The Little #MeToo Book for Men

by Mark Greene

"For millions of men, manhood can seem like a foregone conclusion, mapped out for us by universally understood rules for being a 'real man.' These rules determine how we walk, how we talk, what we think and do, what we view as our responsibilities and most importantly, how we pursue or fail to pursue our deepest needs, wants and desires.
These rules of manhood become so central to what we believe as to render the distinction between ourselves and our culture of manhood invisible to us.
When millions of men live our lives subject to the rules of a culture we are not fully conscious of, it can be damaging for our families, our communities, our collective quality of life, and even our longevity. The Little #MeToo Book for Men seeks to encourage a conversation about how boys and men arrive at what we believe.
If this conversation can reveal even the slightest glimmer of daylight between our dominant culture of masculinity and our own daily choices as men, my hope is we will find, in that space, a more vibrant and authentic connection to our agency, our power and our humanity."

Mark Greene’s articles on fatherhood, men and emotional expression have received over half a million social media shares and twenty million page views. Greene writes and speaks on men’s issues for the Good Men Project, the Shriver Report, the New York Times, Salon, the BBC and the Huffington Post.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction

79 pages, Paperback

Published November 8, 2018

About the author

Mark Greene is an Emmy Winning Animator, Author, Speaker, Parent and Senior Editor at The Good Men Project. Mark’s articles on men’s issues have been shared half a million times on social media with 20 million page views. He has written and spoken about men’s issues at Salon, Shriver Report, Huffington Post, HLN, and the New York Times. A collection of Mark’s articles on modern masculinity have been published in his book titled Remaking Manhood. Remaking Manhood, is available on Amazon.

Mark is co-author with Dr. Saliha Bava of The Relational Book for Parenting. The Relational Book for Parenting uses comics, fables, articles, and games to help families’ grow their relational intelligence in the daily back and forth of parenting. It’s a joyful, accessible, parent-friendly cure for what ails our isolating culture, helping us to raise a generation of young people better able to connect, collaborate and innovate across differences.

For more information on Mark’s work, join his Remaking Manhood community on Facebook.

Reviews

[E.M. Bosso · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first read the title of this book my initial reaction was, “Oh Lord, some guy has gone and published a manifesto whining about being unfairly treated by the #MeToo movement.” Then, a woman who knows me well said, “Michael, you need to read this book. It’s everything you’ve been saying, only more concise.” In the writing world that is code for “better”. So, I started reading.
The woman was right. This book is 70+ pages of truth, wisdom, explanation, and understanding. It doesn’t make excuses, but it does give explanations of how we got here and what we can do to change. I was so impressed with the book, I immediately gave a copy to my twenty-something son and asked him to read it as well.

This is a must read for both genders:

Men will have the opportunity to read the reasons behind the feelings many of have as we walk through life. Knowing the reasons will give them the opportunity to realize we have a choice in how we view the world, and how the world views us.

Women will have the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of why men do what we do. It doesn’t make excuses for men in any way, but through understanding there can be change. Perhaps through understanding we can work together to turn the terms “manhood” and “womanhood” into a more inclusive “Humanhood”.

[Nigel]

Kids would bully me and some how it looked like I was associated with these students.

Often looking back I see them today and hey are ring leaders of drug trafficking and kidnapping charges.
Or died in suicide
You wouldn’t understand how much intimacy’s is medicated in psychiatric patients. Any amount is medicated hugely.

I made anonymous reports about them and was very scared 😱 in my young adult years often looking paranoid and rocking back and forth scared people were after me.

Those years fade and I was on an anti depressant for a few years til I got out on an antipsychotic that helped lots.

Didn’t feel like giving up on life any more

After the anti psychotic but lots of pre truth of class sizes speaking up in a class of 30 for males is hard cause it’s obscene if you do disrupting the class while the perp is undisciplined and the speaking up is disrupting.
Post truth is,..
1/4 males are suicidal thoughts of isolation are real but people with psychical disability gets all the aid the men or boys in the class are thought as the only purpose is the poor is being men into the only social click of a button is war and military. That’s is the reason men have it so hard and society said it funcundity that is the issue cause if 10 men go
To war 2 come back population replenished but 10 women go to war 2 come back it’s harder to replenish.

