The Alternative
A quick note: In a spirit of mercy to myself and to you, my reader, I decided to table a piece I started writing directly referencing recent national events that we are all processing and likely needing some space away from, so I decided instead to offer you this for your consideration, perhaps less directly related. I started it some time ago and wasn’t sure where to fit it in, but after reading several opinion pieces over the past couple of weeks addressing the post-electoral demographic question “WTF is wrong with White, GenX men?”, I thought… I can’t answer for the ones on that particular graph, but perhaps this anecdotal missive might in some way offer insight into why a few of us might have gone a different route.
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OOOH, ALL YOU MIDDLE-AGED WHITE GUYS, PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT THE GRUELING CHALLENGES OF GROWING UP WITH ALMOST ALL OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC PRIVILEGES! -said absolutely no one in 2024 (for good reason), but you guys….you will never believe what I found! That Sony Walkman discovery I told you about last month? It got me wondering what else might be in those mysterious shoeboxes, so I scuba dove into those swampy time capsules last weekend and unearthed a weathered document of unknown origin, that lists step-by-step instructions for what to do should one, by genetic chance, find themselves born into this state of privilege and need some guidance on how to navigate the socialization process into white, straight, cis-het, middle-class, male adolescence.
Wow! It’s almost as if it was written by some future version of me! I don’t remember ever reading this, or where it came from exactly…it’s dated, but generally still applicable, I think? Anyway, it must have been really helpful to me back then because would you believe that, by chance, it turns out that I followed these instructions to the letter? So crazy…I’ve transcribed it here.
How To Be A Lower-Middle-Class White Boy in North Carolina
(dated August, 1985, author unknown):
Are you a daydreamy and insecure newly-teen Caucasian lad in the American South and are surrounded by other boys that you are seemingly obliged to fraternize with but feel mildly intimidated by? Do you find yourself involuntarily initiated into their limited, boorish discourse, and does it primarily consist of:
Which Hair-Metal bands are the awesomest ones and the trivial evidence supporting this stance?
Which college and professional sports teams are the best ones and the statistical evidence supporting this stance?
Which action, horror, and teen-sex-comedy movies are the best and the entirely subjective evidence supporting this stance?
Who of your peers is an F-word (not to be confused with the F-bomb, also dispensed freely) and the numerous evidential reasons supporting why the person currently speaking is demonstrably SO not an F-word?
Whose ass one can decisively kick and the infinite reasons why that ass is so kickable?
Incessant crude references to female anatomy dispensed with casual abandon, despite limited-to no personal exposure to such anatomy, while insisting on unbelievably plentiful exposure to such anatomy, and emphatically punctuating such details of professed conquests with multiple vile, ribald terms unsuitable for “mixed company”, which the writer of this document dares not debase your intellect by recounting here, but for the purposes of illuminating the depths of un-profundity one may encounter…will surmise that the most commonly dispensed term (squeamish readers please turn back now) may be the one that rhymes with “Moon Fang”?
If this is your predicament, then you may be inclined to temporarily take the path of least resistance, half-heartedly mimicking these Jabronis’ posturing and parlance, feigning investment in debating these base subjects ad nauseam as a means to a fraternal end. Benefits of this strategy may include:
Minimally reduced threat of ass-kickings
A tentative sense of belonging
Minimally reduced suspicion of F-word membership, though the slightest display of compassion for other humans or animals, or interests that vary from the aforementioned proclivities of the group may inexplicably render one an F-word suspect, despite not correlating whatsoever to the gender of one’s romantic affections
Temporarily masking the confusion and emotional disorientation of experiencing one’s changing body, changing social environment, and increased expectations of achievement placed on you adding up to the generalized perception that everything previously familiar to you is changing and that you are helpless to stop it
Adverse side-effects of this strategy may include:
Having to watch insultingly misogynistic movies to keep up in fraternal discourse
Having to endure endless cassette-rewound replays of Hair-Metal guitar solos for the same reason
Experimenting with speaking ungentlemanly to girls you’ve known since kindergarten who look at you with mournful pity, not buying your lewd facade for one second and reminding you that you used to be “really sweet”
CONSTANT HYPERVIGILANT SUPPRESSION of the confusion and emotional disorientation of experiencing one’s changing body, changing social environment, and increased expectations of achievement placed on you adding up to the generalized perception that everything previously familiar to you is changing and that you are helpless to stop it
Exposure to wintergreen-flavored, smokeless tobacco (*strongly discouraged by C. Everett Koop, U.S. Surgeon General)
A hollow feeling in one’s spiritual center
