Wrestling the Enemy Within

Juan Rodriguez struggles to make sense of two intertwined feelings: hating men and hating himself. And decides to put down the weapon that masculinity has become for him.

I had some sort of breakthrough this morning. I decided I wanted to take concrete steps in addressing the misandry in my life. As I was writing this article, I discovered there is an online social forum entirely devoted to the hatred of men. Three days ago, it surpassed 100,000 users. I don’t see the two as merely coincidence or mutually exclusive, but rather a confirmation of why I woke up this morning feeling that it was so crucial to begin to address the issue as it slowly evolves into a “natural phenomenon” in this world.

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I’m not sure when I started hating men. I wish I could go back and pinpoint the exact moment that it happened. The truth is that I’m not sure if I learned first how to hate men or how to hate myself. Reflecting on my life and my understanding of my life as it has been, suggests the latter. Somewhere down the road I could no longer tell the difference between the two feelings within me until ultimately, every interaction I ever had with men from that point forward became fundamentally linked with the defining of my identity and sense of self-worth.

Having a sister with a mental disability and being raised to internalize that my existence was less important in relation to hers was one factor. The second was the gender binary system that categorized appropriate forms of behavior and language for me since I was born. I also credit the destructive example of relationship I saw in my parents, always at war with one another, on opposing ends of that gender binary as I curled myself inside the trenches of a conflict that wouldn’t cease until the obliteration of all.

I am a product of these interactions: the words my father used to speak of my mother, the ways I saw women held, subjected, controlled, and the ways that men simultaneously chiseled away at the “feminine” traces they encountered within themselves until they each became hollow.

I believe I was trained to take part in this self-mutilation every day of my life “for the sake of civilization”. “DON’T,” “NO,” “QUIET,” “STOP” became the prevalent phrases of my conscience as more and more of the spectrum of human expression was interpreted to be “feminine,” and all that remained as an option for me was violence, always violence. I hear stories of rape, screams, beatings, shattered glass, spilled liquor, bruised arms, and burns; and I see the thread winding through the trail of the history of masculinity.

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I conducted a survey last year asking random people to share with me the visuals, objects, and sounds of their childhood that contributed to their understanding of masculinity, and the above descriptors composed 90% of the anonymous responses that came in from a diverse group of people: straight men, gay men, transgendered people, women that grew up as tomboys, lesbians, 10-year-olds, and 50-year-olds, of every race, language, and social class.

At some point I taught myself to give up on men entirely and essentially also to give up on myself. It’s difficult to unlearn everything. To go back and understand that everything we’ve ever been told as truth was a lie, a weapon used against the core of our being, and with time, the reason we’ve learned to be masochistic and respond only to abuse.

I’m tired of the abuse. I’m tired of seeing men beating themselves up, sealing themselves in silence, chipping away pieces of me every time they choose not even to look at themselves in the mirror, or when they offer a handshake when they need a hug, or wave or nod their heads from a distance when they’ve been starving for contact for years. So many of us don’t even remember what human contact means, and even more have simply stopped believing in it.

I know that I’m not perfect. I know that most of the time I’m not making this situation any better for anyone, and I have disappointed myself enough times to probably deserve a branding on my flesh of the word “betrayal.”

But today I woke up not wanting to hate men and thereby not wanting to hate myself, not wanting to continue abusing all that is human and beautiful in me for the sake of the weapon that masculinity has become. Today, I woke up wanting to put a daisy in the barrel of that gun that’s been pressed to my vocal chords telling me that to be a man is to be silent, cold, and unresponsive. Today I wanted to be alive and beautiful.

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—Photo tpower1978/Flickr