an·ger

written in late July:

I brought the concept of anger to my former therapist (former, due to very angering circumstances), approaching it as I would if my mother had made me to bring a fruitcake to a dinner party. I'd been told from the get go that I shouldn't be holding it--no one should, the wretched thing. But I also had heard of those who fancied a slice of the tart stuff once and again, so I figured to me-self it musn't be all that bad, cannit? I knew there must be a piece of that cake that could be, if not enjoyed, utilized (perhaps as colorful caulk or cat food). But I wasn't sure if I should try and use it or just get rid of it as quickly as possible.

When I first thought of writing on this topic - back in January, over 6 months ago, I thought, "Wouldn't it be so cheeky and astute of me to craft a story about a misunderstood old man or a 40-year-old virgin type librarian, simultaneously embittered by the fact that his undouseable anger has given him a Scrooge-like reputation and haunted by the fact that his attempts to rid himself thereof continue to be fruitless…" But that thought came from yesterday's me, and today you get today's me, so this is what I'm going to say.

I'm angry because I'm sitting in my (admittedly adorable and craftily curated) studio apartment for over a week alone because I got covid for the third time. I'm also angry because being an even mildly-informed adult in America right now sucks. I'm angry because a system I believed was beautiful and wholesome and magnanimous is actually just bound-the-fuck-up in political platforms that are mind-bogglingly judgmental and selfish. But what I learned from this therapist (former, because…let's just say I know how deductibles work now) is that anger is a transformative little minx. I believed that the anger I carried with me to therapy in my little Baggu would, unless paired with a glass of sparkling confrontation, continually shrivel up forever, like an aerial view of a smoothie blender. But what I learned was that it can turn to contentment. Instead of a Confrontation, you can serve your anger with a glass of Boundaries, bitch. I won't go on and on about this; this is, in fact, not the prologue to my first novel. I'm just saying that boundaries are essentially distance + communication, and when you're angry, especially in situations where you feel powerless (e.g. SCOTUS nonsense) or burnt out (e.g. chronically trying relationships or over-socialization), a boundary can be a good start. It can pour a batch of concrete between you and your issue, and as it dries, you have a chance to think about whether you're going to use that concrete for the foundation of something new.

bell

excerpts from the late miss Hooks' book: Many women cannot hear male pain about love because it sounds like an indictment of female failure. Since sexist norms have taught us that loving is our task whether in our role as mothers or lovers or friends, if men say they are not loved, then we are at fault; we are to blame. 7 How many sons fleeing the example of their fathers raise boys who emerge as clones of their grandfathers, boys who may never even have met their grandfathers but behave just like them? Beyond reaction, though, any male, no matter his past or present circumstance, no matter his age or experience, can learn how to love. 10 In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being give them value, the right to be cherished and loved. 11 Everyone who tries to create love with an emotionally unaware partner suffers 15 It is patriarchy, in its denial of the full humanity of boys, that threatens the emotional lives of boys, not feminist thinking. 37 Indeed the feminist rhetoric that insisted on identifying males as the enemy often closed down the space where boys could be considered, where they could be deemed as worthy of rescue from patriarchal exploitation and oppression as were their female counterparts…Feminist theory has offered us brilliant critiques of patriarchy and very few insightful ideas about alternative masculinity, especially in relation to boys. 39 "Sustaining relationships with others requires a good relationship to ourselves. Healthy self-esteem is an internal sense of worth, that pulls one neither into 'better than' grandiosity nor 'less than' shame... Contempt is why so many men have such trouble staying connected. Since healthy self-esteem-being neither one up nor down-is not yet a real option, and since riding in the one-down position elicits disdain, in oneself and in others, most men learn to hide the chronic shame that dogs them... running from their own humanity and from closeness to anyone else along with it."

