When I was a boy I had few positive male role models. I grew up in a single-parent home. I was raised by my mother after my parents divorced when I was around ten years old. What I remember of my father was not positive to speak of. Actually, for about the first 11 years after he was gone, I would remember him as a violent, raging, and abusive tyrant.
None of the other men that I met throughout my young life impressed me much. Precocious as I was, I learned how to analyze people and make fast judgments about their character early on. So, the part of me that wanted modeling was, for the most part, disenchanted and distrusting of pretty much every man I came into contact with.
As I grew, this was coupled with a fierce intellect that sought to make sense of the world through philosophy and social commentaries on gender and sexuality. My distrust for men grew, as did my social acceptance by women and girls around me as I upheld the plight of the wounded feminine. The more I conceded with and pursued the dominant rhetoric of righteousness against the toxic masculine, the more acceptance I seemed to get among certain groups of people.
At the same time, there was a part of me that was looking for expression, a part that was assertive, passionate, and wanted to occupy space in healthy and powerful ways. But this part of me was relegated to the places where assertiveness was socially justified. Namely, in raging against injustice and the patriarchy. While this worked as a social outlet in some senses, in others it left me generally frustrated and confused.
The mixed messages I got from society and from the women around me left my head spinning. I did everything the be “the good guy.” I championed all the causes that I believed in because someone had to fight environmental destruction, gender and racial inequality, and the destruction of indigenous cultures and laborers. Let’s face it, the world was totally f’d up. But outside of these situations, I had no idea how to translate that assertiveness into pursuing the positions and relationships I wanted in life. To be decisive, aggressive, passionate about attacking everything everyone around me agreed was wrong with the world was okay. But to use that same assertiveness and drive to confidently pursue a woman I was attracted to was not okay. It was confused with the potentially violent and pathological aggressiveness of the “toxic male.”
This went on for years in my life. The harder I tried to fit the mold of what the many mixed messages I received from society and from the women around me, the more isolated and confused I felt. Why, for example, would so many of these women that fought the fight for justice and equality end up with guys that seemed to be the polar opposite of what they said they wanted? Guys that didn’t follow those rules, that didn’t care much about fighting the injustices of the world, that simply had the confidence to say and do what they wanted when they wanted to?
What was I doing wrong? I was such a good boy. I had worked hard at it.
There came a point in my life where this spiraled out so intensely that I found myself in a fast descending spiral of depression and self-destruction. I hit bottom hard after a few years of not knowing how or why I felt so displaced, so isolated, and so heartbroken. I had tried so hard to be the opposite of what I had grown up seeing. I had done everything the feminists said, I had listened to all of the patterned thinking and rhetoric of the women around me. And I had internalized so much of the hatred against men that I had no idea how to healthily express what is masculine in me.
Why am I writing this?
Because I know there are millions of men out there that are experiencing the same confusion, the same frustration, and they are trying even harder to fit into the dominant gender roles that are thrown around for men left and right in this society. Men that are trying so desperately to fit into the contours of everything that is not the “toxic” and vilified male identity. And thems is slim pickins, my friends.
Fundamentally, the rhetoric around gender has become so infused with the personalized wounding of individuals that have a socially acceptable platform to rage against a general population without being held personally accountable, that there is little ground to stand on for those of us that are neither “toxic” nor complacent trend-following sycophants. In a time when any statement can be shut down with the accusation of “mansplaining,” there is no dialog to be had. The pendulum has swung far in the other direction. Not in the name of progress and collective human growth, but in the direction of vengeance and unrestrained vilifying of an entire population of humanity.
I’m not saying that masculinity is, or ever was, free from flaws. But neither is femininity. Why? Because we are all human beings. First and foremost, we are fallible creatures with overblown intellects that make up sophisticated stories about why we do unconscious, self-serving things. When we collectively decide that an “other” or group of “others” is at fault for everything that is wrong in our world, in our society, in our lives, we are no longer rational, empathetic, compassionate beings.
We have become so good at externalizing our own wounds and seeking a villain to blame that we have become blind to the fact that we perpetuate the same wounds on others and make the same toxicity we claim to fight grow in the world. For every person that we collectively attack as being the source of the ills of the world, we refuse our own responsibility in making this world a more toxic and vile place. Is there anything else in the media these days? How much of what we attack out there is actually what we are guilty of by another name?
These days the world is full of bigots. Gender bigots. Progressive bigots. Conservative bigots. Activist bigots. Law enforcement bigots. Corporate bigots. Racist bigots. Agricultural bigots. Spiritual bigots. Political bigots. Apolitical bigots. Pro-Life bigots. Pro-choice bigots. LGBTQ bigots. Cisgender bigots.
What about us? What about you and me? What about being good human beings? What would happen if we started there? Not in fighting all the injustices and wrongs we see out there, but in healing what is wounded within you, for you, by you. Through the right lens you can be the most horrendous monster to me, and I to you. That lens is a choice that you make. A choice that I make. I would rather clean the lens. I would rather take it upon myself to heal the part of me that wants to make a monster of you. Because when what is wounded in me attacks what is wounded in you, we all burn the world to the ground.
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Photo: Getty Images
I had done everything the feminists said, I had listened to all of the patterned thinking and rhetoric of the women around me. And I had internalized so much of the hatred against men that I had no idea how to healthily express what is masculine in me. That’s it right there. At the very most women and feminists can only speak on how they relate to and interact with men. No matter how badly a lot of want they will never have the authority much less insight on what it means to be a man but don’t expect that… Read more »
I agree to a certain point, Danny. I think it’s tricky when we get into any “them” versus “us” generalizations. In speaking for the dominant language around men and women, I do think there is little or no room for men to point out the reactionary and sometimes vicious attacks that some individual women fling at men in the name of all women. There was a recent article on here about narcissism in women, and how often it isn’t called out because women can exempt themselves from being held accountable as individuals by appealing to the collective as being victims.… Read more »