Several years ago, I responded to an ad calling for massage therapists at a small day spa. The woman on the phone was very polite when she told me that they had already filled the position. Out of curiosity, I had my wife call about the same position only ten minutes later. They wanted her to come down for an interview.
Men can sure face a lot of challenges in the massage business – job discrimination like I just mentioned is only one. Homophobia, the impression that men are always interested in sex, and the impression that women are more nurturing and better healers are other obstacles that men can face.
Am I advocating that this isn’t a profession for men?
Of course not.
All of these challenges can be dealt with, overcome, and sometimes even made into a non-issue. There are even some factors that work in men’s favor.
According to the latest surveys at ABMP and others, around 80-83% of the MTs out there are female. The good news is that in my experience far fewer than 80% of massage clients out there will only have work performed by a female therapist.
The Politics of Gender
As much as all of us would love to change massage into a gender-neutral profession (and of course need to endeavor to do so) the reality is that it is not. Massage by its very nature is an intimate experience, so attitudes about intimacy will always be a factor. For some people this is more of an issue than others and there is a large part of this that is based on past experience, culture, and learned attitudes. These attitudes can be changed, however, and it is important for male MTs to be pro-active about educating their clients about this.
I intend to write an entire post on the complexities involved in touch and communication since it has such a big impact on what we do.
The spa I mentioned above actually did something illegal. At the time I chose not to bother doing anything about it (I might do differently now). My school’s career services department fields many calls about externship sites where they only want female therapists as well. Although I could wish otherwise, that all massage businesses would take the high road and educate their clients that males aren’t evil, the truth is that many cave to the requests of their clients without even an attempt to steer their preferences. As a learning institution, we weed out extern sites and clients for our clinic that attempt to perpetuate the gender gap in our profession.
There is an interesting article from Massage & Bodywork Magazine on this subject, even though I have to disagree with some of the expert opinion expressed in it. (more on that later)
What’s Next…
These problems are not insurmountable and we’ll take a look at some strategies for male massage therapists to use to deal with them in part 2…
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