Explain it to Me

For Sarah

I recently filled out my Census form. On the religion screen, I ticked Buddhist. It was the closest fit. A more accurate description would be something like “Christ-loving, Tao-seeking, Thelemic follower of The Buddha’s core teachings”, but there wasn’t a box for that.

Buddhism has a concept called “Emptiness”, which really stands for something like “that which everything emanates from”, or “actual mind”. This is the true nature of the reality we live in, Buddhists say. It’s the very stuff from which everything manifests. It doesn’t have a real description as it’s the thing that comes before everything else. If defies category.

I like to think this is the thing that gives birth to stories. All of the stories of us.

All of the ways we see things are shaped by the concepts we attach to things. All that we are is a story that we tell ourselves and that applies to everything. Take the device you’re reading this on. What’s the story of that? Stop and take a moment and consider it. Where did it come from? Was it a gift? Did you work extra hard so you could pay for it upfront? Are you still paying for it? Does that worry you? Or is it a nice story? Have you considered it from all angles, or have you shaped it into something nice to soothe yourself with?

Humans eat stories. We are storytelling machines. Humans love stories above everything else. Humans make stories before everything else. Everything we create starts with a story of its inception. Of its utility. Some stories hold more power than others. None of them carry any real burden of truth. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story and all that. None of them really stand up to scrutiny. All cut corners and make do with unfulfilling explanations. There isn’t anything wrong with this as such. This is how we make sense of things.

These stories make up who we are. These stories create the world as we see it. Take anything you ‘know’ and consider it, for even a minute and see if really it isn’t just a tale you tell yourself, or one you’ve been told.

Last night, I watched a recent ‘stand up’ special featuring Henry Rollins. He’s a punk icon made famous on the Hardcore scene of the 80’s for those of you who might not know. A great songwriter and a generally fascinating man. I put stand up in quotes there as really, What Henry does is he just gets on stage and tells stories about his life and though some of them are funny, the craft behind these shows is very different from that of the pure comic. It’s not comedy as much as it feels like you’re at a party and you’re having a beer with him (well, Henry would probably have a water or something, he’s very very straight edge.) They’re sweet and funny and they give you a glimpse into the life, feelings and troubles of an alternative rock star. I love his stories.

On the special he talked about meeting Bowie, about hanging out with Ru-Paul and how folks who saw them together assumed they were dating, about how women should rule the world (he even advocates for murder in order to achieve this.) It reminded me of where so much of my story came from. I realised that I was helped in my militant humanism by brilliant iconoclasts like Henry, who have always fought for the right side of things not as a pose, or for how they might be viewed. They do it because they feel like they have no choice. The world has never made sense to folks like Henry and me and so he’s taught those of us who feel this way to rage against that senselessness. He’s helped me to find new stories to tell. To find new ways of seeing.

My story of my view of women is one that I’ll tell you is the right one. I believe it’s the way a man should see it, though I know that it has to change and I want to take some time here to attempt to tell you why.

Let me add a necessary caveat. I am a heterosexual man. Therefore, I have hurt women. Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally, sometimes through plain ignorance. I have tried to be as constructive with my behaviour towards women as I can be, yet inevitably I have fallen short. Often. Recently. I’m sure my behaviour has made women feel uncomfortable. I’m sure I have made them shrink and flinch with my actions, regardless of whether I meant to or not. This is just the way of things. This is not to excuse or justify. I atone where and when I can, though I’d guess not often enough. I deal with this by telling myself that being human is messy. Errors are part of who we are.

After watching Henry and before I went to sleep that night, I watched a video from Parliament of Jess Philips the British MP reading out a list of the 117 women known to have been murdered by men in the UK the last 12 months. The list took almost five minutes for her to read. With each name, I tried to be mindful of the truth that this was a daughter, sister, friend, lover, mother. A handful of them were killed alongside their children. All were killed by a series of stories that led to their death. Stories we all have a hand in creating. All were killed before their time.

We live in a senseless age.

