I Come in Peace. . .

But, I'm Likely to Leave in Pieces.

Excuse Me While I Clear My Throat. . .

An editor will often delete the first couple of sentences from any piece, if not the entire first paragraph. The idea being this is little more than the writer clearing their throat, and by extension, unnecessary. Best to cut to the chase. No need to beat around the bush. Keep your eyes on the prize.

I can see the wisdom, but I disagree.

We can learn a lot from what people say before they get to the point. I dare say, only paying attention to the point might in fact miss the point entirely, or at the very least, result in a skewed perspective.

There’s real value in the journey, something we often overlook. We forget the path is part of it. We’re in such a rush to get to the end, it’s no wonder we’re unsatisfied. A summit, an apex, an orgasm is great, but how many can we have before we get bored, or start to feel a bit empty inside without the backs and forths, ups and downs, and gives and takes responsible for getting us there?

So, I’m going to take my time. Besides, I’m likely to catch flack for what I’ve got to say, which doesn’t surprise me. It’s just where we are.

I’ve been thinking about, toying with, and struggling with this topic for a while now, trying to figure out what I want to say, and how I want to say it. I haven’t nailed it yet, partly because I think it’s a bigger project than I can tackle in a single piece. But, I’m going to start somewhere, and see where it lands.

I Was Woke Before the Alarm Went Off. . .

I’ve made no secret of the fact I never really fit in. From the 4th grade kick ball fields to the grad school conference rooms, I’ve always been out of step.

I suppose you could chalk some of it up to the fact that I’m an INFJ (Introverted/Intuitive/Feeling/Judging) on the Myers-Briggs, the rarest personality type in the world, and also a 5 on the Enneagram, which holds a similar designation. But these categories describe “what” I am, not what it’s like to be me.

I did fine as a youngish boy. I played sports. I was decent at baseball, but when I quit playing ball at 14 because I started to have ideas contrary to the general “jock” mindset of the mid 1980s, things changed. I looked around that diamond and realized the things I cared about, things like feelings, ideas, expression, intelligence, and compassion didn’t mesh well with the competitive, “one-upmanship,” boys don’t cry ideology surrounding me. Sadly, I came to find out later that these were what ran the world.

My teenage years were rough. Nothing special about that. My young adult years were also awkward, but college afforded me the opportunity to step into a larger world where things were less determined. Concepts, approaches, and established “truths” could be questioned, broken down, and criticized. One of the things I naturally turned my attention to was the thing I was, or was supposed to be when I grew up, a man.

I’d figured out by then I was never going to measure up as a “man,” at least not as traditionally defined. I did’t care about making money. I wasn’t competitive, although I was a bit angrier than I liked. Aside from that dysfunction, there wasn’t much “Alpha” in me. And I was fine with that. Still am. I think it’s a good thing, and I think the world would be a better place for everyone (yes, even including those who’ve benefited from it), if masculinity had been defined, or constructed, differently.

College was the perfect place to think about this, and play with possibilities. I focused my studies on feminist thinkers and studied under feminist mentors (going so far as to suggest that perhaps I should be classified as a lesbian, eons before the option existed for self-selecting one’s identity and orientation). Not only did their agenda, i.e., questioning the patriarchy, coalesce with my self-interest of finding where I belonged and how, but they were doing the most interesting and original work. It was an easy choice. I spent those years reading, writing, thinking, and critiquing the status quo to effect change.

Granted, I can’t and don’t take credit for how things have changed (nor how they’ve stayed the same, or gotten worse) over the years. An undergraduate and graduate philosophy student has a limited sphere of influence after all, but I did my best to live a life aligned with this alternative vision. I think a lot us did to some degree, which is why things have improved for women. There’s obviously still a lot of work to be done, but there’s a strong, committed, intelligent class of women (and men) aware of the problem(s) and armed with the lessons from multiple waves of feminism tackling them head on.

The same is not true for men.

The Boys (Men) are Not Alright. . .

The majority of attention over the past 50 or 60 years on social issues has been aimed, correctly and necessarily, at the vast disparities between the predominantly white, male ruling class and, well, everyone else. I hesitate to lump “everyone else” under a single heading, but for now the specifics don’t matter. Because as our attention has been focused on “everyone else,” some real problems have developed for men.

For instance:

• 80% of suicides are men, 4X higher than that for women.

• 68% of the homeless population is men.

• Over 90% of the incarcerated population is men.

• 70% (a conservative estimate) of deaths of despair (drug overdoses, alcohol related accidents and disease) are men.

• Men comprise 58% of college graduates compared to 66% for women

• Boys are 3x more likely to be expelled from high school, resulting in a 5-6% lower graduation rate than girls.

• A full 6.9 million men of working age either don’t have a job, and/or have stopped looking for one, effectively leaving them with no prospects of finding a partner, buying a house, planning for retirement, or in short, pursuing the “American Dream.”

• 15% of young men say they don’t have a close friend, up from 3% during the early 1990’s, explaining in part the increased rates of reported loneliness among men, which has its own deleterious effects on health and well-being.

