summary written by claude.ai
A Frog, an Owl, and the Blade That Got Too Sharp
I went live this week with Matt from Beneath Performance, and he titled it “Masculinity and the Politics of Force,” which is a big meaty title for two writers who both showed up carrying the very thing we were about to talk about.
Matt opened by reading me what his AI told him the night before. He had been printing research articles from his sociologist friend, reading himself into a spiral, convinced he needed a PhD in masculinity studies by Monday morning to be allowed an opinion. He has that chatbot trained to call him on his stuffs, and it delivered. “Stop reading research articles tonight,” it said. And then this: “You’re preparing for a conversation about how men equate worth with competence, certainty, control, and appearing strong. And tonight your mind is telling you, know more, prepare more, don’t get caught not knowing something. Prove you belong in this conversation. That’s the material.”
That’s the material. Sprinkle that on your morning coffee, friends.
Performing is the word I grabbed and ran with, cuz it is exactly what I watched here in Minnesota. I am no expert on politics, though Substack keeps sending me little notes telling me I am rising in the politics category, which still cracks me up. What I am an expert on is ICE in Minnesota. And what I saw was performance. Men with their chests puffed, holding their guns like trophies, radiating I am power, I know better, I am better than you. It looked like a bunch of grown men playing Call of Duty in real life. One of them was recorded saying that out loud after Alex Pretti was killed. “It’s like Call of Duty, it’s so cool.”
I told Matt about the woman in her sixties walking into Target in January, six weeks out from hip surgery, stepping carefully because of the ice on the ground. An agent broke from the pack at the door, bowled her over, straddled her, and started swinging at her face. She turned her head, looked him dead in the eye, and said, “I could be your mother.” He stopped. Something in his brain short-circuited. He got up and walked away.
My friend Frances, the one who went to the protests dressed as a frog, watched a similar spell get cast. Inside the frog suit she became sort of invisible, so nobody performed for her and she saw what she would have otherwise missed. A line of agents stood toe to toe with a crowd of women, and one grandmotherly woman in her sixties stood sweetly in front of a stone-faced agent a full head taller than her and said, “You don’t have to do this. You can quit this job. You can come over and join us. Do you really enjoy all this fear you put in people?” He never looked at her. He never said a word. He started crying.
The old white ladies here call themselves OWLs, and they have figured out the trick. Go ahead and arrest me. Throw me in your detention center. My husband will bail me out in six hours, and you are going to look horrible on camera. That act of surrender carries more power than the force of the arrest, and I think it is why this hyper-masculine performance is falling. It cannot hold its own appearance anymore.
Matt brought me a concept called drone morality. Hierarchical control is treated as good. Following legitimate rules substitutes for individual moral judgment. Empathy becomes suspect the moment it interferes with carrying out the rules. Sit with that one for a minute in relation to a crying man in a uniform.
Where we landed together is the middle. My Hobbit quotes the Tao at me: when you over sharpen the blade, it blunts. Masculine energy is good and necessary. Competition is good when your opponent exists to draw the best out of you. Watch women’s basketball rivals become teammates the second the international game starts, and you will see the version of competition our politics forgot. Matt coached college baseball tied to a scoreboard with numbers on it. I coached high school swimming so empathetically that we lost a lot and my swimmers are still my friends thirty years later. We both watched Ted Lasso and took notes. Governor Walz coached Minnesota through COVID like a team with a common goal.
Go read Matt at Beneath Performance, where he writes his way out of the scoreboard and into honesty.
I love you fiercely. TeriLeigh💜
