Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?

Just excellent. This video was submitted as a welcome suggestion on the weekend of a tragic event in Santa Barbara, CA, where a 22 year-old young man decided he had enough…. and ended 6 lives as well as his own. While extremely rare, it is not entirely isolated and appears to resemble other tragic cases in which young men (who haven’t even begun to conceptualize their own potential) somehow have it in their heads and hearts that their lives are pointless, meaningless and worthless without female affection, acceptance and approval.

While one could be very quick to discount this type of acting out as “insane”, it is clear the root of societal problem runs much deeper, and has much to do with the way boys are told early in life that they are “evil oppressors”, “wrong”, “flawed”, “stupid”, and “potential rapists” of those they have never even treated badly. It starts as early as the crib and is perpetuated in every facet of the media.

• Who’s teaching them this?

• Who’s buying millions of girls t-shirts that say: “Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them.” like it’s cute and funny.

• Who’s telling young men “Ha ha! you probably can’t get laid.”
….as if the pinnacle of success is access to the damp hole between her legs.

• Who’s calling unmarried men “assholes”, “cheaters” and “pigs” while justifying destroying his property expecting him to apologize for “probably” spending time with another girl because he prefers her company instead.

Who.

Of course, “they” expect nobody to ever talk about it or be conscious of it. Just absorb it and accept it. Every day of your life. You stupid cheating asshole rapist. When a lone gunman lashes out against it, just call him “crazy” and hopefully nobody will notice. Everybody back to work. It’s just a gun problem. He’s got a mental problem. Nothing to see here. Carry on. As you were.

We now live in a world where a good man will board an airplane and be relocated away from children sitting next to him because he is automatically perceived as a “potential pedofile” instead of the University Professor he actually is – and worked his entire life to become. A good father is told he can’t have visitation because he raised his voice and said “no”…. so now he is “abusive”, and will be stripped of everything, including the ability to continue working like a slave to pay for cupcake and the kids he isn’t even permitted to see.

This translates right down to school where a boy dare not kiss a girl he likes because “that’s rape”. A guy she doesn’t think is attractive enough might look at her and smile, and now he’s automatically a “creep”…. but exactly the same behavior from a Twilight Vampire is a welcome advance, because pop culture teaches us it is “romantic” for a dead vampire to sneak into her house at night and watch her sleep. That’s not creepy at all. That’s “hot”.

Is it making sense yet?

This is the kind of social and legal climate young men are forced to navigate and try and understand as they look into their futures. Only in a world this s~~~ty and backwards can one man who lashes out be considered entirely nuts. The current reality is as skewed and screwed as Alice’s Wonderland and Keanu’s Matrix, and it is the photo negative of what nature intended.

It is backwards, sick, and wrong when Men are – in the indisputable vast majority – THE creators, inventors, scientists, extreme risk-takers and street cleaners who stock our grocery shelves, create aqueducts, install wifi-networks and climb into burning buildings to save lives at the cost of their own… while also making sure there is enough petrol at the filling station for our cars, which we drive on the roads paved by other men.

No schoolboy should ever have to sit in class while his teacher makes him feel responsible for all the wrongs perpetrated throughout history, or makes him feel worthless and inadequate, or tells him that his gender harms the other and that women will need protecting from him when he gets older. This should be seen for what it is, nothing other than an ideologue abusing her position as a teacher in order to deliver dehumanising classroom propaganda to children.

It was the toil of men—that of our fathers and grandfathers—that built the industry, the railways, the water and sewage systems that lifted millions, if not billions, out of subsistence level poverty. It is typically the male sex that is willing to shoulder the risk and endure the suffering necessary to push back human boundaries for the benefit of others. It is typically the male left-brain psyche that is the inventive one, the one to gaze at the heavens and to have the inclination to go there.

For every Man and his sons. Produced by AndyMan.
A few minutes of reflection.

It’s time for men and boys to feel good about themselves again.