In many respects, Colton Underwood is the ideal Bachelor. He’s a former NFL practice squad member, a conventionally handsome Colorado native whose abs are more ripped than a pair of jeans from 1993. He fits in perfectly with the cast of other Bachelors who have appeared on ABC’s show, now in its 23rd season. But while Underwood never succeeded in his goal of becoming a world famous football player,  the 26 year-old has become famous for not being another kind of player; he will go down in history as the franchise’s first “virgin bachelor.” Sadly, Underwood’s sexual inexperience has made him the butt of many jokes.

Watching this season of The Bachelor is an illuminating case study in how society associates manliness with heteronormative sex. This truly toxic notion of masculinity marginalizes any man who hasn’t had vaginal intercourse, whatever his reasons might be.

The part of Underwood’s virginity currently receiving the most side-eye is his the reason he’s given for keeping it. No, Underwood’s not abstaining because of religious beliefs. In his words, “I’m waiting to be in love.” It is this dream of having sex with someone he loves that the world seems to find hilarious. It also has fans champing at the bit to see if Underwood finds someone he’s willing to let deflower him in The Bachelor’s famed Fantasy Suite.

On The Bachelor’s January 7th premiere, the 30 women competing to marry Underwood made a plethora of not-funny barbs. There were references to “virgin cocktails,” and oblique references to “first times.” On the second episode, Billy Eichner made an appearance. He also snatched the opportunity to mock Underwood, implying he had yet to get laid because he was actually gay. Of course, having a gay Bachelor would be an awesome victory for TV diversity. However, the implication was that no straight man would willingly postpone vaginal intercourse.

The virginity jokes aren’t just taking place on the show itself. In an episode of The Ringer’s Bachelor recap podcast, Bachelor Party, host Juliette Litman expressed sheer confusion about Underwood’s virginity. The podcaster quipped there were only a few things she was certain of in this world, “Death, taxes, and professional athletes having sex all the time.” The fact that Litman was pushing stereotypes didn’t seem to be a problem for her.

We need to call out the jokes for what they are—virgin-shaming, slut-shaming’s chaste but equally problematic cousin. It is time to stop deriding Colton Underwood, and all men, for not having coitus.

This truly toxic notion of masculinity marginalizes any man who hasn’t had vaginal intercourse, whatever his reasons might be.
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The stats reveal there’s nothing remarkable about a man being a virgin in his twenties. The average age for a cisgender American man to lose his virginity is 17, if virginity is defined as penetrative vaginal sex. But average does not define normal. There are plenty of guys (14.3% of them, in fact), who remain virgins between the ages of 20 and 24. Between the ages of 25 and 29, 5% of American men have still not engaged in penetrative sex. And of course, there are gay and asexual people who aren’t interested in vaginal intercourse.

The data shows twenty-something virgins are actually pretty common. To put things into perspective, it’s estimated only 5% of Americans are natural blondes, but no one balks when a natural blonde pops up on TV. As is true of every aspect of human existence, there’s a lot of diversity when it comes to sexual activity. Regrettably, Hollywood has all but erased the existence of male virgins over age twenty.

When adult male virgins do get portrayed by Hollywood, they’re usually represented in one of two ways—as tragic misfits, or complete rubes. For the former trope, an excellent example is Michael Ginsburg of Mad Men. Ginsburg is a prodigious ad man whose status as a twenty-something virgin is presented as the symptom of a severe mental illness, which culminates in the character cutting off his nipple. On the comedy side, we have Steve Carell in 2005’s The Forty Year-Old Virgin. As the film’s on-the-nose title suggests, the middle-aged protagonist’s virginity is the entire plot of the movie, though it turns out his reasons for waiting are much like Colton’s—he wasn’t ready until he met the right person.

In my real-life experience, adult male virgins do not fall into a reductive binary. I personally know a number of smart, funny, attractive men who didn’t have sex until their late twenties. My friend Calvin was 27 when he lost his virginity. A personable entrepreneur with an active social life, Calvin was never tragic, nor was he a buffoon.

When adult male virgins do get portrayed by Hollywood, they’re usually represented in one of two ways – as tragic misfits, or complete rubes.
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While Calvin has always been a cool person, that didn’t make him immune to the effects of virgin-shaming. He tells me the trope of older virgins as weird and inept took a toll on his self-esteem. He recounts a sense of “shame” surrounding being a virgin: “I worried I would be bad at sex.”

Today, Calvin is a happily engaged thirty-something with no complaints about his sex life. Losing his virginity at a later than average age did not derail his life. However, he still takes umbrage with the portrayal of Colton as the “first virgin Bachelor.” As Calvin sees it, The Bachelor is turning Colton’s virginity into a spectacle, making his virginity into his entire personality. Calvin contends, “They’re presenting him as a one-dimensional character to gain ratings.”

Obviously, virgin-shaming hurts people. And the worst part is that virginity is an entirely social construct. The idea that people who have had coitus are fundamentally different from those who haven’t is a patriarchal idea created by men as a means of controlling women’s sexuality. Not to mention how it marginalizes any sex that isn’t penis-in-vagina sex by suggesting it somehow doesn’t count.

Historically, the idea of a sexual purity that could be sullied by penetrative sex has been applied more to women than men, a double standard that was a strategy for safeguarding paternity. After all, how could you trust your wife’s kids are yours unless you’re certain she’s never slept with anyone else? Hence, the creation of a long list of epithets used to other women who’ve had sex outside marriage, and the idea that a woman who has had vaginal sex before marriage is impure, “damaged,” or otherwise unsuitable.

