The Holiday Creation Company (hereto-after the HCC) notified me they’ve created an International Men’s Day to be held annually on the nineteenth day of November.

At long last, a day to acknowledge our ceaseless turmoil seething that we face — daily, I might add — as men. You might be asking yourself “What kind of turmoil can this guy be facing as sits there on his iPhone spouting his brand of rhetoric, and his…white-male-ness?”

Our masculine turmoil can range from anything from comprising 61% of the homeless population in the United States to my middle-aged (but equally white) counterparts leading the pack in deaths by suicide. In 2020 alone we accounted for 69.68% of suicide deaths.

If you think that’s something, wait until you read this:

Approximately 1 in 12 men in the U.S. (8.0%) has experienced sexual violence other than rape by an intimate partner in his lifetime. This includes being made to penetrate an intimate partner (2.2%), sexual coercion (4.2%), unwanted sexual contact (2.6%) and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences (2.7%). In the 12 months prior to taking the survey, 2.5% or nearly 2.8 million men experienced sexual violence other than rape by an intimate partner.

I even have my own delightful story of turmoil. In 2020, my partner and I had a friend, and she was in a group text with my partner and me. Long story short but no less devastating, my now ex-friend stalked us, with a hyperfocus on me. Imagine my shock when I found out that on three separate occasions two mutual friends talked her out of showing up on our doorstep and interrupting my long-term plans of having no long-term plans.

The ending of that story is good. Good for my partner and me, anyway.* We handled it without involving the police, protection orders, or even restraining orders. When mulling over solutions, the police were on the list, of course. There were many reasons why I didn’t want to involve the police. Ask a woman who’s dealt with a stalker and you might hear a similar refrain akin to “Police don’t take stalking seriously,” or “They won’t arrive on time or do anything and I’ll be dead.” Yes, those were issues I took into account. However, none of this logic bubbled to the surface the same way this thought did:

I don’t want them to think I’m a pussy.

Yes, it’s true. I didn’t want the police to think I was a pussy and incapable of protecting my home. That same line of thinking is why I won’t go see a male therapist and haven’t done so since I started going to therapy years back. I managed to surprise myself with some of these thoughts despite growing up with my single father who encouraged emoting and eschewed stereotypical macho displays. So that’s where men are. We are at a point where insidious influences creep in from all corners of the globe and affect the way our thoughts and actions, and none of us are immune.

Why does this happen?

I have some thoughts. We know that video games don’t cause violence. I’m not sure why they don’t but if I had to guess, it’s due to the distinction of them being games like it says in their descriptor. That’s a point toward our suspension of disbelief. Is it our environment? Yes. For all the good things men are capable of, we see a lot of external influences. For as good of a father as he was when I was growing up, my dad wasn’t everywhere. He wasn’t at school. He wasn’t there when one of my uncles said women were “pieces of meat.” He was there when another uncle belittled me by calling me a queer. For context, back in the 90s, the word wasn’t as ubiquitous nor was it undergoing the reclamation it is today. I also didn’t know I was bisexual at the time.

This uncle had a proclivity for talking shit to me. I was a smart-assed-know-it-all. Some would still describe me that way, and I thank them for it. This particular incident was a catalyst for a violent response. My dad, having long been sick of this particular uncle’s brand of bull shit, responded with violence. They ended up on the concrete outside, my father moved aside at the precise moment my uncle threw a punch. Uncle was on top, dad moved aside, and uncle’s fist hit the concrete and uncle broke his hand. I would be lying if I said I didn’t think the outcome was satisfactory. I do think it was a good outcome. Did it stop my uncle from saying dumb shit years after? Of course not. I did notice that the dumb shit was no longer about demeaning me because of my sexuality.

On top of our familial experiences, we also have our friend groups. The friend groups boys have are also interesting to look at. We talked a lot about sex and how excited we were to get laid. We also did a lot of blatantly homoerotic stuff, like playing Gay Chicken. As paradoxical as it is, Gay Chicken is when two straight people, usually they are men, do gay things to each other to see who backs out first. In this game, you might see some groping and kissing. I found out I was bisexual during a game of Gay Chicken because, in an effort to be a man and not lose the game, I wound up on my knees with another man’s dick in my mouth.** There’s also the butt slapping, nut tapping, and literal dick showing that younger men do when they’re growing up. Imagine going through life, and doing gay things concurrent with hearing messages that being a gay man equates to femininity.