- Terrence Real

48 Teenagers are the most unloved group in our nation. Teenagers are often feared precisely because they are often exposing the hypocrisy of parents and of the world around them. And no group of teenagers is more feared than a pack of teenage boys. 50 "Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity." - Terrence Real

61 Many teenage boys have violent contempt and rage for a patriarchal mom because they understand that in the world outside the home, sexism renders her powerless; he is pissed that she has power over him at home. He does not see her autocratic rule in the home as legitimate power. As a consequence, he may be enraged at his mom for using the tactics of psychological terrorism to whip him into shape and yet respond with admiration toward the male peer or authority figure who deploys similar tactics. 62 The first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner's love... This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. 65 Men who win on patriarchal terms end up losing in terms of their substantive quality of life. They choose patriarchal manhood over loving connection, first foregoing self-love and then the love hey could give and receive that would connect them to others. 72 Rage is the easy way back to a realm of feeling 73 The patriarchal man who would never respond to demands from his boss with overt rage and abuse will respond with fury when intimates want him to change his behavior. 79 The more intense the pain of fear, unworthiness, and feeling unlovable becomes, the more obsessive becomes the need to have a sexual interaction. 82 Many men are angry at women, but more profoundly, women are the targets for displaced male rage at the failure of patriarchy to make good on its promise of fulfillment, especially endless sexual fulfillment. 84 "What matters in patriarchal sex is the male need to fuck. When that need presents itself, sex occurs” - Robert Jensen

85 Homosexual predatory sex is the ultimate embodiment of the patriarchal ideal…

"Fucking is taken to be the thing that gay men do; some might even argue that if you aren't fucking, you aren't gay.” - Robert Jensen

86

Concurrently, homophobia becomes amplified among heterosexual men because its overt expression is useful as a way to identify, among apparently similar macho men, who is gay and who is straight. 87 Unemployment feels so emotionally threatening because it means that there would be time to fill, and most men in patriarchal culture do not want time on their hands. 97 Clearly, men need new models for self-assertion that do not require the construction of an enemy "other," be it a woman or the symbolic feminine, for them to define themselves against. 114 Our work of love should be to reclaim masculinity and not allow it to be held hostage to patriarchal domination. 115 [Olga Silverstein writes,] "Until we are willing to question many of the specifics of the male sex role, including most of the seven norms and stereotypes that psychologist Robert Levant names in a listing of its chief constituents - 'avoiding femininity, restrictive emotionality, seeking achievement and status, self-reliance, aggression, homophobia, and nonrelational attitudes toward sexuality,' - we are going to deny men their full humanity. Feminist masculinity would have as its chief constituents integrity, self-love, emotional awareness, assertiveness, and relational skill, including the capacity to be empathic, autonomous, and connected." The core of feminist masculinity is a commitment to gender equality and mutuality as crucial to interbeing and partnership in the creating and sustaining of life. Such a commitment always privileges nonviolent action over violence, peace over war, life over death.

118

Poet and farmer Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture suggests that "if we removed the status and compensation from the destructive exploits we classify as 'manly,' men would be found to be suffering as much as women. They would be found to be suffering for the same reason: they are in exile from the communion of men and women, which is the deepest connection with the communion of all creatures." Many men in our society have no status, no privilege; they receive no freely given compensation, no perks with capitalist patriarchy. For these men domination of women and children may be the only opportunity to assert a patriarchal presence. These men suffer. 138 When feminist women insist that all men are powerful oppressors who victimize from the location of power, they obscure the reality that many victimize from the location of victimization. 139 "I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things, and asking about the big things you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more bout the big things that you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love." - Albert, The Color Purple by Alice Walker

142

As Zukav and Francis boldly state in The Heart of the Soul, "Intimacy and the pursuit of external power-the ability to manipulate and control-are incompatible." Before most men can be intimate with others, they have to be intimate with themselves. 146 "There is no need for temple or church, for mosque or synagogue, no need for complicated philosophy, doctrine or dogma, for our own heart, our own mind, is the temple and the doctrine is compassion." - Dalai Lama

