One man prepares for the culture of masculinity he wants for his son.
—
Son,
You have not been born or conceived. As of now, you are still an idea that exists somewhere inside my imagination’s universe. I saw you tonight with skin as brown as my own eyes, as I read this New York Times article, and a fear for you grew from within the cosmos of fatherhood and I realized you and I need to have our first father-to-son talk.
My first lesson to you is this: Feelings, violence, and communication do not have a gender preference, but society has created and reinforced misconceptions of masculinity that could lead you to believe fighting for respect is what a man is supposed to do.
You do not have to choose between masculinity and femininity. Accepting that you have to choose between the two is to embrace a false dichotomy.
◊♦◊
I am not naïve. I know society will present to you attributes of being male and attributes of being female as a set of binary options. You will think you have to choose to fight because that’s what a man does for respect and talking about your feelings is what a woman does because women are emotional.
I am trying to teach you to realize that there is nothing inherently respectful, masculine or gendered about fighting or self-defense.
|
If you have to choose between fighting like a man to preserve your respect, which is a way of saying, “male respectability is not preserved by talking like a woman”; I implore you, don’t fight like a man. Talk like a woman.
Asking you to be nonviolent is a difficult burden to lie on your shoulders and I am afraid that my advice may put your body in danger. I fear that I will fail you as a parent.
All parents do not teach their sons to be nonviolent and because of this, you will be teased and violence may be acted onto you. Someone’s child will call you soft, sensitive, or a sissy, and try to test your “manhood” through violent means.
I am asking that you withstand those insults and reject the premise that respect and masculinity can be measured in fisticuffs.
I am not asking you not to defend yourself; I am trying to teach you to realize that there is nothing inherently respectful, masculine or gendered about fighting or self-defense.
◊♦◊
The article I read in the New York Times documented “Streetbeefs,” a backyard fight club, which was created by a man named Chris Wilmore, as a way to curtail gun violence in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
Do not accept that because violence is a part of human nature that it is necessary for or necessitates humanity.
|
After losing a friend to gun violence, Wilmore began recruiting participants who have “beef” with each other. The setup is simple: participants put on boxing gloves, take their arguments (which is just an exchange of diverging views) into a yard and fight each other to settle the beef before guns become involved. The fights are three rounds, they are refereed and there are rules: no eye gauging, no biting, no drugs or alcohol, no guns etc…
Streetbeefs is an earnest attempt to reduce gun violence, and I do not want you to think that I am not sympathetic or that I do not empathize with Chris Wilmore.
One day you will learn that I, too, lost a friend to gun violence. I, too, experienced the nihilism, depression and despair of loss and I, too, did not have the tools to expel those toxins from my body. I, too, wanted to resort to violence as the default way to purge my emotions, but I heard Cornel West say this about Emmett Till‘s, mother:
“She walked to the lectern. She looked over at her baby whose head was five times the size of his normal head. Then she looked in the eyes of America as well as the folks at south side Chicago, she said what — I don’t have a minute to hate, I’m going to pursue justice for the rest of my life.”
I took those words to Courtney Graham‘s funeral and if you ever suffer such a loss or have the desire seek vengeance, I will repeat Dr. West’s words to you and I hope you will find the same solace as I did.
◊♦◊
If you decide to take the nonviolent approach, people will say to you, as Wilmore said in the video, “humans have been fighting since Jesus walked this earth. That’s a fact. There’s certain people that’s how they’re wired. They are going to fight no matter what I do.”
That is the premise you must reject. Do not accept that because violence is a part of human nature that it is necessary for or necessitates humanity. This will be critical to your survival; especially, when you enter the professional world. Fighting will not be an option. You will need to learn to use your words, and use your intellect to express your feelings.
You do not need to default to fighting to heal your bruised ego.
|
There will be moments when you will want to “fight it out”, but again, challenge this. “It” is your emotions and “out” means expelled from your body. It is okay to get “it” “out” through talking and not violence. It is okay to get “it” “out” through crying and not yelling. It is okay to be overwhelmed with emotion to the point of tears. It is okay to be emotional.
It took me years to learn this and I’m still working on it. I am under the influence of thirty years of social programming, and sometimes instead of talking “it” out I hold “it” in. I was taught to handle emotions like a man, by burying them inside myself so as not to be emotional.