The idea that people who have had coitus are fundamentally different from those who haven’t is a patriarchal idea created by men as a means of controlling women’s sexuality.
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By contrast, dudes have pretty much always been given a free pass to have copious amounts of nookie, and are considered more “manly” the more sex they have. Look at the case of, Henry VII, the British king who executed multiple wives on grounds of infidelity. Henry killed these women despite himself siring multiple children outside of marriage. Rather than condemning sexually voracious men as wanton or out of control, society has naturalized the myth of men as hypersexual beings. Even today, the idea that men’s uncontrollable sex drives cannot—and need not—be contained is used to justify toxic behavior. And if a man is not having sex, he becomes less of a man—which in a patriarchal society is never what you want to be.

Male virgins like Colton Underwood threaten the patriarchal logic that underpins the sexual double standard. By waiting to have sex, Underwood is publicly defying the toxic logic that redblooded men are somehow at the mercy of their sexual urges. He is a walking refutation of the adage that “boys will be boys,” that their innate desires are somehow beyond their control. Perhaps that’s why adult male virgins make society so uncomfortable…

Choosing a dashing virgin as this year’s Bachelor could have been a valuable opportunity to fight virgin-shaming. Underwood’s casting had the power to normalize the existence of twenty-something male virgins. Next time a man in the public eye proclaims he’s a virgin, let’s hope society doesn’t reduce him to a poorly written punchline.

It jumped out of 2017 and scurried into the darkest corners. It latched on to satire’s face, only to burst from satire’s chest with the most ludicrous headlines. Overall, it was a bad, weird year, but men —  especially — did not come off looking good in 2018, and it’s time to examine what lessons we should glean from these past 12 months to make our collective futures less bad and weird…maybe even better.

#1 Words vs. Conduct: Louis C.K.

In response to displaying his penis at non-consenting women, comedian Louis C.K. took time off to allegedly reconsider himself. “I have spent my long and lucky career talking and saying anything I want,” he said in November 2017. “I will now step back and take a long time to listen.”  

That lasted all of five minutes.

Mr. C.K. was back on stage just a few months later, and was recently recorded dressing up his white guy whines as comedy, including his chagrin when people with Down syndrome asked the word ‘r***rded’ not be used anymore (he felt his freedom was invaded); he mocked black and Asian men, berated trans people, and belittled the students of the Parkland shooting who survived a horrific massacre.

The question is not whether he’s allowed to say these things – as far as I know, he’s not been charged – but whether he should.

Despite admitting to the sexual misconduct, C.K.’s response showed no development. Indeed, all his response did was cast off the veneer of the self-reflecting white guy that made him important to many of us: His insights into white privilege and being a (cishet) white man, for example, were poignant, challenging other white people.

His admitting of sexual misconduct should have been the catalyst for Mr. C.K. to use those assets he had cultivated to grow and to teach, as we know he’s capable of doing. Instead, Mr. C.K. simply became another angry, entitled white man, who viewed criticism as intolerance, progress as immorality and bigotry as entertainment.

The Lesson

People reveal their true selves at their lowest point, not at the height of comfort; it’s easy to be the good guy when you have nothing to lose, easy to use the right words to convey a belief. It’s much harder to demonstrate those beliefs via conduct. Men can easily learn to say the right words and support the right values without having to put any actual effort into themselves. This is why we have many cases of so-called good guys revealing the cracks made by patriarchy and toxic masculinity.

No one is claiming to be a good person you need to be perfect. Perfection is unattainable. Instead, part of what makes a good person is owning up to failure and mistakes, improving yourself and encouraging others like you to do the same, working toward never committing those same failings again. Being good is a verb, not a state anyone reaches.

Having cultivated the image of a woke white man, with an audience receptive to his moral challenges, Mr. C.K. shrugged it all off and swam with the status quo; it was flowing in his preferred direction.

Being good is a verb, not a state anyone reaches.
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Mr. C.K. is an interesting example because he shows what men should avoid but also—in his past—how men can be better: He used his privilege to speak out and challenge those like him. We need more men holding mirrors and fewer holding hammers.

#2 Listening to Women: Aziz Ansari

Aziz Ansari was accused by a woman of being incredibly inappropriate toward her, making her feel unsafe, and repeatedly ignoring her rejections of his come-ons. Ansari and the woman went on a date, back to his place, then he became increasingly aggressive: he kissed, fondled and so on, almost as soon as she was inside. As babe.net put it: “Throughout the course of her short time in the apartment, she says she used verbal and non-verbal cues to indicate how uncomfortable and distressed she was.” After eventually leaving, she was in distress. When she messaged him some time later, he conveyed surprise and an apology.

In response to the whole story, many men pointed to the Weinsteins and Spaceys of the world as “actually” deserving condemnation, for their aggressive, criminal assaults – Ansari’s conduct was handwaved away as confusion, miscommunication, or somewhat fictional. He thought it was consensual and even apologized!

For many, Ansari’s bonafides as an outspoken feminist male comedian created a large fortress from such accusations: How could someone like that, who writes and thinks and discusses the nuances of dating, who proudly and vocally supports feminism, be at fault in this? Maybe this young woman has just reacted poorly!

What’s more important than the story however are the responses.

