Does Anyone Give a F*ck About Men?
It's a Man's World, and now that world is changing rapidly
A couple of years ago, while watching a Chris Rock Special on Netflix, the comedian made a joke that rang both funny and personally triggering. What did he say? Well, according to Rock, while women have it much harder than men, “Only the elderly, women, children, and dogs are loved unconditionally. Men are only loved on the condition that they can provide something.” Rock's comment was funny, but he’s getting at something that I would argue every man has felt. Society may give us the ability to be privileged, pay us more, and acknowledge our rights much faster than women, but the “perks” of manhood come with a huge cost. Our humanity.
The social contract to receive the benefits of manhood isn’t cheap. It requires many of us to embrace the idea that we shouldn’t feel any emotions, and instead suck up any pain that could exist. It requires us to be the ultimate providers, regardless of the circumstances. And if we cannot provide or fulfill the duties that we have been assigned, that failure lands directly on us. In recent years, men have begun to push back against these ideas. Some have identified patriarchy as the harmful tool that creates these standards. Still, for every man who goes to therapy and begins to do the work to decolonize his mind, ten more find unhealthy outlets that do nothing more than feed their growing hurt and anger.
The “Men's Rights” movement doesn’t just exist because a group of men wanted to organize their shitty behaviors on a larger scale. The movement and its many leaders are speaking to a group of people who feel ostracized and ignored. For all of the social capital that men are believed to have, many of us feel like we have no agency. As the world changes, and we all try to shift from the evils of patriarchy, society is not doing enough of the work to bring men along. In some cases, we are pushing them away. With that current vacuum, influencers like Andrew Tate and groups like Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) are grabbing their attention instead.
Check out this post from one of my favorite writers on here.
These bad actors are giving men unhealthy tools to thrive in a world that believes men are nothing but unfeeling machines that only express themselves through sex and violence. This world tells us that sex must be with a woman, and if for some reason we're not interested in it, then something is wrong with us. This manifests in the way we and men respond to the world around us.
Think about it: countless generations of men were sexually violated as young boys, yet they believe it was consensual. I am one of those men. Thirty years have passed, and I still struggle to accept that what happened to me wasn't consensual; it couldn’t be. I know many men with similar experiences, but society told them they should have enjoyed it. Instead of processing what happened, they brag about it or suppress the memory.
For example, during an interview with VladTv, comedian DeRay Davis shared a story of how he was sexually violated. In the interview, DeRay describes two women who were friends of his mom making him give them oral sex when he was 11 years old. If this had involved a woman, we would all be mortified. Instead, the host laughed. What happened to DeRay is why it took me 30 years to acknowledge what happened to me; it’s also why a lot of men will never open up about the harm they have experienced.
Whenever the topic of what society can do to help men comes up, people get upset, especially women, and I get it. Women have had to suffer the consequences of a broken system that prioritizes toxic masculinity. They should not also be tasked with solving a crisis they did not create. I don’t want to put that responsibility on women, but I do want more sisters to understand that the path to breaking the cycle is through partnership, not ostracization. The goal of this essay isn’t to upset my readers, or to start a debate about who is the “most oppressed.” my goal is to ring the alarm, men are struggling, we want to be better, we want your help, but it feels like the world would rather give us a blueprint for how to function, and then punish us for trying to live up to it. If something doesn’t provide, we will all suffer for this.
Men, especially Black men, are told to Man Up all the time (Which is precarious). Charlagmane the God (Shook One) stated that going to therapy, which I he and I believe in it, some view it as being pusillanimous.