The Plague of Individualism

Sometimes, despite my better efforts, I somehow manage to explain some of this blog successfully to someone. Their answer usually is, "I just try to treat everyone like an individual." As though I were trying to treat people like 6 headed hydras or something. "I'm sorry..." they seem to be saying, "I can't tell whether you are a boy or a girl, and if I could, I would ignore it." Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but when I meet a man, I treat him differently than when I meet a woman. For one thing, I don't speak to men at the urinal. To be fair, I've never tried speaking to a woman at the urinal. Also, I don't look men in the eyes until I am introduced. If you women (or people who identify as women) out there don't beleive me, try walking through Harlem or South East DC dressed as a man and looking everybody you walk past in the eye. I promise you will be beat up, or worse. I make decisions about people before I even meet them. We all do, it's how we survive.

We can't see individuals. All we can see are balls of social shit that we call individualism. So just get used to it. You will never be color-blind, you will never be gender-blind, you will never be able to see the "individual," and you will never be able to float like a butterfly to the rainbow land above the clouds. Jews have been trying to get rid of the badges of slavery for 6000 years. How are we able to overcome race and gender in less than 40? Hint: we're not.

Pro Male Hall of Fame

Thank you to Dove for Men for commercials that make men look sexy, attractive, and fulfilled while highlighting their relationships with their children. The new Dove for Men ads are not pinpointing fatherhood as the point behind the ad, or trying to pigeon hole men as fathers, but just showing men as whole beings, and including in that whole being a portrayal of these men as kind and loving, even affectionate fathers. When I watch these ads, I am more confident than ever that the movement of which I write is already underway, and I am optimistic for my own sons future in this society.

Hall of Shame? All of the super bowl ads, and the Olympics Tide ads that could easily say "To their parents, they are all champions." but instead decides to say, "To their moms..." thereby leaving me to wonder, and what about me..? Do I have a place in this process?

Red Tent or Speak Easy?

Over the past several months, I have joined my wife on perhaps the most magnificent and meaningful activity of human life. Week after week, I have watched her grow my child. During that time, I have attended 9 appointments to her midwives, and witnessed her give birth. I have witnessed and felt more than I knew I could or was welcome to witness and feel. Most of the time, I was the only dad in the waiting room. I attended and helped to plan a baby shower where only one man showed up (thank you Damian). Throughout the entire process, women and men alike were astounded when it was made evident that I had done my research and that I had opinions on how Luca would start his life. Like the Tide commercial that ran during these last Olympics ("To their mom's, they're always kids"), the entire process was aimed at moms, and the word dad never even came up.

However, I was welcomed by the midwives and doulas, and the women in my life who wanted to talk about the baby. If I felt uncomfortable, it was only because there was a bouncer to the door of my masculinity asking, "Are guys really supposed to be here? Oh yeah? What's the password?" At my wife's first appointment, the midwife proceeded with the gynocological exam without asking me to leave the room, and casually offered to show me the cervix. It was clear at that moment that the flap to the door of the "Red Tent" was wide open, and it was only my self-oppression, my inner-masculinity-bouncer, that kept me from going in. But I went in. What was the pass word? A simple, "Thank you, yes."