A need for change...

One of the things over the past couple years that I have really evaluated in my life, is how masculinity is expressed and some of the negative and positives that traditional masculinity has had on the cultural definition of male friend. This morning I was reading Scot McKnight blog(http://www.jesuscreed.org/) ....I read his book "The Jesus Creed", earlier this summer it was one of those books that you just don't want to put down...Very compelling and accessible for everyone, I would highly recommend it. But back to the topic at hand, this morning McKnight was reviewing a book on friendship and quoted Joseph Epstein's book, Friendship: An Expose, "Men see themselves as more logical, women as subtler, men as having a surer view of the larger picture, women more neatly concentrated on life’s details. Men drive straight ahead, women are more interested in the view out the rearview and side mirrors, not to mention thsunrooff.”
“The primary difference between men and women perhaps has to do waggressionsion.”
If something remotely like these sorts of things really does distinguish men and women, then his “boys will be boys” chapter moves into what male friendships are like.
Male bonding occurs around similar successes in the world. Athletes like athletes of the same caliber etc..
Men, Epstein seems to think, prefer men because it allows them to be coarse and crude: “Only with men can one banter, use raillery, be heavily-handedly ironic, screw off, and be boyishly, stupidly, manlyy manly.”
But what distinguishes male friendship, according to Epstein, is reticence.
“Reticence is of the essence in masculine friendship, long has been, and probably ought to continue to be.”
By “reticence” Epstein is speaking of the hesitation of males to“share feelings” and such things make male frienships strong... I emfatically disagree with Epstein particularly in that this type of male friendship needs to continue, William Pollack in his extrodinary book 'Real Boys' reveal the lie that stPollockom what Pollack calls the boy code, which has creates an atomsphere in which boy and men are taught how to behave. This type of socialization is not helpful for many males since it give them a narrow definition of what it means to be a male in this world. To be a male for so long meant to be a form of hyper-masculinity, which has shown to be a strong link to partner violence.

While reticence is a new word to me the idea is fairly familar. This is simply an idea that the traditional way of socializing boys into men that typically see violence as the only way to express their feeling. This has a negitive effect for men as well as soceity in general. I sense that reticence is no longer the strong force it once was. I believe there is a movement of men that sees the negitve side of hyper-maculine. Reticence only paralyzes men into a thinking that allows men to be their own worst emenmy.