The thing these days is to speak of “the man box” and “toxic masculinity” in one breath, as if the two are the same thing and if we only found a way to detoxify manhood, we’d be all done with the man box. But the idea that men shouldn’t wear skirts isn’t limited to toxicity….
Author: Clio
Weaponizing “Bullying”
I’m a member of a teacher group that loves weaponizing the word “bullying.” It got so bad that I left it for a few weeks to get my focus back. Bullying is a serious problem, and one that we tend to wrongly assume is limited to children. Bullying occurs when one person abuses their power…
Treat Mass Shootings as a Manhood Issue
In the 2005 movie “Syriana,” a Pakistani migrant worker named Wasim is on the verge of getting deported when he loses his job at an oil refinery. As his story unfolds, he gets seduced by an Islamic extremist, who ultimately convinces him to execute a suicide attack on the company that laid him off. Normally,…
A Time to Keep Silent
The stereotypical mother says, “If you can’t say something nice….” That exhortation is meant to remind us that we shouldn’t say mean things about other people. Well, okay. I think there are times to say mean things about other people, but that’s not the point of my sermon here today. I used to be quite…
… hitting the reset button.
I started this decade unemployed, adrift, and with a commitment to become a blogger. I started several blogs and posted a bunch of stuff. The next year, I went back to school to become a teacher, and let those blogs fade away. I thought about them a few times, but less frequently as time passed….
Dream: The other half of the house
Here is a dream. I had noticed that we were missing one of the steps going to the basement, but we’d learned to just hop over the gap. I finally decided to fix the stair. I hopped down into the gap, picking up the step that had fallen down underneath the stairway. I looked at…
Gillibrand’s Racial Elephant in the Room
During the Democratic debates in Detroit, Kristen Gillibrand, a white woman of privilege, talked about racism. She complained that it shouldn’t be just Cory Booker and Kamala Harris talking about race. White liberals generally have a strange way of talking about racism. We dodge, we couch, we leave the heavy labor to black folks. We…
The Math Meme That Would Not Die
Some version of this question keeps getting asked on the internet. What is \(8\div2(2+2)\)? Some background The strength of mathematical notation is at the intersection of clarity and simplicity. We could be completely clear, which would leave us writing details we don’t need and make it hard to read. We could oversimplify, and lose clarity….
Growing Beyond the White Savior (part 2)
I am a white. I am a high school teacher. I am about to enter my eighth year in the classroom. Several years ago, I wrote about the White Savior complex, and I briefly touched on my personal growth. But I don’t feel like I said enough then. I believe that white people who are…
The Problem With Pronouns
Here is a story about David and Joann: David ran into Joann at the store. After they talked for a while, he told her that she better finish her shopping, because she’d get in trouble with his roommate if he was late to the party. Here is a story about David and Jonathan: David ran…