Then there’s femininity itself. Some of our beloved media and classic insults towards men involve equating a lesser man to a woman. “You play ball like a girl!” from The Sandlot. Or a well-intentioned personal trainer referring to knee push-ups as “girl push-ups.” More crude but direct examples of this are men calling other men girls. Needless to say, there are a plethora of mixed signals codifying the image of an “ideal man” in the hearts and minds of the young boys and men out there.

One of the biggest mixed signals links to some of the above examples, and hashtag blessed, people do seem to be talking about it more often. Look at the thread of logic: if we’re insulting men on the grounds of masculinity and femininity, and we associate emotional expression with women, it’s no small wonder that men would, on an unconscious level, suppress some emotional expression. Suppress it and man up, and soldier on. Expressions of anger, however, are acceptable, even if those expressions frighten the women and children in their lives. The other problem with suppression is that when you suppress something, it still exists. It exists, and it royally fucks up the way you express it over time in detrimental ways. In some cases, at least the ones I’ve witnessed, not knowing how to express something in an appropriate way can still come out as an aggressive form of expression. All this in the name of “manliness.”

Masculinity and Manliness

So what is masculinity? What does it mean to be a man? The answers may disappoint you. I am okay with that because I am a man, therefore, I will suppress any semblance of feeling derived from it and soldier on and man up.

Masculinity and femininity as qualifiers are useful in making sense of some things. For instance, reading a scientific paper that discusses post-pubescent secondary sexual characteristics regarding physical features makes sense. It makes sense for us so that we can then make sense of what they’re talking about so we can digest the information. It also makes sense to use these terms for the parts that we play in life. Drag, for instance, is a campy feminine expression. Similar campy masculine expressions would also involve drag performances from a drag king in lieu of a drag queen. A more concrete example would be some of the gender-affirming care a person can receive to amplify the desirable traits of the image they want to put out in the world. An enby might get top surgery to remove fatty breast tissue and flatten their chest, thus de-accentuating the feminine appearance due to once having breasts. A cisgender, male bodybuilder will take anabolic steroids to accentuate the masculine secondary sex characteristics needed to win a show. Female bodybuilders may use steroids for the same reason, but they have to deftly toe the line to not appear too masculine, or else they won’t place high in a competition. A transgender man will take exogenous testosterone (and maybe an estrogen blocker of some sort) to accentuate their desired gendered characteristics.

Thinking back to the question at hand leads to more questions. Was I less of a man when my testosterone levels were lower than they should’ve been at age 31? Was I more of a man when I elected to engage in my gender-affirming care referred to as testosterone replacement therapy or hormone replacement therapy and my levels elevated beyond the highest range of normal? Was I a middleman when I tamed my testosterone dosage down to a therapeutic level and my levels were within range?

The answer is I was the same man with some subtle differences, like being able to take a 45-minute nap and wake up without crashing for three hours, being less moody overall, and attaining broader shoulders along with an even sicker lat spread.

With that in mind, it’s easier to define masculinity by what it’s not. It’s not your hormone levels. It’s not sartorial. It’s not misogyny, it’s not abject hatred for “the other.” It’s not your dick. Most important of all, it sure as hell isn’t what some other man deems it to be in hardline, definitive terms. First and foremost, it’s what you choose for it to be. If you find others with those commonalities, congratulations, you have what are colloquially called “your bros.” Once there, masculinity involves a fair amount of introspection for the attainment of emotional acumen, which will hopefully allow you to experience the depth and breadth of the human experience. That includes an often-used and misunderstood term known as “toxic masculinity.” Is it an accurate descriptor? Sometimes. Other times, a well-intentioned good man will say that those men are not “real men,” but they do so in error. Toxic masculinity is part of the human experience and it amounts to a reductive trope of masculinity that embodies the most negative of traits. Implying that a toxic masculine man isn’t a “real man” denies them a small part of humanity, and for the one doing the labeling, it doesn’t allow for them to face, head on, the problem of some of the same behaviors promulgating the headspace of their bros. You have to accept the good with the bad to glean a full picture of yourself. Regardless of all these things, if you say you’re a man, sure, you’re a man. I believe you. I want you to believe you, too.

