Do not conform
My shoutout to all the men out there. Fasten your seatbelts gentlemen. The forcible grow up is about to begin.
I need more from you. More vulnerability, more intelligence, more emotional intelligence and most of all. More effort. Effort for yourselves. Not for me or for women. You can’t do anything for a woman until you have learnt to love yourself. Men have been given male privilege for too long and its crippling you. You need to listen to Ciara’s “level up” a hell of a lot more. I need to see more get up and go. I as a black woman would kill for male privilege, the innate knowing that everything will be alright because my ancestors literally rigged the entire world order to be in my favour. But I don’t have that blessing. You do. So use it or loose it. Women aren’t just catching up, we’re emasculating you and all you do is complain you are emasculated. Rather than doing something about it. Don’t tell me about your divine right to be a man when if a woman can do it better, she will do it better. That’s not saying that there is no place for you. However sometimes that place is in 2nd place and if you don’t like that…Then that is not my problem.
The funny other thing is that on the other end of the spectrum other men have no chill. No balance. You’re either lazy as hell or willing to work 23.75 hours a day. Learn balance. Life isn’t how much money you make, this “hustle culture” will land you in a grave before 40. Remember in the 2008/9 crash all the people who committed suicide because they thought self-worth=net worth. And when their net worth fell to 0 they felt the need to end a beautiful life. Learn the lessons of those people. Don’t let any one thing define you. Especially not money.
Then we have the guys who bring only dick to the table. Gentlemen, the advent of the vibrator and 50 shades of grey has heralded your extinction. If all you are bringing is dick to the table, as a 5 ft 10 man, and you boil down to 6 inches then that doesn’t even equate to 10% of you. 2 words. Do better. Stop begging for STI’s and unplanned pregnancies and then getting mad at the universe when you get what you begged for. You are a complex human being with interests and passions. Don’t cheapen yourself. Remember you need to be having sex for 12 hours and 14 minutes a day for sex to occupy 51% of your time. If you don’t make that standard, then you are letting an activity you infrequently participate in define who you are in the world.
You are entitled to precisely nothing. So this one is for all the “Kings” out there. Remember that the last English King to speak of the “Divine right of the Kings” was also the last king to be executed. You are not a King because I am not a Queen. We have no Kingdom/Queendom, we only ever rule ourselves. Even that we feel we don’t have complete control of so drop the foolish title, it doesn’t make you royalty.
Guard your mind. Guard what you expose yourself to. Love yourself properly, don’t wallow in self-pity, self-aggrandisement, sloth, or avarice. Life is a race with no starting gun…. If you were waiting for someone to tell you “1,2,3, go…” well then, I’m saying it. “1,2,3 GO!!!” Learn balance. Learn to live life to the full, be daring, be bold, be assertive, and be you. Don’t ask for permission. Because you are your own kind of beautiful. We have normalised women living life to the fullest, diversifying into interests and industries that are stereotypically male. I challenge you to diversify yourself, crotchet, cry, climb. Be complex, be passionate be multi-faceted. No one tells you “what a man is” you tell the world who you are.
I leave you with a bible verse. Romans 12 vs 2
“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
*Mic drop*
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.
In loving memory of Rev Beale Bis-Audu Griffin my 71st post for a man who is “forever 71” a man who never did conform to the pattern of this world, who taught me how to knit and how to live. God called him home. May whatever age you get to, may your spirit eternally be young, just like my dad’s.