Gentler Men

I am raising money for my parents, who are now in Sri Lanka. If you are unable to donate, I humbly ask that you please take a few minutes to read our story and share it with others. Any help would be incredibly appreciated. 

I feel angry at the injustice of it all, and how unfair the system is. I feel discouraged that the problem feels too big and too insurmountable to do anything about. I feel indignant that valuable resources are going to fund enforcement programs like ICE instead of being used to actually help people like Jenni’s parents.

But feeling angry, discouraged, and indignant isn’t going to help Jenni or her parents. And besides, I don’t want to go through life feeling angry and discouraged all the time. I’d rather focus on some of the other emotions I felt when reading their story.

I felt inspired by the fact that even though the situation is long and hard, nobody in this family is giving up, and Jenni is still doing everything she can to help her parents. I feel compassion and admiration for this family of fellow human beings who are working hard to try and live their lives with sincerity and conviction.

Those are the kinds of emotions that I want to drive my actions in life.

So I’m going to talk with my wife, look at our finances, and figure out how much we can donate to this family. In the meantime, I’m using the platform that I have to share their story and ask all of you, my friends, to consider doing the same.

We all have different circumstances, and if you’re not able to donate today, that’s totally valid. But I do hope you’ll consider passing this along to help make sure that stories like this aren’t buried or ignored.

Because we’re all in this together. And the more connected we are to each other, the more we can overcome together!

Reject Apathy. Embrace Hope.

“There’s nothing logical about wearing jeans with holes in them!” he insisted.

“That depends,” I said. “Do you accept that wearing ‘fashionable’ clothing aids in securing social acceptance, and that ‘ripped-up jeans’ are generally regarded as fashionable? Then saying that ‘wearing ripped-up jeans helps gain social acceptance’ is logically sound, even if you and I both think that ripped-up jeans are tacky, or that this kind of social acceptance isn’t a desirable goal. Those are subjective opinions.”

Yes, anger is absolutely a normal and healthy human emotion, and as will any emotion simply repressing it or ignoring it is NOT the answer.

But there’s an important difference between expressing an emotion and letting that emotion take control. But when society teaches that the only way for masculinity to deal with anger is either hiding it or hitting something, we end up with a lot of problems.

That’s why it’s so important for people to be able to talk about their feelings without shame or embarrassment. That’s why people need to learn that it’s OK to ride out the emotion, let it run its course, and move on, rather than feeling like it needs to fuel some kind of violent turning point or moment of truth in the hero’s journey we all see ourselves on.

I dislike the popular term “impotent rage” because it implies that rage is only valid when it is “potent” or drives us to act. SOMETIMES anger can be an important motivating emotion, and SOMETIMES it is not. And learning the wisdom to tell the difference takes a lifetime, so we need to be patient with ourselves as we get there.

I think my friend Fred Rogers sums it up very nicely in the testimony that he gave so many years ago in Washington DC.

I think the whole thing is worth watching, but if you’re pressed for time or short on attention (which are both valid) then I would suggest skipping ahead to the 04:27 timestamp and 06:05 timestamp.

I love and admire Fred Rogers (as you can probably tell from this blog’s profile image) and I think he did so much good work teaching all people, especially children, that their feelings are valid and important. I consider him one of the great, accessible icons of the Gentler Men movement.

I think "male testosterone fueled anger and rage" is a term that illustrates how misunderstood science can lead to reinforced stereotypes and incorrect ideas.

For one thing, testosterone is a hormone that is not exclusive to males. It's found in all humans at some level. Also, while science has been able to observe some of the effects of increased testosterone levels in the brain, the fact that it interacts with so many other biological chemicals means that it's very difficult to define what exactly it does or doesn't do.

Certainly I don't believe that testosterone "fuels" anger or rage. Does it play a part in certain physiological responses linked with those emotions? Sure. But that connection is far from causal.

All of this is to say that individuals and groups who seek to preserve and promote toxic masculinity will often simplify or distort scientific findings to fit their pre-existing narrative. (That men are naturally more aggressive and violent, and that's the way nature intended it, and that's how our species was able to thrive.)

I'm not saying that @magmagmag intended to do that in using the term in their question, and I think the fact that they put the term in quotation marks was a good way to call attention to it.

My teenage daughter is upstairs in her room, getting ready for her first date. 

Me: *sitting on the front porch cleaning my gun* 

Her Date: *walks up the steps and sees me* “Whoa! Is that a modified EE-3 Carbine Rifle?” 

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

Maybe straight men not being as miserable … shouldn’t be an automatic negative, especially not if the whole idea before that addition was to benefit marginalized groups?

I get it, of course they would in some ways know some positive changes in a less patriarchal/heteronormative society - but maybe let’s not forget who patriarchal/heteronormative society benefits to? Because like. A straight man who is vulnerable and softspoken won’t be as oppressed as a gay man, no matter said gay man’s personality!

I don’t think anybody thinks it’s a good thing straight men are miserable but like are they really? are they miserable? Compared to everyone else? 

I think that men are promised the rewards of privilege. They are told that being homophobic and straight will make them fundamentally better than gay men. They are told that being male and masculine will make them fundamentally better than women. And yes, the people reaping the rewards are generally straight cis men.

