On Cis Men and Choices

As a cis man, I want to be clear that cis men are fed a lot of patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist nonsense as they grow up and go into the world. It's modeled to them by men in their families and communities and made into "guidelines" for what a "real man" is. Cis men are inundated with paper-thin role models and horrible advice that diminishes their identities and worth.

But none of that is an excuse for any cis man to be a bag of crap.

Cis men can do better.

I grew up in the 80's. Toxic, violent masculinity was everywhere. I grew up with the same buckets of filtered nonsense, and I don't go around harming folx and spouting off "real men" rhetoric in every space I find. I don't make it my life mission to belittle others to assert my masculinity. I don't look the other way when cis men harm other people and say things like, "Boys will be boys," or call people derogatory phrases if they aren't "tough enough."

At some point, we have to acknowledge that you can have trauma and need to unlearn things, but neither excuses male toxicity and violence.

Cis men can do better. But cis men have to choose to do better, to be better, and be vulnerable enough to admit they have much work to choose to engage in to be better.

Cis men can do better.

Many choose not to.

Emphasis on choice.

On Whiteboards, Learning, and the Fragile Male Ego

Image description: two pictures of the whiteboard on my office door. The second picture shows the quote of the week from Huey P. Newton (“Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach. Then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.”) and the word of the week, weaponized incompetence (definition: strategically avoiding responsibility by pretending to be incapable or inept at a task so that someone else helps, takes over, or stops delegating tasks to you. This creates an entrenched level of imbalance in relationships. Weaponized incompetence is regularly seen in relationship dynamics driven by patriarchal, heteronormative societal "values" and "norms.").

I have a whiteboard on my office door at work. It has my on-site hours listed, as they vary from week to week. It’s also the home to my chosen quote and word of the week. I started doing this a couple of months ago, and it's been interesting watching my on-site colleagues’ reactions to what they see on my office door. This week's word of the week - weaponized incompetence - has been a real crowd-pleaser for everyone who isn't a cishet male. For the few cishet men in my office? Not the same level of enthusiasm.

Yesterday, I came into the office to find the whiteboard mostly wiped off.

What did I do?

I rewrote the entire whiteboard and put it back on my door.

I'm not that easily deterred. But, more importantly, everything can be a learning moment, even for the scallywag who used their fingers to wipe off my board.

Hopefully, they’ll learn that next time they decide to wipe away a message that brings them discomfort, they should use their sleeves as an eraser so their fingers aren't covered in low-odor, dry-erase ink. I mean, work smart, not messy? But I hope they eventually learn that just because someone doesn't want to see a message doesn't mean they don't need to. Maybe they'll learn to check in with their feelings the next time they get the urge to not sit with and unpack their fragility and make something "go away."

Also, last week’s word of the week was structural racism, but weaponized incompetence was the word that sent someone over the edge?

People never cease to amaze me.

[Image description: two pictures of the whiteboard on my office door. The second picture shows the quote of the week from Huey P. Newton (“Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach. Then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.”) and the word of the week, weaponized incompetence (definition: strategically avoiding responsibility by pretending to be incapable or inept at a task so that someone else helps, takes over, or stops delegating tasks to you. This creates an entrenched level of imbalance in relationships. Weaponized incompetence is regularly seen in relationship dynamics driven by patriarchal, heteronormative societal "values" and "norms.").]

On Low Bars and Cishet Men

Whenever I talk to my femme and female friends, family, and colleagues about their experiences with cishet men, I want to punch the air. Why? Because I swear, the bar is set so low for cishet men.

Which bar?

All of them.

For what?

For everything.

And everywhere.

Our patriarchal society ensures no accountability for their actions and no cultivation of an understanding of active and engaged communication and listening, tuning into the needs of others, and living with empathy for others. Because of this, many of them cannot be called in or sit with the realistic expectations that they can and should be better than those before them. It leaves many of us who aren’t cishet men to clean up and repair their messes while caring for those they leave in their wake. And all this while society tries to force all of us who aren’t cishet men to cater to the emotional kindling of cishet masculinity, or we’ll all get burned. It's irritating to watch, and I'm so tired of watching it. And if I'm tired as a queer cis man of doing everything I can not to perpetuate cishet ideologies while watching cishet men continuously harming others, then I can't imagine how women, Black women, Global Majority women, and femmes, queer folx, nonmasculine-identifying folx, and everyone else who doesn't benefit from cishet privilege and misogyny feels.

Sheesh. Get it together, cishet men. It's well past the time to evolve what identifying as a cishet man should represent.