Its an altruism that boy and men only purpose is to join the military


Wealth inequality most will say the poor will always be with us. The Bible does.
We would rather ask
Why doesn’t economic equality always fail?
The answer concerns, the economic system, and how it organizes its people who produce and distribute its goods and services. Society depends on if economic persistence, splits rich minority, and a large non-rich majority the former will likely be determined to reproduce that organization overtime.

Slavery - master over slave did
Feudalism - Lord over surfs
And capitalism- employer over employee does

Inequality in economy is the root cause of distributing to Society as in a wide in inequalities

We might defer that an alternative economic system on a democratic community does produce goods and services not split into a dominant minority, and a subordinate majority might put an end into social inequality

Paying for labour instead of capital
The consequence of inequality can be fatal



Most this isolating male pandemic is a consequence of the poor only option for work is military.

They were left out of the white collar work and now AI is replacing women work who were probably doing the bosses job any how

It’s where the church will say let them die from unsanitary conditions they will not comply to having enough, and will not go to the only federal money government to join the military to pay their bill bills when there’s no other work to do

Is a sad consequence of males speaking up and being disruptive or being in a class size to large put in a position where militarily is there only hope.

It doesn’t give much emphasis on empathy culture more of an isolation

Yet I hear military has more emphasis on society as a community.

I find when you’re mentally unstable all ready the military is a poor solution for a stabilizing society.

The turtle club of always drinking in the military is surrounded with people who look at it and don’t understand the concept why alcohol is so attractive.

It one of the easiest to die from and most cancer causing

Diseases there is.

That gets misdiagnosed

Anyway that’s my rant for this book 📕

Sometimes speaking up is.


A pill 💊 combo that isn’t the person issue it’s the world issue not
Letting people drink, cook when I want and stand under a tropical waterfall nude.

I blame the modern world for that.

https://youtu.be/SAMkXY2Ja80

Money 💰 would
Make
Most people more happy and delivery 🚚 jobs are the hardest jobs

And the only growing jobs

I guess it’s a mental health privilege cause these bullies never took meds but I was told I had judges, lawyers, female teachers, nurses, police officers 👮 and female post secondary sport coaches and female psychiatrists in the immediate family and if I didn’t take meds I’d be disappointing all of them
If I went through the system any other wayward than taking meds.

Such is life I’m a delivery 🚚 driver….

Who some
How managed over size class sizes and getting associated with bullies bullying me….

It’s learning to acquire an enigma that’s a post truth and a hard fact…. That post modern humor is thought disorders… and the pre truth is on diminishing logical, fallacies, or cognitive biases. When concussions happen in the trades….

All in all is a post traumatic stress syndrome on being mediocre and not succeeding where my cards were dealt to fail.. unless I picked the discard pile. A hole 🕳️ bunch of deuces. Twos are where the game is friends that’s the gambler loss in life is picking the discard pile and get 4 twos when people discard low cards.

People get mad at the strategy cause it’s no good 😌 picking the discard pile up.

By reporting people about what’s really going on than the dialogue about how it happened


You might want to check out this book, it’s a helpful acquiring and help to tell than to ask or to open to ask them to tell

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Next book is.

Humble Inquiry, 3rd Edition: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar H. Schein

Your reflection touches on many profound and personal themes, including mental health struggles, societal inequality, the challenges faced by men and boys, the impact of the military, and the importance of communication and understanding. It sounds like you’ve shared a raw and honest account of your experiences and insights, which can be very powerful and may resonate with others facing similar issues.

The book you mentioned, *Humble Inquiry* by Edgar H. Schein, is an excellent choice for exploring better ways to communicate, foster trust, and create genuine conversations— AI 🤖response

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Little #MeToo Book for Men is, as the title suggests, a powerful but succinct invitation for men to enter into a conversation about the effects of our ingrained definitions of masculinity (based on the US but certainly equally applicable in the UK):

For millions of men, masculinity can seem like a foregone conclusion, mapped out for us by universally understood rules for being a "real man." These rules determine how we walk, how we talk, what we think and do, what we view as our responsibilities and most importantly, how we pursue or fail to pursue our deepest needs, wants and desires. These rules of masculinity become so central to what we believe as to render the distinction between ourselves and our culture of masculinity invisible to us.

