#407 Snippets of wisdom: The societal expectations of masculinity vs your authentic self.

00:02 - Agi Keramidas (Host)
You are listening to Personal Development Mastery Podcast and this is another snippet of wisdom where I select my favorite, most insightful moments from previous episodes. Today's snippet comes from my conversation with Jonny Elsasser, the host of the Art of Masculinity podcast, and it is about the challenges men face with expectations of masculinity and also the emotional side of masculinity and men expressing their emotions. I hope it's as insightful for you as it was for me. 

00:42 - Johnny Elsasser (Guest)
The dictionary says that masculinity is a set of attributes, behaviors and roles associated with men you know, I'm in the works of writing a book and in that I actually go into the definition of masculinity. And the beautiful thing about masculinity, or the the beautiful thing about understanding etymology, which is the foundation of, is that when you look at the definition of masculinity, it is very vague because and what you can see from that definition it's not conceptually transferred from society to society. So when people want to say a man is this or a man is that, you're being very subjective in your view of what masculinity is. That's, that's the concept of why I love the name of my podcast, the art of masculinity, and why I love diving into this. 

01:35
Because of the fact that when we look at masculinity in and of itself, it doesn't transfer from society to society and it doesn't even really transfer regionally within the United States. 

01:47
Like if you look at somebody from New York and you pluck them out of New York City and you put them down in Alabama, a definition of a man in Alabama is going to be very different from a definition of, and vice versa, if I pluck somebody from Alabama and put them in New York City. 

02:04
So in reality, masculinity doesn't even transfer regionally, let alone cross-culturally. So for us to try to create a standardized version of this and then hold all men to the standardized version is a very misconstrued concept that is causing, in my opinion, which is causing the massive influx in depression and sadness and suicides in men worldwide, and that's why I believe that we have to really understand when it decide to be and are owning authentically within society and showing that to be a positive influence on the younger generations in the form of what a man can do and what he's capable of johnny, I want also to discuss with you the emotional side of masculinity, because I suppose this is also one of the things that many men have trouble with expressing their emotions yeah, yeah, and this is a great topic. 

03:22
I love this topic because I come at it from a way that might be very different from other people, but let's go with the most mainstream. We'll start with that, and the first is, obviously majority of men, at least in Western culture, are taught to shove down emotion like that because of the fact that men aren't supposed to have those things, because they're perceived as being the rock or the protector, and if that protector shows emotion, well then they become emasculated, either to the enemy or they become emasculated to the people that love them, who then lose trust and faith in who they are and how they're going to keep them safe. So that's the simplest concept of where that happens, with men shoving down emotion. But the other one that not so many people talk about is you know how are you and I conversing right now? Well, we expand over our vocabulary. We expand our knowledge around subjects. Well, how many people have actually expanded their vocabulary around emotions? 

04:26
I think there was a study and I'll get the numbers incorrect, but there's studies that have been done on the personal vocabulary between men and women on emotions and actually women didn't score terribly higher, but men scored very low. I mean, I think it was like the average dude has like a vocabulary of like four emotions or five emotions, like they could only list that off. And then women were somewhere around like eight or 10, but you know how many. You know how many words are actually associated with emotions? It's like over 250 words and we know not even really a fraction of that. And so how do we really convey emotion when we don't understand the vocabulary, the expansive vocabulary, and how to convey those things? If I only know four ways to express my emotions, it's going to be very hard for me to convey to you what's going on and for you to understand what's going on in me. And then we're going to get it wrong, and then it's going to be all jacked up. We're going to get both infuriated and frustrated and then it's going to we're going to turn away from each other, right, and this is what happens. 

05:36
And and so when, when men can't really discuss emotion, part of it and I think this is for people in general is that because our vocab we're, we're almost emotionally illiterate, you know, and how much do we really expand on that? And so I tell people it's like, well, you know, let's go in, to diving into, to expanding on emotions. Let's go into the vocabulary on them and associate those words with feelings, because then you get into real. Truly, that's when you get into emotional intelligence or EQ. When you can do that, you can understand where you're coming from when certain situations arise, which allows you to get more into awareness. But then I can also have empathy, and empathy is very important for me to really connect with people and to allow them to see my emotional side. So that's where the real conversation happens. But we can't get to empathy when we don't even understand the emotions that are going on in us, because we can't understand what's going on in other people. 

06:37 - Agi Keramidas (Host)
Thank you for listening. You will find the full conversation with Joni Elsasser in episode 241. The link is in the episode description. Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.