Pro Tip!: If the side effects of this approach are determined to be unendurable, you have this also-challenging, though diametrically opposite strategy as a proven alternative to reluctant assimilation: You may comport yourself as if you are a misunderstood poetic and eccentric artiste of unfathomable depth by:
Dressing in oversized, anachronistic thrift-store clothing
Acting peculiar on purpose
Sitting defiantly alone at lunch period
Affecting a stilted, obtuse manner of speech as if you are a some kind of Bono/Jim Morrison astral-triplet
Affecting this character with such conviction that your peers are inferentially gaslighted into thinking you’re sort of The Shit
Benefits of this approach may include:
By and large, uninteresting people are mostly bewildered by you and therefore leave you alone
The pain, insecurities, shame, “big-T” and “little-t” traumas you had heretofore nervously hidden behind a porous veil of false confidence are miraculously transformed from liabilities to badges of honor through the reverse psychology of radical ownership of your woundedness, and the symbolic adornment of the universal and trans-generational flag of outliers, the black tee-shirt
Discovering the secondary benefit that you actually truly enjoy journaling and writing “poetry”, even though the primary functions of this public behavior are that it gives you a point of focus to look downward at, so as to avert eye contact when feeling socially anxious, and effectively supports your egoic fantasy that the artistry being channeled by this act is miles above whatever milquetoast, mainstream horseshit these other conformist infidels are doing
Girls being curious about you, disarmed by your less-threatening version of boyness, allowing you to know them a little and them to know you, earning you friendships in which your concept of personhood is expanded beyond gender and in which you feel seen underneath yours- As such, the pressures and inauthenticity of adolescent mating behaviors are refreshingly, partially neutralized, though thankfully, not entirely, as some of these girls are like, really, really into how long your hair has gotten: they will want to braid it and touch it, and you will not mind this at all
Being “othered” by the well-to-do, “normal” white boys enough to get just a fractional sense of what being othered might feel like to those without your privilege to “pass” (Black kids, Asian kids, Latinx kids, Neurodivergent kids, Queer kids, etc.) that you acknowledge this privilege and emerge with a sense of empathy, solidarity and allyship with disenfranchised people that provides a sense of purpose, connection and integrity that may guide your ethical compass for the remainder of your life
Eventually being gently welcomed into community with others of diverse origins, with varied artistic and eccentric presentation who share your distaste for Jabroni discourse, some of whom have been the target of cruel Jabroni f-word/l-word/n-word/r-word/etc-word bullying campaigns and are glad to increase their numbers for safety and accept you into their circles despite not knowing nor caring about your particular sexual orientation, ethnicity, trauma history, etc. but who treat you as a kindred wounded spirit and have your back unconditionally, humbling you and illuminating the foolishness of your previous passively complicit homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia, etc., changing your mind about who your peers actually are and cracking your heart irreversibly wide-frickin-open
Bonus: The music you are exposed to validates and celebrates (rather than ridicules) the experience of otherness and is objectively superior
In summary, the writer of this document acknowledges your individual freedom to choose from a myriad of directions you might choose to comport yourself through the rocky adolescent middle passage between boy and manhood in the particular southern cultural milieu in which you have been raised, and has merely attempted here to provide one alternative composite example in the event that you wish to free yourself from the narrow confines of default masculine socialization. The writer does not claim to diagnose a pathological condition, nor imply a bias toward or against a particular choice, and this document’s contents should not be considered a substitute for a varied peer-review containing feedback and wise counsel; it is only intended to support your active participation in your fundamental human right to autonomy and self-efficacy.
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Um, wow, okay, well…I really don’t know what bespectacled pinky-raiser wrote this pretentious verbal molasses-puddle of Sunday-words, but it seems I got the gist of it: An advantage of having this societal privilege is that there are ways (no matter how cringey in retrospect) that you can get free from its most soul-withering self-delusions, if you want to.
Why did some of us dudes choose to remain in the scripted formation, marching with the horde of performatively cruel, anti-feminine, emotionally-suppressive violence-fetishizing, while some of us chose to abandon that path and gather with those assembled on the fringes? I can’t say, and I can’t judge: humans are wired with a need to belong, and both paths seem to provide an essentially necessary sense of belonging and purpose. Except one causes harm and one helps to heal it.
All I know is that I took the alternative path, and while not without its obstacles, it has continued to feel like the right call. I can’t appropriate membership in any of the groups feeling most trampled by the current Jabroni stampede, but I know that by saying no to a prominent role in that backward march, I’ve gotten to play a bit part of the “We” that are not going back, and dude, I can live with that.