I’m trying to navigate my newfound celebrity. For whatever algorithmic reason, my Instagram account has exploded. At this writing I have over 62 thousand people following and over 3 million views in the last 30 days. That includes a certain star of Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club. I’ve gone viral! My 90-second takes on the state of political crisis are generating a vibrant dialogue from people around the world who are concerned about the fate of American democracy.
And it’s also brought out the trolls.
It’s shouldn’t be surprising that right-wing trolls target my masculinity. They call me “gay,” “beta,” and “cuck.” It’s the same language of the schoolyard bullies who called me “fag” and “pussy.” One troll said, “I bet he can’t even do 20 push ups.” (I immediately got on the floor to make sure that I could.) Somehow they associate caring about democracy with being feminine and they associate being feminine with being weak. These “alpha men” must not know any actual women. And their AI girlfriends don’t count.
I’ve written endless words in this blog about the ginned up “mansophere,” the booming world of performative masculinity that is there for boys and men who can’t navigate the social changes that include seeing girls and women as human beings. These are the fragile fellas that rally for Trump and rail against all things DEI, that think the man should be the king of his castle. They love MMA and rapists like Andrew Tate because they mourn the loss of the myth of unrestrained male id, to fight and fuck whoever they want. Trump allowed them to escape 4chan and take over Washington. Pete Hegseth is the Incel god.
The fragile troll boys aren’t much of an issue for me. I learned how to deal with them in high school. Redan High had a notorious bully named Ted who one day during lunch, unprompted, said, “Blazak, you’re a pussy.” I shot back, “Well, Ted, I guess you are what you eat, you dick.” I escaped while he tried to figure out what I had just said. These guys are never too smart. They can’t argue policy. They only have ad hominem attacks on how much you’re not like their avatar on Grand Theft Auto V.
Where the danger is in how these “alpha men” treat women and how they vote. The gender gap among the youth is widening. According to a recent NBC poll, only 24% of young women approve of Trump’s performance, but 45% of young men approve of Trump’s shit show. I see this in my college students. There are young men, including men of color, who see the MAGA movement as “preserving” a world where men had status over others. The idea of sharing power cripples them with fear. Trump, the sexual assaulter, with the porn star wife, is their redemption.
So they come after me as a “soy boy libtard.” It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Their hollow macho fantasies of fascism will ultimately bite them in the ass. This isn’t their imagined Roman Empire and it was never meant to be. But trying to beat them down only triggers their fight response. We need to learn how to talk to these boys and men to bring them into the family of man and woman. Alpha Men might just need a hug.
If there was ever a time America needed a leader, it’s now as COVID deaths surge past a quarter million. But sad Donald Trump is in his bunker, tweeting madly that he won the election “by a lot.” No stimulus program for Americans falling into homelessness. No national mask mandate to save additional lives. Just Baby Donald having a temper tantrum and a circus of sycophants too afraid to tell the Emperor that the world is laughing at him.
The pathetic end of Donald J. Trump is not only a lesson in how not to be a president. It’s also a vital lesson in how not to be a man. Of course, Mr. “Grab’ em by the pussy” has provided that service for years.
The lockdowns of 2020 have certainly presented challenges for single people, but there have been challenges for those of us that are boo’d up as well. The pandemic has forced many of us married and “coupled up” (as they say on Love Island) to learn how to truly co-exist in a confined space, without the easy exit hatch of “let’s just go out.” There’s only so much Netflixing you can do. At some point, it gets real. And as if providing (finally) some kind of national service, there’s President Hissy-fit giving the men of America a perfect example of how not to handle this moment.
From the very beginning, Trump has made it all about him. From his word-salad lie-fests before his adoring cult crowds to his denial of the Biden victory, “America first” has always been code for “Trump first” and you almost feel sorry for the schleps that still fall for this con man. (“Quick! Donate to President Trump’s legal team so he prove those black votes in Detroit and Atlanta were illegal! We take PayPal!”) Trump always centers himself and you don’t have to look at Melania’s face to see that that’s his fatal flaw.