These statistics are sobering.¹ It’s not a pretty picture, and it isn’t a world I want my son, your son, or your daughter to grow up in. It’s not a world I want for me, you, or anyone.

It’s a world in which we need to do something for men.

(***ADDENDUM: if you find yourself thinking, “Now is not the time for this. The anti-woman backlash we’re currently experiencing with the rise of the New Right is what we need to deal with!”, please take a moment and read this.***)

I Have a Confession to Make. . .

I think we made a mistake. Not so much in leveling the critiques we did, or even in focusing our attention and resources on addressing the injustices we did, but in failing to realize we can’t simply rip up the script on masculinity, and the process by which society builds men, and not replace it with something better.

I don’t lament the script’s destruction. There’s no reason too. It wasn’t well written, and even those who learned their lines, played their parts, and got the leading roles didn’t like the way it felt, what it did, or what it required. I mean, maybe on the surface, but not in their souls.

Does anyone think Don Draper had it all? He sure as hell didn’t seem to think so.

As a philosophically oriented punk, I always thought my job was to bring things crashing to the ground. In this regard, I wasn’t all that different from Elon Musk and his minions undoing large swaths of the Federal government at the moment. And much like them, I never thought about what came next. I didn’t see it as my responsibility. And I now realize how misguided that was.

I don’t think it’s particularly shocking to point out that this hasn’t worked out for us. Most certainly not for the men who find themselves unmoored from any defining narrative, nor for the women who must deal with an other “half” that doesn’t know what they’re supposed to do and be, and all the unfortunate side effects that come with this. A society wherein 49.5% of its population is lost, can’t be a healthy, functional society. The civil rights and feminist movements taught us this much.

And in This Corner. . .

So, we find ourselves in a place where men are lost and without a map. And, no, there isn’t anywhere to stop and ask for directions, thank you very much. We’re lost, lonely, roaming around, untethered to ourselves, our loved ones, to each other, and to the things which give meaning to human life. We are, in a word, disconnected.

Some have stepped up to offer a solution. But, I’m not impressed with the contenders, who broadly speaking, fall into two categories. They are the New Right, and what I’m calling, the Woke Left.

The New Right is currently manning the grill on this issue. I applaud them for realizing there’s a problem. I’m not a fan of their solution, which in a nutshell is a revamped, repackaged version of the original script which got us here in the first place. This is the idea that men need to be “men” who protect, provide, assert control over situations and their emotions, and who are competitive, strong, and independent individuals. Perhaps, there’s a bit more room for their softer sides, but not too much, and definitely not at the expense of these other things.

In a world increasingly divorced from reality and meaning, an atavistic appeal to the “good ol’ days,” makes sense, despite its lack of originality. It also makes sense in that there’s something, whether it’s due to nature or nurture doesn’t matter, to being a man that’s distinct to varying degrees across a spectrum. This is crucial for this group, and I’d say actually one of their selling points. Ignoring this, pretending otherwise, or simply asserting that it’s not so, at the end of the day appears foolish, naive, and little more than wishful thinking, albeit not without its takers.

Case in point: the Woke Left. Composed of both men and women, the Woke Left was among the first to take serious the legitimate critique of masculinity forwarded as part of feminism’s analysis of the patriarchy, and they tried to address the issue in house, so to speak. Unfortunately, they did little more than to say that “if Y is bad, then X must be good,” resulting in an alternative that amounted to little more than a rejection of the status quo in favor of an assertion of the opposite. Setting good intentions aside, the result was a somewhat neutered version of masculinity.

Again, the Woke Left’s position is not without its merits. Men have historically had issues connecting to, and identifying their emotions. This needs to be addressed. Men have historically been unchecked in their violent, domineering, and aggressive behaviors. This needs to be addressed. Men have historically seen themselves as independent operators, ordained by God Himself, to rule everyone and everything within their purview. This, obviously, needs to be addressed.

But, admitting and recognizing these difficulties is of a different order to broad sweeping generalizations and rejections of traditional characteristics of masculinity as inherently problematic, going so far as to portray the entire category of traits (behaviors? people?...it’s unclear exactly what they take issue with) as “toxic.” The Woke Left’s vision of masculinity ultimately boils down to a guilt-ridden mea culpa of the misplaced, misdirected, immature, and harmful behaviors encoded in half of the population.

In this light, it’s completely understandable why the New Right is on the rise with young men. If I were presented with either the self-flagellation of the Woke Left, or the “I Am Man, Hear Me Roar” of the New Right as my only options, I might very well opt for the latter over the former. And, I only hesitate here because I’m just not that Alpha. For the vast majority of men, the choice is a no-brainer.

What’s a Boy to Do. . .

Without a balanced, complex, nuanced, critically reflective option rooted in reality, I believe it’s fair to say we face a future in which the men of this country take up arms, or at the very least, bear their arms with those of the New Right. Frankly, I’d like to avoid that for them, and us.

And look, I don’t have the answer. All I’ve got are some suggestions, some things for us to think about as we try to write a new script.

