"I am the man, that's what I am
I'm a straight shooter, with a master plan
I am the man, that's why I'm here
I am the man, I am the man"
["I am the Man", The Philosopher Kings]
Last April, a few friends and I gathered in my basement to tune into a webinar by The White Ribbon Campaign. In one part of the presentation, they were talking about toxic masculinity and they showed a list of words they use as discussion points about some of the ideals that it can impose on boys and young men, shaping their notions of what's required of their gender as they get older. Most of the words on the list were completely unsurprising and now forgettable, the stuff you'd expect to see - stoic, macho - that sort of thing. But one word stood out and caught me off guard and I'd certainly never have thought of it if I'd been asked to build the list.
Provider.
And for the rest of the presentation, and now nearly a year later, it still doesn't sit quite right with me, though recent months have certainly helped me better understand.
Today, on the sixth anniversary of my father's death, it came quickly to mind, because my father is the reason I have such a struggle with the word. When I think of Dad, the word provider always springs immediately to mind. When you get to really know people, when you begin to see what motivates or excites them, and you read between the lines and understand how they see themselves, you come to recognize the identity they've constructed for themselves. I consider this an important exercise in trying to understand and empathize with close friends and family. When you truly understand how someone sees themselves, you can be of far more assistance and comfort. You understand why they do what they do, why they want what they want, and stop bringing to the table what you'd want if you were them, but rather, what they need because they are them.
In my adult years, as Dad was aging and having progressively more and more trouble taking care of himself, as I spent more time around him as an adult, and not as his child, I began to grow a deeper appreciation for just how he saw himself: as a provider. Throughout my childhood he worked all the overtime he could manage 'to put food on the table and clothes on our backs'. It was really who he was and how he saw himself. As myself and my siblings went through various life events, like a job or relationship ending, he was always there to remind us we were welcome to move back in, because he'd always give us a bed to sleep in and put a roof over our heads.
In recent times, in discussing toxic masculinity with Liza-Ann, I've told her there are many things I felt I was taught by society growing up and with which I've readily parted, but that there remain certain elements that are much harder to let go. Provider is, for me, one of the hardest of those.
Because I have immense respect for a man who considered himself a provider, whom I considered a provider, and largely because he provided. It is difficult to wrap my head around the idea of provider as a "bad word". I understand - on an intellectual level - that when it comes to toxic masculinity, there is more nuance to understanding it than that. It's not really a matter of "good words" and "bad words". The problem is not in the word or even the concept it describes, but in the idea of its mandatory enforcement. There's nothing wrong with being a provider. There is something wrong with taking any segment of society and saying "you must do this" or "you must be this".
In the last few months, I've been having an especially difficult time at work. I was offered what I knew would be a very difficult and stressful assignment. I knew it was something I would find challenging, at which I could probably excel, and for which my particular history and skills were probably an excellent match. I accepted it.
I under-estimated just how stressful and trying it would be. As I've struggled, as I've fought my way through it, I've had the good fortune that the freedom my newfound, less-toxic self has allowed me to speak a little more freely with Liza-Ann, with a few close friends, to get the emotional support I needed to keep pressing on.
But at the times when I truly felt like I was floundering in the dark, desperately looking for something solid to hold onto and looking for a way out, what I found was a set of bars I'd constructed for myself. My cage still has some bars left, and provider is definitely one of them. Only then did I begin to understand what White Ribbon was suggesting. But recognizing it doesn't hand-wave it away either. Toxic masculinity isn't on an intellectual level; it's a set of instincts borne of years of conditioning.
At the end of the day, what my father did was respectable. It was a good thing. Whether he did it out of his own sense of goodness or out of a sense of socially-enforced obligation is both hard to say and perhaps largely irrelevant. That he did it is something for which I will always remain thankful.
Are good acts done for bad reasons less good? A larger philosophical question for another day.
For today, I just know I miss Dad. He gave great hugs.
