What does it mean to be a man?

What does it mean to be a man, to have grown up in a male body? This question reverberated in my head last weekend, sitting in a circle with thirteen men, united across age and sexual preference by the simple fact of being men. As I contemplated the answer I wanted to share in this men’s circle, several pieces of my life suddenly fell into place.

Growing up a white, European, middle-class, hetero man, my experience of life has felt limited. Yes, limited, in spite of – no, because of all the privileges that seem to come with the random fact of being born a man in a white, middle-class family in Western Europe.

Since elementary school, I have felt a great power harbouring inside me, a voice calling me out to work hard, learn incessantly and care for friends and strangers alike. While I enjoyed running around and playing with my classmates, I also felt that I didn’t always fit in. Rarely did I participate in the activities of the “cool kids” or was I invited to join in. I wasn’t good at them either, to be honest, for lack of interest: I preferred spending my time and energy expanding my horizon.

Not conforming with the predefined image of being a boy wasn’t always easy. However, as I grew up I came to understand that this was a privileged struggle. I learned about the poor people in Africa and the threats to indigenous people’s livelihoods due to natural resource extraction and deforestation. Over the years, inequality appeared ever closer in my life: homeless people, migrant discrimination, LGBTI exclusion all the way up to the daily battles women fight against invisible walls received a concrete face to me.

As natural as it was to feel indignation against the unequal treatment these billions of people face more frequently than I powder my nose, as easy it was to retreat in the cocoon of white, male, hetero, western privilege whenever I wanted to – something that I have done unconsciously more often than I would like to admit.

The most recent confrontation took place just a few weeks ago, as I was watching Nanette. Triggered by the recommendations of several feminist friends on Facebook, I was eager to gain a greater insight into a woman’s perspective on life. I did not expect to have my world of white male privilege shaken up and down that unabashedly.

Digesting tears of shame, I felt overwhelmed by a feeling of impotence. Whereas I didn’t identify myself with many images of male violence portrayed in the show, it was crystal clear to me that I have been contributing on a weekly – if not daily – basis to the structures of exclusion and discrimination that remain almost completely out of sight to men.

What could I do to change this? With which moral authority could I throw myself into the fight against inequality, not knowing what it really feels like, not realising how much I contribute to perpetuating it? This realisation paralysed me. I didn’t see a way out of this moral conundrum and resigned to humbled silence.

Up until the men’s circle of last weekend, that is. Earlier that day, we had been discussing how much our behaviour is conditioned by society’s appreciation and valuation of men purely in function of their performance. At the workplace, our payslip and our hierarchical position determine our value; on the field, our ability to outcompete other men; in the street, the price tag of our car and our manly appearance; at home, the size of our television and conformity to the male-female division of chores; in bed, our stamina and sexual virility rivalling that of porn stars.

For most of my life, many of these societal notions of manliness have dominated my life on a personal and professional level, until they caused me to crash. The fact that I survived this motorbike crash with not much more than a few scratches and a heavily bruised ego, was a wake-up call for me. Since then, I have engaged in a process of self-development ranging from reconstructive constellation workshops over meditation to men’s circles like the one of last weekend.

This work has helped me to recognise and deconstruct the structures that dominate our society and my behaviour in it. Creating space to devote time just to myself, has contributed to realising what my values are and what I want to do with my life – not what I ought to be doing for me to be appreciated or accepted by society or my family.

Last weekend’s eye-opener was the possibility to remove the objective out of sex, the disjunction between having an orgasm and ejaculation. While these two are generally believed and expected to go hand in hand (pun intended), this limits our sexual experience tremendously, making us focus – once again – on performance. Having an orgasm becomes an act that can be measured by me and my partner; not ejaculating receives the stigma of non-performance, something must be wrong.

But what if we decoupled these two? What if we removed the objective of ejaculation from the sexual act? Would it not liberate us from the yoke of performance and allow us to focus on the intercourse instead? It will invite us to become more present to the exchange of energy that takes place in this most intimate of spaces: to how I feel, to how my partner feels, to the exploration of many more physical sensations besides the genitalian one, to an extasis that can elevate us beyond the limitations of the physical and connects us with our essence.