It’s important, I think, to avoid “either/or” thinking. Bad sketches can have good lines. In the case of the above camps, they both have good qualities. Men and boys are different. They aren’t women. They shouldn’t be expected to behave as though they are, nor forced to adopt neutered versions of themselves. As anyone with a little boy will tell you, testosterone is a hell of a drug. The New Right understands this.

The New Right overlooks the very good reasons to resist the idea that “boys will be boys.” Men have been a huge problem. What we might call the “natural” tendencies of men, when left unchecked, unregulated, and undirected can, and often do, lead to harmful consequences. But, for me, this says we have to do a better job of providing structure for their healthy, regulated expression, making them socially useful, as opposed to eliminating, or artificially repressing them.

Men need to learn how to access and connect, or I should say, reconnect to their emotions. From a very early age, approximately somewhere between the ages of 3 to 5, young boys are taught to disconnect from their emotional lives, to distrust their intuition and feelings less they run the risk of being labeled “too girly.”

Look, it’s fine for us to sit here and say, “Well, I’m going to teach my son differently,” but speaking as the father of very sensitive son, and having been a very sensitive little boy myself, I can already see the impact the world writ large exerts on him, and his relationship to his emotions. And keep in mind, he goes to hippy Waldorf school, but still comes home and tells me how A made fun of him for painting his fingernails, or how only girls take ballet. If he’s being subjected to this in the alternative universe he inhabits from 8:15 to 2:45 Monday through Thursday, what chance does the average little boy out there have? None. The answer is none.

Establishing a healthy relationship with ones emotions has all sorts of amazing benefits from increased physical health, but obviously better mental health, and for our purposes here, an ability to effectively communicate and connect (through increased empathy) with other people. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never encountered a problem which was made worse by an emotionally centered conversation, nor a problem which couldn’t ultimately be resolved (which is different than solved) by one as well.

In order to figure all of this out, we need to create spaces, literal and otherwise, where men are free to explore their options, and most importantly, to fuck up. To learn by trial and error. To learn it’s okay to not know. To see that they’re not alone in their struggles. Ask anyone in recovery the power of sitting in a group, being heard, being seen, and being unconditionally supported, and you’ll know just how crucial it is to not feel isolated in our most desperate times.

Finally, and I guess the one place I hope to make a small difference, is there needs to be men giving voice these things, to the problems and the possible solutions alike, from their lived experience (to quote a phrase), to show what it’s like for them, and how and where it can be better.

If History is Any Indicator. . .

This piece will most likely land like a turd in a punchbowl. Which, I get.

I can hear it now (whether it’s said aloud, whispered in confidence, or a silent roll of the eyes), “Oh boo-fucking-hoo, poor little babies lose their place at the top and now they want our help. Well, where were they for the past 500(ish, give or take) years when women were being raped, beaten, treated like slaves, denied access to full personhood...?” You get the picture.

To this I say a couple of things. It was zero-sum game thinking of this type which facilitated and perpetuated the above injustices for far too long. I’d hope, no, I’d appeal to the higher selves of anyone having these thoughts, and say, we can do better than the oppressors of old.

Paying attention to, and working to resolve the suffering of others, regardless of their plumbing, is by definition, compassion. But, if you’re not interested in that, then let me make an appeal to your self-interest. Taking care of men is not to the exclusion of taking care of women, or vice versa. I think it’s inarguable that men, despite their current dilemma, have benefitted from the feminist movement. Why? Because, we’re all in this together. We all rise or fall together. This is the cornerstone of what some have called “ecological thinking.” And, I think moving into it, and away from the “I, me, mine” of modernity is our only hope to survive.

It’s also currently quite fashionable to be “anti-elite.” I grew up punk. I’m pretty sure we fucking invented that shit, so I’m sympathetic. But, here’s what I’ve learned over the years. While elites occupy a better relative place to most, the top-most position is not without its issues.

One way to think about this is to realize that the impacts on oppressors aren’t null. Oppressors carry a burden too. No, it’s nowhere near in the same universe as the suffering they wreak on the world, but it’s not nothing. There needs to be an avenue, a way of on-boarding, of bringing the sheep back into the flock. You simply can’t throw them to the wolves, because then we end up with a sizable population of very disgruntled wolves lurking just outside the city gates waiting for their chance to pounce and exact their revenge. Again, this isn’t good for anyone who wants to live in the peace and prosperity of a healthy, functional society.

Finally, like it or not, this is a conversation we need to have. It won’t be easy. I don’t think any of us will enjoy it, but that’s okay, hard conversations are what adulting is all about. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have the context. The media spheres of the Left and the Right are so disconnected, so disparate in their purchase on the issues, that there often isn’t a shared reality upon which to base our perspectives.

I don’t know what to do about that, other than what I’m doing here. Making an appeal to whoever will listen (okay read). So, I don’t care whoever you are...man, woman, boy, girl, mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, black, white, brown, yellow, straight, gay...it doesn’t matter to me, because we’re all in this together.

For better or worse. For richer or poorer. In sickness and health. Until death do us part.

1. These numbers are generalized, and as such, do not specifically take race into account. It goes without saying the numbers are disproportionately worse for Black men overall.