Harrison Butker and what men fear
Plus, a little on getting free.
I know you’ve heard about Harrison Butker by now, and his embarrassment of a commencement speech at Benedictine College. You’ve probably seen the NFL kicker roasted six ways from Sunday for his misogyny, hypocrisy, and regressive nonsense. People have already written about his stupidity, everyone has memed his nonsense, and conservatives have applauded him for advocating for a return to the 1950s. That is exactly what he was doing, unashamedly. Butker delivered countless awful lines, saying, “Things like abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for degenerate cultural values in media, all stem from the pervasiveness of disorder.” Which is an ugly mix of law and order rhetoric and sexism, a mix that makes no logical sense but scratches a certain itch in the mind of his conservative audience.
I just want to briefly add to the criticism of this Super Bowl winner, who will probably run for office before too long. Specifically, I want to highlight the inane variety of patriarchal bullshit running through his speech, and his apparent approach to the world. Butker and men like him are trying to sell us a load of hot garbage, and get men to be the worst version of themselves. They’re trying to make us see ourselves as victims, and encouraging us to use that false belief as fuel to go out and hurt other people. We can and should reject that directive.
We should reject it for countless reasons, but I think the place to start is to look at this guy telling us we’ve been oppressed by society and so we should stand up and be real men and tell women to be homemakers. He makes four million dollars a year to kick a ball, he’s won the Super Bowl, and he’s still a miserable person pretending to be a victim. All that wealth, all the success, and he’s going to speak at a college to tell young women, “I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.” As they’re graduating college to go out into the world, he’s telling them to stay home and be mothers. He’s theoretically reached the American dream, and he’s spending his time telling college girls to be “homemakers.” Oh and in the days since his speech it’s come out that his mom is an accomplished physicist. But nevertheless.
At the same time, Butker told the young men in the audience that day, “Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men.” It’s pretty funny on the face of it. An NFL player is whining about men being emasculated in society. There’s bigger trucks and bigger guns and men being just as manly as they want to be everywhere I look. But apparently the choice of some men to care less about traditional masculinity threatens guys like Harrison – which seems odd given that he’s a millionaire who just won the Super Bowl. And yet, when you zoom out a little, you start to see the exact problem. This man has everything we’re taught to want, but he’s unhappy and insecure and projecting his issues on college kids. Maybe, just maybe, he’s not actually who we should aspire to be. And maybe there’s some issue with what men have been told to aspire to.
So while Harrison’s speech is laughable is countless way, there’s also a less funny part here. He should be mocked, no doubt, but we should also recognize that he’s emblematic of an era where right-wingers are increasingly saying what they want to say – and that what they want to say is plain bigotry, homophobia, and sexism. Valentina Gomez, a woman running as a Republican to be Missouri’s next Secretary of State, ran a short ad almost the same day as Butker’s speech. In it she says, “In America, you can be anything you want. So don’t be weak and gay. Stay fucking hard.” I wish I was making some part of that up. You can watch for yourself, if you’d like to experience 15 seconds you can never get back. But again, in all seriousness, we’re seeing a remarkably fast rollback of the consensus that you don’t say overtly bigoted things from any sort of important podium, let alone while running for office.
This shift isn’t brand new, the backlash to the basic idea that you shouldn’t be openly racist or homophobic or bigoted (and ideally wouldn’t be internally either) isn’t new. We know that, we’ve seen it develop over the last ten years or more, but we’re at a critical point right now. Do we want people like Harrison and Valentina to be regarded as normal in any way, or do we push back? Do we allow society to devolve back towards the 1950s, or do we find a way to move forward? And men have a crucial role to play here. Harrison and Valentina and countless other far-wing provocateurs try every day to harness patriarchy and our fears about our own masculinity to bring men into the fascist fold. Whether it’s talk about emasculation, or overtly telling men to not be gay, the insecurities programmed into us by patriarchy and traditional masculinity are buttons the far-right tries to press to push us towards being willing foot-soldiers for all sorts of harmful, regressive, abusive ideas. They want us to be scared we’re not manly enough, and they also want us to believe that the way to be a man is to dominate and oppress others.
Oddly enough, a big part of the solution is easy. We have the power to reject their whole paradigm. We have the power to reject the idea that we might “not be man enough.” It’s easier said than done, and it can take some time, but the paradigm shift is immediately available, it’s right there. I, for instance, reject the premise. While Harrison Butker, who has everything a man in America is told to want, still appears to not believe that he’s enough, still appears so concerned with ‘emasculation’ that he’s going to talk to college kids about it, I think I’m enough. I’m not perfect, never will be, but I feel no need to measure myself against some imagined measuring stick where it’s never really possible to be manly enough and you can only endlessly pursue an impossible ideal of masculinity. I have some attributes of conventional masculinity, and I lack others. And I am enough. As a person, as myself.
This one paradigm shift scares the right immensely. It undercuts one of their biggest recruiting tools. If men are content, are kind, are willing to learn and grow and are not interested in being constrained by a narrow and limiting conception of masculinity, we’re not such easy marks. We’re not so willing to buy the idea that we have to be domineering, harmful to women, “alphas” and all that nonsense. That makes us less susceptible to a political and cultural ideology based on oppression. That makes us less vulnerable to the lies of the right.
If you’re reading this, you’re likely already in agreement with most of what I’m saying here. The men reading probably have more to learn, as I myself definitely do, but I’d say that we men also have more to do. Our personal growth can make a real difference, but talking to other guys can multiply that difference immensely. And I’m not saying go around saying corny stuff that other men will reject, but I am saying start some conversations. Get some unlearning going by planting some seeds. And be an example to young men and boys and people in your life, in our lives. The resurgence of a deeply regressive patriarchy is one of the hallmarks of this era, and it’s no coincidence that it’s paired with the resurgence of fascism around the globe. In many ways men everywhere are on the front lines for the future; we all are, but men are being recruited into the ranks of the far-right at an alarming rate.
So go out there, talk to relatives and friends and neighbors and be the example of a healthy masculinity, of a man who is secure in yourself because you know you’re enough. Rejecting the measuring stick that homophobes and bigots want you to constantly use, want you to be scared you’re never living up to, is a powerful step in the process. It’s a powerful step on the path towards internal freedom, and a greater freedom for us all. Know that the men trying to push an impossible standard on you are themselves lonely and insecure, and we have the power right now to begin by changing ourselves and breaking out of the little cell they try to put in. It’s better out in the sun anyway, I hope you’ll join us in getting free.
P.S. There are a lot of resources out there. Jeremy Mohler has a whole substack devoted largely to what I’m discussing here. (Link: https://substack.com/@jeremymohler) He provides links to more resources in a lot of his work.
And bells hooks has a great book covering all this ground and a lot more. It’s call “The will to change” and it’s a great place to start. She also cites a whole lot of other writing for you to dig into.
What a different world it would be if men like you said to other men who talk like Butker, “I just don’t feel the need to tell anyone else how to live their life. I wonder why you do? Have you thought about that?” Because it comes from deep insecurity.
I know nothing about NFL football, aside from the fact that kickers are barely considered players unless they have a decent history of scoring. Not that his personal insecurities about his job excuse his revanchism or condescension. This is still a millionaire that was given an honor by the school and he chose to repay them by demeaning half of the graduating class and insulting the remainder by implying they wanted to hear his garbage.