Let’s start with Abraham and Isaac. You know the
story. God tells Abraham to slit his child’s throat. Abraham ties up his son,
raises the knife, and at the last moment God says it was a test. End of story.
Lesson? Abraham shows, by his willingness to violate his own child, the proof
of his worth. And Isaac learns that his father was willing to kill him rather
than act against the cult of masculinity against the rules of the man box.
There
are many rules of the man box, even though there is no man box, and there are
no rules. Why call it a box when it’s the way things are? And why call it a
rule when it’s who you are?
Rule 1: There is no man box.
Rule 2: There is no box but the man box, and thou
shalt have no other boxes before it.
Rule 3: That’s the way things are.
Rule 4: That’s who you are.
I’m in a restaurant, and I overhear one guy say
to another that he’s in pain. The other responds, “Suck it up. When are you
going to quit being such a woman?”…
So yes, I understand that men are taught to not
feel. Yes, I understand that the cult of masculinity is all about not feeling.
I understand that must be hard. But honestly, I don’t give a shit about
understanding the emotional state of members of the cult of masculinity, except
insofar as that understanding might help stop them. It’s a bit late in the game
to be worried about the feelings of perpetrators.
The ones I care about are their victims, because
the man box isn’t about putting men in a box, it’s about putting everyone else
in a box, the box of other, of less than, of trophies, the box of the violable,
the box of targets, the box of victims, the box of the violated, the box of
proof of the men’s own manhood.
Have you ever done the math on how many women who
are alive right now have been raped? There are almost seven billion people on
the planet, so there are about 3.5 billion women. About one in four women is
raped in her lifetime, and another one in five fend off rape attempts. So more
than 800 million women living today will be raped in their lifetimes. Let’s say
half of those have not yet been raped. So 400 million women living now have
been raped.
And another now.
And another now.
This also means, among many other things, that
unless a few men are excruciatingly busy, there are a lot of rapists out there,
a lot of members of the cult of masculinity, a lot of men who adhere to the
rules of the man box.
But you already knew that.
But of course there is no man box, and there can
be no man box, because if there were a man box, that would mean there’s
something outside the man box, and there’s nothing outside the man box because
there can be nothing outside the man box, and there can be nothing outside the
man box because there must be nothing outside the man box.
Because
if there were, well, there isn’t, and can’t be, and mustn’t be. Because if
there were, that would mean members of the cult of masculinity aren’t as
omnipotent — as completely potent — as they must be. And also because if there
were, why would any victims put up with this shit?
So there must not be a man box, because
everything is part of the man box. That is, everything is violable. And
everything must be violated.
Rule 5, which is actually Rule 1, which is
actually the only rule there is: I exist only insofar as I violate you. But of
course rule 5 does not exist. Nor does rule 1.
The other day I saw an astronomer saying why he
thought it was important to explore Mars and other planets: “It will,” he said,
“answer that most important question of all: Are we all alone?”
I have an even more important question: Is he
fucking crazy?
No, just a member of the cult of masculinity.
Did you know that 200 years ago there were flocks
of passenger pigeons so large they darkened the sky for days at a time? And
flocks of Eskimo curlews so thick that ten, fifteen, twenty birds would fall to
a single shot? There were so many whales in the North Atlantic they were a
hazard to shipping, and there were runs of salmon so thick they would keep you
awake all night with the slapping of their tails against the water. And he asks
if we are alone?
Only if you’re a member of the cult of
masculinity, in which case you are of course alone, with other members of your
cult, because you have declared yourself to be the only one who matters, the
one who does to as opposed to everyone else, to whom it is done.
Did you know that this culture is driving two
hundred species extinct each and every day? Did you know that stolid scientists
are saying the oceans could be devoid of fish in fifty years?
And do you know why?
And did you know that the world used to be filled
with thousands of vibrant human cultures? And that human cultures are being
driven extinct at an even faster relative rate than nonhuman species?
And do you know why?
The man box is full of women. It is full of
passenger pigeons. It is full of whales. It is full of indigenous humans. The
man box is full of the entire world.
But the man box isn’t full, because the man box —
which does not exist — can never be full.
The
psychiatrist R.D. Laing famously asked, “How do you plug a void plugging a
void?” That’s the question, isn’t it? But of course it isn’t the question
because men don’t have a void, and if they did have a void they certainly
wouldn’t plug it with a void.
Someone once told me that any hatred — or maybe
any void — felt long enough no longer feels like hatred, but rather like
religion, or economics, or science, or tradition, or just the way things are.
With all the world at stake I need to speak
plainly. The problem is that within this patriarchy, identity itself is based
on violation. Violation becomes not merely an action but an identity: who you
are, and how you and society define who you are. Within this patriarchy men’s
masculinity defines itself by identifying others — any and all others — as
inferior (which is why those stupid fucking scientists can ask “Are we all
alone?” as they destroy the extraordinary life on this planet), and as being therefore
violable, and then violating them. For men under this patriarchy, these acts of
violating others are how we become who we are. They validate who we are. They
then reaffirm who we are, as through these repeated acts of violation we come
to perceive each new violation as reinforcement not only of our superiority
over this other we violated but as simply the way things are.
So without this identification of others as
inferior, without this violation, we are not. We are a void. And so we must
fill this void, fill it with validations of our superiority, fill it with
violations. Thus the rapes. Thus the violation of every boundary set up by
every indigenous culture. Thus the extinctions. Thus the insane belief in an
economic system based on infinite growth despite the fact that we live on a
finite planet. Thus the refusal to accept any limits on technological progress
— more properly termed technological escalation, as it really involves an
escalation of the wielders’ ability to control and violate at a distance — or
on scientific “knowledge.” Thus the sending of probes to penetrate the deepest
folds of the ocean floor. Thus the bombing of the moon.
What makes this problem even worse is that
because there are always those who have yet to be violated, and because this
violation isn’t really solving the needs it purports to meet — it’s a void
plugging a void — this drive to violate is insatiable.
This culture will continue to violate, until
there is nothing left to violate, nothing left.
So what is at stake in this whole discussion is
life on this planet. This cult of masculinity must not merely be left, and must
not merely be exposed. It must be destroyed, or it will continue to violate its
way to the end of all that is alive.
But before we can leave this cult we must
understand that it is not all that is. That there is a cult of masculinity, and
there is a man box, and you can leave them both. Burn this into your heart:
this imperative to violate is not natural. It is cultural.
And we must resist every effort by the abusers,
by the violators, to “naturalize” this drive to violate. For this is what
abusers, violators, must do. They must attempt to convince themselves and
everyone else that their way is the only way, that there is no other way. They
must convince themselves and everyone else that not only is there nowhere
outside the cult of masculinity, nowhere outside the man box, but indeed there
exists neither a cult of masculinity nor a man box.
There is only this one way of life, which is not
just a way of life because it encompasses all that is or ever was or ever will
be. It is everything.
They say.
But they are lying, to themselves and to you.
Even if they have an entire culture to back them up, they are still lying.
We
must never forget that. There is a cult of masculinity, and there is a man box,
and we can leave them. We can not only leave them. We can destroy them. We
must. With all the world at stake, we must.
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