I am a white man. This essay is about my gender, but first I’ll talk about my race. ◊♦◊ With my skin I inherit generations of abuse against people who are not white. This includes people whose skin looks like mine, but who were stripped of their whiteness because of their specific background: Irish. Polish….
Author: Clio
The Privilege of Civility
My progressive and liberal friends are arguing again. The midterm elections are approaching. We’re reeling from several acts of violence including shootings that killed eleven at a temple and two at a grocery store, as well as over a dozen bombs mailed to prominent Democrats. Thousands of Hondurans are marching towards the US border despite…
How To Raise Boys in the #MeToo Era
Following the politically charged confirmation battle of Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump has a message: It’s a scary time for young men. In his universe, boys will now need to watch their actions around girls, apparently lest a moment of innocent privacy or a peck on the cheek gets remembered as a sexual assault decades from…
Law and Order: Special Criminals Unit
Our society is in crisis. We are looking into our abyss on gender, and on race, and many of us don’t like what we’re seeing. ◊♦◊ A month ago, Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger illegally entered the apartment of Botham Shem Jean and shot him dead. Except for “Dallas Police Officer,” this should have been…
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devolved!
In 1970, following the wake of the Kent State University shootings, three art students from the university formed a band around the concept of de-evolution, their theory that humanity was degrading. The resulting band, Devo, had its peak from 1978 to 1984. During this same time span, Hollywood released a series of movies that, taken…
Stand With Victims, Not With Perpetrators
Men, it’s well past time that we stop tolerating our culture’s attitude on rape. I believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. I believe her when she says, when she was 15, a then-17 Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her. I do not excuse his behavior because he was “young”; at 17, he was old enough to…
Why Do We Romanticize Pirates?
This Wednesday, September 19, is the annual Talk Like a Pirate Day. So it seems like a good time to rant about our culture’s infatuation with pirates. I’m about to ruin Pirate Santa Claus for white people. Why do we romanticize pirates? I was thinking about this recently, regarding a teacher education book called “Teach…
The Complications of School Bathroom Policies
I’ve written in the past about school dress codes. There’s another topic that’s just as complicated, and that’s also getting attention in the news lately: Bathroom pass policies. Last month, a middle school teacher’s policy notice went viral. For people outside of education, the policy (two passes a month, no more) might have seemed draconian….
A Product of His Times
My father said the n-word when I was young. Often. Casually, and sometimes in anger. My father was not a terrible person. He was a liberal Christian minister. He did good works for his community, and he did extensive missionary work in Liberia, a country whose modern culture was built by freed slaves. The common…
R-E-S-P-E-C-T and the Toxic Man
Okay, men, listen up. Many of you claim to not understand what “rape culture” and “toxic masculinity” are. So here’s a lesson. This weekend, the nation honored Aretha Franklin, one of the greatest musicians ever to grace us with her presence. The Queen of Soul brought a consistent woman-empowering message, including through her most famous…