But this isn’t about Trump. It’s about all us men who do the same thing. We’ve been socialized to believe it’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world and women are there as our support system. (BEHIND every great man… is a woman who should be out in front.) The world is about our male hopes and plans and adventures and successes and failures and wet dreams. That’s why Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) resonated with so many women. It simply asked, but what about me? Arn’t I a person, too?
Sadly, the second wave feminist movement that Friedan helped launch did not fully humanize females in America. It made a lot of progress (Thank you, Title IX and hello Vice President Harris!), but it still looks like a penis-centered culture. At least American Ninja Warrior puts the the top two female contestants through to the finals. We can find plenty of reasons to find cracks in patriarchy. (I’ll credit Nancy Pelosi for keeping Trump’s nuts in a vice grip and the daughters of NFL fans for prioritizing Beyoncés BLM anthems over Go Daddy commercials and cheerleaders in halter tops.) We can see progress all around us (if we turn blind eye to the epidemic of rape in the country), but there are still people who want to make America “Father Knows Best” again.
We can talk about this on a societal level (RBG was right. We’ve had generations of all-male Supreme Courts. When do we get an all-female Supreme Court?) But this is about the personal journey of men stepping away from the destructive (including to men) effects of patriarchy.
More than that, this about me learning how to love my wife.
If patriarchy, on a macro-level, is about centering men’s voice and minds in society, on a personal level it’s about doing the same Goddamn thing in our relationships. Hi ladies, welcome to my world. Can you make me a sandwich? Feminist Dorothy E. Smith has written how women are given control of the “domestic sphere” so men can have pretty much everything else on earth. And that can include the space in a relationship.
Now, to be clear, I have claimed feminism as a core value in my life since the 1980s and proudly left my job to become a stay-at-home dad, inspired by my favorite househusband John Lennon. I can thrill you with stories of escorting women into abortion clinics past the screaming banshees of Operation Rescue and challenging students to accept that God is most likely female, but I still internalized patriarchy in the same sad way I internalized white supremacy.
That became most clear this year during long, under quarantine, conversations with my wife. Like most people, we’ve had our fair share of COVID-magnified conflicts; about money, about parenting, about who is going to wash the dishes. She was quick to point out how quickly I would go into defensive mode and try to “prove” my case, like we were on opposing debating teams. We’re on the same team! I forgot! But it became all about me and how I was somehow aggrieved.
What I should have been doing is asking questions. Why do you feel this way? What can I do to help? I should have centered her and put my amazing wife first in the discussion, but instead I retreated into “Randyland,” wondering why she had a “well, fuck this shit” look on her face. Maybe if I slept downstairs I could comeback, refreshed with an even clearer articulation of my position, complete with PowerPoint slides. Meanwhile, my wife felt more and more alone as I plotted strategies in my head instead of re-coupling (also a term from Love Island).
This is going to sound completely basic to many people (and maybe a few men), but I have literally burned through every relationship by doing this. By making it about me. That’s not how love is supposed to work. You’re supposed to put your partner’s emotional well-being before your own, but in patriarchal America I didn’t get that role modeling, not from my father and not from Starsky & Hutch. The result was relationships crashing and burning and me thinking that I was just a “psycho-chick magnet.” If they were psycho, it was because I centered myself instead of them.
There is a parallel phenomenon here with regard to race called White Fragility. America has the handbook and is starting to figure that out. (Thanks, Robin!) It’s not about you, Karen, so stop centering yourself and start centering black voices. Maybe, we need a book called Male Fragility: Why Men Get Their Panties in a Wad.
My wife is strong as hell and sure enough doesn’t need a guy like me who doesn’t put his partner before himself. I should have gotten that lesson a long time ago. I’m not the king of my castle. But somewhere, between long, hard conversations with her and watching Baby Trump center himself instead of the nation we hired him to lead, I got it. Don’t be like Trump. Hey Donald, it’s not about you. It’s about America. She’s trying to tell you how she feels. Please listen.
Watching the Wheels 