“Men” … what are they good for?

A helluva lot more than they actually think they are!

#MeToo is a movement, and a good one. It’s making headway and we’ve “come a long way baby,” but still have a long way to go. And women aren’t alone in needing a movement, so do men.

Ladies, don’t gloat over their needs, instead jump in and lend a hand. It’s good for men, good for women and good for the advancement of heterosexual relationships on which we all depend. And a great starting point is Jed Diamond’s latest book, 12 Rules for Good Men.

“Men have fallen out of their hearts into their heads. Women have fallen over their hearts into their heads. We have both fallen out of the grace of spirit. We have been conditioned to honor a system of values built on contempt and disrespect for who we are as a community of people.” – Iyanla Vanzant, author, life coach and host of Fix My Life on OWN

Iyanla Vanzant wrote the Foreword for Diamond’s book and in it declares, “I had to rework my entire consciousness about men in order to give my son and grandsons what they needed.” That’s something many women should consider, particularly those immersed in #MeToo.

We’re in this together

#MeToo isn’t anti-men, it’s anti-bad men. There’s a helluva difference. And it’s anti-hundreds of valid reasons men behave the way they do. Ingrained traditions, cultural biases, societal values, genetic realities. When we look at it holistically we can see why all good men and good women need to work together to fix a broken relationship, a relationship rooted in at least 10,000 years of recent history and Darwin’s science and, as Jed Diamond declares, “billions of years” of biology.

That’s one helluva Sisyphean mountain to climb but we must if we have any expectation of becoming a more loving and advanced species. We don’t need more wars, more differences, more bigotry, more misogyny, more patriarchy, more division.

We share the same space and if we are not working together in cooperation and collaboration with mutual respect and understanding then we are destined to fail as partners in the evolution of our species. That will be sad, not to mention make for a lousy journey.

Diamond’s book is as enlightening for women as men and the inherent value of understanding men is, for women, not only a necessity but can be a gold mine of empathy, compassion and love. So if you love him or want to demonstrate your love more, read the book.

The book isn’t just diagnostic, the 12 rules are a prescription for how men can be more “fully alive to themselves, to the women they love, to their families and friends … and embrace their maleness.” This is not cookie-cutter psyco-babble, Diamond anchors his theory in evolutionary history (see Chapter #4: Embrace Your 1 Billion Year History of Maleness) and distills the male essence into the “3Ss: Safety, sustenance ans sex.” Even though we’ve crossed over tens-of-millions of years, we are still today, in many ways, defined by the 3Ss – and that’s a good thing to know and understand. It speaks to an understanding of why we behave the way we do.

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