In the Shadow of Masculinity: A Candid Love Letter to Men

By Llian Mathenge-Dudek

Lilian believes no man should be limited by any gender stereotypes, or by their own misconception of how they should act as men. Her book, In the Shadow of Masculinity is a very candid love letter to all men out there, and all those bringing up boys and society at large. In her words, she urges men to jump out of the manhood box that limit them. She encourages men to, by all means, break the generational code that was passed on to them by their forefathers in order to help save the future generations of men. In her piece of writing, she is very blunt with men who think it is OK to figure things out on their own and calls them out from living in the shadow of masculinity and further inspires them to learn to seek help through available support systems.

With a little touch of poetry and personalized real time stories and experiences, Lilian has emphasized the amount of pressure men face internally and exhibit something different externally. In that, she calls for all to encourage and train men from a young age on the need to identifying safe havens and living true to themselves through vulnerability, in order to save more men from internal brokenness.

Reading this book will in one way or another make one relate with what we see on daily trends and in the levels at which we have a high rate of suicide in males, with many men falling into depression, young men dropping out of college, and getting into crime and other means of escapism from masculinity’s unpleasant realities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669811251

Llian Mathenge-Dudek

Lilian Mathenge-Dudek is an enthusiastic change catalyst and graduate from the Africa Nazarene University. She is a former instructor at the Africa Institute of Education and former teacher at the Nairobi Primary School in Kenya. She is an educator with the Shelton School District in Washington State, USA, at the time this book was written and a published author of the book Spark Back the Men in Them. She has a great passion for nurturing and molding the youth, and for that, she has been a board member on several youth-based organizations within the USA where she lives and in Kenya where she was born. Lilian is also a passionate mother to a son and wife.

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Copyright © 2022 by Lilian Mathenge-Dudek.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/16/2022

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Appreciation

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1   Breaking the Generational Cycle

Cut The Code

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Chapter 2   Man’s Own Safe Haven?

Masculinity syndrome getting in the way of men

Chapter 3   Man Worth of Pride

You Are Not Alone!

Prince, Wear Your Crown

Chapter 4   Man’s Confined Potential Through Pain

Chapter 5   The Elephant in the Room

’Tis About Time We Confront This Mountain

Too Soon To Give Up!

Chapter 6   Men and Suicide

One life lost is too many!

Chapter 7   Healthy Musculinity Unsensored

COVID-19 mask-up and healthy masculinity theory

Saving man from himself

Alpha Male And Beta Male Syndrome

Man’s Mental Time Bound

Roll Up The Sleeve

APPRECIATION

To all men who allowed me to use their life-changing stories and interactions as a way to inspire others into the need for male vulnerability. Hats off!

For the men who contributed to very touching opinions on the worldview of masculinity. Your opinions count!

To my incredible husband, David Dudek, for being my strong pillar and fundamental support during the process of writing this book. Thank you!

DEDICATION

To all men out there trying hard to fit in, in the world.

For the man suppressing his emotions and for any man that has been pressured by society to conform. For all men chained by rigid society gender traditions, to that man who has long felt not man enough because society expected you to give more than you could. And for that man still stuck in a manhood box.

The time is now. Get out of the box. Loosen up. You are human like any other. Put your chin up! The world needs you.

And to my son Vincent, may you live and yearn to break any dysfunctional patterns that may hinder you from being the person you were created to be.

INTRODUCTION

Most of the dysfunctional cycles that many men live today were created in them through their parents. Some men have never had a single opportunity to learn to be great fathers. This is because the fathers were never present in their lives. The truth is that narratives can be rewritten and new cycles can be created. That pain of growing up without a father figure can be erased through forgiveness. Excuses too can be erased, and men can create new legacy for their sons. Men can vow that their sons will not experience the same pain they went through by being present in their sons’ lives and being the parents they never had.

To perform a particular action, robots are programmed either by guiding or by offline programming. Most of them are programmed by being guided from one point to another point through the phases of an operation, with each point being stored in a robotic control system.

Synonymously, this is how man through socialization has been programmed. A certain script of do’s and don’ts has been passed on from generation to generation and can only operate on certain lines that have been drawn, making man live in a certain box of operations that I would call robotic control system.

In this book, you will encounter such moments that call up on men and society to help cut the code or break the cycle by all chances possible. Our next generation of men must not be subjected to the fears of mental systems that they can be liberated from.

This book is candid in how I have expressed my feelings and opinions. Most of the concept has been directly addressed to the men in a bid to help save the next generation of manhood from stereotypes and rigid gender expectations. We have long enough seen men uphold certain attributes that are off and totally are an exhibit of unhealthy masculinity. In most cases, these men don’t even know that it is unhealthy because they were born into a system that embraced certain masculinity norm, blended in and are passing the same attributes to the next generations of manhood.

Theorist Albert Bandura stated that children continually learn desirable and undesirable behavior through observational learning.