Thread by @mykola

Some good guys I have encountered, a short inventory.

Guy who comes to understand Male Privilege late in life and works to elevate marginalized others from his own position of power.

Guy who has a lot of tools and knows how to use them, and is always willing to help his friends move a heavy thing with his truck.

Guy who struggles with boundaries and social interactions and always errs on the side of care just to be safe, but doesn't have any close friends as a result.

He's not angry, doesn't feel entitled, but he is pretty lonely.

Guy who replies to many of your tweets with likes and compliments, and who also has no interest in sleeping with you. (I know a few, they exist!)

Guy who joins a mutual aid network run by women of color and immediately understands that his role is to listen and help out, not lead or advise.

Guy who is doing his best in a world where the norms he grew up with evaporated overnight, but he doesn't resent the new normal because he recognizes that it holds space for so many more people.

There's a lot of ways to be a guy, a lot of guys to be. We talk a lot about the ways that guys can be pretty shitty, and that's 100% true, but I want to try to find a way to shift my own discourse towards a more positive model of masculinity. This is a step towards that.

Guy who writes songs about his friends, not to make fun of them or anything but to show the world how great they are.

Guy who goes from union organizer to corporate person in charge of interfacing with unions, because that was the best way to expand his influence over the whole process.

Guy who takes his kids' emotional needs seriously and treats them like people.

Guy who will always validate how you're feeling, even if he knows you're being unreasonable, and holds space for that contradiction.

Guy who just doesn't get it, but who knows he doesn't get it, and is doing the work to figure it out.

(Psst, Guy who just doesn't get it -- follow some marginalized people to hear their perspectives, it'll help!)

Guy who wades into an argument about disability between an abled person and a disabled person, and who doesn't understand the disabled person's perspective but takes their side by default anyway.

Guy who believes you.

In before "none of this stuff is specific to guys"

I'm not saying it is, thanks! :)

Guy who says "I don't get it, can you explain it?" in response to a joke that punches down, so that the victim doesn't have to weather it alone.

Guy who challenges racist/sexist/etc family members in front of their kids, so as to give the kids a model of how to talk and think about complex subjects that they're not getting at home.

Guy desperately taking notes on this thread because he wants to be a good guy, not realizing until the end of this tweet that you can't "be" a good guy you can just be a guy who does good things sometimes.

https://twitter.com/Bluebirdlouise/status/1416805194592133120

Guy capable of saying "Oh, I fucked up and hurt you, and I'm really sorry. I won't do that again, and I'd like to make amends by XYZ. Please forgive me." and moving on.

(note: I am RARELY this guy, but I'm working on it really, really hard.)

Guy who carries that for you because you're obviously struggling and it would be no trouble, really.

I spent a long time thinking there was nothing good about masculinity, thinking that masculinity itself was a problem.

I didn't get that masculinity can be redefined just like anything else.

We just have to hold space for our better selves instead of dominant boomer culture.

Guy who doesn't know about all this SJW stuff and who is nervous around neopronouns but who spends his life working with kids and helping them be their best selves without interjecting his own confusion into their processes.

Guy who takes the time to explain to skeptical guys why they should care about "all this SJW stuff" in terms that get through their defenses, because he loves his friends and wants to help them grow.

Guy who maintains an amicable relationship with a coparent that he's broken up with so that he can be as supportive as possible to his kids, normalizing divorce as a part of human growth sometimes and not a form of abandonment trauma.

Guy who respects your boundaries, and after a polite rejection he thanks you and you never hear from him again.

Guy that is way, way better than you at a thing you love but doesn't make it at all a competition, and when asked gives really good advice about how you can improve and enjoy it more.

Guy who thinks a lot what it means to be a guy, and updates his behavior in accordance with the conclusions he draws and biases he unlearns.

I think being a "good guy" is tricky, because it's honestly pretty easy to be careless and hurt someone pretty badly, whether with words or actions or expectations.

The more time we spend consciously embodying positive behaviors, though, the better we are, by definition.

Guy struggling with mental illness, drug addiction and finances who still recognizes that he's one of the most privileged people who has ever lived.

Guy who has some values you probably disagree with but who has made sacrifices in his life for those values, and who always argues in good faith when you disagree.

Guy who made it out of poverty, has a good job, and still treats his old friends to dinner on the regular because he remembers how hard it was.

Guy who tips extremely generously.

Guy who recognizes the social power he wields in interactions with non-guys, gets that requests can feel like demands, and explicitly holds space for people to feel safe in his company.

Guy who walks you home even though it's only a couple of blocks because safety is important and women experience a disproportionate number of threats when alone at night in public spaces.

Guy who texts you to see how you're doing even though you haven't replied to his last few texts, because he knows You're Just Like That and you're still his friend.

Guy who listens to you talk about your area of expertise and then asks thoughtful questions to satisfy his genuine curiosity instead of mansplaining to you about your own field.