We have a son and a daughter, and often wonder which of them would need more guidance and support growing up and navigating life. As new parents who struggle with the constant changes in our socio-political landscape, how will our children fare? Being mixed also presents a conundrum of race and identity that they would need to unravel as well but as the world becomes a smaller place, hopefully, that will be less of a concern.
Would my daughter find dealing with life harder as issues such as the gender pay gap, reproduction rights and sexual violence may still exist? Would we need to inculcate strong feminist values such as the same right to everything as her brother and to stand up for the same privilege to be treated equally as her male peers regardless of their race, orientation or religion? Would society defend her claim to say no, respect her choices and, allow her to be open about her feelings without judgement?
Her African part is still miles behind recognising those rights and her Asian side still prioritises their males over their females. Unfortunately, even her Caucasian half continues to punish their women for bearing children as a justification for a lower salary and a reason not be taken seriously in the workplace. It may seem like raising our little girl in these times would be the harder case.
Look across the room from Laila (the angel we discussed briefly), and there sits Zach, a fair, tall and beautiful two-year-old. We couldn’t have wished for anything more perfect. At slightly over three-feet, he’s well on the trajectory to be a six-footer, his dusty blond curls and the gorgeous smile probably will give him the ability to charm his way out of the most precarious situations in life.
Born into a middle-class family in suburbia surrounded by excellent schools, he will have access to opportunities, most children will never be able to. It seems we have to do as parents are to get him in one piece to university and the world will be his oyster, his chances for success guaranteed. Unfortunately, I feel the task of raising a decent human would fall more on Zach than Laila.
The majority of successful and influential people are white, male, middle-class, tall and well-educated with access to opportunities not easily available to the rest of the world. This is, of course, a generalisation. The system does seem to favour them and is generally less fair to those who don’t fit the criteria. More is generally required of those who don’t tick those boxes to become successful.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not bashing the system or perpetuating racial stereotypes, I have taken advantage of the same system to make myself more visible, and therefore successful. I tick a couple of those boxes, and from an ethnic perspective, I am also the first-born which has given me the keys to open doors where they have remained closed for some of my friends and family.
We have a generation of men groomed in toxic masculinity. We are taught that to get ahead; we need to exploit those who are weaker. We have played the system by parading our differences and inciting hate. We give reasons for why we are physically stronger, more intelligent and religiously sound than others instead of finding common ground. We are a lot more similar than we would like to believe.
“Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
We have been reminded continuously to exploit our position and status over the less fortunate or those who have not been dealt a fair hand by lady luck. It really comes down to lady luck when the cost of being born female or feeling different in certain parts of the world results in being abandoned as a child. The favouritism in the one-child policy was an unfortunate tragedy.
Grayson Perry describes the curse of toxic masculinity articulately in his aptly named book the descent of man where he mentions “most violent people, rapists, criminals, killers, tax avoiders, corrupt politicians, planet despoilers, sex abusers and dinner-party bores, do tend to be, well… men”. It is a great book that unfortunately depicts the descent of man. A must-read for any man you considers himself modern.
To be perfectly honest, the incidents that led to the #metoo campaign didn’t come as a shock to most men. We just did the decent thing and pretended that it was unfathomable. What really shocked us was how long he had been able to get away with it for. Wasn’t the goal of obtaining absolute power and wealth not to exploit it or use it create an advantage over others? Why else would one amass such things? Male hegemony has been discussed since the 80s, shame it took this long to finally start listening to women.
“There is a time in a boy’s life when the sweetness is pounded out of him; and tenderness, and the ability to show what he feels, is gone.”― Norah Vincent
Growing up, I heard a lot of my male friends speak in undesirable ways about women, but we just took it as that was just what boys did. Fathers ensured that their boys become “real men” by getting them to bottle up their emotions and forcing them down a single path of rigid heterosexuality. Anything less was unacceptable. Men raised men, didn’t they? They were required to take what they wanted, not what was offered of the world and its fruits.
Most boys never really get to show how they actually feel and it has kept them trying to fill a gender role that is now seen as archaic and claustrophobic. It’s no wonder that suicide is one of the leading causes of men under-50s. We all know someone who has taken their life for not living up to society’s version of a man. It is a sad state of affairs when we have been trained that asking for help is seen as a taboo for a young man.
I grew up in a traditional African patriarchal setting, male hegemony was all around us. Being the first-born of three sons, I had to set an example of being a man to my younger brothers. It only served to contribute to the authority of the man. I further reinforced the idea of toxic masculinity by serving in the military. This cemented the confidence that my ego and identity could only be crushed by a bullet to the head.
It came in another form. A broken shin as a result of a special operations training accident. Funnily enough, it wasn’t the physical pain of a fractured shin that brought about my depression, it was the inability to compete with my male peers that broke my mind. I just wasn’t man enough to take it. It took a very supportive partner and a fair bit of therapy to break the chains of masculinity which had masked my trauma for awhile. Charlemagne Tha God puts it beautifully in a letter to himself.
You’ll need to go to therapy. There’s no way around that; you have trauma you don’t even know about. Eventually, you’ll realise things that seemed normal to you because of the environment you grew up in aren’t normal at all. — Charlemagne Tha God
I have been that kind of man, I am not proud of it. Surely by watching the struggles of my mother battle a landscape dominated by male authority and hegemony, a warning light should have come on. Or maybe it has made me question it and as I look down on Zach and all the little sweet innocent boys who are going to grow up with so much pressure to become a man. The challenge is with us the parents of little boys. I hope when I tell him to be a man, what he hears me say is to be bold and gentle, show kindness and compassion and support the ones you love. Wish us luck!
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Jonathan Fashanu