The Lesson

It’s easy for men to speak out against the criminal acts of Weinstein and Spacey. It’s far harder to reflect on Ansari’s situation. Yet, it’s precisely that the incident isn’t an obviously criminal one that makes it more troublesome. The reality is: More men have been an Ansari than a Weinstein.  

The chances are, if you’re a cis man that’s dated or dates women, you’ve done something to make a woman uncomfortable in your attempt to be sexy.

You can prevent a lot of that by reading and listening to women. Take a mild example, as noted by the brilliant Madeleine Holden: men who never ask their dates questions. As Holden notes, the men say the dates went amazingly, while the women note how these same men didn’t ask a single question about their dates. It wasn’t so much a date as an unprofessional, free therapy session. If men are not even reading the room when it comes to basic conversations in public, is it any wonder, in their—arguably—aggressively horny states, that men will not read or consider women’s comfort levels in private? Men can and must be better than this.

If you’re a cis man that’s dated or dates women, chances are you’ve done something to make a woman uncomfortable in your attempt to be sexy.
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Patriarchy has taught men to equate our experience with truth, relegating other experiences to the language of sensitivity or ridiculousness. Instead of viewing women’s experiences as additional windows on the same experience, we dismiss those experiences as mere finger paintings.

Listen to women, not just in the immediate sense, but as an active part of your life — seek out their perspectives, pay attention, and read the goddamn room. (Also, you’re an adult in control of your conduct — you can’t use horniness as an excuse.)

#3 Opposing Nazis Works: Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer

If you’re worried only bad men had a good year, take some comfort: Both Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer had a terrible year.

Yiannopoulos, it was recently revealed, is almost $2 million in debt, and has lost a great deal of the fame he’d cultivated from the poisoned Nazi garden he had managed. He was banned from Patreon, Venmo, and PayPal. He also dropped his lawsuit against former publisher Simon & Schuster, after they refused to publish his (terrible) book.  

Spencer didn’t fare better. He cancelled his speaking tour due to low audience attendance but high numbers of anti-fascist protestors. Spencer’s wife filed for divorce, alleging he is a domestic abuser. He has had to rethink his strategy for spreading white supremacy and pro-fascism to young men – he’s been trying desperately not to say he’s losing to passionate anti-fascist protestors.

The Lesson

Actively not listening to fascists and Nazis works! As Rachel Kraus notes:

“The fact that Yiannopoulos has found his reach and influence so depleted that he can’t get new gigs and takes to comments on Facebook to complain shows the real world effect that de-platforming a toxic public figure can actually have.”

Spencer has stopped trying to lecture at universities because it’s far too troublesome, and his audience’s passion doesn’t match the numbers or organizational skills of his opponents.

We do not need to give equal time under the guise of fairness. Not all political issues are conceptual discussions about the best economic theory; some involve the lived experiences and social aspects of particular groups.

Nazis and pro-fascists aren’t giving alternative opinions about race or gender, they’re spreading hatred. They dress their supremacy under the guise of civil rights, complaining that their power is being taken from them, while at the same time saying those taking away power are beneath them. They never quite square this Swastika but it’s not about logic: hatred can’t be debunked, it can only be opposed.  

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to bring logic to a Klan meetup. Listen to those affected by hate groups, work toward actively opposing those wanting to spread Nazism and fascism and don’t give them even an inch. Men, in particular, are the leaders of these movements and it should be other men—especially white men—who speak out loudly, passionately and with full voice to their emotions.

Hatred can’t be debunked, it can only be opposed.
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The Nazi’s call for debate is a cheatcode to get you to debate people’s humanity, dragging you down into the racist trenches. Stay out, stay firm, yell, oppose, bring your placards, report abuse. We need more men showing emotion for good causes rather than ridiculous/racist/sexist ones.

At the long end of 1986, two households emerge and I absorb the remnants of the home that split four people open. After my parents’ separation, I am always looking around for the rest of me, making sure I am still there. I am several parts of one body, holding two homes and four people’s memories.

When the phone rings at my mother’s house, my father’s berating increases to make up for the fact that he can no longer yell at her in person. Instead of embodying different parts of myself with each parent, I begin to present all of me with my mother and a shadow of me with my father. When I am with him, I am a mistake to be corrected. Most of what comes out of my mouth is wrong, so I eventually stop talking.

In my sixth year I learn that I should never have to go to the bathroom away from home. When I need to, it’s very bad and it upsets my father, but I do not know how to stop. He asks me why I don’t go before we leave, but I don’t have to go then or I do and then I have to go again. I do not know why my body works this way, but it must be wrong because he gets very irritated and lectures me for a long time—whether we find a public restroom quickly or not.

Dinners at his house feel like sharp teeth on me. He picks at me for how I eat, how much I eat and the baby fat I gain in adolescence. I come to realize he is using meal time to poke at my brother and me; asking us questions that no kids could answer, only to laugh at us then lash out at us for getting them wrong. Eventually my brother loses patience with the picking and starts to respond back. This results in a Ping-Pong game of verbal confrontations that bounce back and forth between them and latch onto my skin, assaulting me. I want to escape to the basement or the attic but my limbs are stiff against me. My body is still though I am slowly floating away from me.

In my 13th year, my brother begins to taunt me. We are at my mother’s kitchen table when he smiles, insisting I am holding my fork wrong and people will shun me for it. I melt into my plate and realize I am being eaten down to the core of me. When I look for myself in my body, I can barely find a trace of me.