This revelation opened a new world of opportunities to me. I realised that consciously removing the performance objective out of sex could be equally applied to all other areas of life. Removing externally measurable objectives as the (sole) way of valuing men (and by extension women who want to appear performing like men when trying to shatter glass ceilings and walls), opens the doors to connecting in a wholesome way with life, consciously including every living being in our thoughts, speech and actions, realising that we cannot thrive if this limits others in their capacity to thrive.

That’s when it dawned on me that this newly gained freedom comes with a great responsibility: on a personal level, to replace performance by the ability to connect inclusively and wholesomely as a guiding stick when appreciating my own behaviour and that of other’s; and on a societal level, to share this insight with other men, whether in existing spaces or by creating ones in which to extend this message.

This is a moral imperative that I – a white, hetero, western, middle-class man – can commit to in full conscience and without limitations, as my contribution to the fight against inequality, discrimination and exclusion, as my contribution to unconditional happiness of all living beings.

On relieving the current flow of people in need

In this post, I'm sharing a few articles that provide a more critical reflection on the recent humanitarian crisis and how it is being framed in the media and online. They voice the troubled gut feeling I've had so far when watching the www overflow with emotional cries and impromptu calls for semi-coordinated citizen relief efforts. This is going to be Band Aid all over again and in a few years, practitioner experts and academia alike will be writing on how this huge amount of goodwill achieved so little.

Simply sharing shocking images of a little boy that had drowned, actually reinforces the divide between us, westerners, and our privileges, and them, refugees, and their hard-wrought plights. It won't bring us any nearer to the solution. I hadn't read the article linked into the Vox one about the white-saviour industrial complex but it definitely complements and deepens that line of thought. Also, as Hans Rosling pointed out, it also is another opportunity for media and politicians alike to present Africa and the Middle East as places of pure horror and chaos, whereas tremendous improvements in peoples' lives have been occuring too and there are many positive stories to be told as well. By depicting them as victims you deprive them of their capacity to contribute to society and be part of positive change.

In case you were wondering why refugees pay so much money to risk their lives in shabby rubber boats instead of buying a much cheaper plane ride

Lest we forget, there is much more to all those people fleeing than just war or conflicts. There are often many reasons why that conflict has come about, and most of them involve us, consumers, or our governments, in multiple ways. (Think climate change; arms trade; resource-linked foreign policies; business interest trumping human rights; to name but a few.)

Rather than discussing the height of barbed-wired fences or the pros and cons of a EU-wide quota system, one of the debates to be had is how to implement the Refugee Convention that our nations have subscribed, more in particular, what to do once the countries of origin do no longer pose a threat to the lives of those we have hosted as refugees. Unfortunately, many of those countries of origin are bound to be in upheaval for many years to come. Refugee children will be born here and will grow up in our societies. Do we simply ship them back, as Tanzania did with hundreds of thousands of Burundese families after ten, twenty or in some cases even thirty years, or do we already think of how to integrate them as of today? Is the latter option practically, not to mention politically, feasible?

All this is not to say that we should not help those thousands of refugees marching through in search of a safe haven. Of course we should. But, leave the relief support to professionals. All those citizen-led initiatives inspired by the inaction and incapacity of our governments in hosting this sudden influx of people are no doubt well-intentioned, but good intentions can sometimes have horrible consequences. Already many stories are to be heard of donated clothes that have to be thrown away because they're dirty or wet or too big; that there is not enough space for all the food to be stored; etc. The only effect this will have is that, in two-three months from now, people won't be there anymore to provide warm clothes or other supplies, because they were turned down today for lack of storage capacity. You want to do something now? Ask professional relief organisations (such as the Red Cross or established refugee organisations) what you can do. And beware that most often it will be by simply donating money, even though that may not be as gratifying as feeding a hungry person yourself.

You can't have it all

2012 has been a year filled with new experiences, new friends and lots of new fruits. Applying my last year's wishes, I would like to share with you one of the most valuable lessons I learnt in 2012. I'll never forget the moment: a friend of mine came over for a visit, so I was showing her around the historical centre. We decided to have a beer on the Plaza de San Francisco, which has one of the only outside terraces on which you can enjoy a drink or a bite in the open air.

As we were updating each other on our lives, I was telling her how I was enjoying myself on a personal level in my new habitat, yet felt rather unsatisfied with my professional environment. I had just come up to speed rambling, when my friend interrupted me to say: if there's one lesson I've come to learn over the years, it is that you cannot have it all. No matter how hard you try, there will always be something that is missing from the picture. So you better learn to live with the fact that you cannot have it all: appreciate all the good you have instead of focusing on what you do not have!

