Masculinity Mondays: 18

 

As part of my progression into the Magician archetype, I have come to understand the need to incorporate my class history into my journey, because my experience of class is, at its heart, the experience of magic.

I am working class - but rural working class.  That has meant, as the UK, and the world, urbanises, that I have become classless - not in the way that allows social mobility, but in the way that precludes any real progress at all.  I have to make this transition from Warrior to Magician successfully, because disability means I can no longer effectively fight, and my experience of classlessness means I have no access to community support, and the social capital that lends.

Working class, as defined by urbanised experience, is, as a recent exchange on Instagram revealed, and as my own current situation in a fundamentally working class street in a working class town confirms, defined by "drama",  "people being loud in public",  "chaos",   "dysfunction"  and "avoidable errors of judgement."

Rural working classness, however, is the very opposite of that.  It is a quiet carefulness - carefulness with people as well as things.  There is drama, but it's the quiet drama of gossip, not the loud drama of declarations and accusations.   In the rural working class, we don't scream in peoples' faces, damage their property, or physically assault them - we quietly observe that they "don't always behave how you'd think people should in their situation."   We hold meetings they're not invited to, greet their applications to join committees with polite derision.  I know all this because it happened to me and my family - because we hadn't always lived in the village, or even the county. Because my mother had "notions" - her own father's condemnation of her,  and the perfect description of a woman who, though firmly working class, endeavoured to present herself and her family as otherwise.  I still feel resentment that the village I had to leave when I would have preferred to stay treated a peer who was a criminal and drug addict better than I was treated, because his family were a proper village family; they were established, they had history that my family would never have.  He was given a council bungalow; I was told it was "improper" for me to even enquire about a one-bedroom house with a small garden, because "gardens are for families."  I didn't even have the words to describe being trans fully at that point, I certainly didn't know it would be possible for me to physically transition - but everyone in that village, everyone around me, recognised I was not going to be someone who had a family - because the working class, especially the rural working class, consider "family" to exclusively mean "children." (Another reason for my family to be politely excluded - I am an only child. There were only two other only children in my village when I was growing up, and their families were equally viewed as "not really part of things here."  In the urban working class, this fixation on children, plural, has resulted in an attitude that it doesn't matter how many children you can afford to support - you have as many as you can, because your children buy your place in community...being someone who has never wanted children, and will certainly never have them, I've heard both the slamming and the locking of enough gates against me because my family is my wife, and the close friends I have particular regard for, and a sense of duty towards.)

I stand adrift from British class - I come from generations of people who lived in working poverty, with occasional dips into absolute poverty.  My education has been something I have had to pursue informally, ad-hoc, and entirely without support.  I was raised to believe that you "have to work hard to get what you want" - but without any kind of map as to how that effort should be directed, which has resulted in me wasting over two decades working to the point of exhaustion at the wrong things, never getting ahead, but rather running full-tilt into dead end after dead end.   The men in my family worked in factories - but factory hours no longer fit with bus routes.  I can't see well enough to work at the speed a modern factory line demands.  I'm completely night blind, and factory work means shift work. And the factories are closing rapidly in any case.  My competence at administration and organisation has previously got me into middle class businesses - but I've never been allowed to progress beyond the entry-level, minimum wage levels in those businesses.  Increasingly, the shift to "female focus" - meaning indirect communication, extensive consensus-seeking (ie, endless meetings), rather than decisive, action-focused leadership, and the rise of AI and automation, means those roles are declining, and the attitude is that my "energy" is not appropriate any more.

Working class energy is, at its heart, masculine energy, even when it's held by very feminine women. It's the energy of getting things done, rather than talking about getting them done.  It's the energy of "use the resources you can see", rather than identify the exactly right and proper components.  It's the energy of "me first" rather than "there is no 'I' in 'team'".  It's the energy of survival.   And the Western world is being deafened by people who point to dysfunctional men who should be in prison, away from decent society, and howl that "masculine energy is toxic! We can't allow it in our businesses!"  Middle class people can and do have very masculine attitudes, but they also have the means to be chameleons - to spend time learning to disguise and dissemble. To immerse themselves in other identities. To buy the right clothes, the right cars, the right club memberships. Houses in the right areas. The right holidays. The right hobbies.  They can feign the acceptable energy, whilst holding another energy in reserve, ready to switch back seamlessly as and when society shifts.

Working class people survive because of our masculine energy and focus. Because we need to survive, we can only afford space for that one energy, regardless of our gender and gender expression.  We have to stand ready to be violent, because we are not able to afford to simply move away from violence in the way middle class people can.

We become the indecent people who do violence at the command of decent people whose designs and desires demand violence, but who refuse to dirty their hands.  And no army is ever fully trusted by those who employ them.

"Working class" is being increasingly discussed - but, like "trans", the reality of what it means to be working class, rather than merely "identify as" working class, is being ignored, in favour of including everyone who "feels that the term resonates for them."

Masculinity Mondays: 17

 

I recently got a helix piercing, part of a reclaiming of an identity I lost for 20yrs behaving and presenting appropriately in highly corporate settings. In that whole time, I removed my earlobe piercings (which had been done for so long they fortunately didn't close up), and kept my sleeves down.

I have eighteen tattoos, and, now, 3 piercings.  The piercings are all in my ears, and my plan going forward is to stick to my ears, as they're easier to manage care for by touch.  However, I've previously had a labret piercing and an eyebrow piercing, both between the ages of 17-19, before I started corporate work.

