This is going to be a sensitive post. It is also going to be a manly post. These two sentences in combination - note how the ’also’ feels somewhere halfway an excuse and an exclamation - set up the trouble with which I would like to stay here. The masculine thing to do obviously is to leave others to deal with the trouble. In this sense already is staying with it an exercise in trying not to be The Man. Being a man without trying to be The Man is the trouble we shall stay with here. It is the trouble I’m staying with ever since I realized - consciously, because it was unconsciously always already clear - that the world is an entirely different place to live in when you’re not The Man. It is a place of injustice, rationalized coercion and therefore mostly one of bodily danger. Only when I realized all this consciously, did I succeed in realizing that what I felt unconsciously was the nagging feeling that I was unjust, coercive and dangerous in spite of all my rationalizations. As I do not want to be any of that - and never wanted it, as is clear from a nagging feeling accompanying me - I stand for the trouble of how to be a man whilst not trying to be The Man. A trouble I will not solve here for solving troubles is what The Man thinks needs to be done by His minions, and I decided not to be Him any longer. Trying not to be The Man is aspirational. Being Him is constituted as having achieved arrogance.
By whom is it so constituted? Not by men in any general sense, as we’re born into patriarchy just like anybody else (including those who were erroneously assigned male at birth). By god is probably the best answer insofar as it clearly signals that The Man existed before we were born and that this is a preferred answer of those who self-evidently believe they are The Man (any nagging feelings being quickly dismissed by them as devilish). It also explains how we can whine about trying - and failing - to do the right thing when called out on not doing it. We can wallow, then, in self-pity, because we did not choose to be men committing injustice and rationalizing coercion. No, it chose us. So here we are: symmetrical co-victims of social rules that were not of our own making. Except that the idea of symmetry is an invention of the very same god that gave us The Man. The idea of symmetry is a rational cover-up of asymmetry in concrete everyday reality. In that reality The Man is ‘born again’ every time we don’t do the right thing, and gets an additional layer of rational veneer every time we wallow in a self-pity that diverts attention from the fact that The Man may well have existed before we were born, but that We recreate Him every time we do not take personal responsibility for the things we do, qua men. So, in the end, god is just the hypocritical fig leaf for Our phallic arrogance.
God even gets a capital first letter from me when he figures in the beginning of a sentence. It is however not my lack of belief in god that releases me from the guilt associated with having acted like The Man. Indeed, when The Man gives up believing in the manly god preordaining patriarchy, he ordains patriarchy to be immanent in nature by naturally narrating evolutionary psychology to evolve in the direction of the survival of the fittest patriarchy. And so the story essentially remains the same, but the fig leaf becomes nature (and nagging feelings can now be quickly dismissed as unnatural - which allows for a convenient unholy alliance with those who have not yet fallen from their belief in god). My apostasy from Christianity then is a most trivial matter if it allows Me to continue recreating the arrogant perspective where We’re also shackled to patriarchy and hence are not personally responsible for the factual asymmetry in society. If male and female are like yin and yang then yin is power and yang is concern and patriarchy is the conviction that power trumps care and therefore that might makes right or - equivalently - that knowledge excludes feelings and therefore that rationality outweighs love (which is only provisionally needed as long as our superior masculine minds are shackled to this weak body which is, after all and to round the circle, just a symbol for our original sin).
So what is needed is an apostasy from the enlightenment (a word not in the beginning of this sentence) given said enlightenment has made us rationalize coercion to suppose symmetry in form and accept substantial injustice. Maybe it is a manly thing to do, to write in tongues, I do not know, for it is my way to write and I happen to be a man. I do know, however, that this isn’t an easy matter, but one that spells t r o u b l e. It requires careful thought and conscious realization that nobody can be The Man. Only when you understand this you will be ready to listen to those who are denied the option of their power trampling care. The feeling of shame when finally trying not to be The Man is doubled by the realization that your every indignation (say that of being expected to not act autistically when you are - as I am - autistic) was their indignation which you failed to listen to because, well, minorities were abolished by Our law, which was rationally blinded to non-manliness. Shame accompanying the realization that not trying to be The Man creates more problems than just staying with the status quo. Problems you now share with at least half of the world’s population and that can only be alleviated if ‘at least half’ grows to ‘almost all’. Staying with this trouble means enjoying you have moved the needle somewhat in the right direction, even if it mostly feels like needles stuck in your eye.
I do intend to write this book and I intend to write it without writing in tongues such that more men may more justly distribute the needles stuck in the eyes of minorities by sticking them in their own eyes. I shan’t sugarcoat what at least half of the world’s population knows: that one hardly lives only for one’s self, that sacrifice towards more justice is the basic feature of any existence that doesn’t proceed linea recta to its own non-existence. For now you must make do with tongues that are only fit to inspire those who really want to think for themselves, and are prepared to wake up from His patriarchal capitalist slumber.
PS: Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD ‘s blog post is here