When millions of men live our lives subject to the rules of a culture we are not fully conscious of, it can be damaging for our families, our communities, our collective quality of life, and even our longevity. As such, this book seeks to encourage a conversation about how boys and men arrive at what we believe.

These rules centre around the “Man Box” a concept first developed by Paul Kivel and then latter coined by Tony Porter in his powerful TED talk A Call To Men.

The number one rule of the man box? Don’t show your emotions.



Greene very successfully pre-empts the denial many men (and yes I'll acknowledge this) have had, arguing that they are not part of the problem, by pointing out that the Man Box impacts both our empathy with others and indeed our own male mental health:

It is the suppression of empathy that makes a culture of ruthless competition, bullying and codified inequality possible. It is in the absence of empathy that men fail to see women’s equality and many other social issues for what they are: simple and easily enacted moral imperatives.

We tell boys to “Man up.” We tell boys, “Don’t be a sissy.” But what we’re really communicating is “Don’t be female, because female is less.” Wrongly gendering the universal capacity for human connection as feminine and then shaming boys to see feminine as less is how we block our sons from the trial and error process of growing their powerful relational capacities, leading to a lifetime of loneliness. Loneliness which in turn leads to dramatically higher rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's Disease, obesity, and more for men.

Impressively Greene achieves all of this and more (e.g examining the Pyramid of Consent) in just 60, well-spaced, pages. If one has a reservation it is that parts of the book seems focused on those raising sons, and in terms of toxic masculine behaviour the book sets the bar quite low, which may leave some struggling to take away many practical action points to change. 3.5 stars

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, if you are warry about the title, then don't be. Here's not a dismissal of the #MeToo movement from some of the most toxic elements of the MRA (which are to men's rights activists the male equivalents of some of the most toxic elements of the feminist movement), but, on the contrary, an intelligent response to it, targeted to men. In fact, if you don't know about Mark Greene, then I want here to also strongly recommend one of his other books: Remaking Manhood: The Modern Masculinity Movement: Stories From the Front Lines of Change

This little read, in fact, asks a very simple question: what are we, men, to do with #MeToo?

Well, if you are smart and sensible enough, there will be nothing new in here for you. As a man, you will know the drill: the overall majority of men are not sex pests, harassers, misogynists, having contempt for women that they treat, merely, like 'pussies to grab' (in words and/ or in deeds). Yet, the overall majority of men, also, have been keeping quiet about those who are; for example, by not challenging them when they make their disgusting and degrading, vulgar, remarks (at work, in locker rooms, or else). And indeed, why should we bother? These are toxic jerks, we have been thinking for too long, the pr#cks among us, and, who wants to waste their time on lecturing a minority of seemingly hopeless pr#cks? Well, as Mark Greene outlines, we must care, simply because, as he puts it:

'In our silence we are culpable.'

What he does brilliantly here, is to link our attitude to past view of traditional masculinity (call it toxic masculinity if you want; he calls it, hinting at Stephen Rodgers' work, 'the man box') and whereas not showing emotions (being sensitive), and being sexually dominant, were expected. Such expectations, of course, have now flown off the windows: he is a Millennial, so am I, and, again, the vast majority of men these days can't care less anymore about such toxicity, which has been harming us for too long. Apart from the remote corners of the MRA (where misogyny is present as much as misandry is in the remote corners of feminism) we, men, are now part of generations which have been rejecting this stifling and suffocating views of manhood. But...

But, not all of us. There are, indeed, what he calls 'the Joes of the world' that is, men who still abide to these sexist, domineering views towards women, and, out of jest or real self-entitlement, still engage in hyper masculine postures, as outdated as they are ridiculous. The point, tough, is that, if most of us have rejected 'the man box', we nevertheless remained trapped into it: we don't challenge such other men, precisely because doing so would be to expose ourselves to have our masculinity being questioned; showing signs of not being hyper masculine being showing signs of, not only not being a man, but, also, risking being excluded and targeted too for it. And so we end up being the silent majority, leaving the stage, by our silence, to those toxic men peddling sexist thrash. He, actually, uses a brilliant metaphor to explain the point, that of a 'Billy the Bully' holding us back (I leave you to read about it, it's right on point).