With my most recent piercing, I'd been feeling very run down, anxious, and depressed prior; almost as soon as I got the piercing, I felt better. This is a common experience for people who are into ink and piercings - almost as common as the intense negative reactions against both ink and piercings from those who aren't into them.

Tattoos, piercings, scarification - things that our current society deems "extreme" have actually been part of routine human experience for most, if not all, of our existence.  Wounding in order to heal into community, a sacrifice of comfort for the payoff of belonging.

And that's what frightens the anti- crowd into aggressive hostility about tattoos and piercings; they are afraid of people who are comfortable with sacrifice. They don't know how to handle people who honour ritual in a world that claims nothing is or ever was sacred.

As I move into the Magician archetype, I will be moving away from regular, PAYE employment, and into full time freelancing - something I've previously only ever done alongside a full time job.

I am afraid.
But I am not beholden to my fear.
I have rites and rituals to work through the feeling of being afraid.

And yes - part of those rites will be getting new ink, and more piercings.

Masculinity Mondays: 16

 

Depression and masculinity.

Two things that are supposed to be mutually exclusive. Depression's PR campaign is stereotypically attractive, acceptably young, white women - beauty trapped in the cruelty of compassionless capitalism. Something gorgeous with the light drained out of her by this terrible curse.

Men who experience depression are told we're weak.
We're told we're "just making excuses."
We're told we're selfish.
We're told we're lazy.
We're told to "man up."
We're told to "get over it."

The option of having a lovely, affirming conversation with your manager about "needing a mental health break" is off the table for men - we're told that "everyone is stressed here."  We're reminded of how much our absence would affect the team.

I'm not talking off the cuff here; I've actually experienced this in every single job I've ever had when my mental health takes a dive - which is something I have to account for in my work, as it's part of living with schizophrenia; my brain doesn't co-operate with "Hey, let's just stay on the chill out track, and ignore all the negativity out there" (which is very much how I would prefer to be living my life); even if I keep myself away from all possible sources of concerning news, drama, whatever? My brain will just create that stuff out of literally nothing, and cause more problems than anyone wants to deal with.  

Part of this journey from Warrior to Magician is also learning how to handle not just my physical disabilities, but also my mental health.  That's a challenge for me, because my understanding of "rest" is "take a break from the work I'm paid for and work on stuff I might get paid for one day, or look for more options for work I'll definitely be paid for.  I am very literally restless;  I can't settle to "just doing nothing". That clashes quite badly with the fact that, on bad mental health days, I can't maintain focus - so, I end up task-jumping the day away, because I can't just do nothing, but I also can't focus on just one thing.

Going fully freelance is what I need  to do for my mental health and my physical disabilities, but it's also the worst of all possible world. Not knowing where the money's coming from isn't good for my mental health. Feeling that resting is just wasting an opportunity to find more revenue streams isn't good for either my mental or physical health.  

But the reality is that magic is ultimately creative energy, and creativity needs a lot of downtime. Growing up in a rural community, but being someone who does their best work in creative spaces, I often don't feel I've earned rest - I haven't been walking fields all day. I haven't been throwing hay bales around. I haven't been setting fences.  I haven't been out on a construction site. I haven't even been stacking supermarket shelves - I feel that I shouldn't need to rest.

One of the major steps - and stumbling blocks - on this journey for me is coming to genuinely know, on a guiltless, instinctual level, that rest is sacred.

And the problem is, that sounds too feminine, because women have rushed to claim sacredness - women are lapping up the idea that they are innately goddesses, so of course sacredness belongs to them, because they're goddesses, so who else would sacredness pertain to?

But sacredness pertains to gods, too.  If women are embracing their goddess energy, then men are gods, because for most of human history, spirituality placed a god and a goddess as equal partners in the spiritual landscape.

What does it mean to be a god? It means to hold space for the heartbreak, despair, and rage of those who believe in you.  It means to know what those who believe in you need, even when that doesn't seem to be what they want, and it means to know how to bring them to accept the thing they need when it isn't what they want. It means to do what is necessary even when it isn't popular. It means to be consistent even as belief in you and worship of you shifts, waxes and wanes.

You don't bring trivia to your god. If you can handle something yourself, you handle it yourself. You don't take the blessings from your god for granted - you are thankful to them. You don't cheap out your god - you give them the best of yourself, even if you can't make offerings of anything other than your time; you prioritise them  in the way you allocate your time. They are a commitment, not an afterthought.

It is not unreasonable for men to claim their godhood, and expect to be treated in these ways, just as it is not unreasonable for women to claim their goddesshood, and expect to be treated as such - but you need to understand that a god or a goddess isn't human. They don't have human concerns or human responsibilities.

Getting past the idea that having standards for how I'm treated, and how I treat myself, is entitlement and arrogance is going to be a challenge.  And accepting depression is going to be part of that element of this process - because learning to treat myself as though I am close to godhood in the way I respond to days like the past week, where  my mental health has been absolutely horrific,  is key to learning to be comfortable with rest, which is central to learning how to transition from Warrior to Magician.

Masculinity Mondays: 15

 

March - mad hares, and the point where it really starts to feel like spring. The perfect analogy for masculinity, especially masculinity in transition; spring "just happens" - on its own timeline, but with predictable signs and pacing. It doesn't matter how wild the winter has been, how dark, cold, and wet the previous weeks have been, spring shows up. There's never any doubt about it, it pays no attention to the kind of weather that's been before, or how people feel about it.  It gently arrives, and settles into place.

Hares fight - the quintessential image in Britain of hares is their "boxing matches".  Spring gently puts what has been behind it.  Hares fight for what they want - but they don't fight all the time.

