Peruse The Man They Wanted Me To Be: Toxic Masculinity And A Crisis Of Our Own Making Crafted By Jared Yates Sexton Format Physical Edition
Book I Wanted This To Be
I expected this to be a work of social psychology, and discovered instead that it's primarily a memoir.
I was expecting Dan Ariely, and I got Jennette Walls with a penis, That's okay. It's a good memoir. One that I can relate to, somewhat, having grown up in the rural Midwest, However, his corner of rural Indiana seemed ideologically extreme compared to my Wisconsin hometown, which had an even split between liberals and conservatives.
Growing up, I recall plenty of people who valued education, kindness, and empathy, but I also knew some like his family, where the men were stoic and emotionally repressed and perceived anything artistic or creative as weak.
When the book did veer into social psychology and history which was often, it painted in broad strokes, a bit carelessly at times.
Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that toxic masculinity is a thingI'm buying what this book is sellingbut some of the author's claims seem specious.
For instance, that the Civil War changed our conception of masculinity, and before that men weren't seen as breadwinners or providers, and our current plague of toxic masculinity can be traced backyears to this sea change.
Um I'm pretty sure the traditional concept of masculinity, with all its toxic elements included, goes back further than the Civil War.
The Viking Sagas seem pretty toxic to me,
On Trump's America:
They're justified in feeling that something has changed.
The world really is transforming around them, and with those changes their advantages are rapidly evaporating.
Industry is giving way to a new economy that favors creativity and communication while rewarding empathy and education, which men are taught to oppose.
The future is geared for socalled feminine values, and the education and the democratization of mass culture does mean that minorities who have been held back in the past are now realizing more social and economic potential.
The truth is, the very people who claimed to help men have failed them.
Conservatives have won elections by appealing to traditional values and have left working and middleclass men in the lurch by not preparing them for the economic future.
The goal was always in cementing the past in the present instead of planning for the future.
Republicans lied to men by telling them their factories were coming back, They lied to them by telling them the mines they worked in were going to be reopened.
They told them to resist even the most commonsense gun control as their children were murdered in their classrooms.
They told them to hate higher learning when all the studies and all the books told the same story: the times were changing and you'd better change with them.
Even more tragically, change has always been in their best interest, The occupations they cling to so desperatelythe factory jobs, the mining jobs, the manual labor jobswere awful in the first place.
Men who toil in these careers are underpaid and miserable, They suffer horrific injuries, die prematurely, and are exploited by companies that hardly ever reward their labor or loyalty.
But men have long fallen for the great myth of American capitalism, They strive to make it and when they fail they find solace, no matter how dismal, in their pursuit and their work.
They've been tricked, and to admit now that the lie isn't real, after generations of buying into it and basing their identities on a fraudulent and faulty worldview, would be one of the greatest emasculations ever.
On millenials:
Much of the critique of millennials revolves around accusations of being soft or too emotional, but in truth it's a resentment that we haven't been able to fully explore ourselves without feeling the pressure of society.
Because millennials have largely avoided those old pressures, they intuitively understand persona, One morning they can wear sparkling cat ears and the next they might dress up as a lumberjack, and they can be whoever they want or whoever they were born to be without fear of reprisal or rejection.
They don't suppress their sexuality or expression of gender like so many of us have in the past.
I recommend women buy this book and then quietly place it upon the desk of any man or men in their life, no matter how she might believe that man is immured or not in toxic masculinity.
And then serenade him with Born This Way ::
sitelink youtube. com/watchvLga A solid, if uneven and diffuse book, If you're like mea nonwhite, nonstraight, highyeducated person living in Western cultureyou are not the target audience for this book.
Pretty much ninetyfive percent of what Jared Yates Sexton conveys in The Man They Wanted Me to Be is wellknown to those of us who don't classify as SWGs straight white guys.
After the election of Trump, the details of this book are pretty much wallpaper to our angry, traumatized minds.
But redundancy, in this case, is not a bad thing, Sexton, as someone who, whether he likes it or not, belongs to this group but definitely is not of this group or a champion of its poisonous ethos, intends this book for the men like him who, as he points out, are destroying the nation, the culture, democracy, and themselves.
Sexton is trying to save his brethren so he can, in his own way, save the culture.
The Man They Wanted Me to Be does some good work, In this slim book, Sexton gives readers a gadfly's view into the countless torments he faced throughout his life as a SWG who, for various reasons, just didn't fit the mold of traditional masculinity, what many people now rightly refer to as toxic masculinity.
I can relate. Though there are only slight modifications, black men, and men of other races and ethnicities, are forced to endure the same tests and trauma.
Witnessing a succession of losers, including his own father, abuse his mother and him made Sexton the prime author of a text that critiques the tenets, challenges, and grizzly permutations of modern manhood within a zeitgeist of feminism, civil rights, queer rebellion, and immigration debates that take a power drill to the very foundations of traditional Western masculinity.