But it’s like a pyramid scheme: Every member, when they join, is promised the INCREDIBLE REWARDS they could receive, if they only get a few people to join at a lower level than them! And some members ARE making absolute bank. But when you look at the balance sheet, you see that 90% of active members are earning absolutely no money, and meanwhile the top 1% are fucking millionaires.

I think that, yes, if you look into the lived experiences of men in our culture, masculinity is making them actively miserable. There’s a reason men are, on average, more depressed, more isolated, more violent, and more likely to die by suicide. “Toxic masculinity” wasn’t a term coined to talk about women’s experiences.

The straight-cis-men-always-win argument especially falls to pieces once you look outside the realm of sex and gender–there’s no arguing that things like class, money, race, immigration status, incarceration, disability, and mental health don’t also have huge impacts on peoples’ quality of life. There are a lot of ways queer people can have, comparatively, a lot of privilege compared to straight cis men.

So really, does it benefit us, as a group, to outcast and demonize groups of people who are fighting the same forces as us? Do we want to pit large swathes of the population against each other and stage the Oppression Olympics endlessly? Or do we want to recognize that it’s probably 99% of the population getting fucked over by the massively powerful people at the top and doing something about that?

Be a shift manager. Get promoted to Corporal. Move from floor staff to the sales desk. Make it onto the police force. Put all your effort into being the best little cog in the whole machine. Someday it will pay off. Someday you’ll move up high enough in the ranks. Oh, you’re still poor? Work harder. Get a better job.

Be a man. Catcall women. Get dates. Have a girlfriend. Have children. Produce an entire family of people who have to respect you as its patriarch! Oh, that’s not happening? You must not be manly enough.

It’s similar to the way colonialism works, where the children of one conquered country are used to fill the ranks of the army that invades the next one, because when colonialism has destroyed your country, being your oppressor’s footsoldier is one of the last viable careers left.

The biggest lie the system sells is that if you cooperate well enough, you’ll get to run the show someday. We have to have the wit and awareness to understand that the entire system is rigged, and we need to take apart the systems that dominate and control people, instead of just replacing the people on top.

Radical feminism’s focus on the patriarchy as the end-all-be-all of oppression has conveniently created One Enemy that everyone can embrace and attack and it’s bullshit.

A coal miner in Virginia getting lung cancer because that’s what it means to be a man and support his family in that part of the world isn’t the reason your rent is going up and your wages are going down. A kid getting bullied to death in his frat isn’t the reason that people are trying to roll back the ADA.

This is divisive crap and I won’t stand for it. Somewhere in Texas there’s a straight boy in a cage and it’s just as important to get him out as it is to get out the trans women who are in cages alongside his because as it turns out *people seeking asylum being put in cages* is a shit thing regardless of their gender or sexuality.

Who benefits from this universal-yet-individual fear and distrust of straight men? It sure isn’t straight women, who are being taught that to be a straight woman is to be a victim, who are being trained by the woke internet that they are doomed to a lifetime of fear and subjugation. It’s not straight men, who are being told that no matter how compassionate, kind, patient, generous, or sweet they are that they’re all monsters and that’s all they’ll ever be. It’s not gay men who are more at risk for homophobic violence if they “act gay” but get treated like class traitors if they don’t fit the right radfem gay stereotypes by “acting too straight.” It’s not trans folks who are either delegitimized (”you’re just confused”) or treated like a threat (”you’re invading our spaces”). The only people who benefit from this are radfems who want to gender segregation and who push gendered stereotypes (men are violent and evil and hypersexual; women are kind and gentle and healers and mothers - is this what radfems believe or what republicans believe because it looks the same from where I’m standing).

On the whole, men in our culture are not oppressed as a group. I mean, certainly there are men who ARE experiencing oppression, but not because they're men. We see black men being oppressed because they're black. Gay men being oppressed because they're gay. Transgender men being oppressed because they're trans. Disabled men oppressed for their disability. Elderly men oppressed for being elderly.

But there really is very little systemic oppression that occurs in our culture on the sole basis of being a man. And practically ZERO for being a straight, white, cisgender neurotypical man. Is there discrimination? Sure, a little. But there's a big distance to clear between "discrimination" and "oppression." I mean sure, I'm less likely to get hired at a women's domestic abuse shelter, but that hardly outweighs the substantial benefits I receive simply for being born a man.

And these automatic benefits I receive don't even require me to comply with the arrangement. I can make a fuss and rant about how unjust the system is today, fully aware that it will have no impact on the benefits I will still receive from that system tomorrow.

OK, so if straight white men aren't being oppressed, then does that mean they're the unequivocal winners in this system? Not... exactly.

Because while while straight white men as a group aren't being OPPRESSED by the system, they are being systemically MANIPULATED by the system. And that's a problem for everybody.

Think of it this way. Imagine there is a terrible infectious disease that is debilitating and potentially deadly to a large portion of the population. Men (as a group) are not immune to the disease, but they ARE asymptomatic, making them ideal carriers. (Of course, there are other strains of the same virus that can still be deadly for anyone if they're black, gay, transgender, disabled, poor, or otherwise "othered," but right now we're talking about the strain that is asymptomatic in men.)

