But what about the men?

Yesterday while talking with a friend, I mentioned "that football player's ridiculous commencement speech from a couple weeks ago," and she looked back at me blankly. Naturally I had to pull up a clip of Harrison Butker speaking at Benedictine College in order to get her up to speed. I fast forwarded past his anti-LGBTQ Pride, anti-abortion, anti-diversity, anti-Fauci, and anti-Biden comments, and played his advice to the womenfolk:

"For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career?
Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but 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. 

I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

I'm on this stage today, and able to be the man I am, because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I'm beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker."

My friend had the response you'd expect from any woman with an egalitarian worldview: eye rolls, disgust, annoyance, etc. We moved on.

Later, my curiosity got the best of me. What else did he say besides the lady stuff that grabbed most of the headlines? I went back and read the full transcript of his remarks. Y'all, HB is working out some big feelings about how the Catholic church does things, in matters both large and small. He spent many, many sentences on the importance of attending the traditional Latin Mass, and also took a swipe at priests who "prioritize their hobbies or even photos with their dogs and matching outfits for the parish directory." 

Um. Ok.

Butker never spelled out the so-called diabolical lies that women are allegedly being told, but he did get more specific when he addressed the men:

"To the gentlemen here today: Part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction and chaos set in. This absence of men in the home is what plays a large role in the violence we see all around the nation. Other countries do not have nearly the same absentee father rates as we find here in the U.S., and a correlation could be made in their drastically lower violence rates, as well.

Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men."

I have some questions.

First, who is saying that "men are not necessary in the home or in our communities"? Where is that message being shared? 

I have a wide social circle across the political spectrum; I'm active in my school, neighborhood, and church communities;  I consume a variety of news sources and opinion pieces. Through all these interactions, I have never been told that men are not necessary. Additionally, I have been married to a man for nearly 27 years, and I am raising three young men, and none of them have ever received that message.

So what exactly is he talking about? This is not a rhetorical question. If you are reading this and you, like HB, feel that men are being sent this message, please tell me specifically from where and from whom it is coming.

Second, is it possible that rather than reacting to having heard this anti-man message directly, HB is referring to something more vague, such as a perceived loss of male power and status compared to other times in history? Because a quick look around will confirm for you that men still run literally everything. They are at the head of most of the world's largest corporations; they lead school boards and colleges and media organizations. Men overwhelmingly outnumber women in the US House and Senate, as well as the Supreme Court. Every president we have ever had since the country's founding has been a man, with two of those same men set to be the candidates in our upcoming election. Only men are even eligible to hold the highest positions of leadership and decision-making in Butker's Catholic church, something he and I have in common, actually, since it's the same way in my Mormon church (and in many other mainstream Christian sects).

Butker claims that when men are absent from families or are no longer setting the tone of the culture, then society falls into disorder, dysfunction, chaos and violence. So my third question is, who does he think is creating the chaos and doing the violence? When I look back through history, men are the ones who have waged the wars. In incidents of mass shootings or one-on-one gun violence, men are usually the ones who pulled the trigger. Intimate partner violence has always been committed primarily by men. Rape has always been committed primarily by men. Child molestation has always been committed primarily by men.

I hate that I even have to pause here and do a "not all men" aside, but here goes. As I said above, I'm married to a man (an excellent one), and I'm raising up three men. I love and care about and work next to many wonderful men. I want very much for their life experience to be good and fulfilling. But men have been in charge of basically everything for basically forever, and their results are mixed at best. Perhaps we could shake things up and decide that decent men and women together could "set the tone of the culture".

My fourth and final question was just posed by my 11 year old son, who was reading the laptop screen over my shoulder, scanned the Butker quote above and said, "Wait, what is the cultural emasculation of men?" 

I stumbled through an attempt at speculation: "I guess it's when men don't feel like they are allowed to be...manly...anymore? Or something?"

What is the cultural emasculation of men, and how does HB want men to fight against it? 

I assume that this is at least in part a coded way to talk about the loosening of some of our gendered social norms? There's a guy that we see sometimes at church who wears nail polish. Does his existence signify the cultural emasculation of men? And if it does, how would one fight against that? By forcing him to stop wearing nail polish? If you are a man who doesn't want to wear nail polish, but you have to occasionally see a man wearing it, does that somehow culturally emasculate you? I'm not aware of any forced nail polishing or similar de-masculinizing efforts.

If you care about men and their current struggles, I hope you will look for real solutions that are actually achievable. Butker's comments hint at some very real issues that men are facing, but his prescriptions are vague and non-specific. Here are some ideas that could help.

• Let's teach kids not only that we don't solve problems with violence (I hope we already teach that) but also about de-escalation and how to be an active peacemaker rather than a bystander.

• Figure out how to help boys and men to develop more and better in-person friendships. I don't know how we do this, but it is essential that we figure it out. Men are lonely, and loneliness easily turns to agitation, resentment, and angrily searching for a scapegoat.

• Maternity and paternity leave. Give men the chance to establish a relationship with their kid from the start, and to experience how demanding hands-on child care really is.

• Let's encourage men to pursue caring professions such as nurses, teachers, counselors and therapists, fields which are currently populated with far more women than men. If a man recognizes that he needs therapy and would prefer to talk to a male therapist, his options are limited, and he might forgo therapy because of it. Plus, boys growing up seeing more men in caring professions sends a message that it is up to both men and women to care for others in society.

• If you are a manager, a VP, a CEO, or anyone else who holds sway within a company, please implement family-friendly work arrangements such as flexible hours and the option to work from home. This allows parents to share the considerable responsibilities of raising children together, with less stress on the whole family.

• Worker protections, higher wages, job training for those whose jobs are being phased out, access to health care and child care: all of these things will ease the burdens men are carrying in this modern economy where blue collar and manufacturing jobs are rapidly disappearing.

I'll bet you didn't expect a reaction to a graduation speech would veer into a bunch of policy proposals, but Harrison took us off the traditional path when he brought up the evils of birth control and dog photos, so I guess you can take it up with him.

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Somehow this will be my second (fairly lengthy!) essay in a row dealing with players from the Kansas City Chiefs football team. Am I in a simulation right now? Is this the AI version of me, writing what it thinks I would write? Who even knows.