I am a Masculist

Yes, I advocate for men's rights. I even advocate for white men's equal rights. When I first looked up the word that was equivalent to being a feminist, but that was a male, it said that I should call myself a feminist because it is a term that refers to equal rights for all people. But you know how we decided that you can't be a mailman because the word man is captured inside of the word mailman. So, we have to use the word mailperson. So, there's a lot of emphasis on getting the word man out of terms that refer to both genders. I've always thought this was a little on the silly side, but I understand the importance of words.  So, in that light, I thought it was foolish to call myself a feminist because it has no distinction from the feminist that everyone thinks of when you use the word feminist. After all, the word feminine is actually captured inside the word feminist. So I discovered there's this word called masculist, which is not very poetic, and it brings nothing to mind except maybe the idea of masculine. But that's the word that I've got that seems to me the equivalent of a male feminist that advocates for the rights of all people, including white males, or, to be honest, maybe I should say especially for the rights of white males. 

I've always had a problem with the concept of white male privilege, especially if someone was talking about me. Yes, I have some advantages by being white, and there used to be a lot of advantages to being white and being a male. Those advantages, though, are now vaporware and, in fact, never applied to most poor white males any more than it applies to females or blacks or any of the hundreds of kinds of disadvantaged people.  Rich, even elite, white people are the real advantage group, and assuming that entitlement spreads much at all to people who are only white and not rich at all is a huge extrapolation these days. So, there is a historical precedent for white males running the world and a few white males being on top of this hierarchical pinnacle of power. But that Pinnacle was in the past often a merit-based pinnacle and still largely is a merit-based pinnacle. But what's even more important is this is a historical perspective that is not current with what's going on in the world. 

Richard Reed's book Of Men and Boys describes the current state of the white man in this society and men in general and points out that in today's world, the white male is actually increasingly with the disadvantaged people in our society. Something like 40% of white males don't have any friends. There are fewer males in high school and college and entering the workforce than there are women. Increasingly, men are being excluded from the professions that are traditionally thought of as the care professions that women dominate while, at the same time, women are entering the professions typically dominated by males, such as the STEM professions, i.e., engineering, science, etc. 

The general state of being a male in this society can be deduced by looking at a few other statistics: look at who's committing suicides in our country,  who is addicted to drugs, who's dropping out of the workforce, who lives alone,  who dies earlier, you will find that white males are at the top of the list and therefore disadvantaged.

I've also had a fair amount of attacks on myself for my white male privilege. When I'm attacked, I want to tell the person about the house I grew up in that was 600 square feet for a family of four in the middle of a poor Hispanic area. I want to tell them my parents didn't finish High school. I want to tell them how hard I worked to not only get out of that neighborhood but out of the fundamentalist cult religion that I was born into. I want to tell them all the baggage that I was given at birth because of being a white male growing up in the South.

I want to tell them how being someone who cries easily is not good for a white male. I want to tell them that sensitivity, in general, is a huge disadvantage for a white male.  I want to tell them all the ways that society expects behavior out of me that fits with being a white male that does not feel like white male privilege, but just the opposite. There is this image of a white masculine, hard-nosed male that is counterproductive to what I want to do with my life.  My ability to do what I would like to do in life depends in many ways on the prejudice you hold about what white male privilege has supposedly done for me. 

It's all vague and fuzzy at the edges, and it's hard to describe what is obviously prejudicial behavior toward white males, but I even feel it in phrases like "Black lives matter."   I feel it in the policies that promoted black rights.  Not that I am against promoting the rights of people that need help. I don't like pointing out their race as a condition of giving the help that someone needs.   When I see poor, disadvantaged people, I think helping them should not depend on their race or sex.  I think our caring for humans and being a humanist should be sex and color-blind.  

We should strive to implement being kind and generous to all people who need help and should not use superficial stuff like race, sex, country of origin, religion, or even political tendencies to enter into our decision to help.  We all must seek to be better humanists in our treatment of others. As long as we keep using race as a divider, even when you think bringing race into the discussion is for positive reasons, you are perpetuating race as a tool for deciding someone's worth.   I know in my own heart that I am striving to be a humanist and not see race.  But in making this appeal, I am probably being labeled as a racist. 

I do have some embedded prejudice, of course. I'm not perfect. I have biases that are counterproductive, not only toward Black people but toward other races and women.  But I don't quite see how putting race in every conversation, as is done with identity politics, is actually helping us get away from race. My daughter called me out on several occasions when I was talking about interaction with some man, and I pointed out to her that he was a black man.   She would ask me,  why did you tell me he was black?  And she was right. Why did I tell her he was black? I could say, well, I told you he was a man instead of a woman, and so I might as well tell you that he's black instead of white.  But she has a point that as long as I think it is necessary to point out the man is black, then I am saying race is important, probably far more often than in those few cases where there might actually be a reason to note one's race.

The way we see race, I would say, is almost unavoidable because we've been immersed in it our whole lives, each in our way.   I grew up with Hispanics in El Paso. In my neighborhood, there was probably 70 to 80 percent Hispanics. I didn't see many blacks, nor was I aware of how they were treated in this country.  I was also spared from the point of view that I did not learn the prejudices toward them because those chapters were left out of my book of experiences.  I probably would have come up with the phrase Hispanic lives matter, not black lives matter. But I even see that kind of phrase as being counterproductive.  In my neighborhood, if my mom saw someone who needed some help, say some food, my mom might have prepared them some food, but I don't think it would ever have crossed her mind to tell me that she was giving the food to a people of a particular race.  She was not made that way.  And that was the example I grew up with.

In my neighborhood, we needed someone to see that we were poor, not the color of our skin. We didn't have good doctor support for real serious stuff like my dad's bad heart. I guess our schools were okay.  We didn't know any difference. I now realize that I didn't have people helping me with the SAT entrance examination for college, and I was competing with those who did. Being poor, it wasn't likely that I would go to an Ivory School or get the education that could get me into a high-powered elite school.  But I played the cards I had. I had a hand that was moderately good compared to most people: I had a mom and a dad at home who cared for me. They were not without their problems: my dad had trauma from being in the Philippines in World War II before we knew about the effects of trauma on him or his family. 

The point is this:  we are all on a spectrum of being advantaged or disadvantaged.  We are ahead of some on that spectrum, behind others.  Race is one of the factors that determine where you are on that spectrum, but it is no longer as strong a factor as poverty, poor health, or family life.  And yes, being a white male is a factor on that spectrum. The evidence now indicates it is not a positive factor on that advantage spectrum.  So, I am here to promote the rights of the white male.

I am a masculist.