How are traditional codes of masculinity responsible for a widespread feeling of loneliness among men? What are the origins and impacts of this so-called \u201ctoxic\u201d masculinity? And above all, what can be done to turn things around? Micka\u00ebl Carlier, a social entrepreneur, author, and speaker, hopes to give a voice to positive masculinity by tackling these issues.<\/p>\n
Hello, Micka\u00ebl. We first knew you as the head of Novae, a media outlet that was dedicated to business practices with a social impact for 16 years. Recently, you founded a site called Des <\/em>hommes qui changent<\/em>, a non-profit organization with the objective of promoting positive masculinity. What do you mean by that?<\/p>\n \u201cThese days, we talk a lot about problems related to masculinity or masculinities: violence, the societal problems associated with it. The question, therefore, is: how can we talk about masculinity differently, but above all, how can we invent another type of masculinity? Masculinity, and even femininity, come from the patriarchy or certain demands of society. We construct our identity according to certain codes that don\u2019t belong to us personally. We learn that we have to be \u201clike that\u201d to be a man, which is obviously harmful to women, but also to men, and that\u2019s a bit of what I want to highlight. We, too, are prisoners of these patterns, and it would be in our interest to reinvent masculinity.\u201d<\/p>\n Did you say \u201cmasculinities?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c Yes, because on one hand, I don\u2019t have THE recipe, like anyone else. And it\u2019s also because masculinity is a continuum: there are several ways of being a man, and some are more damaging to society than others.\u201d<\/p>\n And where do these ways of being a man come from? Are they innate?<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m reading a lot about the subject, and the literature teaches us that there are very few behaviours that are biological. They\u2019re mainly socially constructed. But it\u2019s true that some men still use the biology argument to justify their problematic behaviours, while they have in front of them an opportunity to reinvent their ways of doing things, since they are learned and not innate.\u201d<\/p>\n What are the problems with current masculine social codes?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re told that to be a man, we have to disconnect from our emotions. That we have to be strong, courageous, available, especially in the world of work\u2026 infallible, ultimately! And to get there, we learn to detach completely from ourselves\u2014or in any event, mostly. What women know how to do\u2014that is, connect to their emotions, their feelings\u2014as men, we\u2019re told that this is not good.\u201d<\/p>\n And how do we deconstruct these codes?<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea behind Des hommes qui changent <\/em>is to create a platform, a space for discussion and reflection on masculinity or masculinities. Because the problem is systemic: men haven\u2019t had space to vent their frustrations, and the emotion they know is anger, because the other emotions, they haven\u2019t been taught to recognize them and make something out of them. And even anger, what do they do with it? It\u2019s just a heap of rage. In my opinion, there is a great collective opportunity to work with men to bring about major social change.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you think there is enough openness among people\u2014men and women\u2014to bring about this change?<\/p>\n \u201cYes. And I hope that the men who are going to do the work will then be able to talk about it to their brothers, cousins, and that the word spreads, instead of it still being women who have to carry the message. Can we finally have male ambassadors?<\/p>\n \u201cI get the feeling that I would have understood things much faster if it had been guy friends who had talked to me about them. I have plenty of feminist friends, but I felt the finger pointed at me a lot as a man, and rightly so. Except, obviously, that didn\u2019t put me in a position of openness\u2026 On the other hand, if we talk among men, we can understand each other, talk about our frustrations, and take action afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n What can you tell us about male loneliness?<\/p>\n \u201cI think loneliness is THE thing all men have in common. And that\u2019s normal. As for myself, I\u2019ve experienced it and I\u2019m still experiencing it, to a certain extent. We cut our- selves off from our emotions, so we\u2019re incapable of knowing what\u2019s going on inside and unable to tell others about it. That doesn\u2019t help us feel less alone. We mustn\u2019t express what we feel, we have to be strong: it\u2019s untenable as a situation. We become pressure cookers ready to explode at any minute.\u201d<\/p>\n Among women, our friends often offer us a space to open up, share what we feel, and confide in each other. Would you say that this is also the case for men?<\/p>\n \u201cAbsolutely not. No, the answer is definitely no. Among men, you should never take the risk of being too intimate, because if that\u2019s the case, it means you\u2019re gay, and you absolutely can\u2019t be gay in our patriarchal system. Unfortunately, we\u2019re still caught up in this mindset today.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the men I talk to tell me that if they were able to confide in anyone, it was their spouse. That\u2019s another commonality: the confidante is the spouse. The day the spouse leaves or there\u2019s a breakup, there\u2019s no one left. We return to loneliness.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd the guy friends, they\u2019ll go play sports, they\u2019ll go to the restaurant, they\u2019ll go for a bike ride, but talking about intimacy, sexual problems, money problems, health problems? Men don\u2019t talk about that.\u201d<\/p>\n So, this means that men can spend time together, but it remains superficial?<\/p>\n \u201cExactly. I\u2019ve been organizing men\u2019s talking circles for a few months. Recently, one of them explained to us that he had just returned from a weekend at a cottage. He had spent three days with friends. Only his guy friends, no spouses. And yet, he was incapable of telling us how each of them was doing; they had said nothing of substance to each other for three days at a cottage.\u201d<\/p>\n How do you explain that?<\/p>\n \u201cBecause it\u2019s prohibited in the masculine codes that come from the patriarchy. Because there\u2019s no place for that; we\u2019re not taught that language. What emotion can we put on what lies within us, apart from anger and \u201cI\u2019m frustrated?\u201d We don\u2019t learn those words. And I\u2019ve written a book, so I have a good vocabulary! But to talk about that, I see that it\u2019s a task that I\u2019ve been developing in recent years. \u201cI\u2019m not feeling well inside\u201d doesn\u2019t say much. It says the start of something, but it\u2019s not enough. So, to then develop a real conversation between men, we don\u2019t have the vocabulary, we don\u2019t have the ease, so we don\u2019t let ourselves go there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How are traditional codes of masculinity responsible for a widespread feeling of loneliness among men? What are the origins and impacts of this so-called \u201ctoxic\u201d masculinity? And above all, what can be done to turn things around? Micka\u00ebl Carlier, a social entrepreneur, author, and speaker, hopes to give a voice to positive masculinity by tackling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":57365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6302,6206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-favourite-articles","category-societe-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57369"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57563,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57369\/revisions\/57563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stromspa.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Micka\u00ebl carlier<\/h3>\n
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