That's what masculinity often gets wrong; not knowing when to stop fighting, and when to just...arrive. Hares don't fight because it's spring - they fight because spring is when they mate. They don't fight for mates, in the way many people assume - animals which fight during their mating season aren't fighting for the right to be the male who gets the females; they're fighting to be chosen by the females.  Not all females will choose the victor in a mating fight between two males - but they fight anyway, because the process of fighting is what allows watching females to make their own choices. In a fight, something is shown about the nature of a male that cannot be seen at peace or at rest.

Fighting isn't about violence inherently; in non-human animals, the energy, dynamism, and range of movement that fighting requires showcases overall health in a way little else can. Teeth are put on display. Flexibility, speed, stamina, and focus, ability to recover from both exertion and injury, are all very clear signs of health.

What does health mean to non-human animals?  We're often operating on very human assumptions.  Non-human animals have been shown to provide and care for disabled species-members, in a way humans are increasingly turning away from, claiming it's "unnatural", citing "survival of the fittest."

Except "survival of the fittest" never meant the strongest, the fastest, the least unwell, the least disabled, the leanest - it literally meant the most adaptable. Those which could fit themselves to their environment, rather than expecting the environment to remain constantly in line with their best qualities.

In the human world, adaptability is more about mindset than physicality - overpopulation, reliance on buildings and vehicles, and employment, have created a world in which most of us cannot adapt to natural changes and challenges.  Instead, we prove our adaptability by responding positively to social demographic changes, by being ready and willing to gain new skills, and by being able to discern between which "reskill in this now!" demands are genuine, and which are just flashes in the pans of privileged people using other peoples' money to create hype around something that is neither necessary nor relevant.

For me, on this journey, I recognise that, while I am socially adaptable, I'm burned out from having had to pivot, skills and career wise, half a dozen times in 14 years. I've never been comfortable with pivoting in this arena; change feels like an existential threat to me when it centres around the way I'm able to make money, and the things people will pay me for being useful in.  I'm not someone who is able to predict trends, I've never had money to invest in anything, I've never had the necessary buffer to allow me time to wait and work on things, to give riskier changes time to set in.

But that adaptability, that ability to predict and dance with trends and rising areas of focus, is the epicentre of magic.

I've been the hare, fighting to showcase how well suited for the demands of life I am.  Now, it's time for me to be spring, to just arrive as I am, and draw all that is intended for me to me.

How am I going to do that?
. I don't have time to build up investments through stocks, shares, or a pension, and I also feel extremely anxious around illiquid assets; up until now, I pursued high-paying jobs, and have tried to build side hustles to low-wage jobs; for 20yrs, I assumed that one or both of those things would work out, and I'd be able to throw £700-800 a month into investments, and £200-300 a month into savings, and then live on £1,500pm.  But I've never been able to earn the £2,500 net which feels like it really isn't an unreasonable ask, despite repeated attempts - in an average year, I'll apply for over 250 £35k a year + jobs. In a year where I'm out of work, that rises to over 600 £35k+ jobs, and over 250 jobs at lower income levels.   With stocks and shares not being a realistic option, and time running out, I've made the decision, this year, to begin prioritising buying precious and rare earth metals, which can be sold relatively quickly.

. I've recognised that, when it comes to side hustles, I've previously made the mistake of trying to come up with as many options as I possibly can as quickly as I can, and then become overwhelmed by the volume of follow-through required; I've therefore shifted to a focus of coming up with just TWO ideas which COULD generate at least £15k a year every Sunday morning; those two ideas get followed up through the week, then I move on to identifying two new options, pursue them, having automated chase emails for the previous two ideas.  Two ideas a week is manageable. £15k a year feels achievable.

. I've recognised that, other than money, I already live the life I want - I'm not ambitious about travel, I don't want brand items, or luxury housing or cars.  I don't do "rest" well, therefore retirement wouldn't suit me.  I've been told to anticipate losing the remaining 40% of my sight in the next 15yrs, but, even when I can no longer see, I'll be able to talk to people. Text to speech exists now, and is only likely to improve, meaning I'll still be able to work with plain text documents. Speech to text means I will still be able to write.  I own my house outright - thanks only to my father dying, and having been responsible enough to maintain a life insurance policy; I inherited half of that (£80k), and, in 2014, my house was £69,950 - it now needs major repairs, which insurance has refused to cover (because the original damage was caused by "vermin" - otherwise known as seagulls - and resulted from "negligence" - my being unable to convince an aggressive, dysfunctional neighbour to not amuse her grandchild by throwing breadcrumbs onto my flat roof, so that they could "watch the birdies" from their window...), so at best I'd only get the purchase price back if I sold the house tomorrow, as I'm having to piecemeal the repairs as and when I can afford them.  I wouldn't qualify to rent (Minimum rent for a literal studio flat - ie, a bedsit - in my area, which is very low cost of living, is £465 a month. You have to be able to prove 3x rent as regular income - I do not currently earn £1,395 a month.) My local authority - most local authorities in the UK - is more than willing to let people without kids die in the streets. When I was homeless before my marriage, I was literally told "we're not obliged to house single males - there's no real risk to you on the streets."  And that council worker was also aware I was trans, as that had been a contributory factor to my homelessness. (I was unable to live with my mother, as she'd previously attacked me at knifepoint...I got told that it was "understandable that she would have strong feelings about something like that" by this council worker...so much for the online trolls' claims that "trans people will only ever be seen as their biological sex!"  So much for "male privilege" - men have some privilege over women, sure - but there are ways women are privileged, too); I don't need to retire. I don't want to retire - I believe I can work for 3-4 days a week until I literally die.  I used to feel resentful of my wife for that - her disabilities and health challenges are the reason we only have my income, just as my sight loss is the reason I'm shut out of a lot of gig economy side hustles, and a lot of better paying jobs (because I can't drive, and will never be able to drive); the recent realisation that I don't really do well with "resting", and that, other than the challenges with the condition of the house, I already live a life I'm happy with.  I can run this life until the very end - and the type of work I'm best at can literally be done from bed, so ill-health and older age decline aren't really an issue.

