This article was originally presented as a lay sermon before a Unitarian Universalist general assembly. The sermon won a contest sponsored by The Unitarian Universalist Men's Network.

Introduction

Regardless of gender, I use the term "spiritual" to refer to the pursuit, experience, and consequences of a deep understanding of things that are important and true about life. I mean a kind of understanding that is more than intellectual, but not irrational. I mean a kind of importance and truth that is more than temporal, but immediately valuable. I mean a kind of life that is more than individual, more than group, and more than species, but extremely personal.

I think that men and women approach and respond to such things differently, and I think that men in the company of men have the opportunity to make some explorations that they will not make in the company of women.

I might be accused of going far-a-field in what I am about to say. I hope you’ll forgive me for starting with the very first humans, and the fundamental nature of human society. After the mid-day break we’ll switch to the role of quantum physics in ancient poetry, and by this evening we should get around to the part about Men’s Groups.

You might not need me to go to these lengths, but I need it. Having been opposed to gender-ims since childhood, I come to the idea of Men’s Groups with discomfort: discomfort about who is excluded; discomfort about that part of who I am that may be excluded. And I am uncomfortable about women’s groups for the same reasons. This is really a re-telling of what it took me to convince me that a Men’s Group can be a good thing.

Our Tribal Heritage

We have all heard the phrase "hunter-gatherer". We know that tribal life is hunter-gatherer life. We know that for some long period of human history, there was no other way of life. Most of us don’t know how long a period this was. I think it is important to know: it is essentially all of human existence.

About five million years ago, the very first humans were hunter-gatherer tribes-people. Until only about ten thousand years ago, every human ever born was a hunter-gatherer tribes-person. For five thousand centuries times ten, through the life and death of untold millions of people, we evolved into better and better hunter-gatherer tribes-people. That’s a lot of biological momentum.

Our culture departs from our biological nature in both directions. After fifty thousand centuries becoming ever better tribal members, we now consider it ordinary to love something as large as one’s country, and unusual to live in close association with more than one’s spouse and one’s children, both of which have become more optional and more temporary arrangements. We are a social animal without a reliable, substantive social connection. This is not a prescription for health and happiness.

My father had approximately one zillion first cousins, and they all lived within driving distance of one another for many years. The number of related people showing up at this one’s wedding, that one’s Bar Mitzvah, or any other occasion was so astounding, even to them, even though they had grown up in this milieu, that they laughingly referred to themselves as a tribe. They were a tribe.

In one generation, that tribe was eradicated, not by illness or starvation or a conquering foe, but by social "progress".

Anthropologists say that members of a tribe are bound by common values, general customs, and symbolic common ancestry, despite actual diversity. Despite our pride in disagreeing with each other, we UU’s are bound by common values and general customs. We have a symbolic common ancestry in the history of religious and social liberalism which we esteem, and which we are still making. We are bound to each other by these things, despite our actual diversity. We, the people who are the substance of this church, are a modern substitute for a traditional tribe.

So among other things, we come here to be members of a community of the right size. We need social interaction and emotional kinship beyond the scope of immediate family, yet far more intimate than the total society.

As fundamental as tribal membership is to our very nature, it is not the only sort of membership we crave. One of the things that tribes must do is to provide opportunities for people to form valued social relationships at a more personal level than the whole tribe, and still larger than the immediate family. This occurs spontaneously, but is also fostered in many ways. In traditional tribes this is facilitated by shared specialties in hunting, gathering, child-rearing, food preparation, worship, and other activities. In modern pseudo-tribes such as ours, we have committees, classes, discussion groups, social programs, chorus, and other activities, through which we may come into closer association with one another. In both traditional and pseudo-tribes, these activities simultaneously serve those individuals who participate in them, and the tribe as a whole.

Gender Differences Past and Present

"Men Are From Mars — Women Are From Venus" is a very popular book, and more particularly, a very catchy title, because men and women are different in important ways. Individual personalities notwithstanding, I am confident that most of you would agree that this is a valid generalization. I am equally confident that any discussion of the basis of that difference will make many of us very uncomfortable.

We want to have it both ways. Experience tells us that there are differences. But if we say the differences are inherent — rooted in our biology — if we say that the differences have important implications for how we live our lives, we fear the implications we may be led to. We need a title as extreme as "Men Are From Mars — Women Are From Venus" to get us to stop acting as if it is surprising that men and women are different in important ways.

I am going to say a few things about the basis of our differences. I am going to say that our differences are rooted in our biology. But I completely trust you to be open-minded and hear me out. [Put on child’s fire fighter’s helmet and jacket.]

You know that there are outward bodily differences between men and women. You know that there are hormonal differences. You may not know that there are differences in basic brain structures too. Men and women are biologically different, in important ways that go beyond the mechanics of procreation, in important ways that reflect over five million years of specialization.

Were you a group hunter of dangerous game, as almost all of our male ancestors have been for the past five million years, you would reflexively know that being able to bond quickly, and deeply, on the basis of almost nothing, and to keep the relationship dead simple, has great survival value. Any deviation from this approach is a clear threat to personal and communal survival. Is it any wonder that we have a stereotype of men being action oriented, and social simpletons?

By comparison, serving men and socializing children have been the primary responsibilities of almost all of our female ancestors for the past five million years. Is it any wonder that we have a stereotype of women being more accommodating and having better social intuition, depth, subtlety, and interest than men?