It took me a while to absorb the message and, most of all, to accept its ramifications. Not an easy feat, especially when society surrounds you with images of success, glamour and glitter, where the sky is the limit and life seems burdenless. As soon as I accepted my friend's advice, however, I cannot count the times that I saw, read or lived the proof of that valuable lesson. Be it a volcano that didn't let me ascend to her summit, women who still cannot match a high fly job with nurturing their families, or simply a clash of agendas, life abounds with examples that you simply cannot have it all, nor should you try to.

Appreciate all the good things around you, do not abandon ship at the first sight of stormy clouds. Just give the sun some time to break through. Of course, if you still feel you're on the wrong track, you can always change direction. Just don't give up too soon, keep patient and enjoy the good company while it lasts!

As for me, the sky has cleared: not long after my friend left, work has become a lot more interesting up to the point that I am more than happy to extend my stay here. And, besides professional reasons, there are still some mountains left to climb... But for now, I wish you all the best for the new year, and don't forget to smile!

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas to you all!

Music credit: Alt-J, Something good

We are Q

Nope, this is not an obituary in memory of "Q" who passed away in the last James Bond movie. "We are Q" is the new slogan that the city of Quito has launched a few months ago, and now features many billboards, bus stops and several big public events. For some weird reason, it just occurred to me recently how this slogan contrasts with the well-known city-phrase of Amsterdam: I amsterdam. At first sight, it clearly epitomises the contrast between the 'traditional' individualism of modern, Western society, and the socially-oriented, inclusive society the Ecuadorian government is constructing with its vision of the Good Living.

With all the benefits of the new Quito, why would you loose your sense of humour when they rob you on the bus?

Of course, this Good Living society is work in progress. As recent as 2008 the Ecuadorians overwhelmingly approved a new constitution, embracing the foundations of a new society that is to include all cultures and nations, as well as grant rights to nature (the first and only constitution in the world to do so). This implies a whole new change in the lives of the Ecuadorians, contrasting firmly with decades of political chaos and social instability. Hence the need to accompany all these changes towards the good living with big campaigns nudging people into a different kind of behaviour. No more encouraging street children to beg by giving them money, no more hopping on and off buses wherever you feel like, no more speeding (or you risk a hefty fine and three days in jail).

In a similar vein, the municipality of Quito is accompanying its city revival projects with a campaign to promote ownership of the revamped Quito. As the billboards go, being "quiteño" equals humour, respect, public spaces, culture, courtesy and living together. After all, we all are Quito! Are we really? All of us? Benign though the rationale for this campaign may be, it can also have very far-reaching unintended consequences, ending up excluding the very people who are most in need of inclusion.

The goal of the "We are Q"-campaign is clearly to create a new collective imaginary, that unites all the citizens of the city and encourages them to embrace their renewed urban environment, treat it and its citizens with respect, and elevate their urban life to a new, more cultured level. After all, the municipality has been investing a lot to make this new life possible. However, this kind of campaign smells a lot like the "Asian values" debates, where a created vision of united and harmonious society is imposed onto an ethnically mixed constituency, aspiring to undo diversity for the benefit of social order. The people identifying themselves with Quito, will be the middle class and those segments of the lower class that have access to the new services offered by the city. They will make the new collective imaginary their own, moving up to a new level of urban experience facilitated by the city's mayor and his crew.

In fact, the auto-identification with this new life-style will strongly induce them not to pay attention to all that goes wrong and all those excluded from this new society, for whatever reason that may be. The same goes of course to the national societal project, which deliberately uses the we-tense on its billboards ("Avanzamos patria" - We are moving forward, motherland) over a general declaration of the country's progress. In so doing, it adds to the creation of a new collective imaginary that makes citizens associate the governmental efforts with a better, more harmonious and prosperous life. At the same time, it helps the government to justify the exclusion of groups and individuals that do not fit the new Ecuadorian dream and model society, be it for wanting to express critical opinions or for living atop of vast oil and mineral reserves. The majority, however, will not take notice of these political inconsistencies, enjoying the Good Living at the deliberately marginalised cost of those 'dissidents' and 'outcasts'. Ecuadorian public opinion, shaken not stirred.