The more I research feminism and what so many people have to say about the liberation of the female, whilst at the same time often studying the negative cycle of single motherhood and males going crazy and being abusive, the more it occurs to me that, as it stands right now, our society basically just seems to be in some very weird, uncomfortable "middle ground". Basically, the way I see it, there are an awful lot of folks out there, both male and female, who, as i always say, just don't seem to have totally realized that one of the biggest things "trapping us" for all these centuries hasn't just been weird laws, or something called a 'patriarchy', or even religion. What it has really been is the fact that creating children comes with a very particular set of problems that people who never have children will never have.
Here's the real facts about having children, that I think many people refuse to totally acknowledge outright. For example, most people I've noticed, even when discussing the negative aspects of having children, never seem to cover any ground beyond the idea that it is financially draining and time consuming. Many people seem to grasp those two details now, but one gigantic detail that it seems is never discussed is also how having children with a man tends to breed a very particular type of jealousy that, in my opinion, just doesn't exist between childless people. This is to say that, when I broke off with my ex-girlfriend years ago, I was wickedly jealous, and maybe I could have been led to do something really crazy, as a result of my jealousy, but ultimately I moved on simply enough, because I was able to easily locate another girl, and I didn't have a kid with the ex .
But imagine if I had a kid with her, how I might have felt, as a man, knowing that she left me -- or even might leave me -- and take my kid, to go live with another man. Personally, when i envision it, i think i would have damn near lost my mind. I would have been jealous in a way that I just don't think I've ever felt, in my childless existence. This jealousy to me is largely where a great deal of te toxic masculinity of our age is really coming from.
After all, i can't stress enough how rapidly people realyl do fade into the distance, once you split with them, if you never had any kids with them. All the girls of my past, and believe me, I did have quite a few of them (not just Jen), are essentially little more than non-existent ghosts for me, at this point. They're like songs I once caught on the radio and then faded out, never to be heard again. I don't have to worry about who they're hooking up with, or where they're living, or what they're doing. I literally don't care. Most of them, if i do chance to hear of them, appear now as people i could not even force myself to be interested in. They're so radically difference that i'm not even attracted to them! All the new people of my life seem much better to me, and much more suited to who I am now. This is especially the case if you don't much bother keeping contct with the specific friends you knew while you were with the lovers in question. They fade out like you wouldn't believe-- and trust me, once they finally do, it's seriously relieving. It's also liberating, not just for me, but also for the ex-girlfriends.
They don't have to constantly worry about me and what I might think, or maybe even do, once they start their lives over again. They know that I couldn't be less interested. Is it a little depressing? Maybe. But after awhile, it's more relievin than depressing, because modern life shouldn't be about trying to maintain a stranglehold on specific individuals for 80 years straight. Modern life is about information coming at you rapidly, about being able to meet new people all the time, hear new songs, see new cities, etcetc. Everything about the modern world screams rapid fire change: I can get from NYC to Rome in a 14 hour flight. I can switch music records with literally just a click. I can switch books on my iPhone without getting up.
Jen the Single Mom did not have this. She had trapped herself with literally the first two guys who came along into her life, and she basically seemed like she was at least slightly paranoid, all the time, that one of her ex-baby daddies might literally come back to hurt her or something, if she did something they didn't like -- even when she wasn't involved with them!
Do I think they will? Personally no, I don't. But th efact remains that, in Jens head somewhere, these baby daddies had never been able to disappear and just become pure ghostly memories. They were always there. She always had to wonder "what will they htink if i bring this man around their son, or this one?" She was really in a sort of prison and the baby daddies had very much become the prison guards. And though i think it turned her on and got her sexually aroused, once upon a long ago, to think of being "bound" by the chils father like this, it was very evident that it had gotten old, and fast. Jen hated being in that prison after awhile. She was like someone screaming the "code word", but the guards weren't gonna let her out. There was no code word, you understand. The game had long gone sour; but Jen was forced to keep playing it. She will still be playing it for another 20 years, more or less.