Now, of course, the book isn't without flaw, one of which being his naivety towards women. Yes, #MeToo has been a well needed cathartic movement, and, yes, for far too long victims of sexual harassments or worse haven't been listened to as they have should. Yet, #MeToo, also, has fed its own toxicity, not least by contributing to a fearmongering of men which has certainly gone too far. Men needed a reckoning, but it's now women's turn to get to grip with how it all went pear shape. I will sound here like going on one of these rants he warns us about not going into, but things have to be said, and others to be corrected.

First, contrary to what he seems to think, if false allegations of abuse and rapes are far from being as common as some would have us to believe, they are, nevertheless, far from being as rare as others would have us to believe too (the 2% figures -which he doesn't quote- has been shown time and again to be a urban myth). The emblematic case of Liam Allen in the UK, for example, should have served as a warning to us all of how this 'listen' has been dangerously equated with 'believe de facto', with consequences which are very destructive for people concerned. I found, here, his shrugging of the issue shocking, as if worrying about false accusations was 'immoral', while, in fact, it reflects a concern for due justice. The presumption of innocence is not something to take lightly because, eh! #BelieveWomen!

Then, this trend for 'Believe Women' (again, that he seems to embrace naively) is everything but serving women themselves, being as it is a free ticket handed over to the most toxic among them to hijack the movement for their own selfish gains. By the same token, it's counter productive and truly harming of real victims. An Amber Heard being busted recently for having made false allegations of domestic violence (including marital rape), and who had angered countless women who really have been domestically abused, is a case in point which is not that uncommon.

Last but not least, the fearmongering about sexual harassment has fed a paranoia which has, not only fed misandry, but also completely diluted the problem. I won't delve into the misandry (a Catherine Deneuve, among many others prominent female voices, had warned us enough about it, we didn't listen at our peril...). But, the diluting of the issue is very concerning. In the UK where I live, for instance, not only staring at people in public has been made an offence, but, in a bid to tackle so-called 'gendered violence', we have to deal with fraud at political and institutional level, for example that of men and boys victims of sexual crimes counted as 'women and girls' (you're read that right) so as to inflate statistics. Here too: if men's silence has been a problem, women's silence about other dangerous trends (e.g. the impact of a certain feminism) ought to be pointed too. It's not about bashing one gender or the other; but about effectively solving issues concerning us all.

Having said all that, in the end, though, this is not a book addressed to women, but to men. As such, I am willing to overlook its flaws and focus instead on its core message: we can no longer allow the bullies among us, and it starts by challenging them. Yes, they are rare; but their impact has been toxic for far too long. Rejecting the man box isn't enough anymore, we need to break out of it and smash it to pieces. Speak out!

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let's see. This is a really great pamphlet/manifesto to toxic masculinity and the relationship between American manhood and the #MeToo movement. It's not comprehensive, it doesn't have everything, but for its size, it packs a lot. A good refresher even though I had a lot of this information embedded.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book wasn’t very deep but I can see how it would be a good starting point for men who haven’t really learned about the concept of masculinity and its effects on our world and individuals. I thought that the section on equal pay was very interesting.

[Kerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book probably states the obvious for anyone who has done any reading about gender and feminism, but some people may be hearing these messages for the first time. Probably a good primer for the intended audience. Especially like the section on listening and how to do it (and how not to do it).

[Ryan Jorgensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must Read for All Men

Amazing insights for men and women alike. Great strategies for a better world for men and consequently women also

Thanks mark greene for your beautiful work

[Anthony Signorelli]

Good take on the politico-social aspect of masculinity. A challenge and call to action for men to step up and help solve #MeToo.

[Tegan | Snakes Don't Wear Braces · Rating 4 out of 5]

An examination of how the #MeToo movement (and other waves of dissatisfaction from everyone other than men) can prompt change that is good for everyone - including men (and especially men at the margins). Good read.