Trump 2. How are we here again?

And how we can do better this time.

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

Last week I went to my youngest son, Abe’s first grade assembly in which his class performed a song about Martin Luther King to the tune of Knick Knack Paddywhack. “This young man, had a dream… etc etc.” We also had a comic moment when Abe got confused and referred to it as the “‘I Have a Speech’ Dream.”” I’ve been having that recurring anxiety dream since I was about his age, alongside the “I Have an Exam” Dream and the “I’m Naked in the School Hallway,” Nightmare.

In the middle of the song, another mom leaned over to me and whispered disgustedly, “I can’t believe that Trump is being inaugurated on MLK’s birthday. How depressing.” I hadn’t put the two together but she really summed it up. The feeling of powerlessness, of moving backwards into a dark abyss. Of our shared values of equality and justice, generosity and community being mocked by a bunch of rapists and insecure tech bros. We have gone from “Every valley shall be exalted” to “Silicon Valley needs more masculine energy.”

My book, Boymom, opens back in 2017 when I was heavily pregnant and about to give birth to Abe, my third son. My oldest boy, Solly, was in 1st grade, then, the same age as Abe is now, my middle son was 4. We were a year into the first Trump Presidency, the #Metoo movement was exploding online, within days we had gone from “Harvey Weinstein is a sex offender” to seemingly “every man in America is a sex offender.” The discourse around boys and men and gender felt impossibly fraught. As a feminist mother of sons, I felt terrified and conflicted and both angry and defensive.

Now, 7 years later, Trump is President again, the conversation around boys and men and gender still feels impossibly fraught and on the face of it it can feel as though little has changed, either in my personal life or politically. I’m still parenting a sweet seven year old boy, still going to watch first grade assemblies. Still experiencing the disconnect between the sweet hopeful faces on stage singing about equality and justice and the reality of the America in which they are growing up .

It can feel like groundhog day, an endless repeat of 2017. But in the interim, since the last time we were here, a whole microgeneration of boys has grown up. The boys who were hitting puberty around the time of the #metoo explosion, are now of voting age. Their experience of adolescence, and the cultural messages they have received has been unlike any previous generation of boys in history. For better and worse, these young men have spent their entire adolescence in the shadow of our major global reckoning around ‘toxic masculinity’- a cycle of feminist rage and rightwing backlash. We are just starting to see the psychological and political effects of this cultural conversation on these young men, many of whom are hopeless, lonely and resentful, blaming women and feminism for their problems.

Those conversations could have been an opportunity to engage thoughtfully with the ways in which patriarchy also harms boys and men too. The many ways in which masculinity norms impact male mental health and ability to form deep connections with others. For the most part that didn’t happen. Instead many of this generation of young men felt not just excluded from those conversations but actively demonized and ridiculed. And I worry that this time around, with the anger and grief of the election results, we are only doubling down on our anger from last time around.

Now we have a chance to do better.. To have these conversations around gender and patriarchy and men and boys with nuance and real empathy and compassion for all concerned, to inspire meaningful cultural change with the understanding that boys’ and men’s issues are not in conflict with feminist ideals, but at the very heart of the feminist project. This is a hopeful project for all of us, a real opportunity in the face of despair. I hope we take it.

With this in mind, the next Zoom Boymom/ masculinity discussion group will be on Tuesday 28th Jan at 11am PT/ 2pm ET/ 7pm UK. We will be talking about what the second Trump presidency means for all of us, and how we can do better this time, as well as the issues raised in my last post about the gender essentializing of boys and whether it is helpful or harmful. This group is open to all paid subscribers-of any gender/ parenting status etc. The discussions so far have been so interesting and generous with such a range of fascinating perspectives and a genuine commitment to show up respectfully and judgement free.

To join and commiserate/ opine/ despair or hope in community- upgrade to a paid subscription- monthly or annual, (you can cancel at any time.). I look forward to seeing you there!