‘Patriarchy damages men too… no really’, Jo Nubian

‘And our sons must become men- such men as we hope our daughters, born and unborn, will be pleased to live among’. ~ Audre Lorde (From “Man Child…”)

Jo begins with‘I love Black men’.

I love Black men. I think my adoration comes from dancing with my father, my feet on his, to Otis Redding records. Or possibly from my big brother always allowing me to ride shotgun, regardless of what friend of girlfriend was also riding, in his candied Monte Carlo with the booming system.

It is the men in my life who remind me not to subscribe to any agenda that diminishes them.

However, my love for them also mandates that I create an honest space where I can openly discuss how they hurt me, and more often themselves and our community holistically.

While I understand that these conversations create apprehension, a sort of uneasiness, both in my personal and professional relationships, I still must speak.

Sister Audre reminds me that my silence will not protect me, and also that we must love AND resist simultaneously in order to survive.

Bell hooks, in a chapter entitled “Understanding Patriarchy” (from her book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love) defines patriarchy as:

…a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.

I know my mere mention of this definition alerts some men to prepare a defense. Here comes Jo with her feminist/womanist/ men stay losing talk. Not so. Although hooks defines patriarchy in respect to the way it oppresses and violates women, this post is about men- my brothers- who I hope can recognize how the boxes that allow them to dominate, control, and seem superior to others also entangle and entrap them.

Khalil Gibran, in speaking of love, preaches, “For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you”(that’s another post, but WORD LIFE, Khalil).

This hypothesis concerning love can also be applied to theories of sexism, misogyny and patriarchy, which is the social system that all of these behaviors are attributed to.

Patriarchy is a disease …

Patriarchy affects men so deeply, most times without them knowing, that the average man does not understand the term or its proper use. Yet, as hooks also points out, it is “the single most life-threatening social dis­ease assaulting the male body and spirit in our nation.”

Let’s pause. How can this be?

How can a socio-political construct that provides men with so much privilege also threaten their health and livelihoods?

Well there are volumes of books written to explore this ideal, but what sits at the center of it all is this: men, when they subscribe to traditional gender roles, are left without the ability to realize their full humanity.

Traditionally, men are raised to believe that God (who is male) created the world specifically for their use. They are born to conquer (with force) and are supposed to be as callous as stone. Men are never to be questioned, or better still to have questions. Boys don’t cry or show any emotion really- I mean not if they want to be considered a “real” boy and not some “sissy” or “faggot” (I deliberately use these belittling and offensive terms after thumbing through James Baldwin’s discussion of his encounters with sexism in his essay “Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood”).

Subsequently, women were designed by (the male) God to serve men on their quest to conquer…everything- other men, women, children, the world, the universe. Black men are especially negatively impacted by these connotations, because in many ways they are expected to be hyper-masculine.Western culture mandates that Black men are the most aggressive, dominating, and savage of all. At the same time however, Black men are often deprived of those privileges that allow them to be seen as a men- in the traditional sense of the word.

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man comes to mind when I consider this dichotomy. He writes:

‘I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me’.

If such an opposition doesn’t create some sort of schizophrenia within Black men, I’m not sure what could. Our men are left to internalize this contradiction and attempt to maneuver through and around it in silence. Its and impossible feat that is killing them, inside and out.

Twitter tells no lies …

But what happens when one can not be the man society socializes him to be? A few of my twitter friends provided some exceptional insight when I asked, “How does patriarchy hurt men?” Alicia Sanchez (@aliciasanchez) sent me a link to this fantastic poster, which begins by stating, “For every girl who is tired of acting weak when she is strong, there is a boy who is tired of pretending to be strong when he feels vulnerable.”

Wow.

When I speak of men not being able to realize their full human potential, it begins precisely with this concept of masculinity. It is impossible for any human being to always be strong and courageous and fearless. Men though, are not allowed moments of fear, of indecision, of sadness- or even moments of extreme happiness or passion for that matter. The result of this lack of human feeling and emotion is a life of suppression, depression, and abuse towards those who are allowed to express those emotions and feelings.

Lorde asserts:

‘Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly “inferior” capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in dependency and fear’.

She goes on to say that she challenges her son to fight patriarchy by not allowing him to think that she is to navigate his feelings for him.

Epic.

Another friend, Ndada Vaz (@cadillackitty) noted how men’s reading choices are affected by patriarchy, specifically in their not being avid readers of fiction. “… men read autobiographies, reports etc. because the emotion is removed in the ‘reporting’. In fiction emotion tends to be internal.” Hmph. What a nuanced form of oppression it is to have one’s reading habits dictated. Sure we are aware that women are told what to say and read, how to behave, what is socially acceptable and unacceptable, but we must also realize that men have the same demands placed upon them, and are none the better for it. What of the man who prefers to be an artist instead of a ball player (especially in the Black community)? Of course I know that there are Black male artists, just as there are Black female hoopers- the question is, what is the cost of the pursuit? And what happens to those men who are not strong enough to relinquish those crowns and privileges to be who they really desire to be?

