OK, I warned in my first post that there would be Adult Themes to be found here, so here we go. Yes, it’s confronting. Yes, it’s meant to be.
Today, as you may or may not know, is International Men’s Day, and this year the theme that’s been decided upon is “Positive Male Rôle Models”. Very nice too, in theory, but who’s deciding what these rôle models should be, and who’s deciding what makes them positive? What, if you like, is the hypermodel to which these rôle models must measure up? Who’s vetting and signing off on them? I have a nasty suspicion that the word “positive” here is a weaselly euphemism for “acceptable”, and frankly, I am not interested in being judged acceptable by someone whose obvious agenda is to tell us – on the one day of the year which is supposed to be ours – what we should be, rather than letting us tell them who we are. So no. I’m not going to bother with that. Listen, please; don’t lecture.
Men, you see, are told what we should be – or more to the point, what we should not be – all our lives. We’ve had it since we were kids, and we don’t need more of it now. We need to be listened to instead. It’s all very well for people to wring their hands and say, “Oh, if only men would just open up more about their feelings…” but we know from experience what we get when we open up about the “wrong” ones, and those are the ones we most need to express. We need to be able to speak freely, with no ifs or buts, and without comparing our situation to that of those who might “have it worse” according to the ugly ideological arithmetic that requires us to “check our privilege” – another weaselly euphemism there, which translates as “you don’t matter, so shut up.” Three is greater than two, but that doesn’t make two equal to zero.
It is, of course, those who need to speak about their burdens the most that are seen as “problematic” when they attempt it, and as I say, the programming starts in childhood. Speaking as someone who was put through a decade and a half of violent and psychological abuse when I was growing up, I could write a book on it (and I still might.) – Don’t cry! It’s babyish, and proper boys don’t do it. Don’t fight back! It’s wrong, and how dare you? Don’t tell tales! No one will believe you, and no one likes liars. If only you were a good boy, like (insert name here) I wouldn’t need to do this! – The message never changes, even when we’ve reached adulthood; it simply continues. The same themes, the same shaming, the same “because I say so” arrogation of moral authority.
So, to the self-appointed man-wranglers I say this. You have no right not to expect anger, but you don’t need to approach us like a lion tamer, brandishing a chair and a whip, expecting us to have no control over ourselves without your instruction. An overwhelming majority of us are not like that, believe it or not. We’ve done the work because we’ve had to; we’ve found our own answers, followed our own “rôle models” because we respected them, and become ourselves without your help or management. You just don’t know about that because you’ve never bothered to look, or to check in to see if we’re OK. You should try it.
And to the men reading this, a big furry bear hug and a happy International Men’s Day. Now, for fuck’s sake, let’s make it mean something.