Fix Your Hearts or Die

My inbox, via The Boston Globe, tells me that men are opting out of college, and New England’s campuses are missing them. It's a problem, it appears; one for the rest of us to solve, it appears; on behalf of those men, it appears. And the Sydney Morning Herald informs me that "two top podcasters have identified a global decline" and also a cause: "The problem, they say, is women." There's even a pull-quote. “'A huge amount of men between the age of 15 and 50 will not pass on their genes. They will effectively die out of the gene pool...Should society intervene?' Steven Bartlett asked last year." Apparently men, and only men, are having trouble reproducing. Apparently this is a problem caused by women. Apparently it's for society—that's us—to solve this problem, on behalf of these men.

I want to be transparent about these pieces. They are both behind a paywall, and I didn't feel like paying to read them, so I don't know what's in them specifically, and I'm not linking to them. Perhaps these pieces have brand new and surprising lines of thought around their subjects, though I must confess I find it unlikely. I've read so many other pieces like them over the years; these feel just like the latest clouds to scud by on their way from horizon to horizon. Point being: I'm contemplating the overall discourse, of which these two stories are just a part, and whose presence in my inbox represents a synecdoche and a catalyst. This is the discourse about what is commonly called the male loneliness epidemic, which is a problem, usually one that is presented as something for the rest of us to solve on behalf of lonely men. If we don't solve it, we're usually warned, we will be at fault for whatever these men do next, in retaliation for not having their problem solved.

There's apparently nothing the lonely men themselves can do, I've noticed. They've apparently tried everything already. It's up to us.

It's an interesting term, the "male loneliness epidemic." I think we all understand that loneliness is a problem, often born of trauma and often caused by trauma, and certainly it's not good stuff. I think we as a society would do well to try to avoid things that cause people to feel lonely. And also it's real, you know, the loneliness problem; in our modern society, people do report feeling socially isolated, alone, without places to go for human fellowship and engagement. However, epidemic makes loneliness sound like something men can catch from other lonely men, which would recommend isolation and quarantine, and these seem poor prescriptions for the disease of loneliness. Male makes it sound like this is a problem that only men are experiencing; female loneliness is apparently not a social concern. And loneliness is an interesting way to frame the complaint—for complaint it is. The complaint is not a dearth of companionship, exactly. What the problem usually boils down to is a dearth of available sexual opportunities—not so much willing sex partners, as women who don't totally own their own bodies, and so therefore can't say "no" to sex so easily. Women should not be allowed to be voluntarily celibate, it seems—not if it means a man might be involuntarily celibate, and not get the sex he has coming to him.

To simplify greatly for the sake of relative brevity, it breaks down like this. For long centuries, women were deemed property—owned by a man, given to another man for his use—mostly sexual use, but also for free labor. This created a need to guard very strictly the definition of femininity as property of man, and masculinity as owner of female, and, also and crucially, as not female. Or, to simplify further, it cast masculinity as essentially dominating and femininity as essentially dominated. It also created an expectation that every man was owed at least one female, and that if a man wanted a female, that desire meant that the female at least owed some part of herself to him, unless she had already been claimed by some other man's desire. And I say man and female because I notice that this is the terminology used by men who still seem to believe they are owned at least one female. A man is a person. A female is a category. People will tell you things without knowing it, if you know how to listen.

Anyway, that's how things carried on for a very long time.

Then there came along this notion that women were not property of men, but were actually human beings, just like men, with all the same qualities and abilities, and therefore, because of the plain fact of their humanity, they were deserving of all the same rights and opportunities.

The system that holds that women are property of men is called patriarchy.

The system that holds that women are human beings is called feminism.

Feminism completely and directly challenged patriarchy's authority and the underpinnings of its institutions and narratives, and this made people who depended upon patriarchy for fortune and identity very upset and enraged and violent, and all this rage was usually presented as a problem—insofar as it was perceived as something that was being done to men by women, and that it was up to society to solve that problem on behalf of men, mostly by making women not insist on being human beings so much.

