Toxic Non-stories

At eighteen [my father] was coming home from a long hot day in a lobster boat on the bay, where he worked helping bait traps. His skin was burned by the sun and saltwater and his hands were blistered by the rope and the traps. But that day he met Jay Beard, who was selling off many of his books, books Jay had inherited from his dead brother and had himself never read. Beard was actually looking for my father to sell these books to. My father bought three hundred paperbacks and old faded hardcovers, the whole lot for twenty dollars, and brought them home by wheelbarrow.

Then in early fall of that same year Sydney, who in reading these books had given up drink, went to Chatham to see a professor about the chance at a university education. The professor, David Scone, a man who had gone to the University of Toronto, disliked the Maritimes while believing he knew of its difficulties and great diversity. Looking at my father sitting in his old bib overalls and heavy woollen shirt proved what he felt. And he commented that it might be better for Dad to find a trade. This was not at all contradictory to Dr. Scone's sense of himself as a champion of people just like Father. In fact, being a champion of them meant, in his mind, he knew them well enough to judge them. And something he saw in my father displeased him.

"Yes, I know you have come here with your heart set on a lofty education — but look in another direction. A carpenter — how is that? — you seem like a man who would know angles." And then he whispered, as people do who want to show how lightly they take themselves, "It would not be as difficult for you as some things in here, philosophy and theology and all of that—"

Scone smiled, with a degree of naive self-infatuation seen only in those with an academic education, shook his head at the silliness of academia, while knowing that his tenure was secure and every thought he had ever had was manifested as safe by someone else before him. My father never had such a luxury. There was a time my father would have been beaten by his own father if it was known that he read. Knowing this, tell me the courage of Dr. David Scone.

My father said that being a carpenter might be nice and he liked carpentry but that he liked books more. Outside, the huge Irish Catholic church rested against the horizon, the sun gleaming from its vast windows and its cavernous opened doors; its steps swept clean, its roof reflecting the stains of sunlight, while on the faraway hills across the river the trees held the first sweet tinges of autumn.

"Well, then — you want to be a scholar, do you. So what books have you read, Sydney? Mystery — science fiction — Ray Bradbury — well, there's nothing wrong with that at all, is there?" He smiled. My father was about to answer. Dr. Scone was about to listen but he was called away by the head of the department, a rather rotund priest with thick downy cheeks and a bald spot on the top of his head. Father stood and nodded at Scone as he left. Then he walked home from Saint Michael's University and sat in his kitchen. He did not know how to go about qualifying for university. It had taken him five weeks to find the courage to do what he had done. Now he felt that the man had condescended to him. What surprised him was the fact that an educated man would ever do this. He had been innocent enough to assume that the educated had excised all prejudice from themselves and would never delight in injury to others — that is, he believed that they had easily attained the goal he himself was struggling toward. He did not know that this goal— which he considered the one truthful goal man should strive toward— was often not even considered a goal by others, educated or not.

He had by that evening discovered his gross miscalculation. He was angry and decided to write a letter, and sat down in the kitchen and started to write to this professor, in pencil on an old lined sheet. But when the words came he realized a crime had taken place. (This is how he later described it to my mother.) The crime was that he had set out in a letter to injure someone else. He was ashamed of himself for this and burned the letter in the stove, sank on his bed with his face to the wall.

Later I came to hate that he did not send it, but it was noble. And what was most noble about it was that it would never be known as such. Nor did that in itself alleviate his suffering over what the professor had said, or his memory of the professor's self-infatuated smile when he said it. That is, like most spoken injuries, Father had to sample it not only at the time it had taken place but for days and even weeks after, and again each time this well-known professor was interviewed in the paper about Maritime disparage or his lifelong fight on behalf of First Nations rights. (Which became a lifelong fight at the same time it became a lifelong fight among his intellectual class, most of them ensconced in universities far away from any native man or woman.)

The fact that my father not only was a part of the demographic this professor was supposedly expert upon but had worked since he was a boy, and had his own ideas from years of violence and privation, made the sting ever sharper and fresher each time he heard Dr. David Scone lauded for his utter decency by our many gifted announcers on the CBC. Yet by his honour — my father's honour — he could and did say nothing. Even when Dr. David Scone tried to influence my mother against him.

― David Adams Richards, "Mercy Among the Children"

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Dear Kate,

"Toxic masculinity," what is it?

If you think you have a good idea what it is, you are probably right.  To begin with, you are in a good position to judge, being on the other side.  And what is masculine is by definition not subtle, like a hollering deep voice that can't manage to speak without offending, overpowering, and, Ahem, manhandling.

Yet a man can be sneaky without being subtle.  I wasn't asking you to define "toxic masculinity"; I was asking if you know where the concept comes from.

The term seems to be everywhere now, even in razor commercial, but do you know where it comes from?  Don't tell me you've been using it too without the least curiosity about how the bandwagon was made.  "There can be no moral integrity without rigorous intellectual engagement."  And it's doubly true in this case, with a concept of such heavy moral weight.

"The concept of toxic masculinity is used in academic and media discussions of masculinity to refer to certain cultural norms that are associated with harm to society and to men themselves," if you believe Wikipedia is a fair enough source of truth.  You can look it up from other sources, and they will attest to the fact that it is a term first of academic use and subsequently popularized in our everyday language, in media discussions.

Above I shared with you an excerpt from a book of fiction that has spoken definitive words to shape the manhood of this man, by the Canadian literary giant David Adams Richards (also a Senator now, while still writing), his Giller Prize Winner "Mercy Among the Children."

In this passage, you will read about human toxicity of many sorts that happened to be spread via masculine agency, giving them a particular pungent flavor which one could easily mistake for their en-gendering, and about "the silliness of academia," vanity that middle-class, educated fools like you and I share and could crack self deprecating jokes about yet would hold on for our dear life, for career and financial security, and for moral certitude (not necessarily in that order).  You will also read about how the Christlikeness of a father transforms the toxicity in a vengeful son, both struggling in a world of manly treacheries.

"Read stories.  Whatever else you read, read good stories."  It is easy to reduce: just jump on the bandwagon and you are an instant saint.  Many in our world are engaging in this business of reduction, making cardboard character out of every life, storied presence grounded in the complex, dirty soil of human history.  "Toxic masculinity" is a shorthand that can be (and often is) used to gain an upper-hand in a discussion.  Same with slogans that claim to overcome something the claimer wouldn't even know how to overcome in himself.  There is a place for advocacy.  You are in the business of that and so am I.  It is in knowing how easily a man's moral integrity can disintegrate when conforming to the patterns of this world, that I am urging you to dwell in the stories of Man, just as our Lord Jesus did.

What did Jesus give us?  A label on our forehead?  A number on our back?  A battle-cry to lobby our fallenness out of us?  We know what He gave.  He is asking us to give likewise.

Yours, Alex