I’ll bet you’re shaping your narrative on those women now, if you haven’t already. I’d like you to do so though I don’t care for what it is. That’s your story. That’s up to you. I would ask one thing though. Simply for you to ask why. Why you came to that conclusion. Whatever it is, ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Imagine if that was 117 British soldiers killed by ISIS. Or The Taliban. Or Antifa, or Fascists. Would it take an MP to have to stand up and read our their names before we knew of them? This isn’t some rare faction of folk for whom its fashionable to canonise and protect. This is half of the population. This isn’t some distant group you’ve read about yet never seen. These are the people you work with, the people you live alongside.

It all makes me wonder what has happened to men. In this piece I doubt I can come up with any firm conclusions. I’m no sociologist, just a curious soul with a laptop and a heart that’s constantly breaking due to the age we live in. Yet, I have to wonder, what happened to us men? When did we stop idealising the type of man who keeps it all together, the type of man who was born to lead, to care and to protect? What happened to stoicism, idealism and the idea that we were literally formed to hold space for those weaker than us?

Far too often, men are weak, easily triggered, whiny and ready to point the finger. Twitching at their keyboards, ready with the hashtags, always missing the point. #NotAllMen they flick out. Remember they whine, it isn’t all of us. Forgetting how meaningless that is. Like a fucking hashtag can atone for the sheer horror continually inflicted on half of the population.

If you trace the lines back in history, where they snake and wind and slowly nudge us to this odd and crumbling point in time, you get to what I feel is the point of divergence. The age of agriculture was where we started to make out like we were gods and therefore we did all we could to sublimate nature. And in doing so, we seem to have made the choice that we should sublimate those of us who hold the very ideal of that nature inside them. Those whose bodies shape the rest of us. We seem to have decided they required controlling too. They, like the fields we tilled so we could ensure control over a wild, confusing and treacherous landscape, they were worthy only of being held down.

It was at this point too that we externalised the shadow within us all, named it ‘evil’ and decided we were better than that, separate from it and as long as we attended to our chosen rituals and asked an external force for forgiveness we would not be afflicted by this darkness, forgetting that it resides within the very core of us all.

Each time a man tells you it isn’t him, he’s wilfully ignoring the simple truth that it is him. That he is part of it. He’s turned a blind eye at some point. He’s looked away at the worst behaviours of his peers, of his friends. Perhaps through some misplaced sense of loyalty. Perhaps through some misguided sense of ideals. You know, us versus them. Perhaps through the same fear that also envelops the women picked upon. You don’t want that horror to be inflicted on you and so you do nothing.

I know the part I’ve played in this. I know, even though I’ll tell you I’m ‘one of the good ones’, I know I’ve shied away from confronting the worst excesses of my gender when they’ve been displayed to me, in front of me, on many, many occasions.

So what can we do, we men? This bruised, broken and bloodied part of our society, these women, what do they want from us? I wouldn’t dare claim I know. And yet, I’ll make my suggestions, in the hope they make some semblance of a difference.

We start by listening. Shutting the fuck up. Not looking to offer solutions. Listening. And then acknowledging and accepting the parts we have all played in this. And approaching that is shitty, its difficult and it really hurts, but that’s all part of the constant messy process of being a human. To get anywhere, we can only accept that we’ve fucked this up. Badly. Our roles as men.

We can ask ourselves what culture is telling us. How are women represented in the films, music, books, games etc. that we consume? Have we heard the true, clear voice of a woman lately? Have we listened? Or are women merely the backdrops to the stories we consume about the same tired male tropes we’ve always followed? Are they just there to prettify and be overcome? Because their voices are there, these voice of the women clamouring to be heard. Always failingly polite and more often than not better sculpted and curated than those on the other half of the gender divide, because we’ve forced them to be better by constantly holding them down.

So let’s hold them up. Let’s listen and celebrate their voices and just let them tell their stories and admit that we’re wrong and that we have a lot of work to do. Because women are literally being killed by us right now, because we’ve made it normal to show the very worst versions of ourselves. I think we can be better. I think we can tell ourselves a better story, one that includes all of humanity and one that begins with us taking our knee off of the throats of those we perceive to be below us.

And let’s stop placing the fault on the other side. Let’s stop harassing, raping, harming, insulting, following, intimidating women. All of the behaviour that contributes to these horrible moments. Just. Fucking. Stop. Because there isn’t a story that you can really tell yourself that justifies any of that. There just isn’t.

I want to finish by saying I hope that women can forgive us, yet then I realise that they probably will. Just like they always fucking do.