Beyond that, there was another thing she often had to think, which i couldn't help but notice, which was that she most definitely thought very often about her clothing style, and her self-expression in terms of things like that. As a result of being shamed and belittled over being a single mother at such a young age, Jen was extra careful to not dress in any manner that could be labeled provocative. She policed herself in terms of clothing, and even outward behavior, in a manner I haven't seen in many childfree girls--and personally, I found it almost grossly depressing.I can't tell you how many conversations where i tried to encourage Jen to wear some makeup or do her nails, if she felt like doing that, and where she would cry to me and basically express that she was afraid to wear makeup, because she felt it would mean she was a "whore". Every little thing was potentially going to rocket Jen into a "whoredom". She couldn't wear a skirt too short, she couldn't wear lipstick, she couldn't just have a new guy for a friend. Nothing. There was a cop in her head and he was always there....his laws were endless....
In addition to this, I also was always of the opinion that this policing of behavior also happened not just to her, but to the childrens fathers as well.
Oh, sure, it's true...they weren't as constricted as Jen, but I often couldn't help but think that their entire, rather pathetic "macho outlook" on life, had occurred as a direct result of Jen having their babies before they even reached their 25th birthday. With myself, for instance, I was always marginally interested in subcultures and things like that, when i was a teenager, and in my early 20s, but i was also very young, and it took me many yars to fully understand topics like the LGBT one, or the transgendered topic, and other such things. Hell, even the Arts in general, and teh wide range of expression that one can pursue with the arts, was basically mostly beyond me, until after or around my 25th birthday. In my early 20s, I very much limited my art and my self-expression to rather traditional forms: I played rock music, folk music, often wore suits and dreamed of being a cowboy. I didn't dare express myself like i often dream of doing now, in a David Bowie esque way, or as someone who would dance girlishly as I sing, etc. This was all stuff that, for my working class head, came later on, after literally half a decade of studying the arts intensely. Thats how serious the brainwashing is in the working class, in my opinion, and probably all the other social classes too. It took me years to bloom completly as an artist--and i'm probably still not done blooming yet. For a long time, i was just sort of locked in a box of self-expression that i now look at and see as rather pathetically limited. I expressed myself with traditional mediums and did not have many new ideas.
And i feel its important to stress all of this progress I had myself because, you see, it's very easy for me to imagine, again, that had my ex done to me what Jen did to these two, at age 20 or 22, and actually had the babies (for i had an ex who aborted one, and another who took the morning after pill), I think I would have also, by the time i was 25-26, been very similar to these two "lunatic baby daddies". In other words, I would have appeared, probably in the bckground of their lives as single mothers, as some sort of envious, macho asshole. A "prison guard" with short hair, a long beard, some muscles and tattoos. I woul have been the exact toxically masculine asshoel that the liberal part of this society is now railing against.
The reason why should really be very simple: Had someone like Jen turned me into a baby daddy before my 25th birthday, when i had no money, i would have beeni nstantly thrown on a path where, even if i contributed noting to the childs life and never saw them, I would still be wearing that title of "father". And this title changes absolutely everything. It's a very serious title, after all, and it's difficult for me to imagine that i would have been sitting here writing fantasy stories or writing novellas about women characters, had that title accidentally been placed upon me. Fortunately for me of course, the girls i was with agreed to abort, or to take the morning after pills, or were just so responsible with BC that they never got pregnant in the first place. They are thus off doing their own thing now, same as me. We wear no titles. We are liberated. I'm not worried that they're going to come around, for example, and harass my new girlfriend, like the Colombian girl i talk to, was telling me her boyfriends "baby momma" harasses her. See what i mean? These single parents basically become like cops or something. Prison guards.
So, long story short, the reason this is important to discuss is because, often when you hear people talk about toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and all this, they very frequently seem to paint the entire subject, as though it's not connected with something like having children, but more connected with just "old times". It's as though there is no real explanation for why the past was different in comparison to today, or why almost 95% of men in the past were obsessed with toxic masculinity, and yet I assure you, that this is the exact reason why. Essentially, you could look at it like this: The less younger people are having babies, and the less peple have babies in general, the less toxic masculinity there will be, and the less interest in patriarchy there will be. But so long as very young people, ages 16 to maybe even 30, are having children, the more toxic masclinity we will see, because these men don't have the ability to ever grow up and learn how to be any other way. Its hard to explain i guess... but tis basically like all these guys in this hood are eternally trapped in their pre-20 year old seslf, still trying to walk the high school hallways and prove how big their balls are. They've simply never grwon out of it. It's like they're locked in fr life, as who they are, all the way back then. It's absolutely pathetic and seems like one hell of an annoying life to live..
--- notes on patriarchy and motherhood
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