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 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.