Unfortunately for patriarchy, its foundations are set deep in a morass of horrible unsustainable lies, while feminism's foundations are set on a bedrock of deep and sustainable truths. This means that, even though patriarchy is still going great guns today to the great detriment of everyone, over the last century in particular feminism has made significant strides, to the great improvement of the lives of everyone, and as a result of very brave women working very hard and sacrificing a lot—and even as a result a lot of men doing the work on themselves to remove patriarchy from their beliefs and actions—women no longer have to become property of a man in order to participate in society. Increasingly, they can just do their own thing, go their own way, make their own money, control their own bodies and lives, and they don't need a man to do it, and so increasingly they only have to be with a man if they want to.

That's a good thing, by the way. Human beings getting to become more fully themselves is always good.

These are controversial and divisive things to say, I'm told. In fact, saying these sorts of thing is exactly what makes men feel so irredeemable and isolated and dangerous, I'm told. In fact, the fact that I say these things instead of building paths of redemption is what is to blame for the abusive and destructive behavior of lonely—that is involuntarily celibate—men.

Look at me, causing problems.

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I mention that these trends brought on by feminism are a good thing because they are usually identified as the problem to solve on behalf of men, by doing work on men's behalf in order to make women pay the costs of repair. The reason young men are lonely—that is (to name the specific problem that is usually indicated whenever male loneliness is mentioned), the reason they are having trouble getting sex partners they want—is that, if you listen to the young men suffering in this way, they still believe that they are owed a female as a possession, and because of feminism, women increasingly do not have to be a possession anymore, so more and more women are opting out of seeking sex and companionship from patriarchal men, and patriarchal men are very upset and enraged (and, increasingly, violent) to learn that they will not be given what they were told they are owed.

Yes, women don't want to be property, so they choose not to be with men who believe they are property. And patriarchal men holding such beliefs decry women who would withhold themselves over nothing more than political beliefs—beliefs these men think women should find completely unimportant, yet which men also hold as so fundamental to their identities that they seem unwilling to change them, no matter how isolating those beliefs are. Many of these men, rather than fixing their hearts, will lie about their beliefs, which makes women, who still would rather not have companionship at all at the cost of their personhood, increasingly wary of men. And I'm told that this makes men feel as if they are being treated like the bad guys, irredeemable, isolated, unlovable.

This is a problem. What I am inviting you to contemplate is how frequently it is treated as a problem for men, caused by women, to be solved by everyone else. I'm inviting you to contemplate how seldom it's being treated as a problem caused by men who have never even started the work they need to do on themselves.

All this makes women lonely, too, you know. It's just that, increasingly, women are finding that they would rather suffer loneliness than the far greater suffering that attends being owned by a man who sees them more as an acquisition than a person. They'd rather not be around somebody with a near-pathological need to dominate, and they'd rather not be dominated. Meanwhile men are finding out that they'd rather suffer loneliness than learn how to treat women as human beings instead of possessions, because treating a woman as a possession is domination, which means that it is seen as not just masculine, but core to masculinity. Treating a woman as a human being is gay, which is the least masculine thing of all.

There's no end to the things men can't do if they want to stay men. Sweeteners are out, especially in coffee. Certain colors are out, certain clothing, certain foods, art that appeals to women or might appeal to women is out. A guy I know recently shared that he can't watch The Wizard of Oz, because he's not a little girl—as if watching a movie whose protagonist is a little girl makes you a little girl. Expressing emotions, except for rage, is out. Nonviolent physical contact with other men is out. The men who hold these lines of male definition say these constraints represent what they want, but it sure seems to be isolating them.

