I have literally spent my entire life practicing, training, simulating, participating in, studying, and writing about war. My life has been, and is, monolithically violent. It’s only recently that I’ve seriously started interrogating that. Why? In 2019, this seems important. 1/7
As we work together to reform toxic masculinity, spear-carriers have to be willing to ask these questions and answer them honestly. Part of the why for me: I love my parents, but they abdicated their roles. Nobody raised me. I had to figure it out mostly for myself. 2/7
This of course left me socially stunted. At 46, I’m still learning how to socialize. But more importantly, it left me with two predominant pieces of baggage. The first is terror. Recourse to violence is an obvious coping mechanism for this. Dead people can’t hurt you. 3/7
The second is rage. Feeling adrift, abandoned, and powerless is maddening, especially when nobody explains why you are that way. I actively sought to weaponize that anger, take vengeance on a world I couldn’t figure out how to navigate. 4/7
I want to be clear: while my life is absolutely shaped by demons, and my adulthood is largely built by a scared and angry little boy’s coping mechanisms, I *like* the man I’ve become. Through service in the military, intelligence, and police community, I’ve done some good 5/7
I think I add good to the world by studying/writing about war. I don’t want to change who I am. But I do think it’s important to acknowledge WHY I am. I don’t think men seek violence systematically and professionally from a healthy place. I am, in ways, a walking pathology. 6/7
And if we’re looking for where toxicity brews, I think a big part of it is there - in boys struggling to cut a path without proper support and guidance. While I like who I am, I would raise my own child (if I had one) differently. 7/7
