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Mens Day Post
8 years ago
It's ok to include men in talks on how fucked up gender and sexuality are. It effects us too. Talking to men about this is the only way that much of this is going to get any better. If you are male and have learned to suck less, you have a responsibly and duty to do just that. Understanding how we were raised, the baggage, the damage and the expectations placed upon us and tearing them apart is how you fight this.
Talking to women, transpeople, and in general people with a different perspective from yours and not taking personally every negative story about men is how you fight this. It's not about invalidating your own experience, and your own suffering, its about learning that this is a shared struggle an actively working on ways to improve things.
This is how I got better. If you were raised male and think that you don't need to process these things. Think again. It is all men. Every single one of us. And you know what? That's ok and I will tell you why.
Every single person regardless of what gender they are has been saddles with bullshit since birth. Every one. All of us. There is one key difference as I see it however and that is that men have both the power not to care and societal pressure to specifically not think about this. Most women I have met have carefully considered the kinds of conditioning and baggage that were laid on them since childhood and how these things relate to how they treat themselves and others. They have made attempts at contextualizing and understanding them. Not a single trans person will have made the journey they have and not thought about that conditioning and that baggage heavily and also tried their best to contextualize and understand what it did and what it means.
Men, we are the only ones that don't do this.
Think about the ways we were taught to interact with love interests. We have been taught that persistence [stalking] wins the day. That "taking charge" [often strait up sexual assault] is what we are supposed to do. The way we have learned to talk to women is laid out as some playbook, a secret code that has to be cracked, a manipulation that has to take place in order for us to succeed romantically rather than to simply talk to women as other human beings. We have been taught that failure at talking to love interests, or that having love interests that are not women, or that having no romantic or sexual drive makes us less than "men" and that is a load of objective crap.
We have been taught that violence is an acceptable way to deal with our anger. "Boys will be boys" "let them fight it out" "let him tire himself out" etc. People make these excuses for us because they expect us not to be capable of better and we take it because its privilege. We have the anger we do, often times, because we are taught that accepting out fear also makes us less and that we should never talk about it or let people know we are experiencing it. We are often literally taught to direct our fear outward as rage.
We bottle up our sadness, we often redirect it as cruelty because our suffering must have some meaning and we find that through a fucked up mean world syndrome that we inflict on others. We are taught that acts of casual meanness, and sometimes outright cruelty "build character" or "show camaraderie" and ignore the fact that these traumas damage us.
What's worse, because we are taught that these things are normal, we do this to each other and ourselves so that we can feel like we belong.
Well, you are an adult now and you don't have to. You make the choice of how you act. What you take onboard. You decide whats acceptable.
Part of growing up, part of being a man, is making an informed, intelligent choice about what you do with your life and the person you build yourself into.
It's better to do that if you have the full picture.
The full picture is that we all have shit we need to work through if we are going to do this right and become people who's lives and actions are worth being proud of. It all starts with us. Every one of us. It's a problem who's solution lies inward, not outward.
Every day, every moment and every action is a new choice. Every part of ourselves is constantly being created and we have the power to direct how it grows.
Be brave enough to be uncomfortable. You will be.
Be brave enough to admit fault.
Be brave enough to admit the damage.
Most of all, strive to be a better person.
That's my 2 cents for #InternationalMensDay
Talking to women, transpeople, and in general people with a different perspective from yours and not taking personally every negative story about men is how you fight this. It's not about invalidating your own experience, and your own suffering, its about learning that this is a shared struggle an actively working on ways to improve things.
This is how I got better. If you were raised male and think that you don't need to process these things. Think again. It is all men. Every single one of us. And you know what? That's ok and I will tell you why.
Every single person regardless of what gender they are has been saddles with bullshit since birth. Every one. All of us. There is one key difference as I see it however and that is that men have both the power not to care and societal pressure to specifically not think about this. Most women I have met have carefully considered the kinds of conditioning and baggage that were laid on them since childhood and how these things relate to how they treat themselves and others. They have made attempts at contextualizing and understanding them. Not a single trans person will have made the journey they have and not thought about that conditioning and that baggage heavily and also tried their best to contextualize and understand what it did and what it means.
Men, we are the only ones that don't do this.
Think about the ways we were taught to interact with love interests. We have been taught that persistence [stalking] wins the day. That "taking charge" [often strait up sexual assault] is what we are supposed to do. The way we have learned to talk to women is laid out as some playbook, a secret code that has to be cracked, a manipulation that has to take place in order for us to succeed romantically rather than to simply talk to women as other human beings. We have been taught that failure at talking to love interests, or that having love interests that are not women, or that having no romantic or sexual drive makes us less than "men" and that is a load of objective crap.
We have been taught that violence is an acceptable way to deal with our anger. "Boys will be boys" "let them fight it out" "let him tire himself out" etc. People make these excuses for us because they expect us not to be capable of better and we take it because its privilege. We have the anger we do, often times, because we are taught that accepting out fear also makes us less and that we should never talk about it or let people know we are experiencing it. We are often literally taught to direct our fear outward as rage.
We bottle up our sadness, we often redirect it as cruelty because our suffering must have some meaning and we find that through a fucked up mean world syndrome that we inflict on others. We are taught that acts of casual meanness, and sometimes outright cruelty "build character" or "show camaraderie" and ignore the fact that these traumas damage us.
What's worse, because we are taught that these things are normal, we do this to each other and ourselves so that we can feel like we belong.
Well, you are an adult now and you don't have to. You make the choice of how you act. What you take onboard. You decide whats acceptable.
Part of growing up, part of being a man, is making an informed, intelligent choice about what you do with your life and the person you build yourself into.
It's better to do that if you have the full picture.
The full picture is that we all have shit we need to work through if we are going to do this right and become people who's lives and actions are worth being proud of. It all starts with us. Every one of us. It's a problem who's solution lies inward, not outward.
Every day, every moment and every action is a new choice. Every part of ourselves is constantly being created and we have the power to direct how it grows.
Be brave enough to be uncomfortable. You will be.
Be brave enough to admit fault.
Be brave enough to admit the damage.
Most of all, strive to be a better person.
That's my 2 cents for #InternationalMensDay