. While I know content creation isn't a realistic "career" for me - I need a slower pace than social media allows, I don't have enough contacts for anyone to notice anything I do, I can't afford to buy followers, I would need to use AI editing software to create halfway decent videos, and I'm not clear on whether that would result in a major hissy fit on social - I also know it would be challenging for me to access that potential revenue; in 2010, when the ability to make money on social media really started to become a thing that was accessible for ordinary people, I was taking home £989 a month from a job in finance admin (it's depressing to realise that, even my best paid job in the past three years saw me taking home an equivalent income to that 2010 salary, and that I'm currently earning less than that £989 would be worth today); I was working 50hr weeks, with 2hrs a day of commute (on a bus), and I could only afford pre-paid internet on a dongle, which I could afford to top up by at most £20 a month - being chronically online, much less posting videos, wasn't an option. My laptop at the time didn't have an integral webcam. I didn't have a phone which could record video.  I couldn't get in at the ground floor then. During the 2020 spike in content creation potential, I was deep in the weeds of the extreme anxiety of being a carer for a clinically vulnerable spouse. We were a shielding household. My job just...stopped, because the company couldn't see how to pivot to remote work. We didn't get any government support.  I remember having to pay £8 on ebay for 2 packs of pasta, so we could actually have food. The first six weeks of lockdown were brutal.  I didn't have the mental space for literally anything "quirky and fun".   I'm also not naturally wired to be good at video - I communicate better in writing, and I also don't have the equipment to create glossy video content.

But I'm currently planning to do one video a week. Mentally, that's manageable, and it helps me build verbal communication skills, which are going to be increasingly necessary.

Masculinity Mondays: 14

 

For the past fifteen years, disability has never been seen as anything other than a concept. A cost line on a spreadsheet. A political football. "Policy."

For a decade and a half, those tasked with providing for everyone in British society have been very loud about the fact that, whatever their Party is called, whatever side of the House of Commons they sit on, whatever their branding, they don't see disability as something that people experience.  It's just an "expensive problem", a source of grievance for employers, a "barrier to productivity".  Disability has never been about disabled people; it's been about employers, about "hard working tax payers", about the optics for the Party in power, and the Parties closest in the race to potentially be in power next time around.

Social media created a space where disability could be about disabled people, and, in the past year, that's slowly started to drip into the mainstream media - but those spaces were not and are not keen on disabled men being included.   When men, especially white, masculine, cis-appearing men, try to talk about their experience of disability, the immediate clap back is barked out: "Women have it worse! Medical misogyny! Emotional labour and disability! Disability and the mental load!"

But disability is a mental load for the disabled person, and one we don't get to stamp our feet and demand someone else "does their share of."  It's not something we get to drop off at daycare, or with extended family, and head off for some "me time."  And - unlike marriage and kids - it's not a choice. 

Yes, it is true that medical research historically only considered men to be acceptable subjects, and still sees more men as subjects than women - because women can't afford childcare to cover attending research consultations. Women are more likely to be in hourly-paid work, and can't afford the travel costs to major urban centres, or time off from those hourly-paid jobs.

But medical research in the very immediate contemporary era is working to try and address that lack of representation.  The lack of research representation it's not addressing? The absence of disabled people in general medical research.  

If we're lucky, disabled people might get accepted onto research programmes for potential cures for our specific disabilities, but we're automatically excluded from general medical practice research because...participants have to be able-bodied and mentally well.  Even though able-bodied, mentally well people are the least in need of the significant payouts for research participants, and, more importantly, disabled people are having the most interaction with, and dependence on, the medical profession. A profession which...has basically never encountered our bodies, minds, and brains in neutral settings.

This negligence actually affects disabled men as much, but in different ways, as medicine's historic lack of gender representation affects women; women, being more oriented to consensus-seeking discourse, tend to default to "I need a doctor to tell me what's wrong and what to do" (in 2026, 'doctor' can be replaced with 'therapist' or 'wellness practitioner'); women look for commonly-agreed sources of knowledge, and expect those knowledge holders to simply hand them pre-packaged wisdom that is parcelled and labelled for "Western-centric cis het, child-having female experience", particularly if it brings a strong social element.  

Men, in contrast, want knowledge we can explore and interrogate for ourselves, and shape to our own, very specific personal experience.

For able-bodied men, this is fine; the entire world of medical research has centred them for the majority of its existence as a field, meaning that what they want is readily available.  Add to that that medicine approves of people who use insights to "create personalised healthy lifestyles" - thus avoiding having to 'take up the time' of doctors at all.

But disabled men aren't even considered as people with a body and lifestyle beyond our disability/ies, which means the medical profession doesn't have any insights to give to us so we can work up our own understanding and pathways.  

This medical disregard applies to disabled women, too, but the space that social media creates for consensus-seeking, and the validation social media gives to women, provides a non-medicalised space where disabled women can still find the kinds of support they need.

In contrast, when men - especially those who are perceived as being white and cis - try to talk about our experiences, we're told to sit down, shut up, that we've talked too much, that everyone's sick of listening to men! - except, we're not the men who "everyone had to listen to for all of history!" We're not the men who "literally got to write history!"  Disabled men, particularly, are not given the same serving of "male privilege" that able-bodied men receive.  Disabled men are often only seen as men when it suits a "shut up and let the oppressed, marginalised girlies talk!" narrative; unless that narrative needs a hyperfixation, disabled men are seen as somehow femininised - not as women, but as less-than-men, as "burdens" that able-bodied women have to "manage" - yet another addition to "women's mental load and emotional labour."  Whether in the medical world or in our private lives, disabled men are only ever seen as the burden other people are "forced" to "carry."

This hits disabled men particularly hard when it comes to employment - because employers already resent the fact that they have to employ anyone, much less someone who comes with "extra steps" (and extra costs).  In contrast to women, men do not have the option to marry someone with a strong income.  Disabled men are routinely rejected by women who "don't want to spend my life as a carer", or who can't conceive of disabled men being able to be equitable participants in a domestic relationship, meaning we strike out in the face of "Everything should be fifty fifty, because why should he get to complain about that when he'd otherwise be doing a hundred percent if he was on his own?!" - because the perception is we can't do anything, and the reality is we often can't do an exactly fifty-fifty, fully "fair" split of domestic labour.  And, because we can't be fully involved in keeping a house to the showhome standards of many modern women, because we're maybe not going to be able to be doing impressive, reels-ready DIY projects "for our girl", because we are very unlikely to be bringing in that 100k+ salary, we're not really seen as any kind of option for able-bodied partners.  

That leaves us often turning to other disabled people. While these relationships can be very emotionally rewarding, and certainly come with the mental space and safety that disabled people need, they often become relationships pot-holed by unmet needs, and the assumption from statutory providers that "you can look after each other, can't you?" (no, actually, we can't - that's kind of the point about both of us being disabled), meaning that formal support is just...not available.

One of the hardest things in my recent life has been coming to terms with multiple disabilities - losing my sight, chronic IBS, and chronic fatigue (likely a result of the sight loss and IBS, neither of which are especially low-drain when it comes to energy), as well as the possibility I may be experiencing the very early symptoms of Parkinsons (that's not confirmed, and, at the moment, my focus is evidence-backed supplements and physiotherapy to delay symptom progression.)  

I used to work a 50hr per week job, which had a 15hr commute, and still handle chores like weekly grocery shopping, laundry, and DIY at the weekends - that was only 10yrs ago. 

15yrs ago, I was working 45hrs a week, travelling 10hrs a week, and usually going out on coach trips every other weekend, whilst managing the domestic work of living completely independently, and handling several pets.

Now? I'm in paid employment that's only 3 days per week, and I'm exhausted.  I need to try and build a consistent freelance income in the next 10months, because this contract ends in December, and it's no longer safe to claim welfare support as a disabled person, because every political Party in the UK believes disabled people are just lying about/exaggerating the impact of our disabilities. Fluctuating conditions are shoehorned into consistent experience, which often flattens a complex, frustrating disability with significant flares to "claimant could easily manage office-based work." (Office based work? You mean the thing that's being torn up and flung over to AI with gleeful abandon? That form of work?)

Men get yelled at to "go to fucking therapeeeeee!!!", we're mocked as "will do literally anything to avoid therapy" - yet men are still expected to provide the strongest income, men are still widely considered "lazy bums" if we "only" work part-time, men are told that "flexible work is for our female staff members"; that alone makes "just going to therapy" a significant challenge, because therapists tend to...work Monday to Friday, 9-5. The same time we're working.   Then come the additional barriers disabled men face in accessing therapy; offices located on upper floors only accessible by stairs, offices not on public transport routes, or without on-site parking, online therapy that relies on turning your camera on (which can be very exclusionary for those who are bedbound, require significant carer assistance, don't have space to "tidy away" their daily life, or who have visible deformaties), and that's before we even get to disabilities which limit peoples' ability to engage in verbal communication, and the assumption that we need therapy about being disabled.

Even if you don't share my moral and ethical objections to LLMs used as "AI therapy", these have been proven unsafe, and are even less safe for disabled people.  They're also...not therapists. Or intelligent. They can't respond directly to the specific, nuanced human experience they're being presented with. (That's not a reason to hate AI - that's just a limit of their design; people are insistant on misusing LLMs and generative AI, because that's how humans are - we refuse to look at how things are designed to work, and just fixate on "but this is how I want it to work, so I'm going to make it work that way!" - and then get mad that it "is basically shit!" - no, you're using it wrong, but die mad about it...)  

And increasingly, of course, the world, particularly the social media sphere of it, is being littered with "therapists" who used AI to pass a 2hr course...and who therefore end up being humans with LLM's inability to handle complex nuance with appropriate, personal, dynamic responses.  LLMs can be forgiven for this lack; they weren't designed for it. Humans? They deserve all the blame for laziness and shystering - but, because they are overwhelmingly women, they never get that judgement. Especially not if they're white.

I have two degree qualifications - Bsc in Naturopathic Medicine, and Bsc in Nutrition and Natural Medicine - Firsts in both.  I have lived experience of using naturopathy and nutrition therapy to manage a serious psychiatric condition, as well as the more recent chronic conditions I've found myself dealing with.  I've also used naturopathy to support my wife in managing her chronic conditions. But, because I'm still disabled, a white man, and not typically attractive? I wasn't able to turn those strong qualifications and experience into a paying career.   I've had plenty of non-profits ask me to provide free courses - as in, they didn't pay me, I couldn't charge the participants - I've had festival organisers suggest I could "run a workshop" in exchange for a "free ticket" to an event I had no personal interest in attending.

But someone who presents themselves as a Western-centric attractive, femme-aligned person, especially if they are white, can leap onto the internet with precisely zero formal qualifications, no actual lived experience, and make a successful career selling courses and doing classes, usually with the most beige, five-minutes-on-Google blindingly obvious "advice" and "wisdom" - and be loudly applauded and celebrated for their "unique insights." (Which are almost always very basic, highly bastardised cognitive behavioural therapy from 20 years ago.)  These peoples' "therapy" often heavily infantilises women - the consequences of women's independently-made choices are "emotional labour" and "mental load", anything that an individual woman doesn't personally like is "a nervous system trigger", every minor inconvenience is "trauma", every miscommunication, particularly when it comes from men, is "weaponised incompetence" - basically, these women are charging women to hear that of course they can't be expected to feel happy and healthy, because they're just poor, helpless dolls, completely at the mercy of the winds and whims of all these horrible, useless men, and this economy makes it literally impossible for these poor, put-upon women to leave the men who are draining them...  that's not actually a helpful way for grown adults to view themselves, but it does have the handy little result of increasing dependence from people who are already significantly primed for consensus-seeking decision making...meaning that these women who are told they're "trapped by systemic patriarchal abuse", that "the system" has basically forced them to just react to the "chaos of men" come to believe their only hope, their only respite, is the time they spend with these "coaches" and "therapists" - who, as other women, are "the only people who really understand how life is for girls/Mummas/boss babes/femmes".

This is not only deeply toxic for the women who are paying out to basically enter a control dynamic, but it reinforces the barriers that prevent many men from believing therapy is something relevant for men, and causes men who are considering therapy to be put off by how femme-centric it skews, especially online, and the impression that "I'm just going to be told I'm the problem, that everything is my fault for being a man, so what's the point?"   Which, of course, means women keep being faced with unhealed men who have never engaged in any level of introspection...which means women believe that "all men" are "just like that"...which means they continue to accept those men as domestic partners...which causes them more problems...which sees them seeking therapy from the same online clout "coaches" and "counsellors"... which results in those bare-minimum "coaches" and "counsellors" raking in the cash.

This isn't about "how hard it is to be a man".  I'm not here to argue about "which gender has it worse" - disability takes you outside of gender, to a significant degree.  Life is hard for human beings - the only thing that really makes it easier is money. The more money you have, the easier your life will be; it's why so many people living in poverty idolise people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, it's why the vote for politicians who talk about "ending the welfare state", even when those people rely on welfare payments - because, when you have no money, and no access to money, you have blinding clarity on just how much easier a very large amount of money would make your life.  People who aren't "fuck off rich", but are "comfortable" already have an easy enough life; they have the normal irritations and inconveniences of life, not actual hardships; they therefore genuinely don't see how much better their lives would be with more money.

Masculinity Mondays: 13

 

When it comes to driving speed, 40mph is the "irritating mid" speed - it's too fast for "quiet, family-centric communities", but it's too slow for a significant percentage of other drivers; even when the speed limit of the road in question is 40mph.  It's definitely too slow on 60mph speed limit roads, because, in the UK, the attitude of drivers is "you should be driving at the speed limit, or ideally 1-2mph above it", rather than "the speed limit is the highest speed you can travel on this road, so, bearing that in mind, you can drive at whatever speed you're comfortable."

40 as an age, especially for men, is the same "simultaneously too slow and too fast" - you haven't built a successful business, created a comfortable passive income stream from property, you're not a CEO with at least two houses? Failure! Too slow! You're never going to catch up! LOSER! Yet if you're on track to FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), you own a national or international business that's doing well and employing a significant number of people, your property portfolio is international, and it's all Eat the rich! You didn't earn any of that! Oooohh, get youuuu - wow, you achieved everything before you turned 45...enjoy 40yrs of boredom and getting flabby and soft, LOSER!

This is the distinction between men 40+ and women 40+ - women definitely experience the "becoming invisible" syndrome, where the attitude is "Well, you're not at peak fertility anymore, you're probably not going to have any/more kids, you've probably peaked in your career...you can't offer me anything, so you don't really exist", which is cruel, inaccurate, and entirely unnecessary.   Men over 40, however, experience "perpetual loser-dom" - we either haven't achieved enough, aren't ripped enough, aren't rich enough, or we're "posturing" by having achieved all of those things.

This is why the "midlife crisis" is a common trope for men, but not so much for women - invisibility makes you angry, rightfully so, because most people recognise immediately that they should not be being treated as if they are irrelevant or invisible.   Perpetual loser-dom, however, causes insecurity - because maybe they're right. Maybe you have failed at life.  Maybe all your visible achievements are just proof that you've failed to build a rich inner life.

Add to this insecurity the fact that, between 35 and 45, men typically start to spot the patterns women have had to recognise from at least their teenage years, which acts like tectonic slippage, creating a pressure boundary, and shaking the ground of certainty beneath your feet.  If, as a man, you make it to 40 without actually experiencing psychosis, you'll genuinely wonder if you're going insane.  From someone who both lives with a serious psychotic illness (schizophrenia), and who has been seeing the world's patterns for a few years now, there's a subtle but important difference between psychosis and heightened pattern recognition: psychosis has you feeling completely certain that no one else knows what the world is really like; heightened pattern recognition has you doubting whether you really understand the world.  Psychosis brings raging certainty that you're seeing the truth; heightened pattern recognition has you second-guessing whether you're reading too much into things.