You undoubtedly noticed that what I just said could be the basis of arguments in favor of a number of rather limiting ideas and social policies — ideas and policies that we UU’s would typically reject with great vigor. Am I saying that all Real Men are stimulus-bound simpletons, and all Real Women submissive gossips? If you know me even just a little bit, take a guess. Or if you don’t know me, just knowing that I am a Unitarian-Universalist, take a guess. [Remove fire fighter gear.]

These stereotypes, like many others, exaggerate a truth until it becomes a lie. My point is not to support the lie. My point is to ferret out the grain of truth. Reductionistic stereotypes cannot describe our species’ ancestors or ourselves, but they do reflect an important aspect both of our ancestry and of our present reality. The term "hunter-gatherer" does not describe a quaint feature in the history of some people. It applies to all of us. Whether it has been a day or a few centuries since the people in your personal lineage used "tribe" or "clan" or any similar term self-referentially, don’t expect that fact to annihilate fifty thousand centuries of natural selection.

Biologically, we are hunter-gatherer tribes-people. If we ignore or deny this, we put ourselves and those around us in great danger. Indeed I believe that the most grievous of our contemporary problems stem from a lack of appreciation of who and what we really are.

Having gone to such great lengths to try to convince you that our differences are rooted in our biology, I now eagerly repeat that a truth can be exaggerated until it becomes a lie. It does this by crowding out other truths. Here is a truth that must never be crowded out. The most peculiar and important thing about humans is that our biological evolution created in us the capacity for social evolution. Amidst the 2 billion years for which we have fossil evidence of life on Earth, I assert that sophisticated social evolution is the most unprecedented and distinguishing characteristic of our species.

We have socially evolved to the point that we can see that our ages-old, gender-segregated archetypes exaggerate, rather than illustrate, our biological differences.

While social evolution is much faster than its biological counterpart, let us not forget how slow even social evolution is. As merely one example, even here in "the World’s Greatest Democracy", it was not until 1920 — within the lifetime of many of our members — that the Constitution was amended to provide women with the right to vote (the way their husbands told them to). From 1920 until now accounts for sixteen ten thousandths of one percent of human existence — not much. Other evidence of how slow social evolution is overflows the pages of every newspaper.

On the whole, we humans are not as enlightened as we like to think.

While our capacity for social evolution frees us to be so much more today than we were yesterday, it is a slow process. It is slow for me personally, and for you personally, and for all of us collectively.

So, while we are misguided if we allow our differences to lead to exclusion and oppression, we are also misguided if we deny that they exist. Which means that a Men’s Group might be a good thing. Boy it was hard for me to get to that point. A Men’s Group can be a good thing, because men and women are different.

My father used to take the train to and from work. He had a few friends with whom he frequently shared his commute. As a child, I did not understand how my father could feel that these men were his friends, one of them, his best friend. They almost never got together on the weekends, or after work. They almost never spoke on the phone. Their families hardly knew of these other fellows, except through references in uninteresting stories.

Of course, as a child, I over-estimated what it takes for an adult male to think of someone as a friend, or even as a best friend. My impression now that I am an adult male, is that most men have so little experience of really being connected with other people, that a little talk about work or family or sports, is about as much intimacy as most male-male relationships can handle.

Compare this to women. Oh for goodness sakes – women go to the bathroom together! There is no comparison!

Two women meet on the street: "Hi! How are you! Tell me all about ..." and they are off to talk about everything that happened since they last spoke, which was just yesterday.

Two men meet on the street: "Is that you? How many years has it been? It’s great seeing you again. Gotta go. Say hi to the wife and kids." "It was great seeing you too, Dad."

If I could remember the pair of comics from whom I got this particular exaggeration, I would name them for you.

Men in the Company of Men - A Range of Possibilities

It is not an accident that we have the term "male bonding". Men don’t become friends, by and large, they just "bond". They ride the same commuter train, and they bond. They go to a football game together, say nothing deeper than, "You call that running? He should have been a ballerina", and they bond. They go fishing, which is to say they sit still and quite for hours on end, doing nothing at all, and they bond. They bond so tight they’d kill for each other, and they haven’t shared a single meaningful thought.

A story tells of two old Jewish men sitting on a park bench. A half hour of silence passes until one of them emphatically sighs, "Oy." The other one says, "You’re telling me?" This is their whole conversation, and if one of them doesn’t show up the next day, the fellow who is there will feel extremely lonely.

You’ve probably heard the expression, "all men are alike". It’s not true. There are three kinds.

First, there are men who are like the stereotype referred to by the phrase "all men are alike". Second, there are men who are much nicer than that, but not very connected to others, and not very interested in becoming connected. Third, there are men who are looking for greater fulfillment, even at the risk of personal growth, and I suspect that many of us are (perhaps secretly) of this third kind.

In my ideal Men’s Group, we go to football games, and we play pool, and we scratch, and we do all that "manly" stuff. But interspersed with those sort of things, we share enough of ourselves to boldly go where few men have gone before, past mere bonding, and into — Friendship, the Final Frontier for Men.

In Closing

When men and women come together, some of the ways in which we differ are unfortunate, and problematic, and durable. When men and women come together, some of the ways in which we differ are delightful, and enriching, and durable. Some of our differences call us to spend time getting to know each other better, so that we can enlarge and enjoy who we are. Some of our differences call us to spend time apart, so that we can enlarge and enjoy who we are.

Men in the company of men have an important opportunity to create models of who they are, instead of mythical models of who they are not, such as the ones that most of us grew up with. Men in the company of men have an important opportunity to define themselves in their shared leisure, in their shared problems, in their shared support, and in their shared service to the larger community.

A Men’s Group can be a blessing.

Bennett Barouch ©1997  All rights reserved

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