Beyond the Warrior myth
We freed girls from fairytales to show them all their possible futures, but we haven't given boys new heroes beyond the warrior myth. Can we blame them for aspiring to obsolete and dangerous manhood?
Deanne Carson and I are writing a book about school based education programs to prevent men’s violence against women and children (published next year by Allen & Unwin). The standard writer’s fuel of caffeine and self-loathing has got us almost to the end of the first draft, but nothing seems to be working to find a title that we both like, so I can’t tell you what it’s called yet. The book covers the obvious topics like consent and respectful relationships education, and the equally important but much less talked about body safety programs that aim to prevent child sexual abuse. There’s a lot of practical stuff about what happens in those classes and the reactions we get from students, parents, and teachers, but we’re also digging deeper into why these programs are so necessary and what we’re up against when we’re trying to unpick all the strands of life that make men violent and women vulnerable.
I’m going to write a standard NotAllMen disclaimer I can link to in these pieces because it’s a waste of time for writers and readers to go through it in each piece, but until I have time to do that: of course not all men are violent, this is demonstrably true. But it is equally true that most violence – against people of all genders – is committed by men. This is true across all racial, cultural, age, faith, sexuality, and class divides. What we don’t really know is why.
I don’t believe the answer is as simple as gender inequality, that seems more like a symptom than a cause. But if violence was biological, it would be all men and it isn’t, so there must be something else at play. I wish I could tell you that I know the answer and that it’s easy and makes the solution simple. I can’t.
One constant theme though, across all cultures and times, is storytelling and the myths we weave into our understanding of who we are and who we are supposed to be. We humans are atavistically designed to respond to stories. They’re woven into the DNA of our evolution. For 300,000 years we’ve learned by listening to stories about hunting, collaboration, childbirth, leadership, grief, love, surviving winters, and fighting battles. Stories were how we learned to build on knowledge accumulated by previous generations rather than having to work out how to hunt each mammoth, build each house, or raise each child as if it had never happened before.
Writing as a tool for sharing stories has been around for about 5,000 years but it’s only in the last couple of hundred years that we’ve had widespread sharing of knowledge through the written word. Barely an eyeblink in the grand human scheme.
Before the industrial age, we used stories to teach young people practical, ethical, and emotional lessons. Some of the most enduring stories were based on the needs of the group – what did we need people to believe about themselves and each other, what did we need them to aspire to that would keep the group safe, fed, and reasonably cohesive.
War is another constant in human evolution. It’s basis, in very simple terms, is that in a world of scare resources, we have something they do not have. They will try to take it and we will try to defend it. The strongest survive.
For most of human history, almost all young men were needed to produce food or die on battlefields, and young women were needed to birth more farmers, soldiers and mothers. Hunger will provide all the necessary inspiration for growing, hunting and gathering food, but how do you convince healthy young men to willingly die on a battlefield or healthy young women to risk their lives in childbirth? Stories. You tell them that not only is it their destiny, but that it is a glorious destiny. Venerate motherhood and domestic pursuits makes them aspirational instead of dangerous. Emphasising the joy in motherhood and the glory in loving and raising children is not difficult (especially if you’re not the one doing it) and so we created, in every culture, fairy tale princesses whose only goal was to find a husband, have his babies and serve his needs. Writing a book is a very useful way to focus your thoughts on one topic, or as people who live with an author might phrase it, “turn you into a tragic obsessive”. I spent last year tragically obsessing about what the fairy tale princess myth does to girls and women while I was writing Fairy Tale Princesses Will Kill Your Children. This year, as we’re writing the unnameable book, I’ve turned my obsessive tendencies to the warrior myths. The stories we’ve always told boys and young men to make ugly death in war a male aspiration.
Gilgamesh, Achillies, Alexander the Great, Yueh Fei, Henry V, King Ashoka, Julius Ceaser, William Wallace, the Samurai, the Navy Seals, Captain America, Solid Snake, and Master Chief. Every culture and every era has had their warrior-king stories to inspire young men. Battles are celebrated, killing and dying in war is glorified by the warrior myth that venerates male strength, courage, and brutality. The brotherhood of men who fight in wars is sanctified in warrior myths. Hatred of the enemy might not be enough to make healthy young men run towards violent death, so the shame of being labelled a coward who would leave his brothers to die had to become a fear even stronger than death.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
- St Crispin’s day speech, Henry V, Act IV, Scene III
The mythical warrior is both physically and emotionally powerful. He vanquishes honourable foes and dishonourable villains with equal ardour. He is justice without mercy, vengeance without consequence, and authority beyond questioning. He is revered by men, desired by women, and respected by all. He is powerful but unaccountable. In control but never responsible. He will suffer pain, even death, for his chosen bride but she is his prize not his equal and his first allegiance is always to the battlefield and the brotherhood of soldiers. He is everything we still tell young men to exalt as the best qualities of manhood and he is, in real life, the building blocks of a violent and controlling man.
