by Liz Plank
To learn more about male shame, I turned to Brené Brown, who is considered the foremost expert on the topic as one of the few academic researchers who has observed and researched it extensively. Brown distills shame down to a fear of one thing: disconnection. As humans, she argues, we are all hardwired for emotional, physical and emotional connection, but shame convinces us that we need to hide certain parts of ourselves to preserve connection and avoid rejection. But just like fire needs oxygen, shame needs silence to grow. The less shame is talked about it, the stronger it becomes. “The less you talk about it, the more you got it,” Brown told Oprah on an episode of Supersoul Sunday, that I’ve listened to roughly 17 times. “Shame needs three things to grow exponentially in our lives: secrecy, silence and judgment.” All three of these elements had shown up in my conversations with men. The fact that male shame is not often discussed makes it that much more powerful and harder to shake.
While women experience a whole host of shame that comes from expectations placed on their gender like motherhood, racialized beauty ideals, having the perfect slim yet large-breasted body, always being pleasant and smiling for others, we’ve started having ongoing and fairly public conversations around these unrealistic ideals. Women have begun to develop the language to have those conversations. The way traditional masculinity hurts men is slipped under the rug, so men don’t talk about it and it, therefore feeds that shame loop. Masculinity, under its current definition, is antithetical to vulnerability, the element that Brené Brown says is essential to a functioning and successful relationship. Because men can’t show vulnerability, they can struggle to develop healthy relationships with themselves or others. “Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together,” Brown says. “It’s the magic sauce.” But men are not expected to be vulnerable; they are expected to be strong, and our culture has determined that those two words are antonyms rather than synonyms.
The other reason men are silent about feelings is because the realm of emotions is still not considered their prerogative. Being a man is still almost exclusively defined by bringing material stability, and emotions can almost be seen as an obstacle to that security. We’ll be talking more about this when we discuss fatherhood later in the book, but the focus on men materially providing for others as a focal way to understand manhood is what prolific feminist author Susan Faludi calls “ornamental masculinity.” It’s a superficial and stereotypically macho ideal that depends on capitalistic values of athleticism and aggressive domination. She compares it to the ornamental femininity described by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique that was rooted in stereotypical ideals of white feminine materialistic domesticity and subservience. “Men don’t want to live in a world run on retail values any more than women do,” Faludi has said. “Like women, they want to be needed and useful participants in society.” But if your value is dependent on economic rather than emotional stability, how does that translate into a world where economic resources are precarious?
When you combine men’s identity being defined by how many material resources they can accumulate and how rarely they ask for help, you get a pretty dark cycle of shame that can lead men to engage in extreme isolation. Although there isn’t enough academic research on shame, let alone the specific way that men may experience it, according to a growing number of researchers and mental health experts, it is more corrosive than other human emotions because it leads to withdrawal, which can have dramatic consequences and creates a vicious cycle of further detachment. Shame is not just a feeling; it’s a barrier to functioning. It doesn’t just make you feel bad; it makes you dysfunctional. Shame creates lies about how men should think and act, and when men don’t fulfill those roles, they have additional shame. We see it play out in one of the greatest and most-ignored crises of our times: homelessness. We largely see it as an economic problem, because it is. It’s a result of a lack of economic mobility and opportunity as well as a housing crisis, but it’s also enabled by the lies we tell about men.
When I tried to find data about the link between shame and homelessness, I came across almost nothing. When I researched homelessness, an issue that is twice as likely to impact men as women, I was shocked to find that very little research has been dedicated to the intersection of masculinity and shame, despite the fact that the number one reason1 homeless people don’t seek out the support of friends or family is “because they were too embarrassed about being homeless.” In fact, even research that investigates the link between gender and homelessness is rare.
Part of the reason for the lack of research is because homelessness doesn’t receive the academic research and attention it deserves. It’s even worse at the policy level. Very rarely do we hear politicians discuss their plan to address homelessness as a main plank of their campaign. If we just take the 2016 election as a sample, Hillary Clinton had a plan for homeless veterans and youths, but it wasn’t a front-facing topic like many other issues in her campaign. Donald Trump didn’t have a single policy proposal addressing homelessness, and when two of his supporters beat up and urinated on a homeless man’s face, he didn’t even immediately condemn it. Self-described Trump supporters Scott and Steve Leader, both in their thirties, stole the man’s blanket and sleeping bag and broke his nose with a metal pipe. While in jail, one of the brothers said it was “okay to assault” the victim, because he “was Hispanic and homeless.” I tried to find one single presidential debate where homelessness was addressed and I couldn’t find any. Although there are 554,000 homeless people in the United States, they are rarely seen as a voting bloc because many of them never make it to the ballot box, often because they don’t have the proper ID that the state requires.
