Men
Using "Daddy's home" as a threat, plus building a healthy culture for men and boys
“When Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this.’”
-Tucker Carlson, October 23, 2024
Holy F*&^
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Disgraced Fox News personality Tucker Carlson delivered a speech last week in Georgia that could well draw the attention of child protective services for its vivid celebration of the abuse of minors. Instead, in this “new normal” of sadistic, false-masculine bravado, he drew people to their feet in a red wave of laughing applause.
Carlson was stumping for Trump, declaring America’s need for a “brave man” to lead just as every household needs the firm hand of Daddy. And what a bizarre, frightening picture he paints to illustrate his moral tale.
If you allow your 2-year-old to smear the contents of his diapers on the wall of your living room and you do nothing about it, if you allow your 14-year-old to light a joint at the breakfast table, if you allow your hormone addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you’re going to get more of it.
No, there has to be a point at which Dad comes home.
[Crowd cheers]
Forget any prior failures in parenting that got the family to this point, and disregard the psychological well-being of these miserable-seeming children.
Ignore the images of an out-of-control household, and silence the feeling that a 2-year-old might need psychological and emotional inquiry rather than punishment.
Shut your eyes to the outright hatred that these imaginary children seem to feel for their parents and why that might be.
Focus only, Carlson invites us, on the moment of complete chaos when Dad—having been absent until now—arrives home to do his duty and terrorize this household into submission. And remember that a good father must be understood only through the hypnotic prism of Orwellian doublethink: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Daddy Hits You Because He Loves You.
Yeah, that’s right, Dad comes home. And he’s pissed! Dad is pissed. He’s not vengeful. He loves his children—disobedient as they may be—he loves them because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior and he’s gonna have to let them know. ‘Get to your room right now, and think about what you did.’
And when Dad gets home, you know what he says?
‘You’ve been a bad girl, you’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You’re getting a vigorous spanking because you’ve been a bad girl.’”
Here, Carlson is painting a picture of an emotionally absent male indoctrinated in the belief that he is, because of his sex, inherently superior to women and children and endowed by God to control them by whatever means he deems necessary, be it emotional, physical, or sexual abuse.
Indeed, the layers of sadism packed into this short speech are genuinely hard to fathom.
So much could be said about what this means for the women and children living under this sociopathic reign. So much could be said about what this means for us, the “children” in this fairy-tale of a nation-turned-household, ruled with an iron fist.
Yet I’d like to focus us instead on what this says to the men and boys soaking up this strange, nightmarish story.
How tragic for men to imagine that when they come home, the "right” response from their family is to cower in fear, for the announcement of “Daddy’s home” to evoke not smiles and celebration but abject terror instead.
How truly miserable it must be for a man to imagine that his presence within his own home, among his own family, does not inspire love and respect but hatred and loathing.
This is the image of “manhood” that we are offering up? One that guarantees bottomless internal emptiness and a need for control when we could be offering the satiating nourishment of connection instead?
It remains hard for me to fathom that so many people in my country are ready to reelect a man and his cronies who project such a lonely, terrifying image of manhood. I pray that we will usher in a different vision for our society in less than two weeks’ time.
But, no matter what, we have a great deal of work to do.
One of our most necessary social projects in the coming years is to support boys and men with images of an entirely different kind of manhood. We must work to detox from the poisons of toxic masculinity that are infecting every corner of public discourse. What was once in the shadows of terrorized households, in private racist clubs, and in demented secret societies is now drawing public cheers consistent with fascist regimes.
Let’s face it head-on.
Let’s work to model an inviting, attractive, alternate picture for men. While protecting women and children from the policies of these toxic politicians and their private invective, we can emphasize a life-affirming sale’s pitch to men too, one in which their well-being is also of central concern.
Carlson’s form of rhetoric is guaranteed to leave men isolated, lonely, and in pain.
Manhood is not equivalent to abusive behavior, aggressivity, the ability to get a woman into bed, the ability to control a household through violence, nor an inability to feel anything but irritation and rage. That is not “manhood” but depression. It is not an image of a healthy life but of mental illness.
Being a “good man” does not require suppression, repression, control, nor—as so many male influencers now sell—the “optimization” of anything.
Popular influencers tend to be peddling something toxic. They develop large followings through their use of inflammatory rhetoric, intoxicating performance, and inducing shame and self-loathing in their audience. They create the problem and then purport to offer the solution.
But examples of healthy masculinity are everywhere, too, and countless authors, speakers, books, newsletters, videos, and podcasts offer a contrary image of manhood, a healthy one based not on control but on connection.
I want to do a better job of amplifying those voices and help to fuel a future in which men are not feared or beaten in their homes but adored.
Here are some of the individuals and resources that have piqued my interest and inspired me over the years. Please add to this list with your favorites in the comments below.
Terry Crews on the cult of masculinity, the pain of realizing what he was doing to his own family, and coming out about his own sexual assault.
Tony Porter, an author and activist, deconstructs “The Man Box”.
- , an activist and author who frames violence against women as a men’s issue.
Kwame Scruggs created Alchemy Inc. to model self-inquiry and support for young men through mythology and story-telling.
Terry Real, a couples therapist and author of I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, who emphasizes that: “the way we turn boys into men in this culture is through trauma.”
James Hollis, Jungian analyst and prolific author of books such as Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men, spoke recently about the crisis of masculinity with
.Michael Meade, mythologist and author of books such as Men and the Water of Life, recently released a podcast episode called Men, the Soul, and the Search for Truth.
bell hooks’ landmark book The Will to Change lays out how and why patriarchy injures men as much as women.
Carol Gilligan’s research emphasizes the roles boys and men are forced to perform to their own detriment in books such as Why Does Patriarchy Persist and in a recent conversation with
.Niobe Way’s new book Rebels with a Cause is on my list to read and
explores its profound messages here.- and his book Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood conveys the journey to understanding the effects of patriarchy in his own life.
ALOK, nonbinary activist, author, poet, and comedian, on The Man Enough Podcast (and so many others) talks like few people can about the prison of gender.
The Man Enough Podcast tackles many different aspects of masculinity today, including how men can participate in the fight for reproductive rights.
The
, co-founded by , is a valuable new project “researching young men, 18-34, and strategies for better engaging them politically.”
There are so many other resources for boys and men seeking direction in a cultural landscape riddled with toxic mines.
What are your favorites? Help me create an alternate list of books, interviews, and leaders in this space.
I’m Satya Doyle Byock, psychotherapist, author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies, and co-host of a podcast on Jung’s Red Book. My work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, NPR, The BBC, Literary Hub, The Tamron Hall Show, and on podcasts such as Apple News in Conversation and The Joseph Campbell Foundation Podcast. All links can be found here.
Join me for my next paid subscriber workshop on Sunday, November 3rd — Register here. We’ll continue our exploration of active imagination, emphasizing the tending to emotional pain like anxiety and emptiness.
I so appreciate everything you say in this essay, Satya. There was a time when I felt more anger at men; the unearned confidence, the unacknowledged privilege. But now, especially after working with more men and teenage boys, I feel deep sadness at how our culture has used misogyny and fear of appearing "feminine" to twist their natural compassion and vulnerability into something toxic and fear-based. The book Boy Mom by Ruth Whippman addresses how misogyny has seeped into our culture in a way that leaves boys and men fearful of true connection because it somehow reads as feminine. She looks at research that demonstrates the subtle ways we withhold love and tenderness from boys, ostensibly to "toughen them up" and make them more able to succeed in patriarchy, but which ultimately leaves them isolated and hurting. I think we are seeing the absolutely devastating effects of male loneliness and isolation in the culture right now in the behaviors and words of some of the most prominent leaders on the right.
America is still failing to process multiple generations of male anger transmitted continuously…anger originating in part from two World Wars and a depression plus Korea, Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan. We have no collective rituals to process this anger effectively…