The warrior myth served its purpose for thousands of years. Men and boys volunteered for pointless causes and great wars with equal fervour. They died and killed for their tribes, states, and countries and we told them this was how they achieved greatness.
Then we changed things.
Over the last 200 years, and particularly in the last 70 years, much of the world has learned to aspire to a more and better choices for their young men. Wealth and education gave all of us so many more options for our sons than warrior or farmer. Now they can be accountants and lawyers and plumbers and nurses and artists. We want them to be caring friends, good fathers, and loving husbands because we believe this will bring them happiness. We want them to find pride and self-worth in manhood without basing it in violence and control. Even if our boys do become soldiers, we expect our military leaders to have the technology, diplomacy, and smarts that prevent battlefield deaths, not glorify them.
But our mythology hasn’t kept up with the modern world - at least, not for men and boys.
Where are their new role models that show them manhood beyond the warrior myth? All the aspirational male heroes I can find are fictional or real life warrior-variations. Batman, Jon Snow, Tiger Woods, Iron Man, Dwaine Johnson, Cristiano Ronaldo, Will Smith, Elon Musk, Donald Trump. And of course, Andrew Tate. Fictional or real, they’re all winning simulated battles or applying the warrior mythology to politics or business.
Where is the hero in the modern mould? Where is the man who shows aspirational manhood that doesn’t rely on power and control? Where are the men leading by example and inspiring boys to modern heroics of creativity and invention?
Without those heroes, is it any wonder the likes of Andrew Tate have such reach and power over boys and young men? Tate fills the yawning identity gap and tells boys that the warrior ideal can still give them self-worth and the respect of others.
When we talk about needing men to step up, this is where they can have the most value. Step up, step out, show boys a manhood of self-respect, pride, creativity, even leadership without violence and control. Be the man of strength and power who heals and nurtures, the man who thinks and creates and invents. Find other men who do these things, share their photos and stories and tell your sons why you admire them.
If you need guidance on how to do it, look at what women have done for girls in the last 200 years.
Women have worked hard to create aspirational role models that exist outside the wife/mother role. We seek out women who succeed in sport, music, arts, business, and politics and share their achievements. Almost anywhere a woman is doing something amazing, another woman will be standing in front of her taking photos or videos to give other women hope and inspiration. Serena Williams, Hilary Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elise Perry, Cathy Freedman, Jacinda Ardern, Malala Yousafzai, Melissa Lucashenko, Michelle Obama, Madonna, Indra Nooyi, Taylor Swift, Angela Merkel, Jane Goodall, Oprah Winfrey, Sheryl Sandberg, and Beyoncé are all visibly in the world, demonstrating all the options available to women and girls, not just of what they can do, but of who they can be. Sometimes those women paid a high price for their visibility, but even that proved to the young girls crowding up behind them that obstacles can be overcome.
These possibilities are so real to women and girls that we’ve almost forgotten the power the warrior myth has over men and boys. Even more we’ve forgotten how much the warrior depends on the fairy tale princess myth. She is the stepping stone to the wife/mother role. She’s quintessential traditional femininity. She is beautiful, submissive, and most of all unselfish. Her defining characteristic is her ability to win her warrior prince’s love by proving she can joyfully erase all her own feelings and desires in service of his needs. The warrior prince’s story doesn’t exist without his fairy tale princess. Avenging her death or dishonour is often his reason to start his quest and a shiny new fairy tale princess is his prize for completing it.
In the modern world, the continued exitance of the warrior myth creates dissonance for women, girls, and non-binary people who have learned to far live wider, higher and deeper lives than the fairy tale princess trope. Men still ruled by the warrior myth dismiss and ignore these lives because they’re not relevant to the warrior’s story – until reality crashes into their mythology. When those men are forced to see women’s lives outside the warrior/princess dichotomy in their homes, accusing them in courtroom, succeeding in their workplaces or arguing on their newsfeeds, we’re not just sweeping aside the fairy tale princess myth, we’re also destroying the warrior prince’s primacy. Men and boys who believe the warrior myth is basis of their identity and self-worth experience this as a threat and respond accordingly. Boys perform their version of the warrior myth for each other by making classrooms unsafe for the girls and female teachers they perceive as the enemy. Men sneer, harass, assault, dismiss, and ignore women at work. And of course, men rape women (almost without consequence) stalk and intimidate them, abuse and control them, and when all else fails, kill them.
The dissonance is painful, enraging, and bewildering for women and girls. Our lives, our bodies, our futures, our inner worlds don’t just exist for someone else. They are our own, a source of pride and self-respect. And they are important, not just to ourselves, but to the world. How can we be reduced to a joke or an insult to manhood when, most of the time, our choices have nothing to do with men?
The warrior myth and the wounded blank space that is its only alternative hurts all of us and this is a problem only men can solve for themselves, each other, and the boys who look to them for inspiration.
Perhaps a true hero might make that effort.