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I read a piece on Gavin Newsom in The New Yorker recently.
Two sentences really stuck with me. The first: liberals push away young men saying “you’re basically bad and privileged and we don’t really want you here.” Conservatives roll out the red carpet and say “your insecurity and vulnerability are not only welcome here, we care, your feelings are valid, turn toward hating others and you will feel better. Here’s community for you.”
This is not what we want. And yet when men “do the right thing” in liberal communities: you know, being good fathers, being good husbands, being active in local politics…they’re not honored or encouraged or listened to or empathized with.
In my counseling therapy, with Kelsey, our therapist is wonderful. But I consistently have to advocate for my basic point of view. IE, it generally feels like it’s 2 on 1. That’s okay, because I want Kelsey to feel comfortable and supported. But I shouldn’t have to remind our counselor that I have feelings, too, and that they matter.
When I was active in local politics, I could do the work, listen to those advocating for helpful change, try to help them, bring their needs to the table…and I’d be sidelined. For me, as someone raised by a single mom and secure in my caring for issues and community, I didn’t mind much. I know the historic and present context of privilege, and understood why we as a liberal community were lifting up voices of color, women, others not often given a seat at the table or a microphone at it.
But many men don’t want to feel last, so they go to youtube, say, looking for answers, they slide down the slippery slope, the rabbit hole of validated feelings and hate…and they switch to the conservative table, where they’re first in line.
The other day Harrison Ford won a lifetime achievement award and in his moving speech talked about being a lonely young man and finding community in theater, in drama, in a troupe of weirdos and loners looking to tell stories in community. Today, lonely young men find community in Mr. Beast or Rogan, the “I’m not political bunch” of men who are all MAGA, anti-vaxxers, greedy, anti-establishmenters in charge at the establishment.
Today I was literally changing our dear baby’s dirty diaper and wet pants on an armchair in a waiting room and another mother asked my wife how she was holding up, if she was getting sleep. She didn’t look at me or ask me how I was doing.
I got four hours of sleep last night. When my wife and baby go to bed I start working. I work nights. I help out all day, every day, and that’s a privilege and an honor and pleasure. I’m showing up fully, if not moreso: I do the dishes, often, much of the cleaning, pay for everything, do all the laundry, change the baby’s diapers often. My loving wife does so much, and more, and carried our baby and made her and loves her and nurses her all day and I support that and nurture her and bring her food and literally bring home the bacon, in our case hopefully vegan bacon. None of this is to discount my wife’s immense contributions, in fact as the one supporting her with food and bringing her things all day every day I’m the one who, most of all in this world, honors and recognizes her immense contributions to our little family. But all of this is to say that I am showing up fully and society doesn’t really care. We should care. We should want fathers to show up fully, men to be a part of a loving family and society, young men to be felt for and cared for and included.
We should want our boys to grow up to be gentle-men, not discarded and ignored angry young men told to point their resentment at others who are more vulnerable.
This entire thread gave me life. I probably read about 40 or 50 comments. This is caring community for men, right here. Too bad it has to be men doing that caring, for men, when it should be all of us encouraging empathy and kindness in one another. Click on it. Read 40 comments, the top ones nested on the left as you scroll down.
“My wife and I divorced – after our marriage she chose drugs and alcohol and I chose to be a dad. People still ask me all the time how she’s doing through everything. She still gets invited to parent/kid meet ups even though the kids live with me 7 days a week.
It’s unfair.”
~
“It absolutely is unfair. I hope future generations will learn to be more supportive after seeing more great dads in action!”
From the thread here.
And to those inevitable comments saying, “oh, boo hoo, you’re a white man asking for sympathy in a profoundly unjust society, cry me a river, you’re playing the world’s smallest violin,” you’re not wrong, but you’re also part of the problem pushing young men away, towards toxic masculinity.
Our inherited gender role paradigms are hard on those who swim upstream against them.
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