I don't trust men

Ok that's clickbait, I don't trust what it means to be a man in our society

I find romantic relationships really hard.

I wonder if romance would be easier if I was gay. I often share how hard I find being heterosexual under what I refer to as the trinity of oppression - white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism. Constructs that dehumanise everyone and this dehumanisation being amplified further with each marginalised identity you hold.

My experience of these systems and the way they intersect and warp our ability to connect has resulted in me having a deep distrust of the version of manhood our society creates.

Maybe it’s not that I don’t trust manhood, maybe it’s that I don’t understand it and it’s this lack of understanding that creates mistrust.

I am a Gen X woman.

I was raised in a world where women working too much was normalised, exalted. Women proved their worth with their exhaustion whilst her husband sat on his chair, right ankle resting on left knee providing an almost perfect surface for his broadsheet.

Working class Gen X girls with middle class aspiring mothers were taught that strong women could have it all. We could juggle everything, and we could do it without help. In fact doing it all without inconveniencing anyone for support was a badge of honour. The relentless pace of working too much was celebrated as a virtue. 

As children we were taught that our independence and ambition were key to success - this was evidenced by our mothers entering the workforce in droves or going from part to full time. In my community that meant moving up the ladder from social housing with lifts to mortgages and driveways. 

We were told we could do anything and be anything with hard work, qualifications and determination. We saw our mothers do it, managing careers, homes, marriage and exhaustion.

But the boys in our generation? 

They weren’t privy to these new lessons. 

While Gen X girls were learning how to excel in exchange for hyper-independence and grit, boys were passively observing their mothers burn themselves out, learning that this was what a ‘good woman’ did. 

The consequence? 

Gen X girls became women who entered relationships with men who hadn’t evolved alongside them. Men who were boys who grew up seeing overworked, self-sacrificing mothers as the standard and expected their partners to continue this pattern of selflessness - self less. 

The boys didn’t realise they were watching the (r)evolution of the girl. 

So as adults they don’t understand why it’s changed. 

As adults they became confused by women who wanted more. More support. More growth More equality. This confusion created suspicion, resistance and contempt.  Rather than expand and evolve alongside their partner they clung on to the familiar expecting that their partners to remain the same, over-functioning, endlessly giving, and not realising that it’s normal to have needs. 

This creates a deep disconnect. 

While women continue to make strides forward despite the systemic barriers - demanding more from and for themselves, many men remain married to outdated ideas about gender roles. They don’t understand why what they  They are disconnected from the reasons why their partners have changed and why the old model of relationships no longer works.

As I write in my book Women Who Work Too Much:  

“We were born into a world that championed progress and female empowerment. We were raised with the belief that we could conquer any obstacle and achieve our dreams. Glossy magazine after glossy magazine told us that we could have it all and how. Yet, most women find themselves tangled in a web of traditional gender roles. Society tells us we can be independent, strong, and successful, but the weight of domestic and emotional labour still rests heavily upon our shoulders”

Nineties and Noughties media and societal messaging laboured the fact that women could have it all and be everything all at once. A ladette, a graduate, a mother before 35, a career woman, a socialite ‘it’ girl and wife or at least long term cohabitation.

But these glossy magazines failed to include the small print that for most women, this would come at a heavy cost. 

Many of us thought we were liberating ourselves from the patterns of our mothers’ lives, but instead we find ourselves reliving them with added responsibility and less community. 

We expect to do a week's worth of tasks in one singular day. We multitask deadlines, meetings, and presentations, whilst remembering to top up parentpay, do the Ocado order, ten thousand steps, include enough protein and fibre whilst we keep our faces and the running of our households smooth. 

We are holding too much. We are working too much 😉

And this the full circle moment - for this post at least. My distrust of manhood is not about individual men, it is about being a man in this society. It’s systemic. This distrust is a byproduct of the realisation that the trinity of oppression deprives so many men of the tools necessary to understand or support the girls who were conditioned to become the women who believe that success comes from having it all.

I’m not sure how to end this piece so, that’s all folks!