Sexton notably points to the ways men in America born and raised after World War Two succumbed to the propagandistic myths of manhood funneled down to them through cinema I love his critique of Patton, both the Academy Awardwinning film and the man, risky sex, combat sports, misogyny, conspiracy theories, and opportunistic politicians.
Sexton knows his target audience and he's not afraid to call them and their forebears out on the heinous crap they've donelike voting for Trumpthat have widespread ramifications for men and women around the globe.
The most satisfying section of the book for me was the final chapters where Sexton takes morons like Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson to task, exposing them for the hucksters they truly are.
I applaud Sexton for that,
Yet the book is not without flaws, Technically, The Man They Wanted Me to Be is not a smooth, cohesive book.
Frankly, it's disjointed. Sexton is trying hard to blend memoir, sociology, history, politics, and current events in this book.
Yet the result is a stew that, while nourishing, isn't particularly toothsome, While he never lacks conviction, passion, or authority, Sexton falters in his The Man They Wanted Me to Be's presentation, If he could have found a way to be more fluid, to organize this book in a way that elevated it, this would have been an exceptional expose', one to partner Hillbilly Elegy, the new de facto book on poor Caucasians and their myriad socioeconomic struggles and resulting prejudices.
However, I felt this book aimed low, giving informed readers like me material we were already well aware of.
I found the writing neutral and unpolished, yet I think that's what Sexton was aiming for.
He knows that the audience he needs to reach, those die hard Trumpers, won't cotton to highfalutin academic speak or SAT words.
They want real stories, plain talk, and an SWG like him to give this book to them without frills, stats, or BS.
I applaud Sexton for writing specifically to his audience, but I wish he had done a little bit more for woke folks like me.
Still, you can't have everything, and Sexton's book succeeds if only in its raw punchtothegut honesty.
As the mother of a baby boy being raised into a world of Donald Trumps and Brett Kavanaughs, I feel a deep sense of responsibility to raise him right, and to me that means ensuring that he rejects toxic masculinity, both for his own good and for the good of everyone in his life.
These days we see toxic masculinity everywhere: in the abundance of mass shootings that plague our country, the rise of “incels” and the altright, andmost notablyin the election of our current president, “the
personification of white American masculinity.
”
For Jared Yates Sexton, the issue is personal, growing up with a series of abusive father figures in blue collar America.
In this timely book, he combines his own stories and memories with incisive cultural analysis and critique aimed at deconstructing the insidious lie of white patriarchal masculinity.
Tasked with the insurmountable goal of living up to the traditional ideal of masculinity, men are doomed to fall short, causing them to overcompensate in harmful ways.
They often suffer in silenceresistant to expressing “feminine” emotions like sadness and tendernessand then inflict suffering on everyone around them via “acceptable” outlets such as anger and aggression.
Yates connects the dots in ways that make perfect sense but that I hadnt before been able to articulate, linking toxic masculinity with everything from capitalism to military/hero worship to mens health.
He shows how even the most selfaware men such as himself can get caught up in the web of toxic masculinity, bound by traditional social constructs and antiquated ideals that are hard to overcome.
And, on the other hand, how even the most toxically masculine men such as his father can come out on the other side.
An essential book for destroying the patriarchy and creating better men for us all, In The Man They Wanted Me to Be, Jared Yates Sexton writes about his and his family's experience of toxic masculinity, the research showing toxic masculinity's negative health and relational consequences, and how toxic masculinity contributes to Trump and the rise of the altright.
I loved how Sexton shares his personal story with us, how he started out as a soft, sensitive child and hardened after experiencing abuse and problematic masculine role models, outside of his mother and grandfather.
Through his sharing in this book, Sexton emulates how more men, especially white men, should act: confronting our trauma with selfcompassion while owning up to the ways we perpetuate misogyny and other forms of oppression.
I appreciated how he wrote about going to therapy and the courage it takes to seek help.
Sexton also does a splendid job incorporating research about masculinity throughout this book, He does so in a way that adds context and builds to the narrative instead of distracting from it.
He writes about how boys are socialized to repress emotions instead of anger, to devalue anything that is perceived as "feminine," and to enact aggression and violence to prove their masculinity.
As exemplified by his father's story, Sexton links this socialization to how men often do not seek help for their health issues later on in life, leading to their earlier deaths compared to women.
Throughout The Man They Wanted Me to Be, Sexton also makes clear men's culpability in carrying out mass shootings and other acts of devastating violence.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book to everyone, especially men and to those interested in masculinity and feminism.
This book feels like an important addition to the iconic sitelink The Will to Change by bell hooks.
Indeed, we do need more men, especially white men, owning up to our complicity in toxic masculinity and showing how we can change it for the better.
I will note that I wish Sexton had touched on how hegemonic white male masculinity often traps men of color, queer men, men at the intersection of those identities and more, etc.
in its lethal grasp. I also wish Sexton had qualified his idea in the last section of the book that the answer to these issues includes showing men love.
While I agree with the importance of showing men love, those harmed by men e, g. , femmes, women of color should not have to bear the burden of making men better, a point to which I think Sexton agrees.
Still, a fantastic read I hope people will pick up inand beyond, .