Do not fall for this trap. You must not view womanhood, the state of being a woman as the antithesis of manhood, the state of being male. Being emotional or displaying emotions is not emasculating. The idea of emasculation is really about being womanized. By “womanized” I mean made into a woman, to made feel like a woman, which is to say “not like a man” and since men should not feel like women, emasculation implies that the feelings women display are lesser or perhaps more trivial than the emotions men display (do not be fooled, anger is an emotion too).
◊♦◊
I am telling you this because Streetbeefs may get picked up for reality televisionand I do not want you to develop your ideas of masculinity from “testosterone porn”. I don’t want you to develop a habit of being entertained by watching men who may be hurting, who may not know how to cope with their emotions, or deal with conflict engage in inflicting blunt force trauma to each other’s heads. I do not want you to think violence is the primary way men handle their disputes.
This is not to say that all men fight on the show. In fact, one of the main “beefs” in documentary was solved nonviolently; however, nonviolence felt like the second option and one of the fights that did take place on camera was over a woman. There was no mention about the implications of what it means for men to fight over a woman (women are not property), and I do not want that to be your example and I am afraid it will be the example of boys you may encounter one day.
I was bothered by the video because it reinforced destructive syntaxes of masculinity. You do not need to default to fighting to heal your bruised ego. If you can, walk away or talk it out. There is no shame in not wanting to fight. Nonviolence is the best alternative to gun violence.
Yes, fighting is better than shooting someone; but, do not let that be your standard. Because fighting is better, it does not mean it’s best, and you can never settle for better.
If you cannot find the words to express yourself, we will find them together. You can show me you are angry. You can cry on my shoulder and tell me that you are hurting, and I will do the same because in raising, and loving you I find masculinity, and I want to be your example. If I want you to be better, I need to do better and I will. Please, hold me accountable for this.
Love,
Dad
This post was originally published on BlackandWordy.com
Photo: Getty Images
Her,
Violence is not something that only men face today, not at all. Even if we believe in such standards as chivalry, believe that men seek to protect women, it is impossible to do. Women face violence in a number of ways, and violence is violence, a victim is a victim and I do not particularly care if it is a gay man, a white woman, black man, white man. We all have the same chance of having it visited upon us.
I find it Ironic, Tim, that so many men that should be allies are pitted agaisnt each other by the teaching of false masculinity, through homophobia when, very often, we both see things in the same way and likewise face the same hardships.
I’ve often wondered when, or if, there would come a union to where sexual preference would be far less a concern then accomplishing an end to discrimination, sexism toward men. You just gave me hope that the day has possibility of arriving…some day.
Violence finds women way too often, and not just at the hands of an intimate partner. Girl gangs are often just as violent as boy/men gangs, sometimes more. Girls have mental health problems and handle them with violence too…I learned early on in life that my words, to protect a victim of bullying, could be enough to back the bully down, but was prepared in case they weren’t, as taught by my mother!
I find it very sad that society is being taught that men are violent and nonemotional! This is a sterotypical lie, told by gender studies sexists who have many mental issues. Men, like women are individuals who are complicated and react to different situations and people in a varity of ways along a variable continuum of feminity to masculiniy.
Please end this sexism towards men
There are villains and evil in the world; learn to fight, or be their victim. It is that simple – and in learning to fight, you should know what is worth fighting for and what is not. Never fight to impress a woman, you at best -only earn the placeholder of NEXT, it is a fool’s pedestal.
I agree. The world is a struggle. Children and women are often protected from the human violence and the damaging weather changes that occur. Men have to do teh fighting and building shelters.
As a gay man, I’ve been able to manage life with not one fist fight. This is a nice article that tries to keep men from acting out the ‘binary alpha male’ tendencies in hopes young men will learn to vocally communicate rather than get physical. But sometimes physicality is ok. I remember times in high school when I should have fought back as gangs of black boys were hitting me with a metal pipe and baseball bat with razors imbedded in it. There were time when in 5th grade the school yard bullies punched ans shoved me that I… Read more »
Good stuff, and a lot of good words there. I agree with Anthony. Non-violence is the way, but we are men so I will caution that violence will find us one way or another, and there will be a time when it is almost absolute. I would caution that if we soften too much, it will soften us in other, non-violent aspects such as negotiation, conflict resolution, even in business. It may also make it more difficult to avoid it. It would be easier if we lived in a world without violence, where there were no wars, no evil to… Read more »