HAJI SHEARER

Speaker - Writer - Trainer

Manhood / Fatherhood / Relationships	“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” ~ Charles Dickens	Home About Haji Workshops Writing Contact
	A clarion call has sounded around the world. It’s being received in the hearts and minds of men everywhere. The message is to awaken our full humanity. One crucial step is to aid in the liberation of the feminine. Both our sisters and the more sensitive aspects of our own male psyches. We have too long repressed our male emotional life and oppressed the women in our lives. We ignored both the wounds of our bodies and minds and the pains of our partners and children. The jig is up. It no longer serves us to pretend we don’t know what our lovers and friends are talking about when they accuse us of distance, dishonesty and degradation. The Women’s Movement carried the seed of male liberation as well. Just as the U.S War Between the States (Why call that the Civil War?) liberated white Southerners from the

yoke of oppression and dehumanization that is inherent in slave ownership and support of slave society, the Women’s Movement encourages men to free ourselves from the oppressive relationship we’ve inherited vis a vis gender.

I am delighted by the ability of my brothers – black and white – to struggle with the transformation from traditional concepts of manhood characterized by the likes of John Wayne and Snoop Dogg to a more loving, empathic model of masculinity. I am optimistic because I have great respect for men and women and our ability to evolve.

Tony Robbins says there are only two reasons why people change their behavior: to seek pleasure or to avoid pain. Of the two, he says, avoiding pain is the greater motivator. I have experienced the pain of traditional masculinity and listened to hundreds of men share stories of how its values: me over we, no vulnerability, accumulate the most toys and show no fear produces isolation, anger and hopelessness – in a word, pain. I’ve also seen how given proper supports and structure very ordinary men, like myself, are able to change. I’ve spent over a dozen years counseling men individually and in groups. I’ve seen the metamorphosis happen countless times. It is a beautiful thing.

The fatherhood/manhood movement creates a space where both men and women are seen with integrity, with honor and with respect. I believe each of us has the light of unlimited potential within. Yet, as a black man, the Jeffersonian democratic thesis that all men are created equal, as long as they’re white males, still rankles my equilibrium and, I believe, retards evolution. The fact is no one is “equal” in any true mathematical sense. Women get pregnant. Men do not. Men generally have more upper body strength then women and so on. These characteristics – biological and social – predispose us to certain roles. The language of equality, while ultimately true, can cause people of goodwill to get stuck in semantics.

So, the clarion call issued around the world is to recognize the integrity within every person, male or female, black or white, and in-between. I beseech you to receive it.

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