Oh, Hugo, you’ve really outdone your bootlicking little self this time. Have the girls let you in the clubhouse yet? No? Seriously, Hugo, you need to find some boys to play with. In a resoundingly depressing, and disgustingly opportunistic piece at Jezebel, Hugo links the sad shootings of children to one of the ugliest portraits of young men you’ll read in the media this year.
http://jezebel.com/5970262/poor-pitiful-dudes-why-you-should-defer-to-men-with-post+patriarchal-depression
So according to Hugo, there is a problem in America with young “white” men (why just white, Hugo?) getting the shaft and falling drastically behind in achievement and status when compared to their female counterparts. Score one for no shit Sherlock. The problem is not that an entire generation of young men (of all colors) are being chucked under the ideological bus, oh no. Rather, they are reacting to this treatment by picking up guns and shooting children, right? Because, hey, that’s what men do, right?
There’s so much to *facepalm* over here it’s hard to know where to begin. Let’s talk about the accusation that it is white men in particular who are prone to pick up guns and shoot people in mass killings. The question is not “is the shooter white,” but what proportion of mass killings are carried out by white men relative to their presence in the general population? Seems like the folks at Virginia Tech might know something about white men going nuts and shooting up innocent bystanders, as long as by “white,” you mean Korean. There are some other folks in DC that lived through a round of snipers who also might contest the fact that mass murderers are lonely “white” guys.
Why the race-baiting, Hugo? Well, men of color have legitimate reasons to complain that their chances in life might be blighted by the circumstances of their birth (80% to single mothers), their economic status (poor), an educational system geared to ensure they fail, a culture that reviles them and a justice system that is more willing to detain them for years for crimes other folks get away with. And those are legitimate complaints. Although they’re increasingly problems for men of all races. To be clear, I am not making excuses for criminality amongst any group, but I am suggesting life circumstances offer some sort of explanation. It is still up to every adult to take responsibility for their own actions, full stop.
But Hugo’s article is designed to cast men as whiny suckholes who can’t “man up” to circumstances, and who have no legitimate complaints to make. He goes even further, suggesting that young men in particular are not just angry about a school system designed to fail them, the complete demonization of masculinity and manhood and the annihilation of employment prospects for men in particular, but that they are specifically angry at women who supposedly benefit from this “New World Order.” And you know what, probably a lot of them are. For bloody good reason.
Here’s where Hugo outdoes himself: he cites an article that claims as long as we continue to fuck over young men, we will continue to have mass killings of children and other innocent bystanders – indeed, those sorts of killings should increase, according to Hugo, because: patriarchy. Also because: masculinity.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/guns-and-the-decline-of-the-young-man/
Think about that. According to Hugo, picking up an automatic weapon loaded with flesh shattering bullets and killing six year olds is part of what makes you a man. As long as you are going to define yourself as “manly,” you will have to accept that you are willing and able to shoot children.
Hugo is deliberately perpetuating the most destructive portrait of masculinity that he can, in order to justify why he rejects it so resoundingly and to ingratiate himself with a movement that despises men while claiming to love them. Hugo doesn’t consider himself particularly manly, therefore he is exempt from his horrifying concept of what constitutes masculinity. He acknowledges that men are getting a shitty deal in the current climate, and then insists that the only response open to them is to pick up a gun and shoot children. Or come to hate masculinity like he does?
Because according to Hugo, that is what masculinity IS. The Sandy Hook shooter was not a mentally disturbed person with a severe personality disorder, raised by a wingnut Armageddonist mother who provided him with wickedly effective weapons and ammunition, raised in broken family with a father he hadn’t seen in years – no, none of that mattered. He wasn’t in desperate need of psychological help, he was just a man, and killing children in a brutal bloodbath is simply what men DO.
The willful ugliness of Hugo’s concept of what men are and what they do is not just outrageous, it’s profoundly, disturbingly sad. Inside his insistence that men are angry, unstable, violent brutes hides a wretched reality: men who are struggling with mental health issues, who do have unresolved, deeply troubling feelings and thoughts are told that there is no help for them. There is nothing they can do to assuage the loneliness and pain and despair of their lives. Indeed, if they reach out for help, they are just whiny assholes who can’t handle what Hanna Rosen has called The End of Men and the supposed rise of women.
Christmas is almost upon us, and across every western, feminized country, there will be countless thousands of men who will sit out the day alone, deprived of their children and families, grappling with isolation and desolation. The vast, sweeping majority of them will face their demons alone, swallow their anger and hate and the injustice of their lives, try to hang on and hope for the future and carry the faces of their children in their hearts.
They will find the courage and strength and stamina to carry on. To persevere, to face the future unafraid, to remain the Captain of their own souls. And for men who find that the burden is too much to bear, that your strength has failed you, that you cannot go on, ignore hateful assholes like Hugo. There is help, and there is nothing unmanly about asking for it. A man who staggers is still a man. And somewhere, there is a shoulder for you to lean on until your strength is back.
In Australia:
http://www.mensline.org.au/Home.html
In Canada:
http://www.cmha.ca/public_policy/men-and-mental-illness/
In the UK:
http://www.menshealthforum.org.uk/
In the United States:
http://www.nmha.org/go/help
Courage, strength, stamina, perseverance and always, always love for your children. For children everywhere. That is a man.
Lots of love,
JB
Hugo Schwyzer: embracing racism, sexism, & cruelty
