The search for my inner ‘hero’: a modern masculinity retreat

Tim Lott dances, roars and talks intimately at a masculinity workshop which ends in tears, praise and profound insights

Despite spending 62 years as a man, I have never quite worked out what the possession of my defining Y chromosome implies. I doubt, in truth, that much of the damn thing survives anyway. I was brought up in a generation when nearly all the parenting was done by mothers and I have now helped to bring up four daughters as well as having been through the crucible of two marriages. In short, I have lived most of my life in the penumbra of women.

Lately, in the tremors of #MeToo, #TimesUp, the Jordan Peterson phenomenon and the emergence of "incels" (involuntary celibates) and Mgtow (men going their own way), I find myself puzzling over the question: what is masculinity anyway? To try to answer the question, I signed up for a weekend intensive course run by the media platform and transformational workshop company Rebel Wisdom, titled The New Masculinity, at a retreat in a converted barn in Buckinghamshire.