Men Are People
And other revelations.
If you had told me a year ago today that I’d be writing this, I would’ve told you to thank your dealer on my behalf for supplying you with the highest quality of whatever you were smoking to come up with something so ridiculous. Me? Not hating men? Are pigs flying, too?
Alas, it’s the truth. I am (somewhat) proud to announce that I no longer hate men, and to take it a step further, I actually acknowledge that they’re human beings. (They don’t call me the modern-day Charles Darwin for nothing.)
I don’t have many close male friends, (that obvious?). In fact, I can count on one hand the number of men I’d actually walk up to and greet if I saw them on the street, (if it wasn’t late at night and I wasn’t barreling down the road with my keys in between my knuckles, of course). The male friends I do have, however, have recently opened up to me about their experiences navigating the world, and it’s opened my eyes to something I’d never considered: men are people, just like you and me.
I understand just how inhumane that sounds. “You’re telling me you’ve lived 25 years of your life looking at men as what? Animals???”
To be completely honest, yes.
As early as I can remember, I’ve been taught to be wary of men. From the way I dress and what I say, to the times I choose to leave my house and the streets I walk down, I’m aware of myself and how I’m perceived by men 24/7. Sometimes this level of awareness is normal — I know that if I want to be treated with respect, I’ll put more effort into the way I look and how I speak. Everyone does that. How we choose to present ourselves and how other people perceive us isn’t a gendered concept, but universally understood. Sometimes, though, this awareness is gendered and it’s all-consuming — I’ll share my location with my friends and family for any trip taken after the sun sets, I’ll take a picture of the outfit I was last seen in, stay on the phone to someone while I walk down a quiet, or sometimes busy, street, and make sure I walk like I know where I’m going, even if I don’t, and my head down, lest a glance gets mistaken as an invitation.
This hyper-awareness of my vulnerability, which was taught to me by other men, made it difficult in my late teens and early 20s to see men as anything other than predators. I wasn’t able to see men, who I wasn’t intimate with*, as anything other than GTA characters — where I was the NPC, they were the pubescent 15-year-old that might smack me across the face for fun at any given moment.
How did I make the switch from innocent pedestrian to stripper that might fight back, you ask? Two books: “The Right to Sex” by Amia Srinivasan, and “The Power of Strangers” by Joe Keohane.
Where The Right to Sex helped me understand the ways in which the patriarchy has royally fucked all of us, (particularly Black men and women), The Power of Strangers is bringing back the sense of humanity I lost when I moved to London. While I still fear men in general, and will until they collectively decide to stop hunting women for sport**, I’ve come to look at the individual as a helpless pawn in the game we call✨life✨
I still shudder at the thought of having a son, out of fear he may grow up to be the teacher, police officer, elected official, priest, post office employee, Uber driver, store clerk, boyfriend, husband, grandfather or uncle women know to fear. Except if and when I raise my son, he’ll be a human being first. Pawn second.
*The word ‘intimate’ here is used to refer to any man I’ve had a 30-minute conversation with, not just the ones I bump uglies with.
**No disclaimer, women are brutalised at such an alarming rate it might as well be considered a sport.
