Jared Yates Sexton - The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making

Table of Contents

First and foremost, I have so much gratitude for Dan Smetanka, an editor as talented as he is lovely. Dan believed in this book and wouldnt accept anything but my best. Our work has been one of the great privileges of my life.

Thank you to the team at Counterpoint Press. You humble me constantly with your talent and dedication.

Thank you to Clay Risen, my editor at The New York Times who took a chance on my first exploration into the permeation of toxic masculinity in American culture and helped me put to words the suspicions Id been carrying my entire life.

The introspection and chances I took in this book would never have been possible had I not been supported the entire way by friends, loved ones, and colleagues, not to mention the many people who have challenged and inspired me. Thank you to Stacie McDaniel, Laura Agnich, Ted Brimeyer, Melissa Carrion, Lisa Costello, Peter Davis, Bronwen Dickey, Benjamin Drevlow, Clayton Haldeman, Jarrett Haley, Celeste Headlee, Sean Hill, Bernie Hoseman, Amanda Malone, Jon McKee, Amanda Miska, Eric Nelson, Christina Olson, Jeffrey Pfaller, Chad Posick, Steph Post, Christopher Rhodes, Robert James Russell, Joanna Schreiber, Amanda Schumacher, Marisa Siegel, Josh Sanburn, Adam Schuitema, Kerrie Sendall, Eric Shonkwiler, Johnathan Stark, Laura Valeri, and Christopher Wolford.

ALSO BY JARED YATES SEXTON

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage

Danielle Debien

JARED YATES SEXTON is the author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore. His political writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Sexton is also the author of three collections of fiction and a crime novel, and is an associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University. You can follow him at @JYSexton.

1

O n October 7, 2016, I was celebrating my thirty-fifth birthday when news broke that The Washington Post had just published an eleven-year-old video of Republican nominee Donald Trump telling Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about pursuing a married woman like a bitch and bragging that his status as a celebrity meant women let him do whatever he wanted, including grabbing them by the pussy.

Reaction was swift. Prominent Republicans voiced their displeasure as pundits on cable news and the internet speculated that Trump would have to step away from the nomination. Though the billionaire had survived multiple scandals that would have buried any other politician, this seemed a step too far.

This was also the day Hurricane Matthew hit the southeastern United States. A few hours after the Post story dropped, Matthew slammed my home in Statesboro, Georgia, and torrential rain and violent winds buffeted my house well into the dawn. With the power out, I was left with a cooler full of beer and a night of deliberating whether Trump would drop out that evening or wait until the next day.

After a terrible, anxious sleep, I was woken up a little after 6:00 a.m. by a man at my door wearing a threadbare flannel and dry-rotted blue jeans. You hire anyone to take care of the tree yet? he asked, hooking his thumb toward my driveway, where a giant pine had toppled and just nearly missed destroying my car.

I took his number and told him Id get back to him, and after he left I surveyed the damage in my yard and the neighborhood. Limbs and leaves littered the street. Other trees had been uprooted completely, their roots exposed and the holes left behind flooded with muddy water. Roofs everywhere were damaged, power lines sagged, cars flattened.

After a lap I came home to find my neighbor standing in my driveway and staring at the tree. A retired, older man, hed always been quietthe only words Id ever heard from him were his dogs names when hed called them back to his yard. Not taking his eyes off the fallen tree, he asked, You got a chainsaw? When I told him I didnt he asked, Why dont you have a chainsaw? You need one for stuff like this.

I explained that Id bought the house, my first one, in April and was still working on getting the essentials.

Huh.

Instantly I recognized the sound as one my male relatives had made so many times before.

And with that he walked back across the street, putting an end to our first conversation. By the time he returned with chainsaw in tow, I was feeling an old guilt I hadnt entertained in years: Id failed at being a man.

My neighbor sawed into the trunk of the pine and for a while it seemed like hed make quick and easy work of it until the blade caught in the meat of the tree. He braced himself with his boot on the bark and pulled to no avail. Frustrated, he backed off, put his hands on his hips, and sighed.

Not long after, other men whod been surveying the damage joined us and grouped around my driveway the way men often do, in a half circle, their arms crossed or stuffed in their pockets, plenty of room between them.

With each new arrival theyd ask my neighbor whatd happened, if hed tried this, tried that, then theyd take a turn trying to free the blade. Inevitably, theyd turn to me and ask whether I had a chainsaw, and when I said no, almost to a person, theyd answer with their own judgmental Huh.

Later, after the saw had been rescued and the crowd dispersed, the man whod knocked on my door that morning returned with a small crew that cut up the tree and left me a mess of limbs and logs to carry and roll out to the road. The manual labor felt good and had gone a long way toward restoring my bruised egothat is, until Id finished and just taken off my gloves, and one of the men from the earlier crowd came rolling by on a tricked-out golf cart, the kind that are very popular in my neighborhood, and when I raised my hand to wave I got in return a disapproving shake of the head.

For the next two days I went without power, meaning there was plenty of time to get lost in my thoughts and wonder how the fallout from the Access Hollywood tape was playing out. Every time I logged online I expected to find that Trump had dropped out of the race. Surprisingly, or maybe in retrospect not so surprisingly, Trump showed little remorse and even less intention to bow out. He dismissed the conversation as locker room talk, a perfect description, honestly, as Id heard just that kind of garbage in my years playing sports where Id had to listen to teammates brag about their sexual conquests.

Even though it was a very small thing, the chainsaw situation stuck with me, and all of my time not spent analyzing Trumps unfailing lack of shame was dedicated to replaying the scene. I could still hear the confusion in those mens voices, could still see the annoyance on their faces.

Id managed to leave my past life behind, a time Id been different, unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the customs of men. Starting when I was nineteen, Id changed and began carrying myself differently, dressed myself similarly, worked some jobs that earned calluses and supplemented the knowledge I was supposed to have learned when I was younger. With the new house Id renovated portions of it, taught myself how through research and trial and error. To people who didnt know me before then, I appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be a pretty standard, working-class, midwestern man.

The incident with the saw reminded me of my shortcomings and got me thinking about my life and the culture in which someone like Donald Trump, a boisterous mans man whod said he wanted protesters punched in the face, could survive a scandal like the release of the