Making Good Men Great: Surfing The New Wave of Masculinity

By Gunter Swoboda

A straight to the point no nonsense approach to men's issues, Making Good Men

Great: Surfing the New Masculinity takes a look at the present state of masculinity and

throws down a challenge. Men nee

• Language: English
• Publisher: Swoboda and Associates
• Release date: Aug 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9780999266816

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the women that taught me to respect women, my mother

Rita Malvine Swoboda

1932-2016

and to my partner and wife

Lorin Josephson, RN, BA (Hons.), MA

Introduction

Being male is a matter of birth.  Being a man is a matter of age.  Being a Great Man is a matter of choice.  Vin Diesel

Since you have picked up this book I am going to assume that you are interested in the idea of being a great man so it’s important that we clarify right from the beginning that I am not talking about material, political or social success.  It is my belief that greatness is not defined by the magnitude of your achievements, but rather by your character and integrity. 

Now before we go any further I want you to ask yourself a few questions:

Am I happy?

Am I living the way I want to live?

Do I have the relationships that I want with the people that are important to me?

Do I have aspirations that keep me motivated to move forward and evolve?

Do I struggle to understand exactly what is expected from me as a father, son,  and husband?

Do I struggle to understand what’s expected of me as a man?

How’s work and career going?

Is it all work and no play?

I’m going to assume that most of you asking yourself these questions , will not be able to answer yes to all of them.  Guess what?  You are not alone!

The next question we need to ask is why is it that so many of us men feel that there is something missing from our lived experience?  What is it that prevents us from embracing the social changes of the last fifty years, leaving so many men wondering what is expected of them, and who they are supposed to be. 

I believe that the answer can be found in the very foundations of traditional masculinity, and in this book I will explore what this means and what we can do about it.  More importantly, once we understand the problem, we can develop a blueprint for us men to be great in all our endeavours.  Rather than just explaining the problem, this book holds the key ingredients that will lead to you going from being a good man to a great man.

In order to get to the core of the problem, we will need to look at where we have come from historically and socially, and to do this we will need to look at the issues from multiple angles. 

In this, I am following in the footsteps of Macquarie University Historian David Christian and using his ‘Big History’ model to look at the different facets of the problem.  To understand masculinity past and present, we need more than just biology and psychology to explain who, and what we are as men.  I contend that it is the entrenched attitudes of patriarchy that has led us to this masculine dilemma now in the beginning of the twenty first century,  and that we need to understand where patriarchy comes from, and how it drives our culture.  So we'll start there, with the history of patriarchy and look at the ‘Big History of Masculinity’.

Nearly thirty years ago I sat in an auditorium listening to Steven Biddulph¹, a passionate psychologist who had taken the courageous step of forging into an area that, in my view, had been sorely neglected.  At times, it had been a political minefield.  In many respects, this continues.  His topic was Men and Masculinity.  Much of what he talked about resonated with me.  At the same time, there were other forms of discussion about men and an emerging ‘men’s movement’ arose on the fringes of social discourse.  This took various forms ranging from encouraging men to become more sensitive to the women’s movement and acknowledging our guilt in the oppression of half of the human population, to going native and expressing our primitive core, a sort of noble savage idea.  Unfortunately a lot of what was on offer just alienated men further from the very idea of change.

It is from this perspective that I have decided to reach out.  Why?  Because two decades after Steven Biddulph wrote Manhood, masculinity and men continue to struggle.  We are struggling individually and collectively.  And this is an important point.  To understand the issues that men face, we need to understand the individual in the context of their society.  This is where I started my own journey of discovery, working as a psychologist with individual men.

Over the last three decades, without any clear intent, my Psychological Practice gradually changed from what had been a normal eclectic mix of clients to one where men and boys are now my main focus.  It has been an interesting shift given that, traditionally, the majority of people seeking psychological support are women.  Psychology, as a profession, also attracts more women than men.

The fact is, men are notoriously shy of reaching out for medical help, let alone psychological support.  However, without any advertising, my male clients began to refer more men to me.  Soon enough, female clients began to recommend me to their partners.  Today, my caseload is predominately male, ranging in age from thirteen to eighty. 

What I have found is, that despite the gender revolution of the last fifty years, a great number of men continue to cling desperately to patriarchal ideas and behaviours.  In my view, these beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours, still dominate our cultural landscape.  Admittedly, the more extreme version of this ideology is deeply enshrined in the conservative niches of our societies.  However, a more subtle form of patriarchy continues its seduction, especially if you lack a sense of purpose and meaning in your life as a man.  A good example of groups that reinforce a patriarchal ideology are the various  fundamentalist religious movements that have asserted themselves in the last three decades.  Similarly, in recent years the Men’s Rights movements have also returned to the fold of patriarchy.