Like most effective carriers, the men hardly notice the mild symptoms that the illness DOES cause for them. Things like a drippy nose, occasional sneezing, and a few other minor inconveniences that increase the likelihood of spreading the virus to others nearby.

And for a long time nobody notices, the people suffering from the effects of the illness are told that it's just part of the experience of being who they are, and those who are mostly asymptomatic being told it's because they have the best darn immune system around and isn't it great that they're there to keep things running when everyone else is sick.

But then over time, people start to realize what's really going on. They realize that this terrible disease isn't just a preordained part of life, but a preventable, treatable, curable illness.

Now, is it any mystery that people would begin to be suspicious of the men who acted as carriers to the disease for so long, whether they knew it or not? No. It's a totally understandable reaction.

Especially because a few of those men begin to worry that if the disease IS completely wiped out, they'll find themselves without the value they once enjoyed as asymptomatic carriers, and so they try in earnest to spread the virus even MORE than ever before.

So the clinics built to treat this illness start shutting out the asymptomatic carriers, because they're trying to minimize the damage to the vulnerable populations that they are treating.

So now there's a really complicated and really crappy situation that nobody is quite sure how to deal with.

Because the men who were truly unwitting carriers before now feel like they are being shut out and judged for something outside of their control.

And the truly pro-virus carriers are using that isolation and mistrust to their advantage by spreading the infection to even MORE asymptomatic carriers. And without access to many of the clinics, the virus spreads like crazy among these asymptomatic populations, making total eradication of the virus seem more impossible than ever.

Oh and also, the proliferation of the virus among this asymptomatic population is so bloody successful at multiplying that it also becomes a petri dish of all kinds of deadly and unpredictable mutated variations of the disease.

Meanwhile, the people being treated at the clinics and running the clinics are literally just doing whatever they can do to SURVIVE and minimize the harm to the people at most risk.

So some in the asymptomatic population begin to say, "Hey! We're not immune to this disease either! Its only right that nobody can get treatment until EVERYBODY can get treatment!"

And some people at the clinics begin saying, "Wouldn't it be better if we could get the carriers to get treated too so we can eradicate this terrible virus once and for all?!" And others at the clinics are like, "But have you seen what this disease can do?!! We're just trying to stay alive here!!"

And I feel like that's the situation we find ourselves in now, and how the conversation in this thread can seem so frustrating and challenging from so many different viewpoints.

And that's where I hope the Gentler Men movement can help make a difference here.

Think of it like a treatment clinic run by volunteers among the asymptomatic population, trying to treat themselves, other carriers, and anyone else seeking relief from this horrible disease.

We focus on providing treatment for carriers, not because they're harmed the most by the virus (not by a long shot) but because the only way total eradication of this disease is possible is to wipe it out among the carriers too.

Black Holes and Blueberries 

Last night my daughter was asking about black holes, and a few weeks ago she was asking why calculators show an error when you try to divide by zero. I decided we could talk about both of these while also picking some blueberries in our backyard. 

This is a video of that little lesson. 

So if I encounter any ICE agents in my neighborhood, I will smile and waive and as soon as they make eye contact I will engage in the most aggressively friendly chitchat ever witnessed on my block.

I will ramble on and on about whatever pops into my head. I will ask them about their day, their hobbies, their home life, and their personal backstory until I find a common area of interest, and then I will crank my smalltalk game UP TO ELEVEN.

I will force them to look awkwardly at their wristwatch DOZENS of times without taking the hint. I will ask seemingly simple questions that do not have ANY simple answers. I will pretend to wrap up the conversation with, “Anyway…” and then segue DIRECTLY into another topic.

Because every minute an ICE agent wastes chatting with me is a minute that they’re not targeting my neighbors and disrupting their lives.

Get a copy of the song, Cotton Eye Joe. Carry around a big, loud speaker. If you ever see ICE show up in your neighborhood, start playing it at full blast. 

Best case scenario? You can motion for them to come over your way and challenge them to a dance off. (Probably not likely, but it never hurts to dream.) 

Worst case scenario? They think you’re weird and like Cotton Eye Joe. 

Likely scenario? If you’ve let your neighbors know ahead of time that hearing Cotton Eye Joe means ICE is in the neighborhood, it may give them the head start they need to avoid harassment. 

Now you might be thinking that picking Cotton Eye Joe is a really random choice, but consider the following reasoning: 

The song has a very loud, clear, and distinctive opening, so it gets the message across right away without spending time on any kind of intro 

The song was once popular enough that people can easily recognize it 

While the song is catchy, it’s not very likely to be anyone’s favorite, so you don’t have to worry about ruining it for them 

The opening line ‘Fit’adn’t is nonsensical enough to be used as a secret tipoff if you’re unsure who’s listening 

It’s upbeat enough that it likely won’t get on your nerves too fast 

When played really loud, it becomes nearly impossible to talk over 

Would this actually work? Honestly, I have no idea. I’m no expert in active resistance. But I figure it’s worth putting out there. And who knows, maybe it could catch on. 

Stay safe everybody.