When I was a kid, this is all I wanted.
I wanted to be married to the man of my dreams in a synagogue. I wanted my father to walk me down the aisle. I wanted my mother to help me pick out my wedding dress. I wanted my bratty cousins to look on in envy. I wanted…
Well, you can guess how all of that turned out, can’t you?
What I found instead was trouble. I found boys who thought I was hot but expected me to do all the work of actually creating a relationship out of a mutual crush. I found parents who assumed I would go the same heteronormative route they did, who treated my bisexuality like an inconvenience that would go away if they never mentioned it. I found a patriarchal community still governed by the same paternalistic ideas about a “man’s role” and a “woman’s place” that had defined us for generations.
When I was younger, I thought I could fix it. I studied feminism and gender and unequal labor distribution. I thought I could convince my community’s leaders, 95% of them were white hetero Jewish men, to see reason.
I was so, so wrong.
For the longest time, I truly believed that if I simply worked on my own healing, my community would catch up one day. I assumed that if I could just find the right words or gain enough verbal acuity, I could convince the men who had benefited from patriarchy all their lives to do away with it. I was so, so naive because I had to be. I couldn’t give up the hope of tomorrow. I couldn’t give up believing someday, the men all around me would change.
There is a saying my people whip out every Passover, our Spring holiday, our version of Easter. Dayenu. Enough. I have had ENOUGH.
Years have passed. The boys I grew up with have become men in their own right, sort of. They stand up straight and they go to work every day but behind closed doors, they still act like little boys bereft of a mommy.
The boy-men I encounter are narcissistic, entitled and priggish. They expect women to be pure but make no secret of their own conquests. They treat every woman they come across like a new entry in a long-running game of “hook-up, wife, or mistress.” There is no respect there, no hope of equality. Most of them have spent their entire lives being told how terribly important they are, and how women are only important when we manage to birth their babies.
I am saying no. I have to say no.
Yes, I know the men of my community are troubled. I know that historical trauma often shows up as child abuse. I realize the men of my community, like all men raised in modern America, have been inculcated with porno culture and weird fetishistic expectations of women…and yet.
Not one of these things is my job to fix.
So I am going to let the men of my community determine their own fates. Let them choose whether to heal, or not. I am out of the man-baby caretaking game.
I have my own life to live. I’m going to ensure I have enough energy to focus on that, for a change.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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