Even being around women too much or in the wrong sort of way is, ironically enough, considered pretty gay, as is being around the wrong kind of woman. Dating a woman who doesn't have the right physical attributes is increasingly seen as gay in the danker corners of the manosphere, which is the name we've given to those men who spend all their time being manly for the approval of other men, who make themselves look good exclusively for the approval of other men, and seek the company exclusively of women whose appearance will impress other men—all to prove that they are not something so shameful as gay or (perhaps worse) low value.

Value is core to the patriarchal identity. A woman has to be "high value" in appearance, or the man, by transitive property, is not "high value." To be high in value, a man has to have a certain kind of sculpted physique that other men consider "high value." To be high in value, a man must be "a provider," which does not involve giving the people around them what they need from him, but rather accumulating as much money as possible and buying the sort of possessions that demonstrate wealth. To be high in value, a man must "a protector," which does not involve becoming a safe person to be around, but rather becoming an unsafe person to be around, and to celebrate his ability to deal massive amounts of violence to any threat he perceives, because as a man the responsibility to define threats is his. (Are women asked if being around a man who has made himself unsafe makes them feel safe, or if they want to be around unsafe men? Are they asked if they are looking for a man who pursues wealth and physique above all other interests? Not very often.)

What we are learning is that if a woman is in a space—particularly if a woman is succeeding in a space—a man no longer wants to be in that space. He opts out, deeming the space to be low value if it is such a place where he might find that a woman can dominate. We can pretty easily imagine a society in which women are allowed to exist and thrive, that a patriarchal man would chose to opt out of society entirely. What do we do in response? Do we fix society so women can't be there anymore? Many think we do.

And that returns me to the daily flotilla of pieces that wash ashore each week, contemplating the male loneliness epidemic, because The Boston Globe tells me that men are opting out of college, and we miss them. Does the Globe suggest that the solution is that men need to get over patriarchy and accept women as equals in academia? It might. Some of these pieces do. Most don't.

The loneliness of men—which is quite real—is usually presented as a problem to solve. Not by men, but by women. Or, if you like, by the rest of us, compelling women to change their behavior by asking them to agree to be dominated.

The loneliness of women—also quite real—is not a problem that's usually mentioned at all, much less as one worth seeking a solution to, and certainly never as one that ought to be solved by men deciding that they no longer need to dominate others as a core of their identity.

Returning to the podcasters from the opening paragraph: They present the issue in overtly sexual terms, and even present it in terms of life or death—genetically speaking, these young men are at risk of dying off because women will not take their seed. It's a eugenicist spin on a patriarchal frame. Women aren't just rejecting men—they are killing men! Per the subhead, they suggest society should intervene. If they are anything like other podcasters who utilize this sort of framing, I suspect they don't land upon the actual solution.

The solution that people who use this sort of framing usually land upon is to solve male involuntary celibacy, not by encouraging men to become the sort of person women want to be around, but by making women become sexual property again.

The last thing that's ever suggested is that men do the necessary work on themselves. The first thing that's suggested is that women pay the costs of men who refuse to do their own work.

Even when somebody is suggesting men do work on themselves, it's usually within the patriarchal framework, the admonition is to pursue the standard outward shows of value—money, possessions, property, physical appearance—that reinforces the idea that companionship is something to be acquired, that human worth is something that must be earned, than domination is core to masculinity. There's a right-wing freak out there with a wardrobe like a Batman villain and a voice like a Muppet who makes a pretty penny pushing this sort of line. There's a balding liberal-presenting rich guy who makes a pretty penny doing the same. There's a balding international human trafficker/Republican celebrity out there doing the same. Men who want to hold onto the problem have many flavors to choose from is my point. None of it touches the actual problem. All of it is designed to bond men even closer to the philosophy isolating both them and women—which is patriarchy, yes, but also the capitalist mania for profit above all, which dominates society to achieve endless growth, which has decimated community and spaces where community might be fostered.