How old were you when your face fell through? Did you hold it in your hands? Did you catch it in your skin? Did you lose track of where they end and you begin?

In my 17th year, I am in my first year of college when I meet Daniela*—the older cousin of one of my best friends. She becomes part of our friend group and we’re envious when she starts dating the cute guy we’re all curious about, until we find out he pulls her hair by the root when he’s angry.

We are parked in front of the house Daniela grew up in when I notice my skin becoming heavy, as though I am falling out of myself. I feel a draft in my body as though a door has opened that cannot be closed. It is on this day that I learn from my friend, that Daniela’s brothers used to throw her down the basement stairs when they were angry. I look up and stare at the house, as if for the first time, and something cracks in my bones.

I am ripped open and that tear becomes the catalyst for my sociology project—women rappers using art to discuss gendered power dynamics and abuse. When I take the risk of telling my brother and father about it, I do not mention the door of the house, the staircase or the hair pulled from Daniela’s head. I do not tell them the focus is on Eve’s Love is Blind. I simply say that I did a presentation on women rappers using music to illuminate social issues. I explain that I worked really hard and I know my professor doesn’t care for hip-hop, but I have the sense that she might be able to look at the genre in a different light after this.

For a moment, neither of them are saying anything, but they’re both smiling and they eventually begin to laugh. They make fun of me for thinking I had an impact on my professor and I begin to disappear into the length of my hair. I sail away to all those nights at the dinner table, the staircase at Daniela’s house, and the distance from the top of that first step to the basement floor.

I imagine the door to my father’s basement, the safety of his attic and the way edges of houses hold some little girls together, but pull other ones apart. When I float back, they’re still laughing. I know how quickly they erupt when disagreement is present, so I draw a smile on my face too.

Were you tangled in your words, when your flesh fell to your ankles? Could you see yourself around? Were you stuck inside your own sound?

In the last week of my 28th year, my agoraphobia and sensory processing disorder spill out on either side of me. Preparing to get on a plane for the first time since high school, I am terrified. I am washing my hands in the airport bathroom when my mother appears, telling me it’s time to board the flight.       

I check my hair and make-up and walk back to where she and my brother are sitting, only to find him exploding at me. I try to figure out what I’ve done, but I am fading down to the seams of me. I am transported back to the ‘90s to the small apartment we shared with my mom. My skin snags on the image of him shouting in my doorway. I remember the shape of the bedroom door, the contour of his mouth, and the screams that shook my skin out. I think back to the day I found my room trashed and the way I held the damage like souvenirs. I recall the string of punches that came after I interfered with his business call; I remember the rhythm of his fists hitting my arm.

When I drift back to the airport he is still yelling, grating me down to my ankles. Apparently, my having to pee was very selfish and those two minutes I took to look myself over meant that the three of us could’ve missed our flight. As the screaming tapers off, I find the edge of my abandoned body, pick it up by the shreds and drag it onto the plane.

In the coming months I begin to wear my silence like armor. It becomes the protector of me. I find that the only way to be around my brother and father is to be a ground down version of me, an acceptable facsimile; it stands in for me as a way to survive. This makes me feel like I am not a real person or they are not real to me. I start to feel like I don’t really have a father or a brother. The two of them are essentially strangers to me, flaming things that mostly know how to rage at me.

Do you live inside the skin of you? Are you the girl behind the face? Did you find yourself in the shadow box? What’s left of you after the chase?

As my twenties begin to evaporate, I begin to part down the length of me. I feel enamored with men, but when they’re standing in front of me, it seems like there’s a wall between us. I think there must be something wrong with me that cannot be fixed or reconciled, so I eventually stop dating them—but the pull towards them remains.

When I tell my therapist about it, she asks if I am more attracted to men’s or women’s bodies. I tell her that is not the right question. I ask a friend for advice and they tell me that if I enjoy having sex with women, then I am queer. I know that is not the right answer. I feel drawn to men inside my bones, but when I get close to them, it feels like the best parts of me drop out of my body. I know there must be a reason why thinking about it makes me feel like I am holding my breath. I know there must be a reason why they light up so many parts of me, then leave me split up in messy piles.

On the raw edge of my 29th year, my long-term partner starts transitioning and something is pulled up and out of me. I begin thinking about the way people both transcend and encompass gender. I think about the way I am absorbing and categorizing gender and I begin to ask what I mean when I say I cannot connect with men. I begin to ask if I mean that I cannot connect with cis men. Like my other relationships at the time, there is unwarranted anger and an inability to show up for difficult conversations. But when I think about all the ways he is different than my recent partners, the most obvious difference on both a superficial and spiritual level is that he isn’t a girl.

I freeze into myself when I think about the way our relationship took shape. We are best friends and it is New Year’s Eve—one week after my 27th birthday.

He’s coming from work as a bartender, but I’m the one who’s been drinking. He starts a violent argument with me in the public hallway of my apartment building and I fall out to the edge of me. His words draw a fence around me, yelling that he can no longer play this “friend role.” I am confused and tired, but I understand he feels I’ve wronged him and now I owe him a right. I am drunk and drowning in this hallway. I just want it to stop. I cannot imagine losing him, so I have sex with him. When I come, it’s the kind of orgasm I wish I could take back.