So the answer to the question, has there ever been a cohesive Men’s Movement that has aided men to function better in a society where gender roles have changed, then the answer is no.

Times have changed, and there’s never been a more difficult period to ‘be a man’.  Many of us struggle to interpret the multitude of sometimes contrary expectations and demands that more often than not seem contradictory and arbitrary.  The world feels like it is in fast forward and trying to find the time to understand ourselves, let alone develop and maintain healthy relationships with the people in our lives, can seem almost impossible.  If we are going to find the greatness in ourselves, we need to change the way we think about what it is to be a man.  But traditional masculinity, patriarchy, permeates the whole of our society, and like all forms of oppression it seems so normal we don’t actually recognise it even when we are looking straight at it.  Wait a minute; oppression, you say?  Yes oppression, because patriarchy oppresses men as much as it does women.

To illustrate what I mean about our whole society being influenced by patriarchy, I am going to tell you a story from my life.  I have lived on the Northern Beaches of Sydney since I was twelve and have always loved the ocean, so naturally I took up surfing, and in doing so, I learnt some life lessons about how our society works.  When I started surfing in the early 70’s, there were no girls paddling out with us boys.  I heard from the older guys that during the early years in the first long board era women surfed along with men,  and if you look at the history of surfing in Australia you will find women right there at the beginning when the Duke came over from Hawaii.  But something happened to change the attitudes of both girls and boys about who could, or more accurately should, surf. 

In the seventies, girls were expected to sit on the beach, look sexy in their bikinis and be intensely interested in every wave their boyfriend scored.  They were expected to fawn all over him when he came back to the beach.  ‘Did you  see that last one?’.  Girls learned to lie.  ‘Yeah, I did;’[gushing as expected].  If they didn't lie, they were dropped. 

A book called Puberty Blues², written by girls who had lived the Australian beach experience, illustrated the issue beautifully.  Boys wanted this to be their fun pastime and there was no room for competition from girls.  Girls needed to stay in their place, which was to be a follower, certainly not an equal or worse, lead the charge.  Now the really strange thing about this is we are talking about the seventies when Women’s Liberation was a major topic of discussion.  This is when archaic laws and ideas about the role of both men and women were being challenged, and yet out there in the surf a male culture of dominance and competitiveness reigned supreme.  The surf was OUR turf.

Aside from the boy-girl divide, there were a lot of other divides, more us vs them’s that you had to navigate as a surfer.  You had to be a local, if you were from the Western suburbs of Sydney, you were a ‘Westie' and certainly shouldn't surf, nor were you given an inch if you wanted to learn.  But then there was the us vs. them amongst the ‘locals’.  You had to deal with territoriality, localism, if you wanted to surf at any beach where you were not considered to belong.  Added to this was the type of board you rode, whether its a long board, short board, and, these days,  the stand up paddle board.  There was a divisiveness and at times significant bullying, based purely on your choice of ‘stick’, that is the equipment you chose.

Another division was between those who surfed and the ‘clubbies’, that resilient crew of voluntary lifesavers who exercised dominion over the a small portion of the beach marked by a set of red and yellow flags.  These flags were often positioned right where the best waves broke.  And this area was off-limits to surfboard riders.  If you happened to surf into the flags, chances were that you lost your board, as the lifesavers confiscated it.  All of this behaviour is imbued with patriarchal values like competitiveness and territoriality, as well as being acquisitive [wanting to own a surf break], and status conscious.

But not all of those who surf, behaved this way.  Amongst the testosterone driven alpha males, there has always been a vision of surfing that speaks to the emotional experience, the aesthetics of this physical sport and the art of catching waves. 

More than a decade ago I was lucky to meet Shaun Tomson³ in  California.  Most of the surfing communities will know exactly who I’m talking about.  Shaun is a world champion surfer.  Here is a man who had all the bragging rights that you can accumulate as a master in a sport that requires peak fitness and a complete understanding of the ocean.  However, anyone who has ever met Shaun can tell you that this man is humble and walks the talk with the utmost integrity.  At the time we met, his book ‘Surfer’s Code: 12 Simple Lessons for Riding through Life’, hadn't as yet seen the light of day.  But, I’m sure that it was already in gestation. 

In his book,