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Mindful Masculinity Workbook: A Practical Guide to Healthier Masculinity
In the midst of the #MeToo era, toxic masculinity gets a lot of airtime, but rarely do we make the same space for finding solutions to this overwhelming social problem. Many men want to do and be better, but don't know how. The Mindful Masculinity A Practical Guide To Healthier Masculinity provides an intensive and immersive step-by-step self-guided, solution-oriented tool bag for all men.
This workbook includes dozens of writing prompts, meditations and reflections written by Rocco Kayiatos (co-creator of Original Plumbing Magazine) and a list of heavy-hitting activists, writers and advocates, Ashlee Marie Preston, Dr. Chris Donaghue, Jacob Tobia, Wade Davis, Kirsten King, Richie Reseda, Cleo Stiller, Marquise Vilson, Jamison Green, Mike Sagun, Trystan Reese, Andrew Gurza, Jayson Moton, Martin Vitorino. If you are a man or a masculine person looking to expand your view, unpack the patriarchy or just get a better handle on identifying your feelings, this workbook is for you!
This workbook includes dozens of writing prompts, meditations and reflections written by Rocco Kayiatos (co-creator of Original Plumbing Magazine) and a list of heavy-hitting activists, writers and advocates, Ashlee Marie Preston, Dr. Chris Donaghue, Jacob Tobia, Wade Davis, Kirsten King, Richie Reseda, Cleo Stiller, Marquise Vilson, Jamison Green, Mike Sagun, Trystan Reese, Andrew Gurza, Jayson Moton, Martin Vitorino. If you are a man or a masculine person looking to expand your view, unpack the patriarchy or just get a better handle on identifying your feelings, this workbook is for you!
116 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 21, 2022
TL;DR: Really awesome and useful workbook, just not for me.
Interesting to read through, has some nice short anecdotes and articles, and in particular I liked/found useful the parts revolving around identifying emotions and asking for help.
Very accessible and I'm sure it has helped and will help many men start their own personal journeys to understanding their manhood - I'm even going to gift this to a cis friend of mine who just recently has started to expand his understanding of gender and redefine masculinity of himself, because I think he will get a lot out of it and really appreciate it.
It's marketed as "for all men," including nonbinary men and nonbinary masculine people, but as a nonbinary man I didn't find it very helpful and a lot of it was gendered in a way that I felt excluded nonbinary and trans experience. It talks about how gender is made into a binary of male vs female, but much of the book reinforces that the reader is a man and in being a man is not a woman. Which for me as a two-spirited person, I feel like a man and a woman at the same time, so this approach shuts me out from engaging meaningfully.
The author states in the beginning that he is a trans man with the perspective that "gender identity is intrinsic to one's self" which I have no problem with and have many friends who share that perspective, but my personal perspective and journey are very different from that and I think that's why I failed to connect to a lot of the discussion and exercises.
As well, as a man who presents very visibly queer and camp, I found a lot of it unrelatable and not really taking into account alternate forms of masculinity. It talks a bit about different types of masculinity, in particular I enjoyed the short article about disabled masculinity, but it is focused on "manly man" masculinity as the definition of masculinity that needs to be examined and then find a way to re-approach it from a healthy place or not at all, and doesn't give any space for masculinities that don't have *any* relationship to the "big strong tough guy" masculinity.
I didn't expect it to all be perfectly relatable, but I was still a bit disappointed. I want to explore my queer, two-spirited masculinity more and there is not many resources aimed towards interactively exploring masculinity so I was excited to check this out. However, it is mostly just a beginning primer for people who have not thought deeply about gender or their masculinity before. Which is a great resource, and important to have! But isn't useful for me.
I would recommend this if you are a man who is just starting to grapple with toxic masculinity or male privilege, or are a man who's never had the space or language to pin down discomforts you have in your daily or emotional life that seem to come from nowhere or from interacting with other men or thinking about your relationships to other men or your relationships to women.
