Tender Masculinity
It's possible to love men without rage. There are thousands of ways to love men.
--Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water
I have carried this quote with me throughout the years since I first read the book, as talisman, as prayer, as opponent. I have believed it and not believed it in equal measure, sometimes at the same time. There are men I love, who make me feel safe and cared for, who make me laugh and hope and who teach me, day by day, that gender is as arbitrary as any other category we use to group ourselves. But there are also men in much higher numbers who make me feel hopeless, weighed down by concrete. These men speak harshly and move through the world like they own it. They treat women's bodies as property at worst and collateral damage at best. They exist safe and smug with the self-assurance of lifetimes, convincing themselves that they're invincible and having that belief reenforced to them by everyone whose opinions carry any real weight.
It's so hard, with men like this surrounding me on all sides, to not blame them for everything. It's so hard to not wish there were less of them, to dream of a world where I could be free and comfortable and relieved of so much of my tension, a world without men. Or at least without this kind of man.
Here I want to take a detour to assure the men reading this that I know it's unfair and irrational and that I'm definitely not talking about them, but rather all the other men who are worse than them. I'm resisting that urge because I trust that anyone who has subscribed to this newsletter already knows these things and understands the position from which I'm writing this.
One of the things I do to counteract these feelings is to seek out examples of what I call tender masculinity. Tender masculinity is men feeling their feelings in big ways, but the feelings in question are happiness, softness, joy, love. It's men communicating with openness, men expressing gentleness toward other men. It's men hugging it out and saying "I love you" to one another without self-consciousness or irony. It's men taking time to notice the silly little things in their lives that make them worth living. It's men being vulnerable in real ways that they don't often allow themselves, and doing it publicly, for all of us to see.
This week's newsletter exists to share some examples of tender masculinity with you. Your mileage may vary with regard to the tenderness, but they work for me, and maybe, if you struggle with any similar feelings to the ones I've written about here, some of them might go a little way toward helping you to breathe more deeply and find a little healing.
A TV Show
It's Queer Eye. You knew it was going to be Queer Eye. I talk about it constantly, to anyone who will listen, and even if you don't know me well enough to have experienced this, it's the most obvious example. It's obvious for a reason, because it's effective. Four gay men and one gender nonconforming person spending an hour teaching someone, not always but often a man, to love themselves, and watching them learn to love the people around them better through doing that. It's beautiful and life-affirming and has brought me to tears many times, and I'm desperate to be nominated for it myself so I can get an upgraded wardrobe and a refurbished house and have them set me up on dates, as they did for a former nun in the most recent season.
The Fab Five are so, so kind and funny and gentle and in touch with themselves as human beings with feelings and a need for human connection. I am always enriched by watching them go on these journeys each episode, teaching people to value themselves enough to show up, to cook and dress and practice physical self-care and cultivate living spaces they can be proud of and open up to their friends and family about the things that hold them back. Whether it's a houseful of college boys or a group of firemen or a trans man figuring out who he is as a man, or an aging hillbilly whose catch phrase is "you can't fix ugly," or a gay man struggling to come out to his stepmother and become comfortable in his identity, it's all about feelings and self-love and self-growth and I live for it.
A Podcast
All Fantasy Everything might seem, on the surface, like a weird choice. The hosts, Ian Karmel, Sean Jordan, and David Gborie are all kind of bros. They're straight men who are very into sports and hip-hop and sneakers and they talk endlessly about their nights out drinking and getting into trouble, and they have very questionable taste in movies, and sometimes their humor leans a little too far into juvenile for my personal taste. But. But. They're also so open about how much they love each other. They support each other's careers in a way that's genuinely touching to witness, and Sean has a baby now and he's releasing an entire standup special about it and he cries at the drop of a hat about anything even slightly emotional, and Ian loves his cats so much and is a fancy boy with fancy taste in food and clothing, and although David is the most emotionally repressed of the good vibes gang, there's still a whimsy about him that draws me in and he loves his friends. They're all big fans of rom coms and they're sometimes dummies about social and political things, but not in a way that feels dangerous or scary or even very frustrating.
I struggle to be coherent about this podcast because I love it so much and I just want to flail wildly about it until I've forced everyone to listen. It's a podcast where comedians fantasy draft things from the world of pop culture, and if that sounds even a little bit appealing to you, I have some specific episodes you should check out. If you listen to these and you still aren't sold, it's probably not for you and that's okay too.
My favorite episode of all time is Hiding Places with Josh Gondelman because it's peak Ian Karmel being hilarious and I have a weird crush on him. A fan favorite which is also very good is Disney Songs, a live episode with Katie Nolan. There's a lot of enthusiastic singing in that one. Dating Mistakes with Marcella Arguello is one of the ones where they open up and are the most sincere. Dating with Nicole Byer and Amy Miller, not to be confused with the previous one, is wonderful because Nicole Byer is wonderful. Places To Hide A Body, with Rosebud Baker, is a newer favorite, but that might say more about my taste in media than its actual quality. I could go on indefinitely. There is truly no end to the number of episodes that have made me laugh out loud, hysterically, disturbing myself and those around me.
A Book
Josh Gondelman has done several episodes of All Fantasy Everything, which is the entire reason I checked out his book, Nice Try. He's one of my favorite guests on the show. I love his goofy voice and his gentle humor and how kind he seems, all of which are things that come through in his writing. Funny people are my favorite kind of people, and it's unfortunate, then, how many of them choose to be funny in such cruel ways. Humor doesn't have to be angry or cynical or unkind. You can be absolutely hilarious without throwing people under the bus to get laughs. This is what Josh Gondelman does, in my experience of him.
I've seen criticisms of his book that say it's bland and boring, that his stories are too mundane and he doesn't adequately pull the humor out to make us laugh. Nothing happens, people complain, these are just random insignificant moments from the life of an average man. Which is true, but for me, that's what makes them effective. Josh comes across as a real person, sometimes painfully real, relatable in ways that make me cringe. He's so earnest that I want to bundle him up in protective layers and beg him to take care, even while I laugh in sympathetic horror at the things he writes about. He tries so hard to be good and generous and hopeful, and another criticism I saw was that he's just another liberal white man agonizing over how to be better and enumerating for us all the things he does to contribute. Virtue signaling, in other words. Maybe there's merit to that, I don't know, but my bar is low enough that seeing a well-known man with a significant platform talking about these things in a way that feels authentic and complicated to me is a breath of fresh air.
I'm told that the audiobook version of Nice Try is narrated by hhim, and I'm interested in listening to that and I recommend that you do too if you're going to pick up the book, because his voice is so uniquely him and really adds to his charm in my opinion. It's a collection of comedic essays about his life, his family and his difficult history with football and meeting and falling in love with his wife and adopting a dog, and working as a pre-school teacher, and almost but not quite doing drugs, and other things. It's a portrait of a man who is trying his best to be a beacon of light and knocking it out of the park.
That's all for this week. I wanted to include a band, but this was already getting way too long and I could feel your attention spans crying for mercy, so I'll save it for another time. I hope you got something from this jumbled and incoherent mess of recommendations, even if you don't have the same trouble with your feelings about men as I do. These are things I think I would love regardless. Maybe we share this affinity for over the top, outgoing funny men. If so, I would love to know if you enjoy any of this, or if you have similar recommendations you think I would like. You can always email me, or respond in the comment section of the Buttondown post. I would be delighted to hear from you.