When you're treated as invisible, and feel justified anger about that, it is actually very easy to decide your course, and steer it with blithe disregard for the opinions of others.
In contrast, when you're being told you're being paranoid, when you're mocked as "an over-sensitive snowflake", when you aren't certain of what you're seeing, you seek certainty and agreement - depending on your attitudes to people who aren't you, this will either make you hesitant to make any definite decisions, and see you limit your life to what is reliably broadly palatable, or else it will have you taking actions with carelessness and callousness.  Both place you securely in the middle of community - the difference is whether that community is interested in emotionally harming you, or physically and financially harming others.  

Masculinity Mondays: 12

 

If you watch "non-manosphere YouTube", particularly channels focusing on books or art, you'll quickly realise that pretty much every young, stereotypically attractive, white female host will go on, at significant length, in pretty much every intro to every video, and often in the middle of the actual content of their videos, and as part of their outros, about how "no one liked them" when they were in high school, how they'd "never fitted in anywhere, never really had friends...", how they'd "always been this lonely, awkward, unwanted person" - until, of course, they "found YouTube, and people just showed up for me talking randomly!" (this often happened in 2020 "when the world literally went away for me, and I was alone and scared, trapped in my house" - as though there was no pandemic, and, instead, the government just randomly selected a few "pretty-but-def-feel-ugly, neuro-quirky winsome weirdo girlie pops" and literally chained their front doors shut...with no acknowledgement that, in China, people were literally welded into tiny apartments during the pandemic. Many went insane. Many killed themselves in the madness that they were thrown into...meanwhile, in Britain and America, people brazenly refused to wear masks, gathered dozens of people for barbecues every weekend, "because it's outside, so it's fine!", crowded around beaches and parks whose public toilets were closed, shitting in takeaway boxes, even though they'd been told public toilets were closed, flocked to supermarkets every single day, because "we're allowed! I've decided I need to buy more stuff, on top of the stuff I bought yesterday!"  They demanded the less well off put themselves at risk delivering crap they ordered from shitty online retailers, or bringing them takeaways..)

Absolutely, making content that gains and maintains traction is hard. I can't do it - I can't afford the kit I'd need to give a slick impression whilst filming, I can't see well enough to edit videos, I can't afford to pay an editor, and it's not worth the hassle of being a literal nobody who genuinely needs to use AI - that just results in screaming, the blame for the entirety of global poverty and climate change being thrown at you, because you dared to use an AI video editor, so, on top of those systemic evils, you literally, single-handedly, are the sole reason that professional video editors are literally starving to death, and you should never be allowed on the internet ever again.  (Funny how multi-national companies, billionaires, and vapid celebrities are never screamed at for their use of generative AI to anything like the same extent ordinary people just struggling to figure life out are...but that's not my business, just like the fact that the loudest "OMG, die in a ditch for daring to use AI editing software, you capatilist-simping whorebitch fuck!" crowd are very quick to lap up content which is upfront admitted as being AI when it comes from "marginalised neurodivergent global majority" creators also isn't my business...even though the poorest people in the global south, which will definitely include neurodivergent people in those communities, are going to be the first, and most severely, impacted by the economic damage generative AI currently does, as well as currently often being the exploited labour behind multi-million dollar profit AI firms owned and run by Western entrepreneurs and companies...)

Content creation is hard. Done properly, it definitely is as real a job as retail, bar work, care, teaching, or white collar office work.  But if men pulled the same "I was just a lonely, ugly, unpopular high school kid, ooo-wooo", especially well into their twenties, and sometimes even their thirties, the internet would never shut up mocking them, telling them they had "no right" to be on the internet, accusing them of "demanding women soothe their hurt baby feelings by supporting their bullshit self-indulgent podcasts" - the fact that women running YouTube channels are routinely recognised as "content creators", and people reference "their channels", while men are dismissed as "podcast bros", and faces pulled about "what is about how every man thinks he should have a podcast?", even when the women are also actually presenting a podcast.  They would be told to "get over it", that "high school was years ago, grow up!" Men referencing literally any struggle we ever have are accused of "pity marketing", and dismissed as "clearly untalented, because if they actually had any competence whatsoever, they wouldn't need to whine about how people didn't like them when they were thirteen."

The same double standard happens with working out - women are "investing in their old-lady bodies", are "ensuring they can be independent as elders"; men are selfish, self-obsessed gymbros.
It happens with books - women reading male authors "literally have no choice but to allow the patriarchy into even their down time!", while men reading male authors "hate women, and don't respect the work of female writers."
It happens with music - men get demands to "name five female musicians!", yet at the same time are presented as "definitely gay, but way in the closet, lol" when they do listen to women. And it's more often women who are loudly announcing that men who listen to female musicians, appreciate female artists, or read female writers are "clearly actually gay!"  (Make it make sense...I'll be re-immersing myself in the works of Freida Kahlo, maybe blasting some Chapelle Roan, and reading Lionel Shriver - who, yes, is a cisgender woman...look her up.)

It is not wrong for men who are not gay to not want to be called gay. Our sexuality is a key aspect not just of who we are, but how we interact with other people, and how we place ourselves in our society. It's why, even though I have some intimate-interaction interest in certain types of men, as well as romantic attraction to women, I don't call myself "bi", outside of the times I'm specifically looking to meet men to enact my particular kind of intimate interests with, because I don't have any kind of need for the social network placements of openly announcing myself as bisexual, so I leave that space for those for whom those identity-primed positions and networks hold significant relevance and importance.