I think this will give you the space to explore those feelings and start to understand yourself more
I would not recommend this if you are a nonbinary man, trans man who sees their own gender as fluid or changing (ie you look back on yourself pre-transition/pre-epiphany and embrace that self as a woman rather than seeing yourself as having always been a man deep down or having been a man trapped in the wrong body or perception of your body), genderfluid or genderflux, visibly queer or gender non-conforming in your day to day life, or have already engaged in a lot of self-examination about your gender and what gender and maleness and masculinity mean to you.
I doubt you will get much of substance out of this other than general self help and self examination about emotional health that you could get more in depth and helpful from somewhere else.
Interesting to read through, has some nice short anecdotes and articles, and in particular I liked/found useful the parts revolving around identifying emotions and asking for help.
Very accessible and I'm sure it has helped and will help many men start their own personal journeys to understanding their manhood - I'm even going to gift this to a cis friend of mine who just recently has started to expand his understanding of gender and redefine masculinity of himself, because I think he will get a lot out of it and really appreciate it.
It's marketed as "for all men," including nonbinary men and nonbinary masculine people, but as a nonbinary man I didn't find it very helpful and a lot of it was gendered in a way that I felt excluded nonbinary and trans experience. It talks about how gender is made into a binary of male vs female, but much of the book reinforces that the reader is a man and in being a man is not a woman. Which for me as a two-spirited person, I feel like a man and a woman at the same time, so this approach shuts me out from engaging meaningfully.
The author states in the beginning that he is a trans man with the perspective that "gender identity is intrinsic to one's self" which I have no problem with and have many friends who share that perspective, but my personal perspective and journey are very different from that and I think that's why I failed to connect to a lot of the discussion and exercises.
As well, as a man who presents very visibly queer and camp, I found a lot of it unrelatable and not really taking into account alternate forms of masculinity. It talks a bit about different types of masculinity, in particular I enjoyed the short article about disabled masculinity, but it is focused on "manly man" masculinity as the definition of masculinity that needs to be examined and then find a way to re-approach it from a healthy place or not at all, and doesn't give any space for masculinities that don't have *any* relationship to the "big strong tough guy" masculinity.
I didn't expect it to all be perfectly relatable, but I was still a bit disappointed. I want to explore my queer, two-spirited masculinity more and there is not many resources aimed towards interactively exploring masculinity so I was excited to check this out. However, it is mostly just a beginning primer for people who have not thought deeply about gender or their masculinity before. Which is a great resource, and important to have! But isn't useful for me.
I would recommend this if you are a man who is just starting to grapple with toxic masculinity or male privilege, or are a man who's never had the space or language to pin down discomforts you have in your daily or emotional life that seem to come from nowhere or from interacting with other men or thinking about your relationships to other men or your relationships to women.
I think this will give you the space to explore those feelings and start to understand yourself more
I would not recommend this if you are a nonbinary man, trans man who sees their own gender as fluid or changing (ie you look back on yourself pre-transition/pre-epiphany and embrace that self as a woman rather than seeing yourself as having always been a man deep down or having been a man trapped in the wrong body or perception of your body), genderfluid or genderflux, visibly queer or gender non-conforming in your day to day life, or have already engaged in a lot of self-examination about your gender and what gender and maleness and masculinity mean to you.
I doubt you will get much of substance out of this other than general self help and self examination about emotional health that you could get more in depth and helpful from somewhere else.
May 7, 2022
This workbook took me nearly 2 years to complete. I put it down often and went through stretches of thinking through one thought-provoking question for weeks before ready to answer or return to the passage. It's a read that I'll likely return to from time to time to reflect on how I've changed. Overall, I think it could have been more polished and held more variety of exercise, but I do like the book and appreciate what it offers me.
November 21, 2021
This workbook starts off gently and finishes with the hard hitting questions once you've had some practice with the easier ones. I found the language still quite gendered though it claims to be for non-binary folks as well. Definitely would reccomend to people wanting to unpack their masculinity.
June 7, 2024
Hit me right at a right time! Lots to explore that is hard to have come up in daily life.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews