This splendid Wendell Berry poem is the perfect riposte to those among the most privileged who would seize for themselves the undeserved mantle of victimhood. I’m half-Anglo-Saxon, reasonably heterosexual, and gently Protestant by theology (if not by either birth or baptism). And I’m a man who is not going to stoop to asking for a cookie. Here’s to picking up after ourselves, my brothers.
Anglo-Saxon Protestant Heterosexual Men
Come, dear brothers
let us cheerfully acknowledge
that we are the last hope of the world,
for we have no excuses,
nobody to blame but ourselves.
Who is going to sit at our feet
and listen while we bewail
our historical sufferings? Who
will ever believe that we also
have wept in the night
with repressed longing to become
our real selves? Who will
stand forth and proclaim
that we have virtues and talents
peculiar to our category? Nobody,
and that is good. For here we are
at last with our real selves
in the real world. Therefore,
let us quiet our hearts, my brothers,
and settle down for a change
to picking up after ourselves
and a few centuries of honest work.
“undeserved mantle of victimhood”.
So you admit that victimhood is a prize in today’s society - one that you have to “deserve” by category of birth?
What a bunch of twaddle. Go back in time and ask the men who labored and risked their lives for family and for their country - from the battlefield to the steerage on the Titanic. The “male disposability gap” is still as real as it ever was. Some privilege!
Saying that all white males were once privileged is a bit like watching rap stars on MTV and concluding that all black people are privileged.
I appreciate the point. Needing cookies is bad.
But the notion that the better off you are, the less right you have to complain (am I right that that’s what you’re suggesting?)… that notion seriously has messed me up.
Because we are ALL hurt by things, and we are all victims. And what happens when we men constantly tell ourselves that we have no right to complain is that we lose ourselves. We sustain abuse and do nothing about it. And we become fearful and mean-spirited. And we lash out at other people.
I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but packed into this post is a dangerous idea… an idea which is one of the dark fuels for male violence.
I have to agree with Erik. How is it that telling an asian heterosexual Buddhist woman that she has not right to complain is sexist and minimizing but telling a white straight protestant male he has no right to complain is insightful commentary?
The only way that belief can be upheld is if you believe that you deserve to be lumped in with the Anglo-Saxon Protestant Heterosexual Men that created and maintain “the patriarchy”.