Mr. Incredible
Amidst all the shrieking about toxic masculinity, I thought this column, by J. Ishiro Finney, was worth posting in its entirety:
A response to the mass shooting in Florida.
The bodies
aren’t even cold yet and already you are being blamed.
Yes you.
All of you.
The boys and
young men who will grow up to become one half of America’s future.
Once again, due to society’s failure to raise you, to teach you, to properly
guide you on your path to manhood, your mere existence is being held
responsible for seventeen more deaths—this time in Florida, and once again, at
a school. The headlines of the last few days say it all:
“Guns don’t kill people; men and boys kill people,
experts say”
-USA TODAY
“Michael Ian Black reacts to Florida shooting: Boys are
broken”
-New York Daily News
“How Gun Violence And Toxic Masculinity Are Linked, In 8
Tweets”
-The Huffington Post
“Toxic white masculinity: The killer that haunts American
life”
-Salon
“Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us”
-The Boston Globe
“Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us”
-Harpers Bazaar
“Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men”
-Politico
In the handful
of decades I’ve been alive, I’ve seen America shift from a culture of
responsibility to one of blame. We don’t solve problems anymore. We cry, we
pray for, we seek to find closure, and then finally, slaughter a sacrificial
lamb for our sins. When I was young and Columbine happened, that lamb was Marilyn Manson and video games. Before
that, it was D&D and Twisted Sister.
These days, though, as body counts
continue to rise and excuses continue to vanish, the lamb America has chosen to
sacrifice is you. Rather than take responsibility for the seeds we’ve sown, the
culture we built, and the disaster you’ve been left to inherit, we as a nation
have chosen to lie to ourselves. To listen and believe those who claim that the
answer is simple: “Boys are simply born bad.”
As an aging Gen
Xer watching this tragedy unfold, I can’t help but look back at my youth and
realize we were the dry run for this “crisis of masculinity” as the media likes
to call it. In my time I’ve watched as fathers were pushed out of the home,
separated from their children, and their role in society debased and devalued.
Like you, I was taught male behavior was bad behavior. That I was broken and
needed to be fixed. Drugs, therapy, mass socialization were required to save me
from my most innate instincts—
—the need
compete.
—the drive to
create.
—the urge to
protect.
—the desire for
female affection.
Like you, I was
told these instincts were not only wrong, but dangerous. That due to my
Original Sin of being born a boy, I was destined to mature into a lustful
monster and an oppressor of women. All this was burned into me before I even
reached college, where campus policy actually assumed all men to be rapists
waiting to happen.
It isn’t hard
to see how we got here, to an age when America is more than willing to
sacrifice its boys. To quote Fight Club,
“We’re a generation of men raised by women.” And the women who raised my
generation had a saying: All men are pigs.
But there’s another saying those same women were enamored with and that is: The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.
So here we are,
coming close to fifty years of single mothers raising their boys as if they
were animals. Two generations of young men raised to believe they’re broken,
immoral, and dangerous. That their natural state, if left unchecked and
unmedicated, is a sexual ticking time bomb of rape and abuse. Half a century of
academia peddling a grim version of history that holds your gender personally
responsible for all the wrongs ever to have happened in the world. And a press,
that at this very moment, is blaming YOU for every school shooting to have ever
occurred.
After all this,
how could there not be
a crisis of masculinity?
So to the boys
and young men of America, believe me when I say it isn’t you who should be
apologizing for the state of our world today. This mess was set in motion long
before you were born.
You are not
bad.
You are not
broken.
You are not
inherently evil or a sexual abuser in waiting.
You are boys
who were robbed of your right to be men.
All your life
you’ve been told to act, think, and behave like women. To suppress your
passions, your pride, your need to compete and drive to achieve.
Now society is
crumbling around us.
Feminizing boys
didn’t make better men. It’s resulted in broken homes and shattered families
and record suicide rates. It’s destroying any notion of a healthy partnership
between men and women, and is pushing us ever closer to total collapse of
gender relations.
Boys, we don’t
need you to be like women, the world has plenty of women, already.
What the world
needs now more than ever is for you to be men.
For you to
grow-up, to grow strong, and do what men do.
For it is men’s
strength and determination that tamed the wilderness, built civilization, and
has kept the world fed despite all predictions we’d all die starving before the
year 2000. It’s men’s curiosity that lead us to explore the oceans, to conquer
space, and peer into the tiniest of microcosms of the human body. It was men
who built the cities we inhabit, the luxuries we enjoy, the medicines that keep
us alive. Men built the road, the plumbing, the electrical grid, the phone in
your hand, the internet it’s connected to.
Men have always
been innovators, explores, defenders, and leaders.
But most
importantly, men have always been fathers.
So to the boys
and young men of America, please read this and take every word to heart.
The world needs you.
-J. Ishiro
Finney, Feb 2018
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My take-away: America has shifted from a culture of responsibility to one of blame.
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