Carlo Kim ‘24
The essence of a man is among the few things which can, from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, permeate a toxic cloud of insecure rage and instigate a physical altercation with naught but its mention, for it would be decidedly emasculating if one did not immediately defend their manhood following a serious affront such as “Be a man,” “You’re acting like a girl,” etc. And as any modern man of the West knows, the go-to method to smash any doubtfulness regarding one’s masculinity is capricious acts of verbal or material violence. This whole concatenation ends up leading into itself, breeding violence which itself causes more violence. Living in the United States, each of us is a product of these conditions as a woman or, the subject of this article, as a man. We attach ourselves to ideas of dominance, power, and fraternity, all at the expense of other genders, and some men who, born with the requisite genitalia like any other, simply do not fit the violent mold.
We treat this malady as though it were a natural process, inherent both to society and humanity, and we maintain several illusive excuses to that effect which, it should be noted, all boil down to the theme of “Boys will be boys.”
I do confess some confoundment, then, as to whether we are meant to be “boys” or “men.” Is not the latter preferable? and why are we “men” when we fight but “boys” when under scrutiny? It seems to me that the words have no meaning at all beyond basic delineations of sex aggrandized by the tentacles of patriarchy wrapped tautly around our country and the world—otherwise, why the confusion of these terms?
Many men find these firmly feministic assertions diminishing, for we consider this artificial construction of violence, this patriarchy, to be a component of our identity, and not necessarily incorrectly. Why we play sports, the music we listen to, the clothing we wear, the friends we surround ourselves with, the idols we beatify, and every other idiosyncrasy of our—the American man’s—life is, to some extent or another, the product of patriarchy. Fighting that as a man is, to another varying proportion, fighting yourself, but is it really?
As I alluded to previously, the premise of “being a man” is fraudulent, and it only really indicates sexual identity. It is not a thing which falls like a rock thrown over a cliff, ebbs and flows as waves of water, or slinks around unnoticeably like air, for it is nothing at all but a human-made idea—a fabricated restriction, and a remnant of a lesser time—which, characteristic of its counterfeit complexion, does nothing at all but push people in certain directions.
Violence is no longer systematized to the point where women cannot be engineers, sure, but they have been nudged away from it to such an extent that they only serve as about 10% of the total membership of that field. Removing such a direction or, to remind the reader, removing patriarchy only really has the effect of emancipating women and men from restriction, those roads paved in such a way that it would be foolish and isolating to alter your path.
Where comes the diminishment we experience, then? For I must say it's an all but formally indisputable fact that as diminishing as it may be for a man to be told to close their legs to make room for their fellows, it is infinitely more diminishing for a woman to pour her heart out on an article and be harassed for her gender and message; it is frighteningly more diminishing for a woman to report fear of men’s actions when walking late at night on the school campus in which she lives; it is infuriatingly more diminishing when men have no response to this apparent malady save for quiet nods or affirmation of the principle that “boys will be boys.”
We really ought to be prepared as men to accept some comparably minor diminishment affected when looking to women who, ineluctably more intimately, understand this sort of violence better than any man of the West, and I have no trouble conceding that as a Black-Asian-Indigenous-Latino man. Being quiet and accepting their words uncomplainingly is exceedingly important, but being prepared to take active action to the effect of developing the conversation and progressing the degradation of violence in this country is just as important; speak up when your advisor asks for thoughts, ask your fellow human for theirs, and be prepared to organize more broadly. More immediately, do not make excuses for other men, and do not assume you know enough already because of your book smarts. The only assumption any man has the right to make, and every single one must make, is that they have much to learn, for we all do, including myself.
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