Although homelessness cuts across all socioeconomic and ethnic groups, the majority of homeless people are single men. In fact, single men are one of the fastest-growing demographics in groups of homeless people. While family and veteran homelessness is on the decline, single-male homelessness is actually increasing. According to governmental data, 51 percent of homeless people are single men, 25 percent are women with children and the rest tend to be families. Since 2001, there’s been a 40 percent drop in homeless veterans because of the attention of Veterans Affairs to correcting the situation. Single men haven’t received that kind of national policy attention, despite the fact that states like Hawaii and many counties in California have declared states of emergency because of the explosion in their homeless populations in recent years.
Given the high incidence of men who end up in the streets, it’s curious that so little research is interested in understanding why men are more vulnerable to becoming homeless. So I went looking for answers by speaking to my friend Kevin F. Adler. In addition to being a sociologist and author, he’s the founder of Miracle Messages, an award-winning volunteer-led organization that helps reconnect homeless people with their friends and families by assisting them in recording a message for someone they lost touch with. After a person experiencing homelessness agrees to record their message, the team of “digital detectives” attempts to locate those friends and family members to show them the video and let them know that the homeless person wants to reconnect. They also have a paper-based form and built a 1-800-MISS-YOU hotline to assist with reunifications.
Kevin, whose own uncle experienced homelessness, built his organization around his theory of what he has termed “relational poverty” on the streets: “That homeless people are not problems to be solved, they’re people to be loved.” Although more affordable housing is the most crucial way to curb homelessness, Kevin argues that many people who live on the streets have social networks, but can’t access them out of shame about their situation. “Many are single adult men, and many of these individuals are incredibly isolated, and lonely,” he told me. “When we ask them if they want to reconnect and they record a message, the most common reason why they change their mind is ‘I feel dirty,’ so, in other words, an internalized sense of shame, fear, self-loathin
g and a result that they feel like they’re not lovable and don’t want to put that burden or shame on their family.” The little bit of research I could find confirmed that shame is a significant moderating factor that prevents men from reaching out to the very support systems they need. A study by Micheal L. Shier, Marion E. Jones and John R. Graham (2011) found that it’s common for homeless people to cite embarrassment as a reason for not getting in touch with their support networks. Given this internalized shame, it’s no surprise that the average time apart for clients Kevin reconnects is twenty years. He says it takes them on average less than a month to locate the homeless person’s loved ones and 82 percent of the time they are excited to reconnect. When I asked Kevin what was the number-one cause of homelessness, he mentioned the lack of affordable housing, the rising cost of housing, wage stagnation, income inequality, mass incarceration and the lack of support for mental health and addiction issues. But Kevin also emphasized shame and how relational poverty is often forgotten.
“Shame keeps people from engaging in resources that may help them overcome problems.”
One of the few research papers about masculinity, shame and homelessness was written by a doctoral student at the University of Iowa, Kevin L. Fall. He wrote that shame is both central and rarely an admitted factor in the homelessness crisis, particularly when it comes to men. His research finds that “shame appears to be a dominant theme in homelessness,” and that “beginning in early childhood, shame seems to play a contributory role that directs children toward a path of homelessness.”
Fall describes it as a shame loop that renders a lot of men helpless in the face of homelessness:
Painful shame feelings lead to one of two coping strategies. Men may either isolate (i.e., social withdrawal or avoidance) or act out in masculine ways that can include compulsive work, substance abuse or aggression. When men adopt maladaptive coping strategies, they encounter difficulties in interpersonal and emotional conflict that further intensify feelings of shame and reinforce one’s sense of inadequacy, thus contributing to the aversive cycle.
It’s especially sad when you think about the way homeless men are portrayed. They are called hobos, bums and worse. Many of these words are often said to their face. Jordan Peterson, who advises men to “avoid helping people with things they can do for themselves,” mocked a tweet by then-premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne, because she called affordable housing something that people deserve. This kind of thinking portrays homeless people as lazy or violent when very often they’ve been victims of violence themselves. In fact, homeless people are thirteen times more likely to have been victims of violence than people who are housed. Although there are many causes of homelessness, lack of parental support and childhood trauma can often lead to homelessness later in life. In fact, child abuse and trauma can often be a precursor to homelessness. One sample of 212 homeless men found that 36.8 percent had been physically abused, 10.8 percent had been victims of sexual violence and 19.3 percent had experienced a combination of both. If you have been incarcerated, you are also much more likely to become homeless. Being incarcerated for twenty-seven days means you are 11.5 times more likely to have experienced homelessness.
Given how important it is for men to be providers—this is often the defining characteristic for men—it follows that when they are unable to fulfill that expectation, they experience the kind of shame that throws them into isolation. When I think about Jordan Peterson’s attitude toward homeless men, it makes me furious. In fact, it’s not just his comments about homelessness per se but also the entire model that Peterson spews about what a “real man” is that exacerbates the gap between the current life of a homeless man and the expectation he has of what a man should be. For many of these men, the shame is paralyzing. And hiding on the streets with that shame may become an easier alternative than having to show themselves to the people they love, people who often miss their family members and desperately want to reconnect. The shame of being lost shouldn’t prompt men never to ask for help.
