressures.” - Sophie Strand
Adaptation, change, decay and decomposition are all essential to produce healthy soil and healthy ecosystems. An environment that doesn’t change is weak and susceptible. It doesn’t produce good fruit.
Galloway’s prescription of men to focus on providing, protecting and procreating does not meet the current geopolitical moment. His principle concern stated over and over is that men have fallen in the ranks— in education, in the job market, in their desirability to women. His task then is to help men retain their fallen rank—work harder, make more money, be more attractive to women.
But that world where women need a provider and protector has evolved. If men are to thrive in this new environment, they too must evolve beyond what their ancient patriarchal script prescribes.
Time to compost the past and grow something new
Galloway is the ultimate example of Audre Lorde’s warning about trying to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. He correctly diagnoses that boys and men are in crisis. But then he hands them the very tools that built that crisis to begin with: you are not innately worthy, you must earn your worth.
Men deserve better.
I much prefer Sophie Strand’s take on dismantling the master’s house.
She says, let’s not bomb it, let’s compost it4. Let the old beams and walls collapse into the soil. Let it decompose. Let it soften. Let it return to the earth.
Dump on some purple flowers, banana peels, earthworms, animal bones and mushrooms. Let all the things play and mush together in the dirt.
The aim is not to endlessly fortify the same old house.
But to discover what new life-giving fruits could grow if we let the old decay.