I know there must be a reason why men light up so many parts of me then leave me split up in messy piles.
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Five years after the waves rush out and over our relationship, I read Jenny Lumet’s letter to Russell Simmons, and I am cut through to the other side of me. Her words are gentle but unapologetic and I am reminded of the intimacy that is having patience with Black men, even after experiencing harm at their hands. I wipe my face with my own hands and count how many years I’ve held on to things for fear that the men who have hurt me, would feel some of the same hurt if I use words to say what they have done to me.

She talks about making a trade—”just keep him calm, and you’ll get home” and I am yanked down to the tightest threads of me. I think about the way silence and sex turn into offerings when men decide you owe them something. My eyes spill out to my formative years and then back to adulthood. I remember the weight of being covered by flesh that never asked.

I think about all the times my eyes stood still while my body stiffened into a “no” because my words couldn’t do it. I’ve been making trades with trauma since I was 14.

Did you make oceans with your eyes, when your legs dropped out from under you? Do you recognize your body, when you split right down the length of you?

In the wake of 4:44, I awoke—30 years after I first swallowed my mouth closed. Three decades after one house became two, I widened out like unfolding fists. When I heard those words, “You had no father, you had the armor,” it felt as if they lived inside my fingers. When Jay Z says, “You got a daughter, gotta get softer,” I am holding both lines in both hands; I am holding the child me and the grown-up me in the skin of my palms.

I consider the way the world conflates hyper-masculinity with Blackness and vulnerability with femininity. I think about the way self-reflection is conceptualized as something men do in honor of daughters—but not wives. I remember my mother’s ability to hold my father’s rage. I think about the length of my emotional intelligence and how little I was when I learned to shut my mouth. I consider the way abuse patterns wrap around us like rope.

Of all the things that tried to split me, it was the juxtaposition of having a white mother and a Black father and the pain of being accepted by her and rejected by him that ultimately severed me in half. It was the confusion of not being Black enough for my father and feeling like I was supposed to partner with men who acted like him in order to prove that rejecting his abuse does not mean rejecting my Blackness. It was the cut of feeling so guilty; I would see his face in other people and believe I could undo what had been done to me by having it done again by them.

Feeling like men were in charge of me made me feel like my body wasn’t mine long before I knew what words like consent meant. So when it came time for me to say yes or no to a man, I would tighten into my mouth and fall out of my skin. I would later attribute it to my Selective Mutism, my Non-Verbal Learning Disability, and a confusion around my sexuality.

But my tendency to lose my words was born out of a trauma that developed from being unable to speak freely in my home as a child. And my difficulties with non-verbal communication were informed by a childhood that left me feeling like I was safer when I didn’t speak.

In my 36th year, I learn about the R Kelly sex cult accusations and several memories converge as if on cue. The idea of a man controlling women so much that he has power over their eating and going to the bathroom makes me fall backwards into my six-year-old self. I realize that I have spent my entire life being unsure if it is ok for me to speak, eat, go to the bathroom or do anything that reveals me as human around men.

You are not a shadow box, an after-thought or a vacant sketch of you.

My father did not get softer, as a result of having me. He simply reproduced what had been done to him as a child. And my brother’s ability to replicate my father’s abuse came from absorbing my parents’ dynamic and being able to identify more with losing yourself to a fit of violence, than being able to identify with the body that holds the scars after the fit.

I know now that people rage when they are disconnected from their person. Having so much rage projected onto me eventually resulted in my belief that I am too much of a person. Men regarded my most basic needs as something to get rid of. So I believed that if I wanted to be with a man, I’d have to get rid of myself.

When I was able to connect with queer and lesbian people, I thought it meant there was something queer about my attraction to masculinity. I started to think there was something inherently queer about me—something internal that exists outside of my attractions. But as my queerness became wider, it felt like the puzzle was being solved outside of me. The more I tried to grow into these understandings, the more I seemed to grow out of me.

When I learned I was dating a man, I simply thought the way in which I was attracted to men had revealed itself as a different shape. I thought my attraction to him could explain why my chemistry with cis men never translated properly. But I left the relationship still feeling like there was something wrong with me.

It is only now after spending years of my life depriving myself from relationships with all men and then cis men specifically as a way to protect myself, that I realize the only relationships I’ve ever had were replications of the abuse that led to the repression.

And most of the sexual experiences I’ve had with men reinforced that my body was theirs. So I became averse to the abuse and called it an aversion to men.

As I thaw out into the larger part of me, I know that the thing standing between myself and other people in relationships is not their gender. It’s the way my body viscerally responds to gender, since my early understandings of masculinity and intimacy were tied up in abuse. It’s about the way my skin translates injury, after years of experiences taught me to anticipate blood instead of love from men.

I am finally starting to ask if I am truly a poor fit for cis men or simply not attracted to men who act like my father and brother.

You are real raw love and gorgeous flesh. You deserve to be held like the entire shape of you.

In the aftermath of the home that broke open, I know that girls like Daniela* and I will have a steeper climb towards finding home in the arms of a man, because of what happened at the hands of men in our homes. I know that relationships aren’t about breaking somebody down or taking away their person, as a way to regain yours. I know that intimacy doesn’t feel like being trapped inside a house. I know that love doesn’t feel like the wrong side of the basement door.

When I look at the place inside me that split, I can see the wound and feel it closing. I know that people are neither good nor bad, but in a constant state of becoming. When they engage in harmful behaviors it’s because they’ve been profoundly hurt and they’re perpetuating that learning. I know unlearning is a process. I know I’ve survived both my child and adulthood due to my ability to read people who were so checked out from their person, they didn’t care if what happened next froze me out of my person.

