Discovering Your Own Version of Being a Guy
- Mark Grayson
- Feb 5
- 3 min read
Through the Lens of a Gen Xer Working with Millennial and Gen Z Men
One of the great delights of doing podcast interviews regarding my book Getting Naked is the opportunity to engage in conversation with hosts whose life experience and depth of expertise is so different from my own.
Alex Bove is such a person.
With a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality Studies from Widener University (one of the few doctoral programs in the topic at a fully accredited university in the US), I was intimated going into the interview, wondering why I am always in over my head. Instead of calling out my lack of depth, Alex surprised me early in our conversation by remarking how nice it was to talk to someone who had read many of the texts that he had studied in grad school. My impostor syndrome vapors were swiftly replaced by an innate curiosity to learn more.
The terrain that we traveled in our discussion was broad-sweeping, spanning a list of questions that surface when guys begin to explore what it means to be a man in the 21st century. Alex got me to reflect on the strange twists and turns of my life that prepared me to write Getting Naked when I never had any intention of writing a book like this, and even told an agent that I would not do so. We explored my early days in small-town Ohio and Central Texas that both deeply shaped me and forced me to make a decision to chart a path out of their narrow expectations. We then turned our attention to the journey that unfolded as a young man when I refused to settle for the existing cultural narratives about what it means to be a man.
Our conversation then shifted, as it often does, to explore what actually happens to you physically, psychologically, and emotionally when you get Get Naked. The release of shame and dysmorphia that can occur when we learn to be more accepting of our own bodies. The old, worn-out narratives about what it means to be a man that we can update, expand, or discard. The realization that women experience every daywalking through life as though they are stark naked.
Our discussion then moved on to acknowledge that the “feminine” capacities of our personalities can become superpowers in our personal and professional lives if we choose to embrace them. We went on to talk about the current need to focus on relational intelligence as a culture, especially as men – developing our innate gifts for listening with curiosity so that others feel seen and heard, instead walking around like broadcast transmitters all the time. We also took a look at the need to get back to basics, building community in ways that we used to, until the present tendency towards self-absorption took root. Then finally we discussed the lost language of consensual, non-sexual touch that we so desperately need to rediscover today.
I was stunned by how quickly the hour passed, as Alex led me through the book highlighting the topics that he thought would be the most interesting to the younger men that he works with. It’s a remarkable conversation that rewards multiple tune-ins.
You can listen to my interview with Alex Bove for Talk Like a Man here, and learn more about it’s parent organization the Men’s Center for Growth and Change in Philadelphia.
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