Long Haired Men

Some men are longhaired for religious reasons. For some such as "trans" people, it is seen as an issue of femininity. But that is certainly not the reason for a guy who is longhaired because all his biker buddies are! Some have long hair because it fits a social or work image, such as a rock musician. Some have long hair for a medical reason. And for some of us it is an identity issue - we care about none of the above but we have yearned to be longhaired from our earliest memory and it is a powerful drive that will never allow us internal peace until it is listened to.

This is also very much a men's issue. Longhaired women face none of the problems we face. If a woman chooses to grow her hair long, she will generally be allowed to do so in peace. She will not be denied employment nor hassled constantly by police. As a young woman she will not be harassed continually by her parents or her school. And if imprisoned she will not be held down by ten people and forcibly shorn as occurred to one American Indian man in a prison in Texas - a man who in all his life had never cut his hair.

Harassment of longhaired men is very much an aggression issue. Raj Singh, in his research at Valparaiso University www.choisser.com/longhair/rajsingh.html, "The Significance of Male Hair", found that shearing of men has been a technique used by human tribes for eons. In effect, if a village were overrun, if its occupants were not outright killed, the women were generally raped and the men were generally shorn. This "rape of the men" became a signal to all that a man had been subdued - that he was not his own man. Haircutting never caught on as a technique to be used against women because women were presumptively subdued, and it was not perceived as necessary. But Raj found evidence of forced shearings of subdued men from the present day all the way back to Roman times, in both the West and the East. (Ed. - And more resently when signing up for the military.)

First used to indicate subdued tribesmen and prisoners, shearing became a method to show submission in the military, and thereafter in other segments of society, until in recent times it has become pervasive. But aggression against the man shorn is always the underlying issue. For example, when the Nazis first began harassing Jews they would be arrested and then released. But they would return home with their hair having been forcibly removed.

Thus long hair on a man very much conveys the message that the man before you is a man who is independent and thinks for himself. He just may not "fight your war", but he is not a coward. On the contrary, he is perceived as a warrior unsubdued, and this can be particularly unsettling to those who have allowed themselves to be shorn.

Longhaired men are a minority today. Our estimates are that we run between 2 and 5 percent of the adult male population, depending upon what length of hair one calls "long". Though our reasons for being longhaired vary much, our issues are very much the same, and we have come together on the Internet for support, often lacking same from close friends, co-workers, or relatives. The place we gather is a message board run by Victor Engle (http://the-light.com/mens/wwwboard.html), "The Men's Long Hair Hyperboard".

As with any message board, many issues come up over and over. In time it makes sense to collect those issues and wrap them into an FAQ, a document that provides answers to frequently asked questions. That has been done in Bill Choisser's http://www.choisser.com/longhair/ "On Being a Longhair", which provides answers to everything from the speed of hair growth and hair care, to dealing with discrimination, all issues that longhaired men often face with little support or information provided by those around them. - Bill Choisser bill@choisser.com

See the "Links" as mentioned in the POV:
Men's Long Hair Hyperboard - a web bulletin board for info & support http://the-light.com/mens/longhair.html
On Being a Longhair - an FAQ for men with long hair http://www.choisser.com/longhair/
The Significance of Male Hair - extensive research on persecution www.choisser.com/longhair/rajsingh.html