New System Who Dis?

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I stopped actively watching the news in 2020. By this I mean I stopped seeking it out. It still finds me, I’m still always in touch, in the know, but I stopped actively participating in something that always felt designed to destroy.

Every week of this year something truly, unbearably horrific has been exposed. This week we all learned about a group of men who teach other how to drug their own partners to video them while asleep. It hit me in the chest to be honest, and the rest of the week, myself and Holly chatted about it. The internet internetted, churning itself and into toxic chaos, but at least it was being taken seriously. At least there was a real sense that this isn’t good enough.

Every other week has had similar levels of disgust. It’s been intense. Our nervous systems are all fucked. The systems that are controlling this world are set up to cripple us. And I mean all of us. The patriarchy, for example, promises to reward men for simply being men while it actually makes them victims of the same system. It’s akin to Stockholm syndrome. Complicity in it only serves the elites at the top, and yet so many men want to hold onto it, because status quo, because change scary, because conditioning run deep.

I understand this piece is a bit disjointed, but my head is currently disjointed, attempting to problem-solve something so pervasive and complicated that it experiences programming errors multiple times a day.

Are we doing enough? No, so we better lock in. A lot of my work, historically, has been about preventing suicide. And a big part of solving that problem is solving the emotional dysfunction that exists in men due to generations of conditioning. I also believe that this same dysfunction plays a key role in male violence, both towards women and other men, and themselves. Just male violence across the board. The same problem affecting countless lives because men were sold a lie, and are afraid to leave go of it.

There’s work to be done. And there’s anger to be had. But being angry with each other, when we’re on the same side, isn’t something I’m willing to opt into.