Q &A with Andy Roy; What does it take to be a man today?
What is the role of men today?
Andy: Often we hear from men that what their dad did doesn’t work anymore – so what is it to be a man? Women expect more, that’s for sure, but in order for me to do that I need to get a sense of who I am. I had done all that I thought I needed to do in order to be happy, and it wasn’t that I wasn’t drastically unhappy. I had a beautiful wife, my own business, my own home, healthy children, I thought I had ticked all the right boxes, but there was one that was unchecked and that was me and who am I. So men end up doing what they think they need to do so we need to ask ourselves who am I as a man?
What does masculinity mean?
As a bloke I want to give my fullness and yet I can’t really do that when I have a good look behind me and see well, dad, whilst he was a great provider, and that was the big thing for men of the era, they were providing, but they didn’t actually provide emotional support. They weren’t actually someone who actually got people.
So its actually learning what it means to be a man and how that translates into how you work, your relationships, how you drive your car, spend money and all that stuff, and what that means for who I am as a man, and men are disconnected from that.
What are some of the questions young blokes have for you?
“Without saying it guys get to own whether or not they’re playing a victim and this sometimes comes up in the relationship with mum. Because the challenge with mum is that we’ve emerged from the seas of her womb not knowing us from her. Of course there comes a time when we start to get that, hey, we’re not her. In fact something that I imagine is reassuring for girls is that yeah, this is what being a woman’s like. Whereas for a boy mum’s often not happy with dad and he doesn’t want to grow up and be like him because she doesn’t like him. And therein can come a shame of being male or a rejection of it and it comes that guys are asking ‘who am I, where am I in my life right now and what’re my dreams and what do I need to do.’ ”
What has to come into place for fear and judgement from guys to end?
I was raised, not directly by my parents but in the culture, pretty homophobic. Sexism, homophobia and racism, while there are some great things in being Australian, there’s also some pretty difficult things. When I look back on my life its like there’s two different lives. I feel like the part of me that was racist, sexist and homophobic and all of that, is just not there anymore, thank god. So its fear of something different and it’s non-acceptance of self that allows those things to exist.
In the men’s wellbeing community there are certain ways we are together, for example when someone speaks everyone listens, that forms a very tight bond, creating trust. And like trust, belonging is something that is also important to eliminate that fear.
For more information please visit www.menswellbeing.org.
– Julian Jantos
bondlifeone.wordpress.com 