Other Sources:

https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/

https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/coc/coc-homeless-populations-and-subpopulations-reports/

Honey, we don’t do men.

*Some of you reading this might be close friends of mine as well as friends of the person in question. However, do not take sides. They need help and support, but those two things can’t come from me.

**That didn’t happen. The truth of the matter is that I was a theater kid in high school.

If you haven’t done so, READ PART ONE

Given the sensitivity of the subject, I felt it necessary to write a clarifying piece to accompany the last one without explicitly spelling it out for you that it’s entirely satirical. I want to trust that readers aren’t all idiots and do have some degree of critical thinking skills. However, writing that piece was nothing short of frightening on a few levels.

One such level is that some people actually will believe everything written therein with the utmost sincerity; specifically, evangelicals, who already are more likely to own guns, will take it for a fact. The mixed messaging of The Bible lends itself well to schisms both great and small, and largely they have always been political as well as theological. We have that in America amongst the Christians with 25.4% of our population as part of evangelical Protestantism concentrated in conservative areas and influencing policy on a large scale

This isn’t a new phenomenon in religion, it’s been happening for millennia. During the time of Jesus, there were theological differences amongst sectarian Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Among them were the Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots, Essenes, and those who followed Jesus, referring to themselves as follows of The Way.

In Christianity, widespread and colonial under Emperor Constantine, there were also schisms occurring as far back as the mid-second century, long before Martin Luther’s 95 Theses in 1517; the first big schism before that was in 1054 when the Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Catholic church. The differences were in the organization of the church, and other dorky shit like whether or not the eucharist should contain leavened or unleavened bread, among other things. Then came the Anglican Church, and then came Martin Luther. All this to reiterate that this is the evolutionary process of a given religion and it should come as a surprise to nobody that culture and politics also influence these interpretations. The fright is resultant of the fact that there are people in power, with influence, who take things not only out of context but all too literally.

The second and maybe more frightening point combines two things: bending statistics to your own will along with the ease at which we are susceptible to such a slanted belief. During the writing of part one, I got in the zone of spouting this rhetoric that I in no way agree with. My only advantage is that I can snap myself out of it and realize how ridiculous it is. There are a lot of gifted and intelligent people who can’t. In some ways, whether the rhetoric is secular or not, this is a lot like how all religions operate. The word “religion” likely comes from the Latin root “religio” which means to bind. Religion inherently needs a community to spread and thrive. The Roman Empire was a big community, and it had an established religion, ergo, mission accomplished. Whether state-imposed or not, we have a need to belong. Yeah, I know you’re an “introvert” and “hate people” but you still have friends. Probably.

Third, it was frightening because that inherent need to belong allows us to be duped by inflammatory rhetoric. Rhetoric is fine. This piece is rhetorical, as was part one. The part many people miss, however, is that when reflecting on rhetoric, you have to think. If the previous piece were delivered by a fire and brimstone preacher, in earnest, the emotional component of it is designed to sweep you off your feet into action without deep thinking. When you stop thinking about the memes, the writing, the books, the sermons, the TV shows, and all the information you take in, that’s when we have collectively lost. Ultimately, words matter. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the anti-abortionists call themselves “pro-life.” It takes about a half-second to realize that the opposite would be “anti-life.” The line of logic that takes place so quickly in our heads would run like this: Well, I’m not anti-life. “Anti-life” sounds pretty dickish.” When you’ve arrived there, without thinking about the words and their meaning, you’ve already severed a viewpoint and therefore the entirety of the picture. Knock that shit off. Some of you reading this haven’t witnessed a vitriolic hell fire-spewing preacher, and it’s definitely engaging. They have charisma about them and some of them actually believe in similar things to what I wrote about. And they can lead communities. Perhaps that fact is the most frightening of them all.

There’s a simple answer to the gun violence problem our children face every day in the school system. The Republican is on the right track, but they’re facing a serious roadblock along their righteous quest.

Where’s the disconnect? Let’s start by making some connections to bridge that gap of disconnection.

Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas are five of the ten most religious states in the United States.

They are also five of the ten states with the most gun violence per capita in the United States.

Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi are three of ten states with the highest gun ownership by percentage in the United States.

However, overall religiosity in the United States is on a steep decline and has been for a while now, in 2018 and 2019, Pew noted a 12% decline of adults who described themselves as Christians during the preceding decade. If that same trend continues at the same pace over the next decade, that puts God-fearing Christians dangerously close to becoming a minority in this once great nation. And that’s a problem.