How powerful of a vector shame can be became clear to me when I spoke to Charles Lyons, a 25-year-old young professional who works in project management in New York City. He told me that shame was central to his reluctance to ask for help when he found himself homeless over the course of a cold East Coast winter eight years ago when he was only 17 years old. He had a difficult childhood in rural New Jersey, where he grew up witnessing violence and abuse. When his family was evicted from their home a week before Christmas, he slept in his car in a Walmart parking lot. Although he was crestfallen to be spending Christmas Eve alone in his car, he remembers looking at the pine tree air freshener hanging on his rearview mirror as a reminder that at least he had a symbolic tree. “I could have asked for a place to stay with my friends, but I didn’t want to ruin their holidays,” he told me when we grabbed coffee. Now that he is housed, he has chosen to dedicate his life to helping those who aren’t. He’s spent the last few years helping the homeless and disenfranchised find jobs, and he noticed something interesting: it was primarily women who seemed comfortable enough to ask him for assistance. “I’ve hardly ever had a man directly ask me for help to get a job,” he explained. “I’ve had many women call me crying, desperate for a job, but men will often ask rather indirectly.” Charles says that’s born out of the way society shapes us that “views women as incapable and views men as supercapable.” He says we tell men, “You’re a man; go figure it out,” and this in turn often means “people are less likely to provide assistance to a man.” He remembers absorbing this very mantra when he was homeless. He didn’t think about who could help him; he just thought about how he was going to help himself. “I didn’t think who can I turn to … it was like I gotta figure this out somehow,” he explained. “Pride plays a very big role from a very young age.… Men are told that if you don’t have anything, well, at least you have your pride.” He also noted the link between men’s identity and their work. While women often are desperate for work, it’s to provide for their children; for men he noticed it was related to their sense of self-worth and identity. “When we have no work, we have no purpose,” Charles said.
Let’s be clear: while shame perpetuates the cycle of homelessness, it’s not the primary contributing factor. That would be a gross oversimplification. Homelessness is a systemic problem that receives a fraction of the consideration and airtime it deserves from policy makers and the general public, and what those who aren’t housed want above all else is access to affordable housing. Nonetheless, the data points to the role of shame perpetuating and exacerbating the crisis, so this aspect deserves more attention, too.
When we don’t think about male shame we are not productively addressing the world’s biggest problems, because many of them are rooted in that shame or exacerbated by it. According to Brené Brown, shame can start to dissipate through the act of talking about it. As she poignantly wrote, “Self-disclosure helps heal pain.” In other words, the more we talk about our shame, the more it dissipates because it can no longer hide. Shame’s ability to warp the universal truths about gender is as powerful as our refusal to address those myths. If we were to discuss and challenge the myths that dictate men’s lives, perhaps men would realize that the shame they’re carrying was never theirs to begin with.
The strongest men are the ones that also understand their weaknesses.
—VICTOR PINEDA
AMUSE-BOUCHE:
Victor’s Story
The minute I met Victor, I knew he was a ladies’ man. Charismatic, confident and flirty, he hit all the playboy boxes. Yet he tells me it still surprises him when people refer to him as “alpha” or a “wolf pack leader.” Victor lives with a disability, which means he gets around in an electric wheelchair and uses a machine to help him breathe. Although he’s not society’s image of a prototypical womanizer, I can tell you from experience, he’s always the most charming man in the room.
“I project and learned to project some type of strength b
ecause I have a physical weakness,” he said to me. Knowing that people would make assumptions about his body, he compensated for it with a rock-hard psyche. “Because I weigh ninety pounds and have thin arms and thin legs, there is a perception that I am fragile and weak or incapable. There has to be for me a moment where I can project strength in order to circumvent the pejorative social construct that would limit what I can do.” Victor doesn’t think he’s alone. “A lot of men with disabilities have to confront this idea that they don’t see us as sexualized or fully human.”
Victor developed a strong sense of self to make him immune to societal perceptions about disability. “I don’t have the typical male body that you see in magazines, underwear commercials, billboards, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel like my body is attractive, beautiful and able to feel desire and pleasure. Masculinity is anything you want it to be. The problem is when you think it’s prescriptive that it’s a problem.”
Victor wants more men to get to know themselves. “I think most men are oblivious to the multiple identities and cultures they carry,” he explained. “We need to be able to have a space to find our most authentic selves by being aware of things that we might be carrying.” He recently joined a men’s circle that encourages males to get together and discuss the issues they grapple with. “If you want to create a conscious intentional identity, you need these spaces. You can’t adapt an identity without being aware of its implications.”
One of the changes Victor wants to see is men evolving from the ideal of independence. “Humanity is about meeting people, creating social value and a collective tribe or community. There is always going to be an individual within a group. If you are a man, and you think you’re an island, that will come back and bite you in the ass.” He explains that living life without needing others is simply unsustainable given that the survival of the human race depends on it. No wonder one of his favorite quotes is “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world,” a lyric sung by Barbra Streisand in the song “People.”