Men Gotta Step Up
These are incredibly scary times. The Supreme court has voted to strike down the Roe v Wade decision—thrusting us all headfirst into a nightmarish hell. [I mean, a lower level than the one we’ve been subjected to for the last 400 years.] I say all because the decision affects us all, not just women and femmes.
It’s not enough to pretend we aren’t active participants in the oppression of women and femmes—we must also righteously rage against it. We do that by confronting our brothers and ourselves.
There is so much contradictory information and pro-tips out there that it leaves many of us paralyzed. [We don’t need that.] Sometimes for good reasons, but often, it is not, even if they come from good intentions. One cannot end oppression without the active participation to end it of those who commit it.
You’ll read memes about sitting this one out, telling you to be quiet and listen, and that’s fair, depending on the space, but I find that extremely problematic. We must voice our displeasures and act on them when we see, hear, experience any sort of discrimination against women in our presence. In fact, our reputation for what is right should always precede us. We can’t do that if we’re quiet.
I get the sentiment because I once used to be a legit card carrier of “white people need to be quiet, listen, learn, and act on that information.” You can’t end oppression without the voices, the ears, and active participation of white folks to upend white supremacy. That’s just not a thing. It just ends up being performative and we’re sold out on clowns. We need us to do more. [Hell, I wish I could sit that one out and let white people do all the work. I am exhausted.]
However, we must let women and femmes lead without patronizing them. We must listen and act on the information given and once in a blue, we must carefully check those closes to us when they partake in toxic masculinity, but not before elbowing the hell out of our brothers who think toxic masculinity should be upheld and protected at all cost. It’s a balancing, and often dangerous, act, I know.
I can tell you that, yes, the patriarchy is a disloyal beast—it only serves itself and to the detriment of us all. It’s a control system that benefits white heterosexual men in its purest form—but it also hurts them! It hurts us.
I’m a Dominican man. I’m sure you’ve heard a million things about Dominican men—a lot of them are true. I’ve touched on them.
Many of those things are racist, xenophobic stereotypes, too.
I’ve lived them. The true and untrue ones. I’m writing about them. But I’d like you to know that being a Latino man who shows his vulnerable side, who fights for women, the marginalized, comes with a lot of blows to the head, to the body, to the ego, to the soul, to the heart. You find yourself at odds with your family and friends and colleagues. All the time. It’s constant. You’re accused of being too sensitive, too soft, too weak, gay… and even sexist. One is gaslit to death. But to truly be an ally—and an active participant to end a toxic masculinity that also suffocates you—one must take those blows. We must remain vigilant and learn to discern when those hits come from agent saboteurs, though. There are many and many of them work tirelessly to undermine progress. Ojo con ellos.
At what point, though, does one stop sacrificing oneself when one has a family? They, too, are punished for being married to me. They, too, must spend endless nights worried about our wellbeing. I wish I knew the answer to that question because as brilliant as I am considered around some parts, I still struggle with every space I’m in. I am the unbearable social justice warrior that makes his family and friends uncomfortable—that comes with great punishments. That comes with shunning and loss of work. How does one become a good man if one can’t provide for his family because one is out there trying to save the world, for strangers and his loved ones? These questions are asked by many men, I’m sure.
The bottom line is that we all must participate and become each other’s support system. Even if our participation is imperfect (or punished, even). It’ll never be perfect.
We must do something, however. We must lick our wounds when those we try to protect cut us, too. Those go, unfortunately, with the work.
That won’t happen if we are quiet about it. That won’t happen if we don’t step up to the plate and fight for the rights of all marginalized people—not just our own.
Women and femmes need us—now more than ever.
Let’s put in the work to protect them as well.
A mainstream or indie magazine would usually pay me between $250-$450 for one of my pieces. Since I decided to go solo for the sake of keeping my voice unedited and uncensored, I created this website. Keeping it afloat and these pieces coming is not just time-consuming, but it’s also costly because it angers a lot of those same mainstream papers and magazines (along with their donors) for calling them out—so their favorite retaliation tactic is deplatforming. Especially of unapologetic and unhypocritical Black and Brown voices. Ideally, I’d like to raise between $250-$450 per piece and many of you have actually stepped up to the plate and helped me accomplish that. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you would like to see more of these and support one of the few unbought indie voices, please contribute:
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César Vargas is an award-winning writer, advocate, strategist, speaker, and social critic with a loyal following and a robust social capital that spans from coast to coast: Editors, journalists, celebrities, activists, artists, executives, politicians, and multiple communities. He was named one of 40 Under 40: Latinos in American Politics by the Huffington Post. He’s written about internal and external community affairs to several news outlets and quoted in others: The Huffington Post, NBC, Fox News, Voxxi, Okayafrica, Okayplayer, Sky News, Salon, The Guardian, Latino Magazine, Vibe, The Hill, BET, and his own online magazine—which has a fan base of over 25,000 people and has reached over a million—UPLIFTT. He’s familiar with having a voice that informs, invigorates, and inspires people—creating content that usually goes viral. He recently won two awards from Fusion and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts for his films Some Kind of Spanish and Black Latina Unapologetically. He attained a degree in Films Studies from Queens College, CUNY. He is currently raising and distributing funds for Haitians in Sosúa.