I know that brain structure, systemic and familial post-trauma can complicate the ability to say or hear a no. I know that doesn’t make it a yes. I know the thing that causes people to control and rage is the same thing that allows them to keep going during a sexual act, after a face has gone blank. And I know I don’t owe it to anyone to be an emotional punching bag while they work through their trauma superficially through me.

On the long end of my 36th year, I figured out why that complex, primal, physical and emotional longing for men never went away. It is part of me, but it is no longer a gash on me. I am learning how to stop the blood. In the wake of my healing, I know that trying to love people in similar pain as me was an attempt to grow the skin over the cuts that once divided me.

I am not broken, but I have existed in pieces and I know that being deeply harmed during childhood is a particular kind of bruise. I have a higher level of empathy because of it and I know that empathy will translate into the highest level of love for myself as I continue to learn that I cannot love the rage out of a person. And if you are navigating that kind of trauma, you deserve to learn it too.

You deserve to be loved like survival, like the spelling of your name, like the softest whisper and the loudest yell that sounds like the entire length of you. And you deserve to hear it over and over again until you know it’s true.

The clippers jolted to life, buzzing like a swarm of bees, waiting to shred through my short afro. “Hey, P, it’s time to cut them naps,” my brother yelled from the bathroom. Crying profusely, I sauntered to the bathroom, staggering, reluctant to get my hair cut. I plopped onto the chair and peered through salty rivulets of tears as black sheep wool fell from my head. “Why do I always have to get my hair cut?” I asked my brother. “Grandma said,” he replied militantly.

“Because you don’t take care of your hair,” my grandmother interjected, fully aware of her condescending tone. “You just let it grow and do nothin’ with it. It looks terrible, like a bird’s nest.”

“But I want long hair,” I said to her, unable to clear the tears from my eyes or the crack in my voice.

“You ain’t supposed to have long hair,” she coolly replied. “You’re a boy, Jeremy, boys ain’t never had long hair.”

For years, this was the common refrain from my family and from society: Boys — Black boys especially — aren’t supposed to have long hair, because long hair is for girls.

‘You’re a boy, Jeremy, boys ain’t never had long hair.’
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Part of this messaging is rooted in rigid, and damaging, assumptions surrounding gender in general. But White Supremacist culture also plays a significant role, with the White majority dictating what is and is not appropriate for Blacks to do, say, and wear. As a part of this culture, Black men are typically categorized as hyper-masculine and overly aggressive, with media depictions focusing on athleticism, criminality, and little else. As a Black man, you are to be physically adroit, rugged, tall, thuggish, and stoic; anything outside these strict parameters makes you less Black. Because society continues to insist on associating long hair with femininity, this leads to a crude calculation: the longer the hair, the less acceptably Black the man.

Years after my brother and grandma first insisted I get my hair cut, I now wear my hair freely — but it took years to get to that point. And the reason is rooted in some ugly truths about White supremacist culture.

Genetically, most Blacks — men and women alike — have nappy (or kinky) hair that, for the most part, grows upward instead of downward. Because of the “women equal long hair” equation, it’s more acceptable and conventional for Black women to modify their hair in ways that defy genetics, by way of flat irons, perms, weaves, and the like. At the same time, there are significant societal pressures wrapped up in this; under the auspices of White beauty standards, it is considered ugly or unprofessional for a Black woman to wear her natural hair. As such, Black women, while having more options than Black men, typically choose to adopt more White-approved hairstyles — bouncy curls, straight locks, wavy hair, etc. — in order to avoid disparaging and hurtful descriptors.

I Was Supposed To Have Good Hair

In August 2016, the Perception Institute did a study on “good hair” and bias toward hair textures. The study showed that “white women show explicit bias toward black women’s textured hair” and that “[white women] rate it less beautiful, less sexy/attractive, and less professional than smooth hair.” If you walk into any beauty supply store, ethnic hair products — hair products geared toward non-White hair types — are sectioned off, exacerbating the idea that non-White hair is “other” and should be treated as such by being segregated.

As for Black men, if they want to grow their hair long, they only have the option of an afro, with any other alteration or modification either deemed distasteful or looked down upon by both the Black population and the White majority. Because the White majority has an almost Darwinistic approach to what is and is not acceptable in popular culture, Black men, similar to Black women, adhere to the common adage of majority rules.

A Perception Institute study found that ‘white women show explicit bias toward black women’s textured hair.’
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Many expectations surrounding hair and masculinity can be traced back to Black cultural icons. Though disco brought about a style of dress unseen in Black culture, the hairstyles for Black men remained the same: large, neatly picked-out, and very circular afros. The evolution of hip-hop from the Bronx, New York to Los Angeles, California (East Coast vs. West Coast), and the introduction of Gangsta Rap in the mid-1980s, brought about new styles — but these styles were mostly short.

Lesane Parish Crooks (Tupac Shakur) is iconically known for a shaved head. Christopher George Latore Wallace (Biggie Smalls) is iconically known for a low afro. Todd Anthony Shaw (Too Short) is iconically known for a Caesar cut. And so, if you were at all associated with hip-hop and/or were Black during the ’80s and ’90s, you would primarily see afros, low cuts, or shaved heads.