So what’s happening is the overt immorality — and the arguably worse amorality — of the Godless lost souls is bleeding into the very fabric of the Godly. What happens when fabric colors start to bleed? You get a stain marring that fabric. Take a red hat and throw it in the wash with your favorite white shirt. The white shirt will forever be tainted.

The initial step along this newfound path to greatness is well underway. We have to protect the sanctity of life, and the more morally fibrous members of the Supreme Court are on their way to doing just that. With the sanctity of life growing to become a highly valued commodity, we can raise an abundance of virtuous children to witness the light of God. As the community of upstanding citizens grows, we can shrink the numbers of the Papists, the Satanists, and the more insidious members of society who are Godless and proud of it.

Once we have the numbers trending in the correct direction, we have an outlet for marked change on a grand scale. If the 18th and 21st constitutional amendments are any indicators, things can change. The first change to enact would be to establish a state religion; the framers of the constitution weren’t stupid insofar as they knew they had to appeal to a wide swath of people, so they made no mention of God in the constitution. Not to mention that in the Declaration of Independence they appealed to the detractors of the crown in an extreme way by referring to God as “The Creator”, among other sobriquets. It’s time to get away from that veiled language. With the morally righteous leaders in place, we can have an established religion.

With the preservation of unborn lives and an established religion, we’re off to a good start.

The point at which these innocents are ready to enter the school system. However, the school systems need federal change. The first and most important facet of this change needs to be a curriculum based on our Christian values. It needs to embed itself everywhere; it’s no secret that in 1 Kings 7:23 the divine messengers, speaking His Word, talk about Pi in relation to a circle. There’s no reason to shun God away from our arithmetic.

Even Galileo was a man of God. The unfortunate truth about Galileo was that he was under the whims of papal dominance and couldn’t get out from under the thumb of the Catholic Church. Therefore, as he was doing The Lord’s work, they convicted him under suspicion of heresy. Suspicion, mind you, not outright heresy. Don’t let some heathen liberal tell you science and God can’t coexist. God IS science. We need that blend in our education system.

The faithful among us need strict oversight on what and when our school children read. We don’t need loose women corrupting innocent minds with their abject depravity. Women like Daphne du Maurier, Kate Chopin, and Virginia Woolf, who explicitly said she doesn’t like the dominance of men or masculinity at all. God gave man dominion over the earth, and we were created in His image, and woman from our image. It was the woman who disobeyed and deceived her husband. It’s women like those “authors” who are descended from Eve turning to harlotry and sin, forsaking the covenant between a man and his wife, that add to the moral decay of our society. Keeping a firm hand on your woman isn’t abuse, it’s God’s will.

We need to bring back virtuous authors like C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers to lead our children down the moral path of virtue. With virtue comes victory. Over two centuries ago, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards had it right when he said “Under all the cultivations of heaven, they brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit.” We need to cultivate our garden as the pure among us have been doing. Though their intentions were noble, nobility doesn’t work as swiftly as it needs to when we’re on the brink of the end times and believe me, we are at the end of days. Make no mistake about the intentions of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s as plain as the light of God’s sun in Matthew 10:34, where He said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

I have taken great pains to learn the ways of the wicked so that I could share them with you and thereby lead you away from the left-hand paths of the sinners of the world. It brought me no pleasure to walk amongst the den of thieves, but I have made it. In Isaiah 56:7, God says, in no uncertain terms, “I will bring them to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” There’s a reason America is a world power, and it’s not a coincidence. It’s biblical. It’s providence, friends.

The final step in the education and sealing of our future is to provide the tools necessary for the children to carry the sword of Jesus Christ. Physical education is a must. Part of that physical education needs to include tactical weapons training. We have the funds to modify our schools to include shooting ranges and provide the best weapons for our youth with which they can learn and practice. We need to demand that our leaders include this funding in our defense budget since this would be defending our country, and our defense needs to start young with an impassioned sense of traditional religion and patriotism.

We can’t allow ourselves to be cast out of the promised land the way like the twelve spies. As promised to Abraham, we have our home through his son Isaac, and we have it here, in America. We need to be willing to die to defend it for our salvation.

For more, READ PART TWO