If you want men to engage with female content, female creators, if you want them to realise women can offer the same range of personalities and interests, the same potential for genuine friendship, as men, you need to not claim things about their identity which are not true when they engage with women, and with things produced by women.

But waving your heterosexuality like a pair of last week's soiled underpants whilst loudly suggesting someone else may not be entirely heterosexual is a very popular way for cisgender, typically white, able-bodied women to snatch up armloads of the very privilege they claim they "are systemically prevented from accessing."

Yes, men need to be better, and do better, in some cases (recent research suggests that's only actually about 10% of cases, rather than "all men"...)  Absolutely, men need to see women as people of equal talent, competency, and potential as themselves, and the other men they associate with (and many men already do) - but that change is only going to happen if cis women let go of their preference for getting hold of privilege by the easiest way - trying to deprivilege other people.   These women are often the ones making social media posts claiming that "privilege isn't pie - more for other people doesn't mean less for you!" - yet they can't conceive of having privilege unless they not just deprivilege, but also humiliate other people.

And yes - some men do this, too. But the men are rightly called out, often quite loudly, for it.
The women rarely are - in fact, they're often celebrated as "baddies" who are "in their villain era now." (Those terms should be negative judgements, but they're actually the top tier of all possible positive terms.)

If stereotypically attractive, middle-class, white, able bodied cisgender women weren't being privileged at least equivalently to, and often, above, their male equivalents, we wouldn't be seeing trans men harping about their "female socialisation", we wouldn't see trans men identifying as "Sapphic", and attending female-focused Sapphic relationship groups.  We wouldn't see trans men posting their "girl mode" photos.   

I'm a trans man who is also on the entry-level part of the intersex spectrum; I never had any kind of past as an attractive, desirable, popular "girly girl."  I had facial hair, a square jaw, and a deep voice by age 10 (in an era where "transgender" meant "pervert men who wear women's clothes", and definitely wasn't something that was even acknowledged as being possible for children, much less being in any way supported when children identify as trans), and, by fifteen, was a broad-shouldered, tenor-voiced person of almost six foot, with size 10 feet. (At 39, I'm now exactly six feet tall, literally bang on the line - my feet are technically 10.5 - sometimes size 10s fit me, sometimes I need to go for a size 11.)  I was nine years old when I cut my hair, changed my name, and insisted I was "going to be a boy when I grew up."  I was just five years old when I threw an absolute fit about wearing a female police uniform in a school play. (In the 1990s, female police officers wore a broader, chequered tie, and skirts, with slightly heeled court-style shoes...and carried handbags...very impractical, completely ridiculous...They were also referred to specifically as Women Officers - eg, WPC - Woman Police Constable, and I very clearly remember the absolute meltdown that followed the UK police force deciding it was going to drop the "female identification", and have a single uniform style - the more practical trousers, boots, and tactical belt - for both male and female officers...grown adults were claiming it would be "impossible to follow up with the same officer, because you don't know if they're a man or a woman! What if there's two coppers called Sam Smith - one's Samuel Smith, the other's Samantha Smith?! How are you supposed to identify which one you were talking to?!"  They were demanding to know "what's so bad about admitting to being a woman, anyway?! You'd think women would be proud they'd made it into something like the police!") I've never brought up my "female socialisation" - I wasn't socialised as a woman. I wasn't given any direct socialisation at all. As an only child without a lot of extended family around, who was also a child carer, I was taught practical skills; I can cook and clean, I can chop wood, wire a plug, fix a mountain bike, do basic car maintenance, change a tyre, use hand tools for hours at a time, and remember to do laundry.  
I was also expected to do emotional labour for basically every adult that ever wandered across my life.
The socialisation I absorbed by osmosis was male socialisation, tempered with "but, hey...I know XY&Z, they're girls, but they seem cool."  I read magazines about football and cars. I wore tracksuits and football shirts (I supported Blackburn Rovers - the year I got into football, and chose them as "my" team, because I liked the way Alan Shearer played, they won the Premier League...following them was a falling trend from then on, until I discovered rugby, and got more interested in that.)  I climbed trees, I built dens, I rode skateboards and bikes in ways that should have probably prevented me reaching adulthood, but somehow didn't.  I took up kickboxing, and had a dream of moving to Thailand and becoming a professional Muay Thai fighter - probably just as well that dream didn't work out, on the "staying alive and at around 80% physically abled" side of life.)  I imagined myself being romantically involved with women, exclusively - and I saw it as a purely practical, transactional exchange; I saw myself being romantically involved with women because "that's what you do" and "so I could have someone to handle the housework while I was at work" (That evolved to being with a woman who was also a successful professional, and "being part of a power couple" - that also didn't work out...turns out I don't have an adapter for whatever this timeline's default power supply is, and like attracts like...my wife is great, we have a lot of fun together, but it's not giving power couple, that's for sure.) It wasn't the "I really love women, and I'm imagining all these cute and cosies with another woman" that women who are attracted to women have. (And yes - I include trans women in "women". In all circumstances, and by default. If I am not referring to trans women, I will specifically say cisgender women.)
I wasn't "a girl who became a boy" - I was a weird, fucked-up kid who stumbled into a somewhat semi-functional adulthood.  I was someone who was suicidal, and who had attempted suicide multiple three times before I turned 14, who has now not attempted suicide for over three years. I don't have a female background and socialisation I can play on for acceptance and social approval.