In the late-’80s and through much of the ’90s, the perm became the mainstream hairstyle for Blacks, with the Jheri curl inspiring a shift in styles. The perm was around during the early ’80s as well — sported by Edmund Theodore Sylvers (known for being the lead vocalist in the disco/soul band, The Sylvers) on his 1980 solo record, Have You Heard, and by Michael Jackson on his 1982 record, Thriller — but it took a few years for it to really catch on. By the late ’80s, Black artists from all genres had begun chemically modifying their hair, from DJ Quik and Ice Cube to Ice-T and Snoop Dogg.

The late Eazy-E, former member of N.W.A. who died in 1995 from complications of AIDS, is iconically known for his Compton hat and Jheri curls. And Prince Rogers Nelson (simply Prince) mixed his permed hair styles with an innovative fashion sense that injected a more effeminate taste into the pulse of Black culture.

The hi-top fade — very short hair on the sides and very long hair on top — also became popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s, sported by the likes of Bobby Brown, Vanilla Ice, and Will Smith (any Fresh Prince of Bel Air fans?). This look, though long, played into the “up, not down” parameters of acceptable Black hair. And as Gangsta rap began to fade into obscurity during the late-’90s and early ’00s, so, too, did fluffy, blown-out, chemically modified hair, reverting back to a lot of afros, Cesar cuts, and shaved heads.

As a ’90s baby and a ’00s adolescent incessantly harassed by the short hair propaganda put forth by hair companies like Just For Men and Shea Moisture, I did not accept any of this. Most of the commercials these companies propagated consisted of muscular Black men grinning at the camera, running their hands through their just-washed low cut — something I fervently detested and never coveted. And so, after years of getting my hair cut every two to three weeks, I went behind my Grandmother’s back, like the defiant 13-year-old I was, and asked my sister what I had to do to get her hair. “I have a perm,” she replied, disappointed in my decision.

Just two years earlier, while on a Christmas trip to San Diego to visit family, I was introduced to rock music. While sitting on my uncle’s coffee brown couch, watching hip-hop/rap and R&B music videos on MTV (when MTV, you know, actually played music), my cousin changed the channel to MTV2; blaring, distorted guitar cut through the TV’s speaker and I became enveloped in the noise of Switchfoot’s “Meant To Live.”

That song, those lyrics, penetrated my very soul and rebirthed me, connecting me to emotions I always knew I had but never felt I could display because of the pressures put forth by White supremacist culture. Watching these guys rock out as their hair wisped through the air, I longed for that sense of freedom from cultural and societal pressures. It was at this moment I felt comfortable expressing myself in my most natural way — and the first step to true authenticity was to get long hair.

After appealing to my sister, she ended up putting a relaxer in my hair. It burned after a while, but once the solution was rinsed out, my naps straightened, providing me the luscious locks I always longed for.

My joy, though, was short-lived.

When the upkeep of this hair became too burdensome, I gave up, resigning myself to hair I could barely care about, let alone love. I grew my hair out and deliberately ignored it, refusing to brush it, pick it out, or shape it in any way. (Don’t worry, I still washed and conditioned it.) Dejected and miserable, I chose to hide my mini afro under beanies and hats, begrudgingly accepting my style destiny.

There was, however, another option available to get the long hair I coveted.

Though Jamaica-born reggae artist Bob Marley popularized dreadlocks — or, as they’re sometimes known, “locs” — in the ’70s, the hairstyle has been around for hundreds of years. According to Chimere Faulk, an Atlanta-based natural hair stylist and owner of Dr. Locs in Roswell, Georgia, “Dreadlocks can be traced to just about every civilization in history. No matter the race, you will find a connection to having dreadlocks for spiritual reasons.”

In Judges 16:13 of The Old Testament, Samson, the last of the judges of ancient Israelites, said to Delilah, “If you weave the seven locks of my head with the web and fasten it tight with the pin, then I shall become weak and be like any other man,” evidently purporting that the seven locks he has grants him strength and by stripping these locks, his strength would be stripped, too.

Dreadlocks have a deep association with the Rastafari movement, but it was Marley who brought the hairstyle over to the United States and made swinging locs look alluring. Into the ’80s and ’90s, cultural icons like Alice Walker, Lauryn Hill, Lenny Kravitz, Toni Morrison, and Whoopi Goldberg helped bring the iconically Black hairstyle to the mainstream.

The hyphy movement has since further assisted in cementing the style in pop culture (“shake them dreads,” the E-40 hit “Tell Me When To Go” directs), with many artists in recent years adopting the look. These include Earl Stevens (E-40 himself), Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. (Lil Wayne), Faheem Rashad Najim (T-Pain), and Olubowale Victor Akintimehin (Wale).

Still, like so many aspects of Black culture, the hairstyle has also faced appropriation, derision, and stigmatization over the years. For a long time, I personally couldn’t understand the appeal of having “black worms” grow out of someone’s head. (That’s what I thought they were. I was 12 or 13 years old, leave me alone.) But in my senior year of high school, circa 2011, I did more research into dreadlocks as a way to give me the long hair I’ve always wanted — and, lingering stigma be damned, I realized this was the look for me.

I’ve had dreads ever since, and six years later, they’re frequently worn in a bun because they too often obscure my vision. (Dreadlocks and glasses is a terrible combination, in case you didn’t know.)