151 Patriarchal culture has required of men that they be divided souls. We know that there are men who have not succumbed to this demand but that most men have surrendered their capacity to be whole. … Asked to give up the true self in order to realize the patriarchal ideal, boys learn self-betrayal early and are rewarded for these acts of soul murder. 153 “Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a person who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so that there is no longer a split in the soul." - Rabbi Harold Kushner

155

Patriarchy encourages men to surrender their integrity and to live lives of denial. By learning the arts of compartmentalization, dissimulation, and disassociation, men are able to see themselves as acting with integrity in cases where they are not. Their learned state of psychological denial is severe. Adding to the definition of integrity in Further along the Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck discusses the root meaning of the Term "integrity," which is the verb "to integrate," emphasizing that this is the opposite of compartmentalization. "Individuals without integrity naturally compartmentalize. And patriarchal masculinity normalizes male compartmentalization." 156 It is difficult to believe that men feel at all threatened by masses of women entering a workforce where they receive less pay than men and come home after long hours to do a second shift. 158 Therapist George Edmond Smith remembers learning early that men will respond with rage and rejection if they are perceived to be out of control or making a mistake…Only a father capable of being whole can have the integrity to acknowledge ignorance to his son without feeling diminished. Men who are whole can speak their fear without shame. They do not need to wear the false mask of fearlessness. Fathers have been unable to share with their sons that they are afraid. They fear not measuring up to the expectations of sons. They fear that the son will see their jealousy and envy of the boy who has not yet severed his relation to feeling, who is not emotionally closed off. Writing about his boyhood, Neale Lundgren recalls, "I was in awe of my father, and it seemed to me that I often sensed he was afraid of me. Perhaps he was intimidated by my heart chat was as his used to be when he was a boy: big, full, open, strong, and tender." 163 Even though war is failing as a strategy for sustaining life and creating safety, our nation's leaders force us into battle, giving new life to the dying patriarchy. 170 Loving parents already see that if rigid gender roles are not imposed on boys, they will make their decisions about selfhood in relation to their passions, their longings, their gifts. 174 The love women are looking for in relationships with men is one based on mutuality in partnership. Mutuality is different from equality. 177 But if as enlightened witnesses we offer the men we love (our fathers, brothers, lovers, friends, comrades) affirmation that they can change as well as assurance that we will accept them when they are changed, transformation will not seem as risky. 178 "My vision for myself and for all men is that we reclaim every piece of our humanity that has been denied us by our conditioning. Obsession with sex can be healed when we reclaim all the essential aspects of the human experience that we have learned to manage without: our affinity for one another, caring connections with people of all ages and backgrounds and genders, sensual enjoyment of our bodies, passionate self-expression, exhilarating desire, tender love for ourselves and for another, vulnerability, help with our difficulties, gentle rest, getting and staying close with many people in many kinds of relationships." - Steve Bearman

182

We cannot turn our hearts away from boys and men, then ponder why the politics of war continues to shape our national policy and our intimate romantic lives. 184

now

I heard a podcast episode about a woman named Meighan dating in the Present. She sounded very pleased with herself, which I don't mean condescendingly - she was genuinely relieved and exhilarated by the fact that, at the age of 53, she'd unearthed an ability to "let go of tomorrow and just live for today." Her dating life became about enjoying what is & not contemplating what may or may not be.

I tried to get in that frame of mind in my last relationship, to live and learn from Miss Meighan. But I lived in the fear that, though we'd pulled off pressure of longevity early on & maintained open communication, I was somehow stringing my partner along. I feared that the length of time we spent dating dictated the future of our relationship; that our precious moments together absolutely had to be the building blocks of a life-lasting partnership; that we could only play it by ear for so long until our good times, if not a prologue to forever, became irresponsible.

I don't know if I regret holding that position or not. I do know that it resulted in a really disappointing break, a separation of snuggle bugs who had spent a lot of happy hours smiling and cooking and exploring together.

Am I meant to live for right now or build the future I want? To live in the present or to zoom out? To not let a bad day get me down, or live every day like it's my last?

Right now I'm sad.