Mohamad Fazeli

“In these years we did the tried-and-true masculine things. We watched ball games on the TV, fished for catfish and bluegill in stripper pits in the Greene-Sullivan State Forest, shot guns, stood out in the garage, as is customary, and generally bullshitted. But what was most amazing, other than my father’s apparent transformation, was that Dad, seemingly exhausted by years and years of near-silence, began to speak openly about the burden of masculinity.

He told me the expectations he’d carried, as a father, as a son, as a man, had sabotaged his relationships and prevented him from expressing himself, or really enjoying intimacy, emotionally or intellectually, his entire life.

Shocked at the depth of frustration and despair my dad had suffered, I listened and realized, for the first time, that the masculinity I’d sought, the masculinity I’d been denied, had always been an impossibility. Deep down, I realized that masculinity, as I knew it, as it was presented to me, was a lie.”
― Jared Yates Sexton, The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making

“Ultimately you, and only you, can make yourself consistently happy. No one else can.”
― David D. Burns, Feeling Good: Overcome Depression and Anxiety with Proven Techniques

“In the digital age, the troll is essentially a caricature and embodiment of all the worst traits associated with masculinity. They’re culturally and intellectually shallow. Angry. Violent. Aggressive. And, after years of wading through graphic images, postmodern stew, racist propaganda, and disgusting and misogynistic pornography, they have grown into nihilists with no other purpose besides punishing the world while laughing to prove they’re stronger than their humanity.”
― Jared Yates Sexton, The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making

“Even more tragically, change has always been in their (white men’s) best interest. The occupations they cling to so desperately-the factory jobs, the mining jobs, the manual labor jobs-were awful in the first place. Men who toil in these careers are underpaid and miserable. They suffer horrific injuries, die prematurely, and are exploited by companies that hardly ever reward their labor or loyalty. But men have long fallen for the great myth of American capitalism. They strive to make it and when they fail they find solace, no matter how dismal, in their pursuit and their work.

They’ve been tricked, and to admit now that the lie isn’t real, after generations of buying into it and basing their identities on a fraudulent and faulty worldview, would be one of the greatest emasculations of all time.

So they double down nearly every single time….No ground can be given to the forces of progress here because with each case of men being held accountable for their actions the whole house of cards could come tumbling down.”
― Jared Yates Sexton, The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making