Embracing the hair I’ve always wanted has forced me to confront our society’s rigid gender roles. Because of the length of my hair (and my style of dress, consisting of button-ups, polos, skinny jeans, and Vans), I’m often confused for a woman, and I’ve been taunted for daring to defy gender and heteronormative standards. From “f*****” to “gay” to “queer” and everything in between, I’ve been harassed incessantly because of my decision for longer hair.

Embracing the hair I’ve always wanted has forced me to confront our society’s rigid gender roles.
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But more and more, I feel a part of something bigger: a push to challenge the roles that have limited Black people for too long. Out of Los Angeles in 2009, Jerkin’ became a dance craze that helped challenge stereotypical Black dress: Associated artists such as Audio Push, the New Boyz, and The Rej3ctz all sported tight-fitting shirts and even tighter-fitting pants. And into the current mainstream, artists continue to confront gender roles by wearing typically effeminate accoutrements: leggings, nail polish, skirts, and the like.

You needn’t look far to see Black people slowly tearing down restrictive gender roles: Jeffery Lamar Williams (Young Thing), on his 2016 mixtape, Jeffery (originally titled No, My Name Is Jeffery), is seen in a light blue faux-dress replete with ruffles and a sun hat. In 2011, Kanye West was seen on stage in a black silk blouse at Coachella. In 2010, Sean John Combs (Diddy) was seen in a black and white kilt while on stage in Glasgow.

In an interview with Nylon magazine back in July 2016, Jaden Smith said, “So, you know, in five years when a kid goes to school wearing a skirt, he won’t get beat up and kids won’t get mad at him. It just doesn’t matter. I’m taking the brunt of it so that later on, my kids and the next generations of kids will all think that certain things are normal that weren’t expected before my time.” And if you remember The Boondocks, the episode titled “The Story of Gangstalicious Part 2,” which aired in 2008, has Riley sporting a skirt to promote his favorite rapper’s new clothing line.

Over time, I’ve learned not to give a damn about gender roles or the insults. There is no doctor dictating that all Black men must keep their hair short. Michael Jackson and Prince and others more newly on the scene are shining examples of challenging the status quo, the accepted normal; they have helped pave the way for Black men to tap into their feminine side. It’s because of them that Black men are more willing to wear their hair as they damn well please — a sentiment I’m happy to embrace.

What’s that saying again? Oh, yeah: long hair, don’t care.

Men, You Can Survive Without Us — Please Try

Unsplash/Alan Labisch

By Ijeoma Oluo

Men — straight, cisgender men. We need to talk. I’ve been concerned about you for quite some time. You’ve been acting out. The yelling, the name-calling, the violent outbursts — I’ve been watching with keen interest and I’ve finally understood the pain and fear at the root of it. And I need you to understand something: You can survive without us.

Not only can you survive without us women, you can thrive. You can be successful, happy, fulfilled — all without us. Nobody likes rejection — it sure does sting. But you are so much more than your relationship to us.

I know that you’ve been told that your identity is tied to being able to have sex with us, to provide for us, to keep us in close proximity to you at all times. And you’re scared, because all that you’ve been told that you need for your manhood is at risk right now. We are refusing to have your babies, we are having babies without you. We are saying no to sex when we don’t want it. We are earning our own money. We are running for president.

Some men are even beginning to adapt their definition of manhood to fit this new reality — cheering on these women who are withholding the gender-based purpose that you’ve built your life around. I know that must feel like a betrayal. I understand why you call them “cucks” — if they redefine manhood without the ultimate goal of tying a woman to them, what would that say about your life’s work?

But I’m here to tell you that you are so much more than that. You are so much more than your desire to catch and keep us. Your manhood will still stand if we refuse to sleep with you. Your days will still have purpose if you spend your evenings with friends instead of a wife. Your job will still be as fulfilling if the women in your life do not require your income to survive. Your buildings will not crumble if we are not stuck in your kitchens. You do not need our love if you love yourself.

Bearing the sort of crushing fear and anxiety you’re currently experiencing is no way to live. It causes depression, it fuels hate-filled MRA blogs, terrifying YouTube videos, thousands of Twitter troll accounts. This sort of fear causes grown men to spend their days anonymously telling us that we are cunts whom they hope are raped to death.

Is this really what you wanted to grow up to be?

I want you to understand that you don’t need us, and that you should get used to living a life not defined by how closely you can bind us to you. Because your fear of living without us is literally killing us. When you shoot us for not giving you our phone numbers, when you stab us for breaking up with you. When you force us to have your children, when you force your bodies on us, when you demand that we make a low enough salary to make us financially dependent on you, and then you beat us to ensure that we know that all we are is yours. When you shoot into crowds of us because we rejected you in college, when you kill us and our children when we try to escape you.

All of this fear that you cannot survive without us is leaving so many of us dead.

What bound us to you was circumstance — circumstance that you created. But what bound you to us was fear. And as we break our bonds of circumstance, you face an even harder task: breaking free of the prison of your own minds that says that you stand on nothing if you do not stand on our necks. That without us underfoot, you will fall into the abyss.

But I’m the mother of two boys, and I see in them the freedom that boys have before the expectations of manhood set in. I see how their confidence rises on their own achievements, and not on their superiority over the female gender. I see how they can enjoy friends and family and feel loved without feeling the need to bind the love of a woman to them. I see the joy of a life before they are told that their success can only be measured by power over another. To them, love is not yet a harem. And I want to protect that for them, and for you. I know that you too were once nothing more than humanity and possibility, and that it was enough.

It still is enough, if you’ll let it be.

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