Frederick Joseph - Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood

I dont have a good memory. Im not someone who recalls faces easily or where I might have met you the first time. But its not for a lack of trying. I dread the moments in which I may accidentally make someone feel as if they were irrelevant to me, or that I dont remember them because Ive deemed myself more important than they are. In reality, for quite some time, Ive found nearly every interaction I have and person I meet to be important. But I didnt always feel this way.

It wasnt until I was around twenty-four years old that I began to realize how crucial it is to breathe in all parts of those around us, good or bad. How essential it is to grasp the moments of our lives, fleeting or persistent. Connection is one of the most beautiful aspects of being here, and in a terrible turn of fate, I was made to realize this more fully than ever before. After a long stretch of arduous symptoms, I found out my short-term memory loss, along with many other newly developed ailments, was due to me having multiple sclerosis, a diagnosis that would change everything. I could no longer grasp anything or anyone as tightly as before, when I didnt even realize how important it was to do so. Suddenly, it felt like my entire life was going to slip away, like trying to clench the last days of summers sand in your hand.

Learning about my sickness was the first time I considered that at such a young age I could be taken from this world by something other than a white mans rage or a white womans tears. I spent most of my life being reminded by white supremacy that time is a luxury, but I couldnt reconcile how little of it I might have.

When I was a young boy, teachers often asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, to which Id typically respond in a way that would make us both comfortable: I want to be the president! As I became older, the answer evolved into things that were more feasible: I want to be a lawyer. But the truth is that since I was about ten years old all I actually wanted to be when I grew up was alive.

For me at just twenty-four, every moment suddenly felt as though it was borrowed time. Doctors couldnt tell me whether my sickness would become worse or regress back into whatever chasm it came from. All I knew was that this creature lurked in my body and threatened to take everything from me.

But as I saw my mortality looking back at me in the mirror, I began to consider not only the time that I was potentially going to losebut also the time that I had been given. Who had I been? What would I be remembered for? What would I be remembered as? When I assessed honestly who I had been throughout my life, I didnt like the truth. I had spent most of my youth navigating the world and the people around me through a misogynistic and toxic masculine lens; destroying many of my relationships with others, especially women; and completely failing to reciprocate any semblance of love or respect as I was receiving it. I took those truths and built a boat so that I could sail away and lose myself on an ocean of brown depression, looking for answers at the bottom of the bottle. Its a difficult thing to accept that you may be remembered for more harm than good.

But somewhere along the way I found myself washed up on a shore in the form of a simple truth that was greater than any of my failures. Time is only what you make it. When I reached that shore, I asked myself a question, Are you willing to try and give more than you have taken? Since then, my work, including this book, has been an attempt to answer that question.

If there is a devil, he toils in keeping us fixated on our pain rather than on the pain we are causing. But what if together we dared to imagine ourselves beyond the harm we have felt and the harm we have inflicted? Im daring to imagine all those things.

We will all be called home by our ancestors at some point, that is inevitable. But the question is whether youll be greeted fondly for what you did while you were away from home.

Realizing your life wont last forever has a way of reminding you to be free. Realizing your name may last forever has a way of reminding you to help free others.

As I said, being a Black man in America, Ive thought about the concept of freedom since I was very young. Who is free, who isnt free, is anyone free? But for the first time, it dawned on me after finding out Im sick that I may never get to see any semblance of freedom for myself during my remaining years. That doesnt mean I cant help others have what I never will in this life.

I have never had more conversations about freedom and the work necessary to attain it than during 2020, a year in which the world faced one of the deadliest health crises in history and its subsequent systemic impact. An impact that disproportionately decimated already marginalized communities globally, as is sadly always the case.

It was also a year in which many people believe the world began a long overdue reckoning with both white supremacy and its manifestations, such as police brutality. Personally, I believe we are heading in the right direction, but I dont think weve reached a true reckoning yet. That would require a dismantling of oppressive systems and accountability for the conscious and unconscious roles we all play in them. If a true reckoning was taking place, conversations and policies focused on supporting Black transgender women and reparations would not still be widely framed as radical.