Here's what we can all see, if we choose to bear witness to observable things: Patriarchy binds and restricts and isolates not only women, but men, too. A world in which women are not property is a world in which the boundaries of sex would not need to be violently protected, which means a world in which men would no longer be isolated in an ever-shrinking cell of self-imposed masculinity, but free to do as they please. A man free of patriarchy is a man who has found not only every woman's humanity, but one who has at last discovered his own. The actual path to liberation for lonely men is feminism.

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This isn't any novel revelation, and I'm far from the first to make it. But I've been contemplating our cult(ure) of abuse, and the ways that it makes us tell the abuser's story, and the ways it makes seek healing for the abuser and not his victims, and the way it makes such think of abuse as a problem for everyone but the abuser to solve, and the way this makes us seek paths of redemption for abusers before they've shown any interest in doing anything redemptive, rather than seeking to create paths of liberation from abuse, open to both the abuser and abused. And I've been contemplating the question "how do we oppose abuse without becoming abusive ourselves?"

Last time I came up with one way: Don't play the cooperation game with people who are playing the murder game.

Here's another way: Don't fix and maintain paths of destruction. Build paths of liberation instead.

To repeat, the actual path to liberation for lonely men is feminism. This isn't about forcing them to become feminists; you can't force somebody to change their mind. Rather, it is for us to create a feminist world of feminist institutions and feminist power, in which patriarchy is simply not seen as a valid option to pursue, in which the natural costs of pursuing a philosophy founded in a morass of unsustainable and isolating lies are paid exclusively by the one pursuing such a philosophy.

It's fine to say that we need to help patriarchal men heal, but if we are serious about doing that we have to give them somewhere to go, and if we are serious about liberation, it cannot be someplace that is made exclusively for them. If we are serious about not being people of domination, we have to leave them the freedom to walk the path of liberation and gain the reward of liberation, or to walk the path of domination alone, and let them pay the natural cost of that choice alone, too.

We destroy paths of destruction. We build and fix paths of liberation. This still involves all of us doing work, but rather than doing that work exclusively on behalf of those who see the abuses of domination as core to their identity, and rather than doing it exclusively within the terms they demand, we do it for the liberation of all—even those who oppose liberation, should they chose to walk it.

There's a phrase that's grown in popularity in recent months, attributed to the late David Lynch, spoken by his Twin Peaks character Gordon Cole. Cole is speaking to Denise, who in the world of the show is a trans woman risen through the ranks to lead the FBI. Cole tells Denise what he told all of her colleagues back in the early days, when Cole was her superior. Here is what he told them:

Fix your hearts or die.

Fix your hearts or die. We can see that as a threat, and I imagine many men do, but I think it's an invitation. It's not if you don't fix your heart, we will kill you—though some who fail to fix their hearts will make themselves so violent in their lives that they may eventually meet a violent end.

I think it's that if you base your identity on unsustainable lies, your heart is broken, and if you live with a broken heart, you will die. Not metaphorically, but actually, and inevitably, because you have set your heart upon something unsustainable, and unsustainable things will not sustain.

So, fix it. Fix your hearts or die. Fix your hearts or isolation. Fix your hearts or loneliness.

Or, if you like: Fix your hearts and live.

Fixing involves doing the necessary work, not having work done for you. People can build the path, but they can't walk it for you. So, walk the path. Do the work. Be a man.

We're never going to fix any broken hearts by fixing and maintain the very structures and beliefs that make them so broken in the first place, or by helping them walk their broken path for them, or by defending the structures and institutions that undergird that brokenness, or by asking others to unnaturally pay the costs of the brokenness they cause by walking it.

But if we demolish those broken structures and institutions in our own hearts, we can demolish them in reality. We can refurbish and improve the sustaining paths that undergird universal humanity, and build new ones.

Anyone can walk the sustaining paths. They're for everyone. They're communal. The path of liberation for everyone is the path of liberation for lonely men, too.

And then, having done the work of building liberatory paths, we'll see who walks the path, and who doesn't. And then we'll know.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He said he once a lizard too.