I want a partnership, so should he …

Many of my male twitter friends, like Wise Naim (@wisemath) noted that ‘patriarchy takes from men the opportunity to have true equally partnered relationships with women’. I can personally attest to the reality of this issue. In many ways my ex husband was emotionally withdrawn and unavailable- not at all because he didn’t desire to be kind or caring, but because he didn’t feel that it was safe to do so, he didn’t have the tools to do it, and society told him that his wife (who is a woman) is not allowed to instruct him on how to. Additionally, other relationships that I’ve had ended because some of those men could not digest the idea that I may be more educated or earn more money than them.

Traditionally, men are the providers and are supposed to be intellectually and financially superior to the women in their lives, therefore being with a woman who is smarter or more financially sound than him is deemed emasculating. Again, Black men are particularly affected by this issue because statistics show that in many cases Black women are better educated and higher paid. I sincerely believe that the fix to the many issues that Blacks face in love relationships lies in a need to shift the paradigm of traditional relationship and gender roles. Unfortunately, patriarchy does not allow for such transitions to be feasible. It’s tragic, really.

Patriarchy literally kills …

There is a much more gruesome manner in which patriarchy destroys men. It happens when this idea of dominating and killing overrides the basic decent and human characteristics that allow us to peacefully co-exist. One can consider the case of Tekerrious “T.K.” Jackson, a six year old boy who was beaten to death (over a period of weeks actually) by his father. When investigators asked Alex Duncan why (or how) he abused his son to the point of death, he replied “he was trying to discipline his child, to teach him how to “man up.””

The idea that a child is expected to be a man, and a man in a very violent and artificial manner, to the point where he loses his life is just inexplicably wretched. It may be safe to say that Duncan was repeating behavior that he himself was subjected to as a child and as an adult. Either way, a child is dead and another child (or possibly children) will undoubtedly grow up without a father.

We all lose when the ‘mental disease of patriarchy’ inhibits us from reaching our full potential. The foremost quote in this post from Audre Lorde prescribes a solution to the dilemma we face.

We simply have to raise our sons to be the men we want our daughters to live among.

As women, we owe it to the men in our lives to address patriarchy at its core and explain that they don’t have to subscribe to the associated social mandates that are meant for their demise. Additionally, we must halt our own (often unchecked) perpetuation of patriarchy when we deal with men. As men, you have to be strong enough to be honest about who you are and demand your full humanity- to claim an existence that allows you to face disappointment, and hurt, and laughter, and love without feeling that those things make you unmanly. We just need to become better people. Period.

In closing, Lorde wrote this about raising her son:

‘The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself…And this means how to move to that voice from within himself, rather than to those raucous, persuasive, or threatening voices from outside, pressuring him to be what the world wants him to be’.

We all need healing.

In the words of our African ancestors: ‘Ase, let it come, let it be so.’

On “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response”, Audre Lorde

This is not a theory or a philosophy of how a mother should raise a son, but rather an example of how one woman has done so far. Oh, by the way, she’s a lesbian, too. This is the story of the relationship between Lorde and her son has developed, while she has tried to instill black pride in him, love of self in him, and understanding of what it means to be male in our society and how to accept all that goes with that. Through honesty with her son, Lorde shows that courage and strength are not found by eliminating fear, but by acknowledging it and carrying on, using it. That life must be lived through yourself and your own terms, as you come to realize through honest emotion who you are and that who you are is OK. She sets many examples of kindness and acceptance, and recognizes that as a man he must pull away from her and express his maleness. She shows her son that being male does not mean having to be violent, anymore than being strong means being female. He continually forces her to keep her eyes open to the male side of society, and not get too comfortable in her female environment and forget the other half of society. By being open with her son, she has created a boy that will soon become a strong man who respects women and himself, who is open and honest and caring in regard to self and others.

Audre Lorde is amazing to me. Once again, she is the lyrical poet, even in a simple story about her son’s development. She is excellent at portraying the development of this relationship, and so modest as she tries to give her son all of the credit. It is a wonderful example of how a strong woman can greatly affect the life of her son, and she can be a lesbian (oh no!) and he can turn out to be strong and proud and intelligent and caring, not some psycho-mama’s-boy pedophile that heterosexist patriarchy loves to dump on the gay community. It is important that she is a lesbian, to show that lesbians can be good parents. It is important that she is strong, to show that strong women can yield strong sons. But most of all, it is probably her honesty that has and will always affect him most: her examples of how to be and love yourself have allowed him to do just that in his own life. He will be one of the few men who don¹t have to live the patriarchal lie of needing to dominate women to be strong. Also, an important part of this was Lorde’s letter to the feminist organization that tried to bar her son from attendance. More people need to realize that agism and sexism are not useful in tackling patriarchy, it only erects more barriers. Love, understanding, and community through sharing are important, which I feel Lorde expresses quite clearly as values to her son.

Thanks to JO NUBIAN – ‘I love dichotomies and my existence (maybe our existence) is a perfect definition of them- a philosopher and a laborer; a fire-starter and a peacemaker; a mother and a daughter; an individual and a part of a whole; a hopeless romantic who is skeptical of love; a womanist who enjoys having her door opened and chair pulled; and a political theorist who hates politics. I am many extremes as you will note while perusing this site. I hope that it will become one of your favorite spaces.’